For the space of a golden hour he held the _remedium_ in his grasp, he felt its life-giving influence course through his frame, he tasted again of health and strength and manhood, he saw before him years of success and power and triumph! In comparison to it the bath of Pelias, though endowed with the virtues which lying Medea attributed to it, had not seemed more desirable, nor the elixir of life, nor the herb of Anticyra.
Nor was it until he had taken the magic draught once and twice and thrice in fancy, and as often hugged himself on health renewed and life restored that a thought, which had visited him at an earlier period of the evening, recurred and little by little sobered him.
This was the reflection that he knew nothing of the quantity of the potion which he must take, nothing of the time or of the manner of taking it.

Was it to be taken all at once, or in doses?
Pure, or diluted with wine, or with water, or with _aqua vitae_?
At any hour, or at midnight, or at a particular epoch of the moon's age, or when this or that star was in the ascendant?
The question bulked larger as he considered it; for in life no trouble is surmounted but another appears to confront us; nor is the most perfect success of an imperfect world without its drawback.

Now that he held the elixir his, now that in fancy he had it in his grasp, the problem of the mode and the quantity which had seemed trivial and negligible a few days or hours before, grew to formidable dimensions; nor could he of himself discover any solution of it.

He had counted on finding with the potion some scrap of writing, some memorandum, some hieroglyphics at least, that, interpreted by such skill as he could command, would give him the clue he sought.

But if there was nothing, as the girl asserted, not a line nor a sign, the matter could be resolved in one way only.