"Miserable sensualists that you are," he exclaimed, raising his voice and confronting his cowering audience, "the use for which you would chiefly value this inestimable secret has no attractions for me. My spirit looks upward, not downward. I scorn pleasure. I love glory and power. Through woman I shall conquer man. Woman herself shall be the agent of transferring all that husbands, lovers, brothers, sons, friends possess, to the great magician who shall be a god in her eyes."
"When I have achieved the conquest of the world," said the earnest madman, "I will resign the women to you, as a conqueror throws the treasures of a sacked city to the soldiers who have won him a crown."
"And the liquid?" inquired Magistus--"how is it to be obtained?"
"That brought me hither from my subterranean palace in Egypt, where I was initiated into the sacred mysteries by Isis herself."
All ears paid him the strictest attention.
"I must obtain the body of a young girl and convey it to the buried city of the sands, where Ja-bol-he-moth, whom you saw just now, will assist me in the magical rites. We must take her alive. I have made every preparation. I have a vehicle specially constructed for concealment. That will convey us to Joppa whence I have just come. From there to Alexandria by a vessel which awaits me. Thence to the Lybian desert."
"She must be pure as the snow nearest heaven: innocent as the babe tended by angels: beautiful as Aurora when she treads the golden pavement with her feet of pearl: loving as the heart of Spring when she gives her life to the earth: holy as the spirit of prayer which breathed from the lyre of King David."
"And what would you do with this peerless maiden?" said some one in the group.
"Are you acquainted with the processes and powers of magic, and do you ask such a question? Do you know the virtues of the dust of a dove's heart? of the ashes of a viper's tongue? of the pulverized bones of a babe's head? of the blood of a living man? Can you not imagine what subtile forces we may extract from the essences of a virgin body?"
"Has your oracle directed you where to find this wonderful woman?" asked Magistus.
"My presence here is a warrant that it has. That woman is a Jewess, of the tribe of Benjamin, the youngest child, born at the death of her mother."