elixir is extracted from the material which hoards its essence is one that
requires a hardihood of courage which few possess. This Dervish, who had
passed through that process once, was deaf to all prayer, and unmoved by
all bribes, to attempt it again. He was poor; for the secret by which
metals may be transmuted is not, as the old alchemists seem to imply,
identical with that by which the elixir of life is extracted. He had only
been enabled to discover, in the niggard strata of the lands within range
of his travel, a few scanty morsels of the glorious substance. From these
he had extracted scarcely enough of the elixir to fill a third of that
little glass which I have just drained. He guarded every drop for
himself. Who that holds healthful life as the one boon above all price
to the living, would waste upon others what prolongs and recruits his own
being? Therefore, though he sold me his secret, he would not sell me his
treasure."

"Any quack may sell you the information how to make not only an elixir,
but a sun and a moon, and then scare you from the experiment by tales of
the danger of trying it! How do you know that this essence which the
Dervish possessed was the elixir of life, since, it seems, you have not
tried on yourself what effect its precious drops could produce? Poor
wretch, who once seemed to me so awfully potent! do you come to the
Antipodes in search of a drug that only exists in the fables by which a
child is amused?"

"The elixir of life is no fable," cried Margrave, with a kindling of eye,
a power of voice, a dilatation of form, that startled me in one just
before so feeble. "That elixir was bright in my veins when we last met.
From that golden draught of the life-spring of joy I took all that can
gladden creation. What sage would not have exchanged his wearisome
knowledge for my lusty revels with Nature? What monarch would not have