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A strange medley of persons visited this house, each seeking in her own peculiar way the elixir of life, which is beauty, or the potion of love, which is beauty's handmaiden. There were remedies plus remedies; the same skin-food was warranted to create double-chins or destroy them; the same tonic killed superfluous hair or made it grow on bald spots.
But when Sarakoff said that the whole world was going to have the elixir, a spasm of anger shewed for a moment in her face. She lowered her eyes. "This is unkind of you, Alexis. Why should not just you and I have the elixir?" She raised her eyes and turned them directly on Sarakoff. "Why not?" she murmured. The Russian flushed slightly.
He also asked her if perchance his father had wounded his hand before he had discovered the elixir, and when Frau Schimmel stated that he had, for she remembered the broken glass retort which had cut the Court apothecary's finger the day before his death, he smiled and said: "Now the wonderful fact of his discovery is explained.
If there is anything, little or big, which we can do for him in return, how gladly will we do it! Your voice has soothed him in his unconsciousness. Who knows what your presence may do when consciousness comes back? Why, it would be like throwing away an elixir to waste you after this in the ward above. You are from now on promoted as assistant nurse to our hero."
Beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, his eyes gleamed with excitement, and he breathed heavily as he approached his son to try the power of the new elixir on him.
The air, rich and fragrant with the scent of new-mown hay, stimulated him like a magic elixir. Mother Nature was in one of her most gentle moods, and with unseen fingers soothed both heart and brain of her ardent worshipper. Ere long, the sound of voices fell upon his ears, causing him to listen attentively. Several people were walking slowly along the road discussing the incident at the hall.
They have drunk poison; they are consumed with passion one for the other; death is close at hand, and there is nothing to prevent them confessing their love and dying in each other's arms. If Wagner meant us to accept the love elixir as the genuine spring of the immediate drama, he might have saved himself the trouble.
Though your science discredits the alchemist's dogmas, your learning informs you that all alchemists were not ignorant impostors; yet those whose discoveries prove them to have been the nearest allies to your practical knowledge, ever hint in their mystical works at the reality of that realm which is open to magic, ever hint that some means less familiar than furnace and bellows are essential to him who explores the elixir of life.
"Ah," he said to himself, "you have your eye on the King with your elixir of life." And then he added aloud, "He is quite well." "Oh! I had heard the opposite!" "Then they have lied." Then there was silence in the room, and the two men tried to read each other's thoughts. It was so terribly still that they felt their hatred germinate, and had already begun a fight to the death.
The only safe preparation, and this to be given only by the doctor's orders or with his approval, is the compound tincture of camphor, or paregoric elixir, as it is called, of which sixty measured drops contain a quarter of a grain of opium. Ten to fifteen measured drops of this are a sufficient dose for a child one year old, and this ought not to be repeated within twelve hours.
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