whether I am any wiser now is more than I take upon me to say, but it was
my folly then) to be in quest of certain kinds of secret knowledge, which
the fathers of science thought attainable. Now, in several quarters,
amongst people with whom my pursuits brought me in contact, I heard of a
certain recipe which had been lost for a generation or two, but which, if
it could be recovered, would prove to have the true life-giving potency in
it. It is said that the ancestor of a great old family in England was in
possession of this secret, being a man of science, and the friend of Friar
Bacon, who was said to have concocted it himself, partly from the precepts
of his master, partly from his own experiments, and it is thought he might
have been living to this day, if he had not unluckily been killed in the
Wars of the Roses; for you know no recipe for long life would be proof
against an old English arrow, or a leaden bullet from one of our own
firelocks."

"And what has been the history of the thing after his death?" asked
Septimius.

"It was supposed to be preserved in the family," said the doctor, "and it
has always been said, that the head and eldest son of that family had it
at his option to live forever, if he could only make up his mind to it.
But seemingly there were difficulties in the way. There was probably a
certain diet and regimen to be observed, certain strict rules of life to
be kept, a certain asceticism to be imposed on the person, which was not
quite agreeable to young men; and after the period of youth was passed,
the human frame became incapable of being regenerated from the seeds of
decay and death, which, by that time, had become strongly developed in it.
In short, while young, the possessor of the secret found the terms of
immortal life too hard to be accepted, since it implied the giving up of
most of the things that made life desirable in his view; and when he came