alchemists, were still in vigour. These
treatises were, then, forbidden, and in consequence desirable. It is
certain that Gilles had long studied them, but from that to
understanding them is a far cry.

"For they were written in an impossible jargon of allegories, twisted
and obscure metaphors, incoherent symbols, ambiguous parables, enigmas,
and ciphers. And here is an example." He took from one of the shelves of
the library a manuscript which was none other than the Asch-Mezareph,
the book of the Jew Abraham and of Nicolas Flamel, restored, translated,
and annotated by Eliphas Levi. This manuscript had been lent him by Des
Hermies, who had discovered it one day among some old papers.

"In this is what claims to be the recipe for the philosopher's stone,
for the grand quintessential and tinctural essence. The figures are not
precisely clear," he said to himself, as he ran his eye over the pen
drawings, retouched in colour, representing, under the title of "_The
chemical coitus_" various bottles and flasks each containing a liquid
and imprisoning an allegorical creature. A green lion, with a crescent
moon over him, hung head downward. Doves were trying to fly out through
the neck of the bottle or to peck a way through the bottom. The liquid
was black and undulated with waves of carmine and gold, or white and
granulated with dots of ink, which sometimes took the shape of a frog or
a star. Sometimes the liquid was milky and troubled, sometimes flames
rose from it as if there were a film of alcohol over the surface.

Eliphas Levi explained the symbolism of these bottled volatiles as fully
as he cared to, but abstained from giving the famous recipe for the
grand magisterium. He was keeping up the pleasantry of his other books,
in which, beginning with an air of solemnity, he affirmed his intention
of unveiling the old arcana, and, when the time came to fulfil his
promise, begged the question, alleging the excuse that he would perish
if he betrayed such burning secrets. The same excuse, which had done
duty through the ages, served in masking the perfect ignorance of the
cheap occultists of the present day.

"As a matter of fact, the 'great work' is simple," said Durtal to
himself, folding up the manuscript of Nicolas Flamel. "The hermetic
philosophers discovered--and modern science, after long evading the
issue, no longer denies--that the metals are compounds, and that their
components are identical. They vary from each o