Book Description

Auriol: or, The Elixir of Life is a novel by British historical novelist William Harrison Ainsworth. It was first published in 1844 in serial form, under the title Revelations of London.Auriol is restored to his own century and the situation seems to be as it was in the first chapter - except that we are given to understand that this is all a literally devilish trick, and that he is, in fact, still in the nineteenth century where he has just delivered up yet another woman he loves to death-in-life. The volume closes with two short pieces - a rather tedious evocation of Christmas-time and description of an "old London merchant"; and a fairly effective "night's adventure in Rome" which is reminiscent of - or anticipatory of James' Daisy Miller or Hawthorne's Marble Faun, though much more melodramatic than either.Excerpt from Auriol:The gourd-shaped cucurbites were transformed into great bloated toads bursting with venom; the long-necked bolt-heads became monstrous serpents; the worm-like pipes turned into adders; the alembics looked like plumed helmets; the characters on the Isaical table, and those on the parchments, seemed traced in fire, and to be ever changing; the sea-monster bellowed and roared, and, flapping his fins, tried to burst from his hook; the skeletons wagged their jaws, and raised their fleshless fingers in mockery, while blue lights burnt in their eyeless sockets; the bellows became a prodigious bat fanning the fire with its wings: and the old Alchemist assumed the appearance of the arch-fiend presiding over a witches' Sabbath.