Tinged by these fires, the different objects in the chamber seemed to take other forms, and to become instinct with animation. The gourd-shaped cucurbites were transformed into great bloated toads bursting with venom; the long-necked bolt-heads became monstrous serpents; the worm-like pipes turned into adders; the alembics looked like plumed helmets; the characters on the Isaical table, and those on the parchments, seemed traced in fire, and to be ever changing; the sea-monster bellowed and roared, and, flapping his fins, tried to burst from his hook; the skeletons wagged their jaws, and raised their fleshless fingers in mockery, while blue lights burnt in their eyeless sockets; the bellows became a prodigious bat fanning the fire with its wings; and the old alchemist assumed the appearance of the archfiend presiding over a witches' sabbath. Auriol's brain reeled, and he pressed his hand to his eyes, to exclude these phantasms from his sight. But even thus they pursued him; and he imagined he could hear the infernal riot going on around him. Suddenly, he was roused by a loud joyful cry, and, uncovering his eyes, he beheld Doctor Lamb pouring the contents of the matrass--a bright, transparent liquid--into a small phial. Having carefully secured the bottle with a glass stopper, the old man held it towards the light, and gazed at it with rapture. "At length," he exclaimed aloud--"at length, the great work is achieved. With the birth of the century now expiring I first saw light, and the draught I hold in my hand shall enable me to see the opening of centuries and centuries to come. Composed of the lunar stones, the solar stones, and the mercurial stones--prepared according to the instructions of the Rabbi Ben Lucca--namely, by the separation of the pure from the impure, the volatilisation of the fixed, and the fixing of the volatile--this elixir shall renew my youth, like that of the eagle, and give me length of days greater than any patriarch ever enjoyed." While thus speaking, he held up the sparkling liquid, and gazed at it like a Persian worshipping the sun. "To live for ever!" he cried, after a pause--"to escape the jaws of death just when they are opening to devour me!--to be free from all accidents!--'tis a glorious thought! Ha! I bethink me, the rabbi said there was _one_ peril against which the elixir could not guard me--_one_ vulnerable point, by which, like the heel of Achilles, death might reach me! What is it!--where can it lie?" And he relapsed into deep thought. "This uncertainty will poison all my happiness," he continued; "I shall live in constant dread, as of an invisible enemy. But no matter! Perpetual life!--perpetual youth!--what more need be desired?" "What more, indeed!" cried Auriol. "Ha!" exclaimed the doctor, suddenly recollecting the wounded man, and concealing the phial beneath his gown.