"I have sought one like you for the last hundred years. Now I have found you, we part not till I know what I desire. The vision that sees through the Past, and cleaves through the veil of the Future, is in you at this hour; never before, never to come again. The vision of no puling fantastic girl, of no sick-bed somnambule, but of a strong man, with a vigorous brain. Soar and look forth!"
As he spoke I felt as if I rose out of myself upon eagle wings. All the weight seemed gone from air--roofless the room, roofless the dome of space. I was not in the body--where I knew not--but aloft over time, over earth.
Again I heard the melodious whisper,--"You say right. I have mastered great secrets by the power of Will; true, by Will and by Science I can retard the process of years: but death comes not by age alone. Can I frustrate the accidents which bring death upon the young?"
"No; every accident is a providence. Before a providence snaps every human will."
"Shall I die at last, ages and ages hence, by the slow, though inevitable, growth of time, or by the cause that I call accident?"
"Is not the end still remote?" asked the whisper, with a slight tremor.
"Regarded as my life regards time, it is still remote."
"And shall I, before then, mix with the world of men as I did ere I learned these secrets, resume eager interest in their strife and their trouble--battle with ambition, and use the power of the sage to win the power that belongs to kings?"
"You will yet play a part on the earth that will fill earth with commotion and amaze. For wondrous designs have you, a wonder yourself, been permitted to live on through the centuries. All the secrets you have stored will then have their uses--all that now makes you a stranger amidst the generations will contribute then to make you their lord. As the trees and the straws are drawn into a whirlpool--as they spin round, are sucked to the deep, and again tossed aloft by the eddies, so shall races and thrones be plucked into the charm of your vortex. Awful Destroyer--but in destroying, made, against your own will, a Constructor!"
"Far off; when it comes, think your end in this world is at hand!"
"How and what is the end? Look east, west, south, and north."