is mind
to new ideas.

The Ruggieri were well aware that their stake in this game was their own
life, and the glances, so humble, and yet so proud, which they exchanged
with the searching, suspicious eyes of Marie and the king, were a scene
in themselves.

"Sire," said Lorenzo Ruggiero, "you have asked me for the truth; but, to
show the truth in all her nakedness, I must also show you and make
you sound the depths of the well from which she comes. I appeal to
the gentleman and the poet to pardon words which the eldest son of the
Church might take for blasphemy,--I believe that God does not concern
himself with human affairs."

Though determined to maintain a kingly composure, Charles IX. could not
repress a motion of surprise.

"Without that conviction I should have no faith whatever in the
miraculous work to which my life is devoted. To do that work I must have
this belief; and if the finger of God guides all things, then--I am a
madman. Therefore, let the king understand, once for all, that this work
means a victory to be won over the present course of Nature. I am an
alchemist, sire. But do not think, as the common-minded do, that I seek
to make gold. The making of gold is not the object but an incident of
our researches; otherwise our toil could not be called the GREAT WORK.
The Great Work is something far loftier than that. If, therefore, I were
forced to admit the presence of God in matter, my voice must logically
command the extinction of furnaces kept burning throughout the ages. But
to deny the direct action of God in the world is not to deny God; do not
make that mistake. We place the Creator of all things far higher than
the sphere to which religions have degraded Him. Do not accuse of
atheism those who look for immortality. Like Lucifer, we are jealous of
our God; and jealousy means love. Though the doctrine of which I speak
is the basis of our work, all our disciples are not imbued with it.
Cosmo," said the old man, pointing to his brother, "Cosmo is devout; he
pays for masses for the repose of our father's soul, and he goes to hear
them. Your mother's astrologer believes in the divinity of Christ, in
the Immaculate Conception, in Transubstantiation; he believes also in
the Pope's indulgences and in hell, and in a multitude of such things.
His hour has not yet come. I have drawn his horoscope; he will live to
be almost a centenarian; he will live through two more reigns, and he
will see two kings of Fr