So speaking, Varney arose, and taking the flask from the table, he left
the room.
"I tell thee, my son," said Alasco to Foster, as soon as Varney had
left them, "that whatever this bold and profligate railer may say of the
mighty science, in which, by Heaven's blessing, I have advanced so
far that I would not call the wisest of living artists my better or my
teacher--I say, howsoever yonder reprobate may scoff at things too holy
to be apprehended by men merely of carnal and evil thoughts, yet believe
that the city beheld by St. John, in that bright vision of the Christian
Apocalypse, that new Jerusalem, of which all Christian men hope to
partake, sets forth typically the discovery of the GRAND SECRET, whereby
the most precious and perfect of nature's works are elicited out of
her basest and most crude productions; just as the light and gaudy
butterfly, the most beautiful child of the summer's breeze, breaks forth
from the dungeon of a sordid chrysalis."
"Master Holdforth said nought of this exposition," said Foster
doubtfully; "and moreover, Doctor Alasco, the Holy Writ says that the
gold and precious stones of the Holy City are in no sort for those who
work abomination, or who frame lies."
"Well, my son," said the Doctor, "and what is your inference from
thence?"
"That those," said Foster, "who distil poisons, and administer them in
secrecy, can have no portion in those unspeakable riches."
"You are to distinguish, my son," replied the alchemist, "betwixt that
which is necessarily evil in its progress and in its end also, and that
which, being evil, is, nevertheless, capable of working forth good. If,
by the death of one person, the happy period shall be brought nearer
to us, in which all that is good shall be attained, by wishing its
presence--all that is evil escaped, by desiring its absence--in which
sickness, and pain, and sorrow shall be the obedient servants of human
wisdom, and made to fly at the slightest signal of a sage--in which that
which is now richest and rarest shall be within the compass of every one
who shall be obedient to the voice of wisdom--when the art of healing
shall be lost and absorbed in the one universal medicine when sages
shall become monarchs of the earth, and death itself retreat before
their frown,--if this blessed consummation of all things can be hastened
by the slight circumstance that a frail, earthly body, which must
needs partake corruption, shall be consigned to the grave a short space
earlier than in the course of nature, what is such a sacrifice to the
advancement of the holy Millennium?"