"These will be forthcoming, still you must not enter into the study of
this foolery too earnestly. I have seen, how at times even the most
steady heads went mad on the Kabbalah and astrology, for once the mind
has got accustomed to wander about the starry fields, it returns
unwillingly to earth. The young Princess has eyes like stars, and to
gaze into them will reward you better than looking at Sirius or
Jupiter, and your own are not bad," added he with a gallant smile.
"Once win over the young Princess, and then can we do with the Kurfuerst
what we wish, that is," correcting himself sanctimoniously, "what is
required for the benefit of the Church. When a Prince at the age of
sixty marries a young widow he is a lost man. The widow Brederode
brings with her all the charms of youth, but not its inexperience; so
the good old animal is doubly lost. You are young and handsome, and it
must come to pass, that she will prefer you to her fat German husband.
Thus we shall soon compel the old man to do what you read in the stars,
and what you have to read there, that we shall arrange together in
yonder observatory," and he pointed through the window to the tower of
the Klingenthor. Paul made an impatient gesture of dissension, but
Pigavetta continued quietly. "Other secret sciences would be of use.
The Kurfuerst is heavily in debt. Otto Heinrich lived fast, and Simmern
was ever a land of need. How would it answer, should we fit up a
laboratorium. You must study the fixing of metals, making gold, must
gather falling-stars so as to extract the _materia prima_, collect the
night-dews in buckets, with which the Princess may wash her alabaster
neck ... You will find me no bad preceptor, I think I have proved to
you that I can do more than eat bread. I will instruct you, especially
in white magic," said he emphatically, with a sharp look at Paul, "not
in the black art."

"Excuse me from studying either. It might suit certain people later on
to turn white into black, and I have not vowed to spread the devil's
arts and idol worship over Germany."

"Idol worship!" screamed the Physician. "You speak like a Calvinist. In
matters of religion the question is not what is true, but what is
efficacious. Properly handled, belief in the Philosophers' stone or in
the _Elixir vitae_ of Bombastus Paracelsus can bear fruit just as
profitable to the Holy Church, as belief in the scapulary of the Holy
Franciscus or the bones of the Apostles."

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