“I suppose such a being, having by experience learned the power of his arts over others, trying what may be the power of will over his own frame, and studying all that in natural philosophy may increase that power.  He loves life, he dreads death; he wills to live on.  He cannot restore himself to youth, he cannot entirely stay the progress of death, he cannot make himself immortal in the flesh and blood; but he may arrest for a time so prolonged as to appear incredible, if I said it—­that hardening of the parts which constitutes old age.  A year may age him no more than an hour ages another.  His intense will, scientifically trained into system, operates, in short, over the wear and tear of his own frame.  He lives on.  That he may not seem a portent and a miracle, he dies from time to time, seemingly, to certain persons.  Having schemed the transfer of a wealth that suffices to his wants, he disappears from one corner of the world, and contrives that his obsequies shall be celebrated.  He reappears at another corner of the world, where he resides undetected, and does not revisit the scenes of his former career till all who could remember his features are no more.  He would be profoundly miserable if he had affections—­he has none but for himself.  No good man would accept his longevity, and to no men, good or bad, would he or could he communicate its true secret.  Such a man might exist; such a man as I have described I see now before me!—­Duke of ——­, in the court of ——­, dividing time between lust and brawl, alchemists and wizards;—­again, in the last century, charlatan and criminal, with name less noble, domiciled in the house at which you gazed to-day, and flying from the law you had outraged, none knew whither; traveller once more revisiting London, with the same earthly passions which filled your heart when races now no more walked through yonder streets; outlaw from the school of all the nobler and diviner mystics; execrable Image of Life in Death and Death in Life, I warn you back from the cities and homes of healthful men; back to the ruins of departed empires; back to the deserts of nature unredeemed!”

There answered me a whisper so musical, so potently musical, that it seemed to enter into my whole being, and subdue me despite myself.  Thus it said: 

“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?”