gleamed with excitement, and he breathed heavily as he approached
his son to try the power of the new elixir on him.

But something most unexpected happened: Frau Schimmel, usually so
timid, pressed the boy's face against her breast and, her good gray eyes
flashing with her angry determination to resist, cried out "Do with
your elixir what you will, only leave me the child in peace! Little Zeno
speaks the truth without any of your mixtures. A child's mind is a holy
thing, so his mother who is now an angel would tell you, and I--I will
not permit you to misuse it, in order to try your arts upon it!"

And stranger yet! The doctor accepted this rebuff and did not even
reprove the old lady for her disrespectful opposition, he only answered.
with calm certainty: "Neither the child nor any one else is needed to
make the experiment."

He inhaled the contents of the phial himself, in long breaths, staring
for some time thoughtfully at the floor and then at the arches of the
ceiling. His chest rose and fell heavily, and he wiped the perspiration
now and then from his damp brow. Frau Schimmel watched him anxiously,
and she could not say whether he looked more like a madman or a saint as
he finally lifted his arms towards heaven and cried: "I have found it,
Father, Bianca!--I have found it!"

Frau Schimmel left him alone and put the child to bed. When she returned
to the laboratory and found the doctor in the same place where she
had left him, she said modestly: "Here I am and if it pleases the Herr
Doctor to try the elixir on so humble a person as myself, I am at his
service. Only one favour would I ask: would the Herr Doctor be so kind
as not to ask questions about Schimmel and myself or any member of the
honoured Ueberhell family."

But the doctor hesitated awhile before accepting this offer, for he had
not forgotten the defiant words with which she had withheld his child
from him only a short time before, and moreover the trial which he had
made on himself had assured him of the success of his discovery; having
inhaled the essence it had seemed to him as if the burden of oppression
had been suddenly lifted from his mind. And when he turned to the
introspection of himself, and questioned his own heart, he found so many
spots and defects on what he had hitherto considered faultless, that he
was confirmed in the belief that he had seen the true reflection of his
own personality for the first time.

Yes, he might well be cer