full of tears, he suddenly remembered that by the side of his mother's
coffin, and more recently at Bianca's death-bed they had wept together,
then his full heart overflowed, and gasping and shaken by his cough he
burst forth with: "It will soon be over--I feel it within me, and yet I
am no nearer to the goal.  All the elements of nature I have called to my
aid--all the spirits 'twixt Heaven and Earth over whom necromancy has any
power have I made subject to my will and have commanded them to help me
--to what end?  There stands the elixir and is hardly more valuable than
the small beer with which the servant down-stairs quenches his thirst,
indeed it is less useful for who derives any benefit from it?  I shall
quit this world an unhappy man who has wasted his life and talents in
untold efforts from his school-days until now--and yet, if the spirit
would only reveal to me the missing substance which should give to this
liquid in my hand the power that it once possessed, gladly would I
sacrifice twenty lives!  Oh! you faithful old soul, you can never
understand it, I know.  But this world, where lying and deceit flourish,
would be changed into a Paradise, and it would be an Ueberhell whom
mankind would have to thank for the great blessing.  And now--now!"

Here he buried his face in his hands like one in despair.  Frau Schimmel
regarded the sorrowful man with deep sympathy, and as it was in her
nature to try and comfort those who wept rather than to join in their
lamentations, she cast about her for something that would console him.

She had not far to seek, for there in the bay-window was perched little
Zeno, carefully picking the green leaves off a rose bough that he had
been told to gather from his mother's grave to take home to his father.
The whole stem was now bare but the white blossom at the end was
untouched, and still beautiful.

She beckoned to the boy, and in a low voice bade him rouse his father and
give him the rose from the churchyard; little Zeno obeyed and walked
straight towards Melchior; opposite the sofa his courage failed him for a
moment, but he took heart again and laying his little hand on the
prematurely gray hair of the disheartened sage said, with all the sweet
charm peculiar to a child when it speaks to comfort one who is its
natural guardian and support:

"Father, little Zeno brings you a rose.  It comes from the churchyard.
Mamma sent it to you with her love."

The doctor, deeply touched, sat up suddenly, grasped the child's hand
that held out the rose to him and tried to draw the boy towards him in
order to embrace him.  But Zeno, instead of answering the loving words
addressed to him, struggled and cried out sharply, for the strong
pressure of his father's hand had driven a big thorn into his finger,
and the blood from the wound was running down onto his light blue dress.

The doctor was distracted.  He had hurt the one creature for whose future
greatness he had sacrificed his waning strength.

There flowed the blood of his son who had come as messenger from his wife
On her he had lavished the one great love of his life and the white rose
that she had sent him lay at his feet!

As his gaze fell upon the flower that she had loved better than all
others, and then rested upon the crying child, a great tenderness filled
his soul and for the first time he felt deep remorse that he had not
dedicated his whole life to his love.  To devote the remainder of his
time on earth, which he felt would be but short, to the child who stood
there crying, seemed to him at that moment his holiest duty; yet the
passion of the investigator within him could not be subdued, for as he
looked about in search of a cloth to stanch the blood that flowed from
the boy's finger his eyes fell upon the bottle of elixir on the table,
and then on the rose at his feet and the thought flashed across him that
Bianca who had sent him the rose might have indicated to him by the hand
of their offspring the substance which he needed to achieve the object of
his life.

Of every element found in water or in air, in the earth or fire, he had
added a portion to the elixir, save only the blood of a child.

Breathless he caught the hand of his son and held it over the phial,
speaking coaxingly to him while drop after drop of the red life blood
trickled into the elixir.

Then he put the child in Frau Schimmel's arms and hurried into the
laboratory as fast as his tired feet could carry him.  There he blew the
bellows so violently that the housekeeper looked at him with silent
indignation.  When all was prepared he poured the liquid into a crucible,
set it among the glowing and sparkling coals and murmured strange words
and spells over the seething fluid until it boiled up and the hissing
bubbles ran over the rim of the crucible.  Then he stood the hot vessel
in cold water, pronounced one more incantation over it, held it before a
mirror--the symbol of the Spirit of Truth and the emblem which she is
always represented as carrying in her right hand--and poured the liquid
back into the phial.  Beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, his
eyes gleamed with excitement, and he breathed heavily as he approached
his son to try the power of the new elixir on him.

But something most unexpected happened: Frau Schimmel, usually so timid,
pressed the boy's face against her breast and, her good gray eyes
flashing with her angry determination to resist, cried out "Do with your
elixir what you will, only leave me the child in peace!  Little Zeno
speaks the truth without any of your mixtures.  A child's mind is a holy
thing, so his mother who is now an angel would tell you, and I--I will
not permit you to misuse it, in order to try your arts upon it!"

And stranger yet!  The doctor accepted this rebuff and did not even
reprove the old lady for her disrespectful opposition, he only answered.
with calm certainty: "Neither the child nor any one else is needed to
make the experiment."

He inhaled the contents of the phial himself, in long breaths, staring
for some time thoughtfully at the floor and then at the arches of the
ceiling.  His chest rose and fell heavily, and he wiped the perspiration
now and then from his damp brow.  Frau Schimmel watched him anxiously,
and she could not say whether he looked more like a madman or a saint as
he finally lifted his arms towards heaven and cried: "I have found it,
Father, Bianca!--I have found it!"

Frau Schimmel left him alone and put the child to bed.  When she returned
to the laboratory and found the doctor in the same place where she had
left him, she said modestly: "Here I am and if it pleases the Herr Doctor
to try the elixir on so humble a person as myself, I am at his service.
Only one favour would I ask: would the Herr Doctor be so kind as not to
ask questions about Schimmel and myself or any member of the honoured
Ueberhell family."

But the doctor hesitated awhile before accepting this offer, for he had
not forgotten the defiant words with which she had withheld his child
from him only a short time before, and moreover the trial which he had
made on himself had assured him of the success of his discovery; having
inhaled the essence it had seemed to him as if the burden of oppression
had been suddenly lifted from his mind.  And when he turned to the
introspection of himself, and questioned his own heart, he found so many
spots and defects on what he had hitherto considered faultless, that he
was confirmed in the belief that he had seen the true reflection of his
own personality for the first time.

Yes, he might well be certain of his success!

And yet the joy of the discovery was clouded.  How often had he dreamed
of the manifold effects that would be produced by the elixir!  At such
moments the hope had sprung up within him that it would possess the power
to enlighten him concerning his own nature and existence; would enable
him to pierce the veil that hides the mystery of the future from mortal
eyes; that it would reveal to the mind of man the true nature of things,
and solve the problem of life.

Yet all the questions directed to that end, which he asked himself,
remained unanswered, and for this reason he was desirous of seeing
whether the essence might not perhaps enable others to grasp the real
nature of that which until then had been unfathomable by man.

Consequently he could not resist the temptation, of letting Frau Schimmel
inhale the elixir.  Then he asked her why every one who was born was
destined to die, and disappear?

To which she only answered: "Such things you must ask of the good God,
who has so willed it."

When he wished further to know how, and of what ingredients the human
blood was made, the old lady laughed, and replied lightly that it was
red, and more than that she had not learned from the "Schoolmaster with
the Children," from which she had acquired all that she knew.

Then the doctor cried: "And so my hard-earned discovery is of less value
than I hoped!"

But these words had scarcely escaped him before he smiled to himself, for
it was the elixir that had forced him to this outbreak, otherwise he
would never have confessed to any one, be he who be might, that his
wonderful discovery was in any way incomplete.

Being satisfied with his experiences for that day he no longer hindered
the old lady from going to rest.

On his own bed he lay and pondered over the limitations of his discovery.

To reveal the truth, wholly and absolutely, was not within the power of
the elixir, nor unfortunately did it possess the efficacy to lead one to
a perfect knowledge of oneself; on the other hand it was capable of
forcing any one who used it to be absolutely honest in his dealings with
his neighbours, and that surely was no small gain.  Indeed it was enough
to place him among the most famous discoverers in all ages, and to
inscribe his name beside those of the noblest benefactors of man in the
whole round world.

Sleepless, yet filled with triumphant joy, like a general who has won a
glorious victory, he watched through the night.  When Frau Schimmel came
to the house on the following morning she found him with the little Zeno
between his knees.

Her suspicion was immediately aroused that the father had misused the
child in order to try the effect of the elixir upon it, and she stood at
the door and listened.

But the little bottle tightly corked peered from the doctor's breast-
pocket and, instead of questioning Zeno, he was talking to him earnestly:

"Your mother," he was saying, "was more precious to me than life or aught
else, and you, my little one, are dear to me, too, chiefly because it was
she who gave you to me, but who knows if I might not have sacrificed you
if the success of the work, to which I have devoted so many years, had
depended upon it.  Now I have reached the goal, and I tell you, my boy,
there are only two joys here below so great as to give a foretaste of the
bliss that awaits us in Paradise: one is the sweet rapture of true love,
and the other, the transport of the inventor when his experiment is
successful.  I have known both."

During this speech, which the doctor had made under the influence of the
elixir, the boy stared at his father with open mouth, undecided whether
to be afraid, or to consider it all a jest and laugh.

Frau Schimmel made an end of his doubt, for she could not bring herself
to stand by patiently and have the child confused by such extraordinary
sentiments.  She interrupted the doctor:  "Little Zeno finds his pleasure
in very different ways, don't you, my lamb?  You would rather have your
father send you to market with Frau Schimmel who buys cherries for you,
wouldn't you?  Cherries are better for children than 'true love,' and all
the other nonsense that men worry themselves about."

The doctor only laughed and said "One day he will learn for himself what
his father meant, and if you wish to buy him cherries, you good old soul,
take him along with you and pick out the finest.  You might also go to
the Nuremberg shop and let him choose the most beautiful horse, and
whatever else among the toys that he wishes for, no matter how expensive
it may be; for I owe it in part to my boy that I have attained my object,
and I must hurt him a bit more.  But don't be afraid!  He will hardly
feel it."

What did that remarkable man have in mind?  Certainly, no good!

As Frau Schimmel felt that she stood in the place of a mother to her
darling, she demanded respectfully what the doctor meant to do to the
child.

He answered in some embarrassment, and without looking at the old lady;
"It is because I have need of a larger quantity of the elixir.  If I were
to bleed another child--and bleeding is good for every one, big or
little--they would accuse me of practising the black arts and perhaps,
after their fashion of making a mountain out of a molehill, would
denounce me as an infanticide.  Therefore the boy must spare a few more
drops of his blood, and he will do so gladly if he receives something
pretty as a reward.  I am very skilful and can draw the blood without
hurting him."

When, however, Frau Schimmel clasped her hands, and Zeno, whimpering, hid
his face in her skirts, the doctor hastened to add: "There, there, I am
not going to do it at once, and perhaps it is just as well that I should
experiment with my own blood first.  So take the boy out and buy him the
finest plaything you can find, and leave a message at Herr Winckler's; he
is to come to-day to The Three Kings, for I have something very important
to communicate to him."

The old lady was very glad to get the child beyond the reach of his
father.  His happiness was as incomprehensible to her, as his design on
the blood of his child was dreadful, and she led the boy forth quickly.
The doctor, however, went into the laboratory with wavering steps, and in
the next half hour prepared more of the elixir into which he mixed some
of his own blood.

The effect was the same as if he had used the blood of his child.

This delighted him so much that he fairly beamed with pleasure.  But even
then he gave himself no rest.  He took the elixir which he had made the
day before into the library, and there he wrote and wrote.

At noon he allowed a morsel of food to be brought to him, and ate it
seated at his desk.  When he had finished he continued his work with his
pen, sealing-wax and seal, until the notary, Herr Winckler, called
towards evening.

For the first time in the course of their long friendship he fell on the
notary's neck, and told him with wet eyes, and broken voice that he had
reached the happiest hour of his life, for the great work to which he had
already dedicated himself while yet in Padua and Bologna, was completed,
and that only the preceding evening he had achieved the most marvellous
discovery of all times.

One of whose effects would be that a new epoch would dawn for the
profession to which Herr Winckler belonged--that of the law.

Here his friend interrupted him to inquire what this discovery might be,
but Melchior had the force to keep his secret, and only handed over to
him the phial of the elixir, which he had previously packed carefully in
a jewel casket of Bianca's, of Italian workmanship, and then wrapped in
parchment, and tied, and fastened, with many seals.

He also entrusted his school companion with the letters which he had
written, saying that his days were numbered, and giving him many
instructions.  Finally he made the notary swear to be a faithful
guardian and second father to Zeno if he should be taken away.

At midnight the friends parted, deeply moved, and Herr Winckler told his
wife that he had never seen any man, let alone the solemn Melchior, so
bubbling over and beaming with happiness, and if one could judge by the
radiance of his glance, and the fire of his youthful enthusiasm, his
friend had many more good years to live.

But what had pleased him in the appearance of the doctor was, alas! only
the expiring flicker of the burnt-out candle.

The intense excitement of the last few days had exhausted the sick man,
and before dawn Frau Schimmel was roused by his bell.  When she entered
his room she found him sitting up in bed with burning cheeks and coughing
violently.  He called for something to drink, saying that he was dying of
thirst.

When he was refreshed by a glass of wine mixed with water, which in Italy
had grown to be his favourite drink, he said to the old housekeeper that
he would not need to use his son's blood, as his own was equally
efficacious.  He also asked her if perchance his father had wounded his
hand before he had discovered the elixir, and when Frau Schimmel stated
that he had, for she remembered the broken glass retort which had cut the
Court apothecary's finger the day before his death, he smiled and said:
"Now the wonderful fact of his discovery is explained.  A drop of the
paternal blood must have found its way into the mixture.  Thus one riddle
after another is solved, and soon the last mystery that remains will
become clear to me."

Then he added that having brought Truth into the world he was glad to
depart to that region where it was always day, where there were no
deceits and no uncertainties, and where the star of his life that had
set would arise for him once more.

He murmured Bianca's name and closed his eyes, while a happy smile lit
up his worn, thin face.  His breast rose and fell with his irregular
breathing, shaken now and then by his cough and feverish shivering, and
often he cried out like one inspired: "Infinite labour, measureless
reward!  All, all fulfilled!"

Frau Schimmel realised that the end had come.  After he had received the
sacrament, the old lady laid his hand upon the curly head of his son.
Melchior gazed fondly into the sweet face of his child, and quietly
closed his eyes.

The priest who administered extreme unction to him was fond of telling
the story of this last sacrament, for he had never seen any dying man
exhibit greater confidence and faith.

Frau Schimmel cried herself nearly blind.

On the third day after the death of Doctor Melchior Ueberhell, his mortal
remains were carried to rest with great ceremony, and buried in the place
that he himself had chosen during his lifetime.

Between his wife and his mother, rose the little mound that marked his
resting-place, and later many who visited the churchyard used to stop
beside the graves of Bianca and Melchior, perhaps because of the creeping
roses which had been planted beneath the cross of his beloved, and which
spread so luxuriantly that they soon covered the husband's grave as well
as the wife's, and in the month of June decked them both with a wondrous
wealth of blossom.

In the letter which the doctor handed to Herr Winckler, the guardian of
his son, shortly before his death, he desired the notary, or his
successor, to give to his son Zeno, on the morning of his twenty-fifth
birthday, the sealed package containing the phial, together with the
accompanying manuscript.

In a second letter on which was written: "To be opened in case my son
Zeno should die before reaching his twenty-fifth birth day," he informed
the notary of the power that dwelt within the phial, and charged him to
employ it for the benefit of mankind.

Both letters--the one to Zeno and the other to the notary--contained
precise directions for the making of the elixir, and also the
recommendation that it should be sent to all universities and faculties,
as well as to the spiritual and temporal authorities of his beloved
fatherlands, Saxony and Germany, that it might become the common property
of the whole world.

To Frau Schimmel the doctor entrusted the worldly welfare of little Zeno,
and to the notary the responsibility of his education, and both of these
people not only fulfilled their duties, but gave the child a large share
of their love, so that the orphan throve both in mind and body.

That he was neither wiser nor duller, stronger nor weaker than his school
companions pleased Frau Schimmel, for as she loved to say: "Those people
over whom one exclaims when one meets them, either because of their
exceptional goodness or badness, are destined to be unhappy in this
world."

The old lady also took great pleasure in dressing the boy very finely,
and as he would one day be rich, she had no fear for his future, save
that on his twenty-fifth birthday he was to receive his father's elixir,
concerning which, loyal to her oath, she maintained silence towards
everyone.

But even this anxiety was, she thought, to be removed when one day there
was an alarm of fire, and she learned that a conflagration had broken out
in the oil cellar of the Winckler house, and that the notary's quarters
had been entirely destroyed by the flames.

But she rejoiced too soon, for only Doctor Melchior's letters to his son
and to the notary were burned, and the strange old lady could hardly
bring herself to forgive the brave and conscientious guardian of her
favourite, because at great personal risk he had saved the casket
containing the phial.

Of Zeno there is very little to tell, except that from a child he grew to
be a fine youth, with the great dark eyes of his mother, and that he
cared much about his elegant clothes, and was devoted to his noble horse.

In his twenty-third year he became a doctor of ancient and modern
jurisprudence, in his twenty-fourth he gained admission to the famous
Leipsic  "Schoppen" court of justice, and now the venerable Frau Schimmel
as well as his guardian, the notary, whose housekeeper had died in the
meanwhile, were strongly urging him to choose a helpmate for life.

As the wishes of his guardians coincided with his own in this particular,
he hastened to fulfil them, and his choice fell upon the daughter of an
officer of high rank, who had been noticeable at the Rathhaus balls on
account of the elegance of her costume.

Frau Schimmel was apprehensive, for according to her ideas, an honourable
young woman of good burgher family was better suited to the heir of The
Three Kings; yet in reality she considered nothing too good or too
beautiful for Zeno, and after she had learned from the officer's servants
that their mistress was of a cheerful disposition, and was able with her
own skilful hands to dress herself well on very small means, and to keep
up an appearance of elegance in her father's house which swarmed with
children, she came to the conclusion that Zeno's choice was a wise one.

She therefore gave her consent to his wooing, and at the end of three
months the wedding took place with great magnificence, to the sound of
drums and trumpets.  The young husband went about as if he were borne on
wings.

Surely there was no bride in all Saxony so lovely and so beautiful, and
when she refused flatly to have Frau Schimmel invited to the wedding
feast, he excused her, thinking that her refusal was the result of her
aristocratic surroundings and training.  The question did not give rise
to any open quarrel, for Frau Schimmel of her own accord announced that
it was enough for her to pray for the happiness of the young couple in
church.

For four weeks after the wedding-day, Zeno continued to wonder that such
exquisite bliss could fall to the lot of any mortal in this world, which
so many people regarded as a vale of sorrow, and when his passionate dark
eyes were reflected in the cooler blue ones of his wife, and she returned
his caresses sweetly but without laying aside her distinctive and
reserved manner, which he laid to the account of maidenly bashfulness, he
felt that no one could be more blessed, and that he was the most enviable
of men.  So the time passed, and his twenty-fifth birthday was
approaching.  The young Frau Ueberhell awaited with even greater
curiosity than her husband, the disclosure of the contents of the sealed
package which Herr Winckler had in charge for his ward.

On the morning of the birthday Frau Rosalie dismissed the housekeeper,
whom she kept at a distance, and herself admitted the notary when she saw
him approach The Three Kings, which by her wish had been richly decorated
with stucco and gilding, and furnished with stable room for Zeno's horse
and her two ponies.

The old gentleman brought with him the parcel, as the young couple
expected and after saying that unfortunately the written instructions,
which Doctor Melchior had given him at the same time with the box, had
fallen a victim to the flames, he broke the seals that had fastened the
package for so many years, and Rosalie clapped her hands when the
beautiful casket of carved ivory mounted in gold came to view.

It was opened with great care, and Zeno took from it a paper which lay on
a rose-coloured silk pad and on which Doctor Melchior had written in
large Roman characters: "To my son Zeno Ueberhell.  To be used according
to the directions found in the letter accompanying the casket, afterwards
to be given to his eldest son on his twenty-fifth birthday, and thus
always to be handed down from first-born to first-born, to the last one,
which, please Heaven, will be to the end of Time, in order that the
phial, destined to change the aspect of human life, and lead it to its
true salvation, may remain forever a priceless heirloom in the Ueberhell
family.  By means of the accompanying prescription every experienced
chemist will be able to make the elixir in any desired quantity.  My
blessing rest upon you, my son, and upon every Ueberhell who, on his
twenty-fifth birthday--that is having reached maturity--shall receive
this little bottle and regard it as the most precious of all his
possessions."

This inscription Melchior's son read with trembling voice, and he was
so deeply moved by the solemnity of his father's words that he did not
perceive his young wife lift the cushion from the casket, examine the
phial with curiosity, and then, having removed the glass stopper with
difficulty, hold the bottle to her dainty little nose.

But she closed the phial as quickly as she had opened for she experienced
so strange a sensation, her blood beat through her veins so oddly, that,
impelled by some inner force, and regardless of the presence of Herr
Winckler, and the tact which she usually displayed, she cried out: "So
that, then, is your inheritance!  A bit of coloured glass which one could
buy in the street for a trifle, and a few brown drops of some stuff which
no one knows the use of, now that the directions are burned."

As Zeno, surprised at these shrill notes which he now heard for the first
time, in his wife's voice, tried to pacify her, saying that no doubt the
liquid possessed marvellous properties, and that they could not blame his
sainted father because an unlucky accident had destroyed his elucidation
of them, and sought to draw her to him, she pushed him away roughly, and
answered with angry scorn: "Sainted, you call the old man!  As if I
didn't know that he was a master of all sorts of hellish arts and black
magic!  A fig for such saintship!"

They were bitter words, and, like one who has been wandering in sunshine
and suddenly finds himself overwhelmed by blackest night, Zeno felt
himself deprived of strength, the floor seemed to rise, and his knees
trembled.

He grasped the phial, hoping to recover himself by aid of the pungent
odour that escaped from it, and even as he inhaled the contents, light
seemed once more to flood the darkness, and very erect, and with a
dignity of which he had not hitherto thought himself capable, he listened
to Rosalie's further words.

He grew very pale, and it was with difficulty that he restrained himself,
but he did not interrupt her as, forced by the power of the elixir, she
went on to declare, that she had accepted his offer of marriage merely
because he was sufficiently presentable, notwithstanding his humble
origin, to enable her to walk or ride with him about the city without
feeling humiliated; that she had hoped and expected to find great wealth
by means of which as his wife, she could lead the life that she enjoyed,
and be able also to help her father to bring up her younger brothers and
sisters in a fashion befitting their rank; that on the contrary she had
found him only rich enough to secure her own comfortable existence, and
for this she had chained herself to a turtle dove whose eternal cooing
was beginning to weary her beyond endurance; that now her last hope of
the riches, which one had a right to expect in the house of a magician,
had vanished, and that if it were not for the gossip of the townsfolk,
she would return to her father's house.

With this statement Rosalie stopped and looked around her, frightened by
her own frankness, which she now recognized as unwise and fatal to the
last degree.

The unlooked-for and dignified reserve of her injured husband, together
with his ghastly paleness disturbed her, and her inquietude grew to
painful anxiety as he maintained silence.  At length he said "I have
learned to love you truly and passionately, my wife, and now you show me
how you have returned the affection which my heart bestowed upon you.
You are right when you accuse me of having laid too much stress upon vain
trifles.  For that very fault I have been most severely punished, for had
I wooed you in woollen, instead of in velvet, I should never have had the
misfortune to be bound to a woman like you.  Nor was it love that led me
to you, but the miserable ambition to bring a nobleman's daughter into my
burgher home.  So we both deceived each other, and now if you wish to
return whence I took you--you may leave my home unhindered."

The young wife buried her face in her hands and answered: "No, no, life
is too miserable and poverty-stricken at home and I have suffered too
much in the long struggle to keep up appearances.  And then what would
people say?  No, no,--I will do everything that I can to please you."

"Very well, you may stay," he replied gloomily.

Frau Schimmel, who had been in the room for some time, turned to the
notary and said:  "The Court apothecary used to say that I was stupid,
but thirty years ago I foretold what has happened here today."

She then implored Zeno to throw the elixir into the Pleisse, but for the
first time he exhibited a will of his own.  He put the phial and the
document in his father's writing into his breast pocket, and tucking the
gray-haired notary under his arm, he left the room.

Frau Schimmel followed his example.  Having reached the ground-floor she
stopped and, shaking her gray head, murmured: "Doctor  Melchior was such
a wise man, I wonder he did not order that each of his successors should
make the girl of his choice inhale the elixir before he proposed to her.
The life I led with Vorkel, and with my second husband Schimmel, who lies
beside the first in the churchyard, was hardly perfect, but Zeno's
existence will be hell upon earth."

But this time Frau Schimmel was a little wide of the mark in her
prophesy.  The two young people, for a time, treated each other distantly
and coldly, but Fran Rosalie learned to regard her husband with a timid
respect that sat well upon her.  As for him he was transformed into a
stern man since he had inhaled the elixir, and his severe dress seemed
but an outward sign of his earnestness.  Before the year was out a boy
was given to them, and when Rosalie saw him take the little one in his
arms and kiss it, she called him to her bedside and whispered: "Forgive
me."

He made a sign of pardon, and stooping, kissed her white face, that was
still the dearest in the world to him.  Then he went to his own room and
inhaled the elixir whose properties and effect he had long before learned
from Frau Schimmel.  He called aloud, as if speaking to another person:
"If she be good to the child, I will no longer make her feel how she hurt
me, though I can never forget it."

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.

But the stern upholder of the law did not feel that he had the right to
disobey the instructions of his father.  And so the elixir descended to
his son, and was given to him on his twenty-fifth birthday by his
guardian, for Zeno died before his only child reached that age.

What happened to this second Melchior Ueberhell whose unfortunate
history....Here the story broke off.  The son of one of my friends had
found it in an old chest, when he was playing in the attic of The Three
Kings.  It was written in a discoloured blank-book, which had escaped the
devastations of the mice and insects, because it had lain under a pile of
aromatic herbs and drugs that had probably belonged to the shop of the
Court apothecary.

Between the last page and the cover of the blank-book, which was confided
to me, I found a continuation by a later Ueberhell.

This appendix could hardly have been written earlier than towards the end
of the last century, to judge by the paper, the stiff, old-fashioned
handwriting and, more surely still, by the fact that the writer mentions
vaccination as a new discovery.  Inoculation was first tried in 1796, and
three years later an institution was opened in London where a Leipsic
professor of medicine gave lectures.

This communication is signed: "Doctor Ernst Ueberhell, Professor of
Medicine."  And runs as follows:

Several centuries have passed since the time of the ancestor to whom we
owe the wonderful history of the elixir as written in this book, and
preserved from generation to generation in our family.

Many Ueberhells have closed their eyes forever, since then, and even the
graves of Dr. Melchior and his beautiful wife Bianca have disappeared,
owing to the removal of the burying-ground.

On the other hand the portrait in red crayon of Frau Bianca and the
little Zeno is still carefully preserved as a most precious heirloom, and
was the picture that inspired my sainted father with the desire to become
an artist.

Our forebear Dr. Melchior devoted the best of his energies to the
benefit, as he thought, of his race, perhaps indeed of all mankind, and
yet his efforts were unavailing, for to my sorrow must I acknowledge that
much of the enmity felt towards our family, and the disrepute into which
our good old name fell, was caused by the elixir.  The majority of
Ueberhells were accused of presumption and arrogance, of opiniativeness
and pugnacity.  Many had made themselves disagreeable to their neighbours
by their caustic criticisms and ill-natured complaints, at the same time
bringing misfortune upon themselves by a most curious exhibition of their
own faults.

The whole race degenerated so rapidly through their unbridled license and
lack of consideration for others, that they ceased to be received by the
members of the better circles, and there came to be an offensive saying