merely watch the progress of the experiment."

While he spoke, Doctor Heidegger had been filling the four champagne
glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently
impregnated with an effervescent gas; for little bubbles were
continually ascending from the depths of the glasses, and bursting
in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant
perfume, the old people doubted now that it possessed cordial
and comfortable properties; and though utter sceptics as to its
rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But
Doctor Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.

"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it would be
well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should
draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a second
time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would
be if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns
of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"

The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by a
feeble and tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous was the idea that,
knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error, they
should ever go astray again.

"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing: "I rejoice that I have so well
selected the subjects of my experiment."

With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor,
if it really possessed such virtues as Doctor Heidegger imputed to it,
could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more
wofully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure
was, but had been the offspring of nature's dotage, and always the
gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now sat stooping
round the doctor's table, without life enough in their souls or bodies
to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank
off the water, and replaced their glasses on the table.

Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of
the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of
generous wine, together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine,
brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful
suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them
look so corpselike. They gazed at one another, and fancied that
some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad