do not reject
science. I have not crawled so long, flat on my belly, with my nails in
the earth, through the innumerable ramifications of its caverns, without
perceiving far in front of me, at the end of the obscure gallery, a
light, a flame, a something, the reflection, no doubt, of the dazzling
central laboratory where the patient and the wise have found out God."

"And in short," interrupted Tourangeau, "what do you hold to be true and
certain?"

"Alchemy."

Coictier exclaimed, "Pardieu, Dom Claude, alchemy has its use, no doubt,
but why blaspheme medicine and astrology?"

"Naught is your science of man, naught is your science of the stars,"
said the archdeacon, commandingly.

"That's driving Epidaurus and Chaldea very fast," replied the physician
with a grin.

"Listen, Messire Jacques. This is said in good faith. I am 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 I have 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! Hi