Free After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley

affectionate in intention, but a little patronizing in fact. “Knows his physiology. Good with his hands, too. Best mouse surgeon I ever saw.” He patted the young man on the shoulder.
    Pete smiled—a little uncomfortably, it seemed to Jeremy, as though he found it rather difficult to make the right response to the other’s cordiality.
    â€œTakes his politics a bit too seriously,” Dr. Obispo went on. “That’s his only defect. I’m trying to cure him of that. Not very successfully so far, I’m afraid. Eh, Pete?”
    The young man smiled again, more confidently; this time he knew exactly where he stood and what to do.
    â€œ Not very successfully,” he echoed. Then, turning to Jeremy, “Did you see the Spanish news this morning?” he asked. The expression on his large, fair, open face changed to one of concern.
    Jeremy shook his head.
    â€œIt’s something awful,” said Pete gloomily. “When I think of those poor devils without planes or artillery or . . .”
    â€œWell, don’t think of them,” Dr. Obispo cheerfully advised. “You’ll feel better.”
    The young man looked at him, then looked away again without saying anything. After a moment of silence he pulled out his watch. “I think I’ll go and have a swim before lunch,” he said and walked towards the door.
    Dr. Obispo picked up a cage of mice and held it within a few inches of Jeremy’s nose. “These are the sex-hormone boys,” he said with a jocularity that the other found curiously offensive. The animals squeaked as he shook the cage. “Lively enough while the effect lasts. The trouble is that the effects are only temporary.”
    Not that temporary effects were to be despised, he added, as he replaced the cage. It was always better to feel temporarily good than temporarily bad. That was why he was giving old Jo a course of that testosterone stuff. Not that the old bastard had any great need of it with that Maunciple girl around . . .
    Dr. Obispo suddenly put his hand over his mouth and looked round towards the window. “Thank God,” he said, “he’s out of the room. Poor old Pete!” A derisive smile appeared on his face. “Is he in love?” He tapped his forehead. “Thinks she’s like something in the works of Tennyson. You know, chemically pure. Last month he nearly killed a man for suggesting that she and the old boy . . . Well, you know. God knows what he figures the girl is doing here. Telling Uncle Jo about the spiral nebulae, I suppose. Well, if it makes him happy to think that way, I’m not the one that’s going to spoil his fun.” Dr. Obispo laughed indulgently. “But to come back to what I was saying about Uncle Jo . . .”
    Just having that girl around the house was the equivalent of a hormone treatment. But it wouldn’t last. It never did. Brown-Sequard and Voronoff and all the rest of them—they’d been on the wrong track. They’d thought that the decay of sexual power was the cause of senility. Whereas it was only one of the symptoms. Senescence started somewhere else and involved the sex mechanism along with the rest of the body. Hormone treatments were just palliatives and pick-me-ups. Helped you for a time, but didn’t prevent your growing old.
    Jeremy stifled a yawn.
    For example, Dr. Obispo went on, why should some animals live much longer than human beings and yet show no signs of old age? Somehow, somewhere we had made a biological mistake. Crocodiles had avoided that mistake; so had tortoises. The same was true of certain species of fish.
    â€œLook at this,” he said; and, crossing the room, he drew back a rubber curtain, revealing as he did so the glass front of a large aquarium recessed into the wall. Jeremy approached and looked in.
    In the green and shadowy translucence, two huge fish hung suspended, their snouts almost touching, motionless except