But it was not granted to him to show by his actions that he had forgiven her, for during the night fever supervened, and before morning she died.

Her hot hand had lain in his, just before her heart ceased to beat, and had pressed it, as if in farewell.

Frau Schimmel followed her darling’s unfortunate wife shortly afterwards.  Her death was a peaceful and happy one, for Zeno held her withered hand, and talked to her of the days when she had dressed him in his beautiful light-blue frocks.  He closed her eyes himself, and followed her coffin to the churchyard.

Only Herr Winckler remained to the widower, who lived alone with his son in The Three Kings, and like a father, more than a friend, aided him in his researches concerning the elixir.

They discovered that it produced its effect only on those who were connected with the Ueberhell family.  This was a great disappointment to Zeno, for he set a high value upon truth, and had heard from his father’s friend what great blessings for mankind the dead man had anticipated from his discovery.  All his hopes of using it in his profession to make hardened sinners confess their misdeeds, were therefore, vain.  For this purpose it was certainly useless and Zeno and Herr Winckler concluded that the reason why its effect was so limited was because it owed its power to the blood of a child of the Ueberhell race.

That its potency extended to those who married into the Ueberhell house was proved by its effect upon Frau Rosalie.  As it had also once vanquished Frau Schimmel, they argued that the Court apothecary must have used other blood beside his own, for he certainly had never been connected with his housekeeper by marriage.  What had been intended to benefit the whole world, exercised its influence only in one direction, and on the members of one small family; this grieved the old notary when he recalled the happy and triumphant death-bed of his friend.

The elixir had undoubtedly changed Melchior’s son to an incredible extent; from an easily-led, pleasure-loving youth, Zeno became a self-contained man—­almost a recluse—­and he won for himself the reputation of being one of the severest judges on the Leipsic bench.

High and low doffed their hats to him with respect, but he was not popular.

After he had worked at the Rathhaus long after hours, he would go home alone, and no one sought him out to pass an hour in his company, for everyone feared the rough and brutal frankness of his speech.  The gregarious and friendly notary used to wince when he heard his adopted son spoken of as “the hard Ueberhell,” or “the sinner’s scourge,” and he tried his best to make him more human, and to draw him within his circle of friends.

When death overtook Herr Winckler, from whose mouth Zeno used to hear many bitter tirades against the elixir, and Melchior’s son found himself entirely alone, and making always more enemies by his irrepressible instinct to speak out what he thought to be the truth, he would sometimes ask himself if it were not better to destroy the elixir, which had brought him nothing but misery, and thus to spare his son and succeeding generations.