"Listen, Messire Jacques. This is said in good faith. Iam not the king's physician, and his majesty has not given me the Garden of Daedalus in which to observe the constellations. Don't get angry, but listen to me. What truth have you deduced, I will not say from medicine, which is too foolish a thing, but from astrology? Cite to me the virtues of the vertical boustrophedon, the treasures of the number ziruph and those of the number zephirod!""Will you deny," said Coictier, "the sympathetic force of the collar bone, and the cabalistics which are derived from it?""An error, Messire Jacques! None of your formulas end in reality. Alchemy on the other hand has its discoveries. Will you contest results like this? Ice confined beneath the earth for a thousand years is transformed into rock crystals. Lead is the ancestor of all metals. For gold is not a metal, gold is light. Lead requires only four periods of two hundred years each, to pass in succession from the state of lead, to the state of red arsenic, from red arsenic to tin, from tin to silver. Are not these facts? But to believe in the collar bone, in the full line and in the stars, is as ridiculous as to believe with the inhabitants of Grand-Cathay that the golden oriole turns into a mole, and that grains of wheat turn into fish of the carp species.""I have studied hermetic science!" exclaimed Coictier, "and I affirm--"The fiery archdeacon did not allow him to finish: "And Ihave studied medicine, astrology, and hermetics. Here alone is the truth." (As he spoke thus, he took from the top of the coffer a phial filled with the powder which we have mentioned above), "here alone is light! Hippocrates is a dream; Urania is a dream; Hermes, a thought. Gold is the sun; to make gold is to be God. Herein lies the one and only science.
I have sounded the depths of medicine and astrology, I tell you! Naught, nothingness! The human body, shadows! the planets, shadows!"And he fell back in his armchair in a commanding and inspired attitude. Gossip Touraugeau watched him in silence.
Coictier tried to grin, shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly, and repeated in a low voice,--"A madman!"
"And," said Tourangeau suddenly, "the wondrous result,--have you attained it, have you made gold?"
"If I had made it," replied the archdeacon, articulating his words slowly, like a man who is reflecting, "the king of France would be named Claude and not Louis."The stranger frowned.
"What am I saying?" resumed Dom Claude, with a smile of disdain. "What would the throne of France be to me when I could rebuild the empire of the Orient?""Very good!" said the stranger.
"Oh, the poor fool!" murmured Coictier.
The archdeacon went on, appearing to reply now only to his thoughts,--"But no, I am still crawling; I am scratching my face and knees against the pebbles of the subterranean pathway. Icatch a glimpse, I do not contemplate! I do not read, Ispell out!"
"And when you know how to read!" demanded the stranger, "will you make gold?""Who doubts it?" said the archdeacon.
"In that case Our Lady knows that I am greatly in need of money, and I should much desire to read in your books. Tell me, reverend master, is your science inimical or displeasing to Our Lady?""Whose archdeacon I am?" Dom Claude contented himself with replying, with tranquil hauteur.
"That is true, my master. Well! will it please you to initiate me? Let me spell with you."Claude assumed the majestic and pontifical attitude of a Samuel.
