She had reseated herself apart, on the grey
crag above the dried torrent. He stood at the
entrance of the cavern, round the sides of which
clustered parasital plants, with flowers of all
colours, some amongst them opening their petals
and exhaling their fragrance only in the hours of
night; so that, as his form filled up the jaws of
the dull arch, obscuring the moonbeam that
strove to pierce the shadows that slept within,
it stood now—wan and blighted—as I had seen
it first, radiant and joyous, " literally framed in
blooms."

CHAPTER LXXXII.

"So," said Margrave, turning to me, "under
the soil that spreads around us, lies the gold
which to you and to me is at this moment of no
value, except as a guide to its twin-born—the
regenerator of life!"

"You have not yet described to me the nature
of the substance which we are to explore, nor
of the process by which the virtues you impute
to it are to be extracted."

"Let us first find the gold, and instead of
describing the life-amber, so let me call it, I will
point it out to your own eyes. As to the
process, your share in it is so simple, that you will
ask me why I seek aid from a chemist. The
life-amber, when found, has but to be subjected
to heat and fermentation for six hours; it will
be placed in a small caldron which that coffer
contains, over the fire which that fuel will feed.
To give effect to the process, certain alkalies and
other ingredients are required. But these are
prepared, and mine is the task to commingle
them. From your science as chemist I need and
ask nought. In. you I have sought only the aid
of a Man."

"If that be so, why, indeed, seek me at all?
why not confide in those swarthy attendants who
doubtless are slaves to your orders?"

"Confide in slaves! when the first task
enjoined to them would be to discover, and refrain
from purloining, gold. Seven such unscrupulous
knaves, or even one such, and I, thus defenceless
and feeble! Such is not the work that wise
masters confide to fierce slaves. But that is the
least of the reasons which exclude them from
such confidence, and fix my choice of assistant on
you. Do you forget what I told you of the
danger which the Dervish declared no bribe I
could offer could tempt him a second time to
brave?"

"I remember, now; those words had passed
away from my mind."

"And because they had passed away from
your mind, I chose you for my comrade. I need
a man by whom danger is scorned."

"But in the process of which you tell me I
see no possible danger, unless the ingredients
you mix in your caldron have poisonous fumes."

"It is not that. The ingredients I use are
not poisons."

"What other danger, except you dread your
own Eastern slaves? But, if so, why lead them
to these solitudes? and if so, why not bid me be
armed?"

"The Eastern slaves fulfilling my commands,
will wait for my summons, where their eyes
cannot see what we do. The danger is of a
kind in which the boldest son of the East would
be more craven, perhaps, than the daintiest
Sybarite of Europe, who would shrink from a
panther and laugh at a ghost. In the creed of
the Dervish, and of all who adventure into that
realm of nature which is closed to philosophy
and open to magic, there are races in the
magnitude of space unseen as animalcules in the
world of a drop. For the tribes of the drop,
science has its microscope. Of the hosts of yon
azure Infinite, magic gains sight, and through
them gains command over fluid conductors
that link all the parts of creation. Of these
races, some are wholly indifferent to man; some
benign to him, and some dreadly hostile. In all
the regular and prescribed conditions of mortal
being, this magic realm seems as blank and
tenantless as yon vacant air. But when a seeker
of powers beyond the rude functions by which
man plies the clockwork, that measures his hours
and stops when its chain reaches the end of its
coil,—strives to pass over those boundaries at
which philosophy says, ' Knowledge ends;' then,
he is like all other travellers in regions unknown;
he must propitiate, or brave, the tribes that are
hostile, must depend for his life on the tribes
that are friendly. Though your science discredits
the alchemist's dogmas, your learning informs
you that all alchemists were not ignorant
impostors; yet those whose discoveries prove them
to have been the nearest allies to your practical
knowledge, ever hint in their mystical works at
the reality of that realm which is open to magic
—ever hint that some means less familiar than
furnace and bellows, are essential to him who
explores the elixir of life. He who once quaffs
that elixir, obtains in his very veins the bright
fluid by which he transmits the force of his will
to agencies dormant in nature, to giants unseen
in the space. And, here, as he passes the
boundary which divides his allotted and normal
mortality from the regions and races that magic
alone can explore, so, here, he breaks down the
safeguard between himself, and the tribes that
are hostile. Is it not ever thus between man
and man? Let a race, the most gentle and timid
and civilised, dwell on one side a river or mountain,
and another have home in the region beyond,
each, if it pass not the intervening barrier,
may with each live in peace. But, if
ambitious adventurers scale the mountain, or cross
the river, with design to subdue and enslave the
populations they boldly invade, then all the
invaded arise in wrath and defiance—the
neighbours are changed into foes. And, therefore,
this process by which a simple though rare
material of nature is made to yield to a mortal the
boon of a life which brings with its glorious
resistance to Time, desires, and faculties to subject
to its service beings that dwell in the earth, and