Haroun, in return for what? A boon shared by the meanest peasant,--life,
common life; to breathe yet a while the air, feel yet a while the sun.

Then Haroun replied. He said, with a quiet disdain, that the dark art to
which Grayle made such boastful pretence was the meanest of all abuses of
knowledge, rightly abandoned, in all ages, to the vilest natures. And
then, suddenly changing his tone, he spoke, so far as I can remember the
words assigned to him in the manuscript, to this effect,--

"Fallen and unhappy wretch, and you ask me for prolonged life!--a
prolonged curse to the world and to yourself. Shall I employ spells to
lengthen the term of the Pestilence, or profane the secrets of Nature to
restore vigour and youth to the failing energies of Crime?"

Grayle, as if stunned by the rebuke, fell on his knees with despairing
entreaties that strangely contrasted his previous arrogance. "And it
was," he said, "because his life had been evil that he dreaded death. If
life could be renewed he would repent, he would change; he retracted his
vaunts, he would forsake the arts he had boasted, he would re-enter the
world as its benefactor."

"So ever the wicked man lies to himself when appalled by the shadow of
death," answered Haroun. "But know, by the remorse which preys on thy
soul, that it is not thy soul that addresses this prayer to me. Couldst
thou hear, through the storms of the Mind, the Soul's melancholy whisper,
it would dissuade thee from a wish to live on. While I speak, I behold
it, that Soul,--sad for the stains on its essence, awed by the account it
must render, but dreading, as the direst calamity, a renewal of years
below, darker stains and yet heavier accounts! Whatever the sentence it
may now undergo, it has a hope for mercy in the remorse which the mind