The exhalation of the elixir acted only on
the tongue, and hence its fatal effect. if, however, it had been
possible to infiltrate a desire for truth into the whole man, then, ah
then! it might have been possible for a man really to know himself, which
is the beginning of his salvation. One thought occurs to me for my
consolation:
A race that has felt itself forced, generation after generation, to serve
the truth must finally have acquired an instinct to do so, like the races
of pearl-divers who by inheritance can hold their breath a phenomenally
long time.
POSTSCRIPT.
At this point my granddaughter Bianca came in to see me. Three days
before she had been betrothed to young Karl Winckler, a descendant of the
notary Anselmus.
As I had fallen asleep over my writing she read through undisturbed the
book that had fallen from my hands onto the floor.
And so the secret was betrayed, for of course she told the story to her
lover.
She expressed her thankfulness that the elixir was out of the world, but
asserted impertinently, that if a drop of blood had been drawn from Frau
Bianca--whose features as well as name she had inherited--instead of from
the little Zeno, or if the women of the Ueberhell family had been allowed
to inhale the elixir the consequences might have been entirely different.
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