tial lesson might have led me to believe. With
a vigilant eye and a little prudence, I shall be able to continue. The
prospect is enchanting.

And so, in due season, comes hydrogen, carefully contemplated in my
reading, seen and reseen with the eye of the mind before being seen with
the eyes of the body. I delight my little rascals by making the hydrogen
flame sing in a glass tube, which trickles with the drops of water
resulting from the combustion; I make them jump with the explosions of
the thunderous mixture. Later, I show them, with the same invariable
success, the splendors of phosphorus, the violent powers of chlorine,
the loathsome smells of sulfur, the metamorphoses of carbon and so on.
In short, in a series of lessons, the principal nonmetallic elements and
their compounds are passed in review during the course of the year.

The thing was bruited abroad. Fresh pupils came to me, attracted by the
marvels of the school. Additional places were laid in the dining hall;
and the principal, who was more interested in the profits on his beans
and bacon than in chemistry, congratulated me on this accession of
boarders. I was fairly started. Time and an indomitable will would do
the rest.

CHAPTER XX. INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY

Everything happens sooner or later. When, through the low windows
overlooking the garden of the school, my eye glanced at the laboratory,
where the madder vats were steaming; when, in the sanctuary itself,
I was present, by way of a first and last chemistry lesson, at the
explosion of the retort of sulfuric acid that nearly disfigured every
one of us, I was far indeed from suspecting the part which I was
destined to play under that same vaulted roof. Had a prophet foretold
that I should one day succeed the master, never would I have believed
him. Time works these surprises for us.

Stones would have theirs too, if anything were able to astonish them.
The Saint Martial building was originally a church; it is a protestant
place of worship now. Men used to pray there in Latin; today they pray
in French. In the intervening period, it was for some years in the
service of science, the noble orison that dispels the darkness. What has
the future in store for it? Like many another in the ringing city, to
use Rabelais' epithet, will it become a home for the fuller's teasels,
a warehouse for scrap iron, a carrier's stable? Who knows? Stones have
their destinies no less unexpected than ours.

When I