THE LABYRINTH WAS A SUBTERRANEAN GARDEN, WHOSE TREES AND FLOWERS WERE CHISELED OUT OF THE LIVING ROCK.
"Your magicians," said the sorcerer, "weaken or kill the body without imparting corresponding power to the soul. Now we of Atvatabar believe that the body should be developed equally with the soul. We believe that contact with the noblest and best of earthly things develops power and beauty. We feed both body and soul on the perfection of things, that both may thereby absorb perfection.
"In the brilliant activities of the supernal palace, and in the golden calm of the infernal palace, priest and priestess, as twin souls, naturally intermingle in the enjoyment of a long Nirvana of ecstasy. We have not only the occult power to perform miracles like the ascetics of the outer sphere, but the soul possesses an enormous development of every noble quality without which our golden century is impossible. We are able by means of our baths of life to obtain a hundred years of glorious youth, during which period age and decay of the body is suspended. Our devotees when they arrive at the age of twenty years, when youth is fully developed, begin their Nirvana of blessedness and love. They do not grow older during these years. The eye is as bright, the pulse as bounding, the heart as lively, the complexion as pure and lovely, the feelings as fresh, at the end of the interregnum as at its commencement. Then when the golden century is exhausted, the body begins to be twenty-one years old."
"Do you mean that a man who has lived one hundred and thirty years is but thirty years old?" I inquired.
"Precisely," said the sorcerer; "why should we call a period age in which there is no change?"
"Do all souls live until their century of youth is accomplished?"
"Not all souls. Many die of accident or in consequence of sin. With some, Nirvana consists of but a single day's felicity, with others a month, or a year, up to a hundred years. It is the ideal for which we strive, and there is no reason why the body should not live one thousand years as well as one hundred, when vitality becomes more developed."