beyond the dark, mysterious charlatanic communications of Doctor
Portsoaken. So that, in fact, he seemed to be discovering for himself the
science through which he was to work. He seemed to do everything that was
stated in the recipe, and yet no results came from it; the liquid that he
produced was nauseous to the smell,--to taste it he had a horrible
repugnance, turbid, nasty, reminding him in most respects of poor Aunt
Keziah's elixir; and it was a body without a soul, and that body dead. And
so it went on; and the poor, half-maddened Septimius began to think that
his immortal life was preserved by the mere effort of seeking for it, but
was to be spent in the quest, and was therefore to be made an eternity of
abortive misery. He pored over the document that had so possessed him,
turning its crabbed meanings every way, trying to get out of it some new
light, often tempted to fling it into the fire which he kept under his
retort, and let the whole thing go; but then again, soon rising out of
that black depth of despair, into a determination to do what he had so
long striven for. With such intense action of mind as he brought to bear
on this paper, it is wonderful that it was not spiritually distilled; that
its essence did not arise, purified from all alloy of falsehood, from all
turbidness of obscurity and ambiguity, and form a pure essence of truth
and invigorating motive, if of any it were capable. In this interval,
Septimius is said by tradition to have found out many wonderful secrets
that were almost beyond the scope of science. It was said that old Aunt
Keziah used to come with a coal of fire from unknown furnaces, to light
his distilling apparatus; it was said, too, that the ghost of the old
lord, whose ingenuity had propounded this puzzle for his descendants, used
to come at midnight and strive to explain to him this manuscript; that the
Black Man, too, met him on the hill-top, and promised him an immediate
release from his difficulties, provided he would kneel down and worship
him, and sign his name in his book, an old, iron-clasped, much-worn
volume, which he produced from his ample pockets, and showed him in it the