His toil of nearly half a century had brought him to the threshold of the temple, but it had not enabled him to open the door of the sanctuary. The secret was still a secret, and he felt life waning. All those things which made this world pleasant to the common race of mortals Vincenti had sacrificed to the necromancer's grander idea of bliss; he had nothing to live for except the realisation of that one hope; and if he should die without having mastered even the meanest of those three great secrets, he must needs confess that he had lived and laboured in vain. "Others may follow me," he said, with a simplicity of resignation that was almost heroic. "Others will read what I have written, and may profit by labours that have just missed fruition. The truth must be revealed, the secret must be found. It is only a question of time and patience." * * * * * Lavendale spent his days between London and country, rushing backwards and forwards by coach or on horseback, as whim prompted him, and in this autumn of 1726 he seemed of all men the most whimsical. London was dull and empty, half the fashionable world was at Twickenham, and the other half at Bath; yet there was always a chance of playing deep, or of getting involved in some political plot; there were always taverns, and chocolate-houses, and clubs in full swing, and a fever of party feeling in the air, which gave a certain amount of variety and excitement to life. Bolingbroke was in London, plotting hard, and there were bets as to whether he would succeed in undermining steady-going, steadfast Robert Walpole, the greatest financier England had ever known, and the only man of capacity wide enough to foresee the peril of the South Sea Company, when to all the rest of the world that rotten fabric seemed the enchanted palace and treasury of Plutus himself, containing gold enough to enrich every one of the money-god's votaries, down to the meanest.