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"No," said the archdeacon, grasping the arhted up his gloomy eyes, "no, I do not reject science I have not crawled so long, flat on h the innu far in front of ht, a fla central laboratory where the patient and the wise have found out God"

"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 blaspheht is your science of ht is your science of the stars," said the archdeacon, co Epidaurus and Chaldea very fast," replied the physician with a grin

"Listen, Messire Jacques This is said in good faith I aiven 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 froy? 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 ht Lead requires only four periods of two hundred years each, to pass in succession from the state of lead, to the state of red arsenic, from red arsenic 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 rains 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 hiy, and hermetics Here alone is the truth" (As he spoke thus, he took from the top of the coffer a phial filled with the pohich we have ht! Hippocrates is a dreaht Gold is the sun; to old is to be God Herein lies the one and only science I have sounded the depths of ness! The human body, shadows! the planets, shadows!"