I have said no living thing moved in the street, and every building was closed against the storm; but in the outskirts of the city, in a narrow and solitary lane, built up at intervals with a few houses of mean and wretched appearance—a faint light shone through the gloom. It proceeded from the casement of a house of antique structure, and dilapidated appearance. Years must have gone by since that dwelling was the abode of comfort, for poverty and wretchedness seemed to have long marked it for their own. The exterior gave faithful promise of what was revealed within.
In a large and gothic room, the broken and discolored walls of which betokened decay, an aged man was bending over a fire of charcoal, and busily engaged in some metallic preparation. His form was bent by age. The hair of his head, and the beard, which descended to his breast, were bleached by time to a silvery whiteness. His forehead was ample, but furrowed by a thousand wrinkles. His eyes, deep set, small, and still retaining much quickness and fire, yet at times their expression was wild, despairing, even fearful.
A cap of peculiar and ancient form was upon his head, and his person was enveloped in a robe of russet, confined about the waist by a twisted girdle. His motions were tremulous and feeble, his countenance wan and death-like, his frame to the last degree emaciated.
A bed stood in one corner of the room; a table, and two roughly made forms, were all the furniture of that miserable apartment; but around the small furnace, at which the old man had been lately employed, were gathered crucibles, minerals, chemical preparations, and tools of mysterious form and curious workmanship, but well understood by the artist. Once more the adept, for such was the inmate of this lonely dwelling, scanned with searching eye the contents of a crucible; while the pale flame which rose suddenly from the sullen fire, cast over his sunken features a hue still more livid and cadaverous.
His labors had resulted in disappointment; he sighed heavily, and dropping his implements, abandoned his self-imposed task.
“It is over,” he murmured, “my hour is almost come—and should I repine? No—no. Life!—wretched and misspent!—world! I have sacrificed thee, to thyself!—wonderful enigma, yet how true!”