While thus speaking, he held up the sparkling liquid, and gazed at it like a Persian worshipping the sun.
"To live for ever!" he cried, after a pause—"to escape the jaws of death just when they are opening to devour me!—to be free from all accidents!—'tis a glorious thought! Ha! I bethink me, the rabbi said there was one peril against which the elixir could not guard me—one vulnerable point, by which, like the heel of Achilles, death might reach me! What is it!—where can it lie?"
And he relapsed into deep thought.
"This uncertainty will poison all my happiness," he continued; "I shall live in constant dread, as of an invisible enemy. But no matter! Perpetual life!—perpetual youth!—what more need be desired?"
"What more, indeed!" cried Auriol.
"Ha!" exclaimed the doctor, suddenly recollecting the wounded man, and concealing the phial beneath his gown.
"Your caution is vain, doctor," said Auriol. "I have heard what you have uttered. You fancy you have discovered the elixir vitæ."
"Fancy I have discovered it!" cried Doctor Lamb. "The matter is past all doubt. I am the possessor of the wondrous secret, which the greatest philosophers of all ages have sought to discover—the miraculous preservative of the body against decay."
"The man who brought me hither told me you were my kinsman," said Auriol. "Is it so?"
"It is," replied the doctor, "and you shall now learn the connection that subsists between us. Look at that ghastly relic," he added, pointing to the head protruding from the bag: "that was once my son Simon. His son's head is within the sack—your father's head—so that four generations are brought together."