There answered me a whisper so musical, so potently musical, that it seemed to enter into my whole being, and subdue me despite myself. Thus it said:--
“I have sought one like you for the last hundred years. Now I have found you, we part not till I know what I desire. The vision that sees through the past and cleaves through the veil of the future is in you at this hour,--never before, never to come again. The vision of no puling, fantastic girl, of no sick-bed somnambule, but of a strong man with a vigorous brain. Soar, and look forth!”
As he spoke, I felt as if I rose out of myself upon eagle wings. All the weight seemed gone from air, roofless the room, roofless the dome of space. I was not in the body,--where, I knew not; but aloft over time, over earth.
Again I heard the melodious whisper: “You say right. I have mastered great secrets by the power of will. True, by will and by science I can retard the process of years; but death comes not by age alone. Can I frustrate the accidents which bring death upon the young?”
“No; every accident is a providence. Before a providence, snaps every human will.”
“Shall I die at last, ages and ages hence, by the slow, though inevitable, growth of time, or by the cause that I call accident?”
“Is not the end still remote?” asked the whisper, with a slight tremor.
“Regarded as my life regards time, it is still remote.”
“And shall I, before then, mix with the world of men as I did ere I learned these secrets; resume eager interest in their strife and their trouble; battle with ambition, and use the power of the sage to win the power that belongs to kings?”
“You will yet play a part on the earth that will fill earth with commotion and amaze. For wondrous designs have you, a wonder yourself, been permitted to live on through the centuries. All the secrets you have stored will then have their uses; all that now makes you a stranger amidst the generations will contribute then to make you their lord. As the trees and the straws are drawn into a whirlpool, as they spin round, are sucked to the deep, and again tossed aloft by the eddies, so shall races and thrones be drawn into your vortex. Awful destroyer! but in destroying, made, against your own will, a constructor.”