At length the expected date of my official rejuvenating process arrived, to which I submitted with unusual docility. Despite the murderous intentions of Marzona, I endured the subsequent plunge into the fountain without trepidation, although I dared not face the baleful eyes of the personage whose malignity was rendered powerless for this occasion by the inevitable laws of Meleager. I fancied I could detect an air of quiet reassurance to myself in the bearing of the two inferior councillors; but in any case I swallowed my apprehensions to the best of my ability and entered that malodorous but invigorating fluid with a firm bearing. I duly obtained my reward, for when I emerged all dripping from the seething pool, I experienced a buoyancy of mind and body beyond that of any previous occasion. Thus refreshed and refortified, I deemed myself capable of taking the initiative, and so cheerful and confident did I feel that I was almost tempted to snap my fingers in that saturnine face as it grimly surveyed my drying and dressing. Before ever I quitted the baptistery, several schemes of policy, and even of escape, began to invade my brain, so that I longed to be alone with my own thoughts; nor did many days elapse before I had adumbrated a certain scheme of procedure. This plan was, it is true, somewhat shadowy in its outline, but it was founded on the assumption that any active effort on my part was preferable to mere stagnation, to a passive courting of future disaster. My idea too was of a dual nature, for it aimed both at self-preservation and also at an unveiling of The Secret. For some time past I had been speculating on the uses of Mount Crystal with its temple of the Altar of the Sun, and from many items of information I had acquired in devious or accidental ways, I had come to the certain conclusion that on this rocky peak was to be sought the key of the mystery. A presentiment, that was already become an article of faith to me, told me that by penetrating hither even at a venture, I should be pursuing the sole avenue leading to ultimate escape, to regained liberty, to a safe return to Earth. In my fresh exuberance of mentality I kept arguing to myself that as my translation to Meleager had been successfully accomplished, so also there existed a chance, however difficult, of my returning safe to my original domicile. My immediate object therefore was to enter that distant temple on the shoulder of the mountain, which I could descry from my palace windows; the goal once attained, I must trust further to my sharpened wits. The spirit of adventure flamed hot within me, so that I found some difficulty in concealing my vigorous excitement under an air of lazy indifference.