His Other Wife: A Novel — page 329: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FATHER LOUIS’ STORY. 321 large volume. Only a portion of it had survived the ravages of time and students, Father Louis went on: _“’Yhis volume is a curious disquisition in Persian upon certain arts known and practiced in the East by Hakims and Magians. A strange enough blending of science and superstition, which under the more potent alchemy of the learned science of our time easily dissolves, and the tiny particles of truth appear concrete and whole amid the dead 4shes of the old superstitions. Among other fables and stories related in these pages, is one that appears near the last portion of the leaves that remain together. It tells of a young man who, under the arts of a certain El Hakim of Ispahan, was put to death by means of a drug distilled from strange desert plants. But in order that he might not bear the stings which his conscience would inflict for selling poison for murderous purposes, the Hakim delivered to the murderer a liquid, which he was instructed to administer only after having by other medica- ments reduced the victim to so low a state of health that the drug would produce a condition of atrophy so pro- found and prolonged as to have all the appearance of death, but in reality admit of the patient's resuscitation. The narrative states that only upon a body already much depleted and weakened will such an effect be produced. A high state of vitality would inevitably resist the power of the drug so as to render its action only partial; but when complete, no traces of poison could be ever after discovered in the body 7/ death ensued. Comichoo iGO