"To live on--to live on! For every year of life he can give me, I will
load these floors with gold."

"Gold will not tempt Haroun."

"What will?"

"Ask him yourself; you speak his language."

"I have asked him; he vouchsafes me no answer."

Haroun here suddenly roused himself as from a revery. He drew from under
his robe a small phial, from which he let fall a single drop into a cup of
water, and said, "Drink this; send to me tomorrow for such medicaments as
I may prescribe. Return hither yourself in three days; not before!"

When Grayle was gone, Sir Philip, moved to pity, asked Haroun if, indeed,
it were within the compass of his art to preserve life in a frame that
appeared so thoroughly exhausted. Haroun answered, "A fever may so waste
the lamp of life that one ruder gust of air could extinguish the flame,
yet the sick man recovers. This sick man's existence has been one long
fever; this sick man can recover."

"You will aid him to do so?"

"Three days hence I will tell you."

On the third day Grayle revisited Haroun, and, at Haroun's request, Sir
Philip came also. Grayle declared that he had already derived unspeakable
relief from the remedies administered; he was lavish in expressions of