Part 27 (1/2)
”No,” said the archdeacon, grasping the arm of Gossip Tourangeau, and a ray of enthusiasm lighted up his gloomy eyes, ”no, I 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 G.o.d.”
”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 pa.s.s in succession from the state of lead, to the state of red a.r.s.enic, from red a.r.s.enic 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! Hippocrates is a dream; Urania is a dream; Hermes, a thought. Gold is the sun; to make gold is to be G.o.d. Herein lies the one and only science. I have sounded the depths of medicine and astrology, I tell you! Naught, nothingness! The human body, shadows! the planets, shadows!”
And he fell back in his armchair in a commanding and inspired att.i.tude.
Gossip Touraugeau watched him in silence. Coictier tried to grin, shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly, and repeated in a low voice,--
”A madman!”
”And,” said Tourangeau suddenly, ”the wondrous result,--have you attained it, have you made gold?”
”If I had made it,” replied the archdeacon, articulating his words slowly, like a man who is reflecting, ”the king of France would be named Claude and not Louis.”
The stranger frowned.
”What am I saying?” resumed Dom Claude, with a smile of disdain. ”What would the throne of France be to me when I could rebuild the empire of the Orient?”
”Very good!” said the stranger.
”Oh, the poor fool!” murmured Coictier.
The archdeacon went on, appearing to reply now only to his thoughts,--
”But no, I am still crawling; I am scratching my face and knees against the pebbles of the subterranean pathway. I catch a glimpse, I do not contemplate! I do not read, I spell out!”
”And when you know how to read!” demanded the stranger, ”will you make gold?”