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So very similar to Faust's cell presented itself to Jehan's viehen he ventured his head through the half- open door It also was a glooe are table, compasses, alelobe rolling on the floor, hippocephalicups, in which quivered leaves of gold, skulls placed upon velluecorners of the parchment; in short, all the rubbish of science, and everywhere on this confusion dust and spiders' webs; but there was no circle of lu the flaazes upon the sun

Nevertheless, the cell was not deserted Aover the table Jehan, to whom his back was turned, could see only his shoulders and the back of his skull; but he had no difficulty in recognizing that bald head, which nature had provided with an eternal tonsure, as though desirous of , by this external symbol, the archdeacon's irresistible clerical vocation

Jehan accordingly recognized his brother; but the door had been opened so softly, that nothing warned Dom Claude of his presence The inquisitive scholar took advantage of this circumstance to exae furnace, which he had not at first observed, stood to the left of the arht which penetrated through this aperture h a spider's circular hich tastefully inscribed its delicate rose in the arch of the , and in the centre of which the insect architect hung motionless, like the hub of this wheel of lace Upon the furnace were accumulated in disorder, all sorts of vases, earthenware bottles, glass retorts, and h, that there was no frying-pan "How cold the kitchen utensils are!" he said to himself

In fact, there was no fire in the furnace, and it seelassthe utensils of alchemy, and which served no doubt, to protect the archdeacon's face when he orking over some substance to be dreaded, lay in one corner covered with dust and apparently forgotten Beside it lay a pair of bellows no less dusty, the upper side of which bore this inscription incrusted in copper letters: SPIRA SPERA

Other inscriptions ritten, in accordance with the fashion of the herreat nuraved with a metal point There were, moreover, Gothic letters, Hebrew letters, Greek letters, and Roman letters, pell-mell; the inscriptions overflowed at haphazard, on top of each other, the led with each other, like the branches in a thicket, like pikes in an affray It was, in fact, a strangely confusedof all human philosophies, all reveries, all hu the rest like a banner a lance heads Generally, it was a brief Greek or Roes kneell how to formulate--~Unde? Inde?--Homo homini monstrurn-Ast'ra, castra, nomen, numen--Meya Bibklov, ueya xaxov--Sapere aude Fiat ubi vult~--etc; sometimes a word devoid of all apparent sense, ~Avayxoqpayia~, which possibly contained a bitter allusion to the regime of the cloister; sometiular hexameter ~Coelestem doon, of which Jehan, who as yet knew but little Greek, understood nothing; and all were traversed in every direction by stars, by figures of les; and this contributed not a little to make the scraall of the cell resemble a sheet of paper over which a monkey had drawn back and forth a pen filled with ink