James Lane Allen

“ Signor Conte, the sadness of the human lot! Death, which may come at any instant, is the end of earthly love, and earthly love is so blissful that nothing in the power of even Heaven to bestow can ever compensate for its troubled course and too early dissolution."
"Angelo and Francesca, your remonstrances against destiny are at best short-sighted and vain. How have you lived so long in this world and been so strangely shielded from contact with its irreparable imperfections? Do you not know that love increases with increase of uncertainty? that it is purified by sorrows? ”

“ Truly, when Heaven shall allow one to attain a knowledge of the elixir of youth, will it not curse him by denying the wisdom that should accompany the power to use it?
He could not even fly from her, for he alone might hope to save her life. Thus, the fear of some unforeseen issue kept him near her during the day; and often at night, starting with horror from the pale specter of his dreams, he would take a lamp, and, stealing to the couch whereon she lay with her head on Angelo's bosom, assure himself that the end was not yet come. ”

“ On the marble floor lay the richest skins and rugs of the Orient. In the center of the room was represented the fountain of perpetual youth, whose descending perfumed sprays filled the ear with low molten music. Near this stood a collation, with joy-bringing wines in which they were to pledge each other for the new life. Over the feast presided a bronze figure of Time, his scythe entwined with roses. At one end of the room was a bridal altar, illumined by the myriad serene, starlike lights of crystal chandeliers. ”

“ Should he be compelled to witness the gradual transformation of the woman he loved into a handful of dust? Or, what if the calculation were right, and the effects of the draught were to expire at the expected moment? Would not the shock to the brain have been too great—its long unnatural action fatal—and would not Angelo and Francesca be left mindless, emotionless, mere beautiful idiots? Or, what if the natural life had ceased at the time the elixir was given, as it had seemed to do, and this strange state were but due to the fictitious vitality imparted by his own skill? ”

“ Is it some monstrous crime that I am to hear you confess?"
"We have committed no crime, Signor Conte, and we are absolved of all our sins."
"Youth, beauty, health, wealth, innocence! You possess all these, and yet you come to bespeak the offices of my poor skill! Ah! Angelo and Francesca, it can render you no service. It is for those who come to me and say, 'Only mitigate the infirmities of old age, and we can bear all the rest'; or, 'Only ease this agony of pain, and we can bear all the rest'; or, 'Only aid us in the unequal struggle against poverty, and we can bear all the rest' ”

“ Finally, there were the emotions with which Angelo and Francesca contemplated all these changes. As, in the order of nature, the soul abides within and notes how the body grows old,—how a furrow is plowed across the brow, a film creeps over the eye, how knowledge perishes and skill is lost,—so the souls of this young pair, remaining aloof from all material mutations though not uninfluenced by them, appeared freely cognizant of the progressing rejuvenescence. They remembered their former future, which had now become their past ”

“ Touching those inevitable casualties, those many sorrows, and that closing scene whereby it has pleased the will of Heaven to make the noblest passion of our mortal estate uneasy, sad, and brief, look not to find, in any means of mine, prevention or escapement."
"Signor Conte," they exclaimed in tears, "do not send us home to Palermo, but hear and grant the request which we have secretly come hither to make. How often have we not heard that you possess a marvelous elixir which has potency to restore even to the old the intense and satisfying realities of the long-lost youth! ”

“ And yet you may lack one thing: is it love?"
"Signor Conte," they cried passionately, "we love beyond the love of earth—beyond the love of heaven. It is the very perfection of our love that is the only source of our unhappiness. Two years ago we were wedded. Ah! the rapturous, the delirious joys of those two happy, happy years! From the ecstasy of this long trance, during which we had no thought of coming sorrow, we have just been fatally awakened. A pestilence is raging in Palermo. The air is full of the farewells of the dying, of wailings for the dead. ”

“ But scarcely had they awakened to a realization of the fearful thought that they were growing younger, that they alone of all the race were being borne irremediably, not toward that verge of life where Death opens the portal of the infinite hereafter, but toward that more awful verge where Birth closes the portal upon the void and formless infinite behind ”

“ And a thousand other pleasures yet to come you may even now experience many, many times; for have you not hope? Be content, I pray you, with the beautiful past, and so act that the favor of Heaven may reward you with a beautiful future. ”

“ Here, perhaps, they came to entertain that broad view of life which embraces its endless succession of transitory forms, its long array of waiting and more splendid pageants, for which room must be made by those in front and whose preëstablished order of march none dare confuse. ”

“ They were willing to become parties to the secrecy which the awful nature of the deed would make indispensable. They had entire faith in his supernatural skill. And the period of two years which they had mentioned was so short that he would be enabled to modify the strength of the draught and thus greatly diminish the possibility of a fatal result. Never again would such an opportunity occur: should he allow it to pass?
Count Cagliostro arranged to make the experiment on the next night, which was the second anniversary of Angelo and Francesca's marriage. ”