r. But Susie, though amused, felt that this was not the
purpose for which she had asked him to come. Dr Porhoet had lent her
his entertaining work on the old alchemists, and this gave her a chance
to bring their conversation to matters on which Haddo was expert. She had
read the book with delight and, her mind all aflame with those strange
histories wherein fact and fancy were so wonderfully mingled, she was
eager to know more. The long toil in which so many had engaged, always to
lose their fortunes, often to suffer persecution and torture, interested
her no less than the accounts, almost authenticated, of those who had
succeeded in their extraordinary quest.

She turned to Dr Porhoet.

'You are a bold man to assert that now and then the old alchemists
actually did make gold,' she said.

'I have not gone quite so far as that,' he smiled. 'I assert merely that,
if evidence as conclusive were offered of any other historical event, it
would be credited beyond doubt. We can disbelieve these circumstantial
details only by coming to the conclusion beforehand that it is impossible
they should be true.'

'I wish you would write that life of Paracelsus which you suggest in your
preface.'

Dr Porhoet, smiling shook his head.

'I don't think I shall ever do that now,' he said. 'Yet he is the most
interesting of all the alchemists, for he offers the fascinating problem
of an immensely complex character. It is impossible to know to what
extent he was a charlatan and to what a man of serious science.'

Susie glanced at Oliver Haddo, who sat in silence, his heavy face in
shadow, his eyes fixed steadily on the speaker. The immobility of that
vast bulk was peculiar.

'His name is not so ridiculous as later associations have made it seem,'
proceeded the doctor, 'for he belonged to the celebrated family of
Bombast, and they were called Hohenheim after their ancient residence,
which was a castle near Stuttgart in Wuertemberg. The most interesting
part of his life is that which the absence of documents makes it
impossible accurately to describe. He travelled in Germany, Italy,
France, the Netherlands, in Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. He went even to
India. He was taken prisoner by the Tartars, and brought to the Great
Khan, whose son he afterwards accompanied to Constantinople. The mind
must be dull indeed that is not thrilled by the thought of this wandering
genius traversing the lands of the earth at the most eventful date of the