populace rose as on a wild beast,--a mad dog. I was driven from the place
with imprecations and stones, as a miscreant whom the Plague had overtaken
while plotting the death of a holy man. Bruised and bleeding, but still
defying, I turned in wrath on that dastardly rabble; they slunk away from
my path. I knew the land for miles around. I had been in that land
years, long years ago. I came at last to the road which the caravans take
on their way to Damascus. There I was found, speechless and seemingly
lifeless, by some European travellers. Conveyed to Damascus, I languished
for weeks between life and death. But for the virtue of that essence,
which lingered yet in my veins, I could not have survived--even thus
feeble and shattered. I need not say that I now abandoned all thought of
discovering the Dervish. I had at least his secret, if I had failed of
the paltry supply he had drawn from its uses. Such appliances as he had
told me were needful are procured in the East with more ease than in
Europe. To sum up, I am here, instructed in all the knowledge, and
supplied with all the aids, which warrant me in saying, 'Do you care for
new life in its richest enjoyments, if not for yourself, for one whom you
love and would reprieve from the grave? Then, share with me in a task
that a single night will accomplish, and ravish a prize by which the life
that you value the most will be saved from the dust and the worm, to live
on, ever young, ever blooming, when each infant, new-born while I speak,
shall have passed to the grave. Nay, where is the limit to life, while
the earth hides the substance by which life is renewed?"

I give as faithfully as I can recall them the words in which Margrave
addressed me. But who can guess by cold words transcribed, even were they
artfully ranged by a master of language, the effect words produce when
warm from the breath of the speaker? Ask one of an audience which some
orator held enthralled, why his words do not quicken a beat in the
reader's pulse, and the answer of one who had listened will be, "The words