It was with a little
trepidation that I knocked at his door. I felt a good deal as one might
have felt on disturbing an alchemist at his work, at the very moment, it
might be, when he was about to make projection.
--Come in!--said the Master in his grave, massive tones.
I passed through the library with him into a little room evidently
devoted to his experiments.
--You have come just at the right moment,--he said.--Your eyes are better
than mine. I have been looking at this flask, and I should like to have
you look at it.
It was a small matrass, as one of the elder chemists would have called
it, containing a fluid, and hermetically sealed. He held it up at the
window; perhaps you remember the physician holding a flask to the light
in Gerard Douw's "Femme hydropique"; I thought of that fine figure as I
looked at him. Look!--said he,--is it clear or cloudy?
--You need not ask me that,--I answered. It is very plainly turbid. I
should think that some sediment had been shaken up in it. What is it,
Elixir Vitae or Aurum potabile?
--Something that means more than alchemy ever did! Boiled just three
hours, and as clear as a bell until within the last few days; since then
has been clouding up.
--I began to form a pretty shrewd guess at the meaning of all this, and
to think I knew very nearly what was coming next.
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