"Now, bravo! bravo! my good father," said Varney, with the usual
sardonic expression of ridicule on his countenance; "yet all this
approximation to the philosopher's stone wringeth not one single crown
out of my Lord Leicester's pouch, and far less out of Richard Varney's.
WE must have earthly and substantial services, man, and care not whom
else thou canst delude with thy philosophical charlatanry."
"My son Varney," said the alchemist, "the unbelief, gathered around thee
like a frost-fog, hath dimmed thine acute perception to that which is a
stumbling-block to the wise, and which yet, to him who seeketh knowledge
with humility, extends a lesson so clear that he who runs may read.
Hath not Art, thinkest thou, the means of completing Nature's imperfect
concoctions in her attempts to form the precious metals, even as by
art we can perfect those other operations of incubation, distillation,
fermentation, and similar processes of an ordinary description, by
which we extract life itself out of a senseless egg, summon purity and
vitality out of muddy dregs, or call into vivacity the inert substance
of a sluggish liquid?"
"I have heard all this before," said Varney, "and my heart is proof
against such cant ever since I sent twenty good gold pieces (marry,
it was in the nonage of my wit) to advance the grand magisterium, all
which, God help the while, vanished IN FUMO. Since that moment, when I
paid for my freedom, I defy chemistry, astrology, palmistry, and every
other occult art, were it as secret as hell itself, to unloose the
stricture of my purse-strings. Marry, I neither defy the manna of Saint
Nicholas, nor can I dispense with it. The first task must be to prepare
some when thou gett'st down to my little sequestered retreat yonder, and
then make as much gold as thou wilt."
"I will make no more of that dose," said the alchemist, resolutely.
"Then," said the master of the horse, "thou shalt be hanged for what
thou hast made already, and so were the great secret for ever lost to
mankind. Do not humanity this injustice, good father, but e'en bend
to thy destiny, and make us an ounce or two of this same stuff; which
cannot prejudice above one or two individuals, in order to gain lifetime
to discover the universal medicine, which shall clear away all mortal
diseases at once. But cheer up, thou grave, learned, and most melancholy
jackanape! Hast thou not told me that a moderate portion of thy drug
hath mild effects, no ways ultimately dangerous to the human frame, but
which produces depression of spirits, nausea, headache, an unwillingness
to change of place--even such a state of temper as would keep a bird
from flying out of a cage were the door left open?"