“Des Hermies, who is well acquainted with the underworld of science, maintains that more than forty alchemic furnaces are now alight in France, and that in Hanover and Bavaria the adepts are more numerous yet.
“Have they rediscovered the incomparable secret of antiquity? In spite of certain affirmations, it is hardly probable. Nobody need manufacture artificially a metal whose origins are so unaccountable that a deposit is likely to be found anywhere. For instance, in a lawsuit which took place at Paris in the month of , between M. Popp, constructor of pneumatic city clocks, and financiers who had been backing him, certain engineers and chemists of the School of Mines declared that gold could be extracted from common silex, so that the very walls sheltering us might be placers, and the mansards might be loaded with nuggets!
“At any rate,” he continued, smiling, “these sciences are not propitious.”
He was thinking of an old man who had installed an alchemic laboratory on the fifth floor of a house in the rue Saint Jacques. This man, named Auguste Redoutez, went every afternoon to the Bibliothèque Nationale and pored over the works of Nicolas Flamel. Morning and evening he pursued the quest of the “great work” in front of his furnace.
The the year before, he came out of the Bibliothèque with a man who had been sitting at the same table with him, and as they walked along together Redoutez declared that he was finally in possession of the famous secret. Arriving in his laboratory, he threw pieces of iron into a retort, made a projection, and obtained crystals the colour of blood. The other examined the salts and made a flippant remark. The alchemist, furious, threw himself upon him, struck him with a hammer, and had to be overpowered and carried in a straitjacket to Saint Anne, pending investigation.
“In the sixteenth century, in Luxembourg, initiates were roasted in iron cages. The following century, in Germany, they were clothed in rags and hanged on gilded gibbets. Now that they are tolerated and left in peace they go mad. Decidedly, fate is against them,” Durtal concluded.
He rose and went to answer a ring at the door. He came back with a letter which the concierge had brought. He opened it.
“Why, what is this?” he exclaimed. His astonishment grew as he read:
“Monsieur,
“I am neither an adventuress nor a seeker of adventures, nor am I a society woman grown weary of drawing-room conversation. Even less am I moved by the vulgar curiosity to find out whether an author is the same in the flesh as he is in his books. Indeed I am none of the things which you may think I am, from my writing to you this way. The fact is that I have just finished reading your last book,”
“She has taken her time,” murmured Durtal, “it appeared a year ago.”
“melancholy as an imprisoned soul vainly beating its wings against the bars of its cage.”
“Oh, hell! What a compliment. Anyway, it rings false, like all of them.”
“And now, Monsieur, though I am convinced that it is always folly and madness to try to realize a desire, will you permit that a sister in lassitude meet you some evening in a place which you shall designate, after which we shall return, each of us, into our own interior, the interior of persons destined to fall because they are out of line with their ‘fellows’? Adieu, Monsieur, be assured that I consider you a somebody in a century of nobodies.
“Not knowing whether this note will elicit a reply, I abstain from making myself known. This evening a maid will call upon your concierge and ask him if there is a letter for Mme. Maubel.”
“Hmm!” said Durtal, folding up the letter. “I know her. She must be one of these withered dames who are always trying to cash outlawed kiss-tickets and soul-warrants in the lottery of love. Forty-five years old at least. Her clientele is composed of boys, who are always satisfied if they don’t have to pay, and men of letters, who are yet more easily satisfied—for the ugliness of authors’ mistresses is proverbial. Unless this is simply a practical joke. But who would be playing one on me—I don’t know anybody—and why?”
In any case, he would simply not reply.
But in spite of himself he reopened the letter.
“Well now, what do I risk? If this woman wants to sell me an overripe heart, there is nothing forcing me to purchase it. I don’t commit myself to anything by going to an assignation. But where shall I meet her? Here? No! Once she gets into my apartment complications arise, for it is much more difficult to throw a woman out of your house than simply to walk off and leave her at a street corner. Suppose I designated the corner of the rue de Sèvres and the rue de la Chaise, under the wall of the Abbaye-au-Bois. It is solitary, and then, too, it is only a minute’s walk from here. Or no, I will begin vaguely, naming no meeting-place at all. I shall solve that problem later, when I get her reply.”
He wrote a letter in which he spoke of his own spiritual lassitude and declared that no good could come of an interview, for he no longer sought happiness on earth.
“I will add that I am in poor health. That is always a good one, and it excuses a man from ‘being a man’ if necessary,” he said to himself, rolling a cigarette.
“Well, that’s done, and she won’t get much encouragement out of it. Oh, wait. I omitted something. To keep from giving her a hold on me I shall do well to let her know that a serious and sustained liaison with me is impossible ‘for family reasons.’ And
