science! how many wise men come flying from afar, to dash their heads against thee! How many systems vainly fling themselves buzzing against that eternal pane!”

He became silent. These last ideas, which had gradually led him back from himself to science, appeared to have calmed him. Jacques Charmolue recalled him wholly to a sense of reality by addressing to him this question: “Come, now, master, when will you come to aid me in making gold?

I am impatient to succeed.”

The archdeacon shook his head, with a bitter smile. “Master Jacques read Michel Psellus’ ‘Dialogus de Energia et Operatione Daemonum_.’ What we are doing is not wholly innocent.”

“Speak lower, master! I have my suspicions of it,”