with a clearness of mind, an ease, which he had not known for years. A
great flood of happiness, of joy in living, inundated his being. From
this time, after he had had a syringe made at Paris capable of
containing five grams, he was surprised at the happy results which he
obtained with his patients, whom he had on their feet again in a few
days, full of energy and activity, as if endowed with new life. His
method was still tentative and rude, and he divined in it all sorts of
dangers, and especially, that of inducing embolism, if the liquor was
not perfectly pure. Then he suspected that the strength of his
patients came in part from the fever his treatment produced in them.
But he was only a pioneer; the method would improve later. Was it not
already a miracle to make the ataxic walk, to bring consumptives back
to life, as it were; even to give hours of lucidity to the insane? And
at the thought of this discovery of the alchemy of the twentieth
century, an immense hope opened up before him; he believed he had
discovered the universal panacea, the elixir of life, which was to
combat human debility, the one real cause of every ill; a veritable
scientific Fountain of Youth, which, in giving vigor, health, and will
would create an altogether new and superior humanity.

This particular morning in his chamber, a room with a northern aspect
and somewhat dark owing to the vicinity of the plane trees, furnished
simply with an iron bedstead, a mahogany writing desk, and a large
writing table, on which were a mortar and a microscope, he was
completing with infinite care the preparation of a vial of his liquor.
Since the day before, after pounding the nerve substance of a sheep in
distilled water, he had been decanting and filtering it. And he had at
last obtained a small bottle of a turbid, opaline liquid, irised by
bluish gleams, which he regarded for a long time in the light as if he
held in his hand the regenerating blood and symbol of the world.