“So ever the wicked man lies to himself when appalled by the shadow of death,” answered Haroun. “But know, by the remorse which preys on thy soul, that it is not thy soul that addresses this prayer to me. Couldst thou hear, through the storms of the Mind, the Soul’s melancholy whisper, it would dissuade thee from a wish to live on. While I speak, I behold it, that Soul,--sad for the stains on its essence, awed by the account it must render, but dreading, as the direst calamity, a renewal of years below, darker stains and yet heavier accounts! Whatever the sentence it may now undergo, it has a hope for mercy in the remorse which the mind vainly struggles to quell. But darker its doom if longer retained to earth, yoked to the mind that corrupts it, and enslaved to the senses which thou bidst me restore to their tyrannous forces.” And Grayle bowed his head and covered his face with his hands in silence and in trembling. Then Sir Philip, seized with compassion, pleaded for him. “At least, could not the soul have longer time on earth for repentance?” And while Sir Philip was so pleading, Grayle fell prostrate in a swoon like that of death. When he recovered, his head was leaning on Haroun’s knee, and his opening eyes fixed on the glittering phial which Haroun held, and from which his lips had been moistened. “Wondrous!” he murmured: “how I feel life flowing back to me. And that, then, is the elixir! it is no fable!” His hands stretched greedily as to seize the phial, and he cried imploringly, “More, more!” Haroun replaced the vessel in the folds of his robe, and answered,-- “I will not renew thy youth, but I will release thee from bodily suffering: I will leave the mind and the soul free from the pangs of the flesh, to reconcile, if yet possible, their long war. My skill may afford thee months yet for repentance; Seek, in that interval, to atone for the evil of sixty years; apply thy wealth where it may most compensate for injury done, most relieve the indigent, and most aid the virtuous. Listen to thy remorse; humble thyself in prayer.” Grayle departed, sighing heavily and muttering to himself. The next day Haroun summoned Sir Philip Derval, and said to him,--