"'I'll discover the centre of gravity, You'll find out the Philosophers' stone.'
"It has been the habit of the wiseacres of this world to deride the idea that it is possible to make gold; to laugh in face of the notorious fact that nature is constantly making it, and that, too, of gasses in the earth, as all things else, save souls, are made. It has been fashionable to laugh at the idea of compounding a material capable of freeing the system of all its gross and clogging impurities--the only friction to the wheels of life; a mixture which would exhilarate, purify, strengthen, and supply to the body the chemical and dynamic forces of which it is constantly being robbed. But these wise people will have done laughing by-and-by; not by any means must it be thought that I, for a moment, entertained the silly notion of the alchemists and false Rosicrucians--of finding a material which when brought into contact with metals would change them into gold. We of this century are too knowing for that; nor that I hoped to discover, from the application of the old man's suggestions, that wonderful fluid alluded to awhile since; but I did believe it possible that I could compound a draught that when quaffed would repair the waste of nature, and believed until that moment, that in Phymyle I had found it. What, then, was my astonishment when the weird old man whispered in my ear that I stood upon the brink of the grandest success conceivable, that the grand Secret of secrets was all but in my grasp? To describe my sensations at that moment is impossible, and the more so because the old man told me the whole process and constituents.
"What cared I even if it _was_ necessary for me to go to Jerusalem, and gather the precious seeds of a fruit that grows upon its walls, wherewith to prepare the water? In other years I did go, and the treasured seeds are mine.... In that awful moment of success I blessed the old man and internally vowed that in return I would read his horoscope, and sleep the sleep of Sialam; for was not the desire of my soul gratified? Why then should I not return the favor?
"Such, in that tumultuous moment, were my thoughts. Soon I became calmer, and then, 'How came the old man to know the materials that were being used?' 'Perhaps he saw the fumes, and thus knew them!' But how of the contents of the condensing-chest through which the vapor was forced for the purpose of nullifying its injurious qualities? for no living human being had seen me compound or place them there. How came he to know the purpose for which this compound was being brewed? How had he become aware of the dream, the hope of my soul, the fixed purpose of my life during long and wearisome years?