"Another important secret!" thought I; "this day has certainly been fruitful in discoveries. A panacea for all diseases, even for the disease of old age, so that a man may live two hundred years, and still find some pleasure in existence. But for me life has lost its savor, and I have no wish to last so long. There is more writing here--another secret perhaps, but I doubt very much that it will give me any comfort." _When your soul is darkened, so that it is hard to know evil from good, and the thoughts that are in you lead to madness, drink of me, and be cured._ "No, I shall not drink and be cured! Better a thousand times the thoughts that lead to madness than this colorless existence without love. I do not wish to recover from so sweet a malady." I took the bottle in my hand and unstopped it. The stopper formed a curious little cup, round the rim of which was written, _Drink of me_. I poured some of the liquid out into the cup; it was pale yellow in color, and had a faint sickly smell as of honeysuckles. Then I poured it back again and replaced the bottle in its niche. _Drink and be cured_. No, not yet. Some day, perhaps, my trouble increasing till it might no longer be borne, would drive me to seek such dreary comfort as this cure-all bottle contained. To love without hope was sad enough, but to be without love was even sadder. I had grown calm now: the knowledge that I had it in my power to escape at once and for eyer from that rage of desire, had served to sober my mind, and at last I began to reason about the matter. The nature of my secret feelings could never be suspected, and in the unsubstantial realm of the imagination it would still be in my power to hide myself with my love, and revel in all supreme delight. Would not that be better than this cure--this calm contentment held out to me? And in time also my feelings would lose their present intensity, which often made them an agony, and would come at last to exist only as a gentle rapture stirring in my heart when I clasped my darling to my bosom and pressed her sweet lips with mine. Ah, no! that was a vain dream, I could not be deceived by it; for who can say to the demon of passion in him, thus far shalt thou go and no further? Perplexed in mind and unable to decide which thing was best, my troubled thoughts at length took me back to that far-off dead past, when the passion of love was so much in man's life. It was much; but in that over-populated world it divided the empire of his soul with a great, ever-growing misery--the misery of the hungry ones whose minds were darkened, through long years of decadence, with a sullen rage against God and man; and the misery of those who, wanting nothing, yet feared that the end of all things was coming to them.