four or five years more. It was a powder
of projection which was to transform instantaneously all metals into the
finest gold. She shewed me a pipe by which the coal descended to the
furnace, keeping it always at the same heat. The lumps of coal were
impelled by their own weight at proper intervals and in equal quantities,
so that she was often three months without looking at the furnace, the
temperature remaining the same the whole time. The cinders were removed
by another pipe, most ingeniously contrived, which also answered the
purpose of a ventilator.

The calcination of mercury was mere child's play to this wonderful woman.
She shewed me the calcined matter, and said that whenever I liked she
would instruct me as to the process. I next saw the Tree of Diana of the
famous Taliamed, whose pupil she was. His real name was Maillot, and
according to Madame d'Urfe he had not, as was supposed, died at
Marseilles, but was still alive; "and," added she, with a slight smile,
"I often get letters from him. If the Regent of France," said she, "had
listened to me he would be alive now. He was my first friend; he gave me
the name of Egeria, and he married me to M. d'Urfe."

She possessed a commentary on Raymond Lully, which cleared up all
difficult points in the comments of Arnold de Villanova on the works of
Roger Bacon and Heber, who, according to her, were still alive. This
precious manuscript was in an ivory casket, the key of which she kept
religiously; indeed her laboratory was a closed room to all but myself. I
saw a small cask full of 'platina del Pinto', which she told me she could
transmute into gold when she pleased. It had been given her by M. Vood
himself in 1743. She shewed me the same metal in four phials. In the
first three the platinum remained intact in sulphuric, nitric, and
muriatic acid, but in the fourth, which contained 'aqua regia', the metal
had not been able to resist the action of the acid. She melted it with
the burning-glass, and said it could be melted in no other way, which
proved, in her opinion, its superiority to gold. She shewed me some
precipitated by sal ammoniac, which would not precipitate gold.

Her athanor had been alight for fifteen years. The top was full of black
coal, which made me conclude that she had been in the laboratory two or
three days before. Stopping before the Tree of Diana, I asked her, in a
respectful voice, if she agreed with those who said it was only fit to
amuse ch