"Thank you," he said, "for bringing those singing voices and the
music, a banquet, young and lovely women with fair faces and dark
tresses, all the pleasure of life! Bid them wait for me; for I am
about to begin life anew."

"The delirium is at its height," said Don Juan to himself.

"I have found out a way of coming to life again," the speaker
went on. "There, just look in that table drawer, press the spring
hidden by the griffin, and it will fly open."

"I have found it, father."

"Well, then, now take out a little phial of rock crystal."

"I have it."

"I have spent twenty years in----" but even as he spoke the old
man felt how very near the end had come, and summoned all his
dying strength to say, "As soon as the breath is out of me, rub
me all over with that liquid, and I shall come to life again."

"There is very little of it," his son remarked.

Though Bartolommeo could no longer speak, he could still hear and
see. When those words dropped from Don Juan, his head turned with
appalling quickness, his neck was twisted like the throat of some
marble statue which the sculptor had condemned to remain
stretched out for ever, the wide eyes had come to have a ghastly
fixity.