The Alkahest

oman whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering it beautiful, gives expression to irresistible hopes. Woman’s greatest charm lies i

would hide her physical defects by resting her hand upon a chair and drawing herself gracefully forward. It was calling him to help her. Balthazar, sunk for a moment in contemplation of the olive-

end, that I am worthy to know it, since I have had the courage to study a science condemned by the Church that I might be able to understand you. I am

istry that you have made yours

ned, pure; I long to know what dream has had the power to keep it from me so long. Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of all the women in the world. Love is vast, but it is not infinite, while Science has depths unfa

not a thought; it was a man that fi

she cried

, the Polish officer who

coals of hell, those hollows above the eyebrows, that broad skull stripped of hair, the upturned moustache, the angular, worn face! —

in gave a start of surprise. ‘Have you studied chemistry?’ he asked. ‘With Lavoisier,’ I answered. ‘You are happy in being rich and free,’ he cried; then from the depths of his bosom came the sigh of a man — one of those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish hidden in the brain or in the heart, a something ardent, concentrated, not to be expressed in words. He ended his sentence with a look that startled me. After

t he spoke with a force of tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture, which stirred my very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer strikes the anvil. I will tell y

it does all animal and vegetable creations which show an organization more or less perfect — or, to be more exact, a greater or lesser motive power, which gives more or less sensibility — is, undoubtedly, the more important part of our earth. Now, analysis has reduced all the products of this nature to four simple substances, namely: three gases, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, and another s

— in fact, if we could decompose nitrogen which we ought to consider a negation, we should have but three. This brings us at once close upon the great Ternary of the ancients and of the alchemists of the Middle Ages, whom we do wrong to scorn. Modern chemistry is nothing more than that. It is much, and yet little — much, because the science has never recoiled before difficulty; little, in

s Ternary, which has occupied the human mind from time immemorial, will not be found by physical anal

. Well, by analyzing those ashes, you will obtain silicic acid, aluminium, phosphate and carbonate of lime, carbonate of magnesia, the sulphate and carbonate of potassium, and oxide of iron, precisely as if the cress had grown in ordinary earth, beside a brook. Now, those elements did not exist in the brimstone, a simple substance which served for soil to the cress, nor in the distilled water with which the plant was nourished, whose composition was known. But since they ar

force. Such is the net meaning and position of the problem of the Absolute, which appears to me to be solvable. In it we find the mysterious Ternary, before whose shrine humanit

ctures. Listen to the conclusions my personal experiments have led me to foresee. The PRIME MATTER must be the common principle in the three gases and in carbon. The MEDIUM must be the princ

acts; it moves amid bullets, and cannon, and men; it crosses Europe at the will of a power I obey and yet despise. My soul has no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed, immovable, plunged in one idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the Alkahest — for that principle by which seeds that are absolutely alike, growing in the same environments, produce, some a white,

— that is to say, Matter, Force, and Product — are they not an echo, lingering along the ages, of some confused knowledge of the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus, Agrippa, all the great Searchers into occult causes took the Great Triad for their watchword — in other words, the Ternary. Ignorant men who despise alchemy, that transcendent chemistry, are not aware that ou

t I will bequeath it to you before I die.’— My Pepita,” cried Balthazar, taking his wife’s hands, “tears of anguish rolled down his

phrase, a word, the happiness of a family! Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of the cross? did you examine him? The Tempter alone could have had that flaming eye whi

above the level of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine purple of his glory, as a paltry offering in exchange for the t

ed under the fires of genius than she had ever seen it und

ple; I have discovered new metals. Why!” he continued, noticing that his wife wept, “I have even

tracted Josephine’s features; he was again astride of Science, wh

three marked stages of the organic system), these three agencies necessitate a combustion whose activity is in direct proportion to the result obtained. Man, who represents the highest point of intelligence, and who offers us the only organism by which we arrive at a power that is semi-creative — namely, THOUGHT— is, among all zoological creations, the one in which combustion is found in its most intense degree; whose powerful effects may in fact be seen to some extent in the phosphates, sulphates, and carbonates which a man’s body reveals to our analysis. May not these substances be traces left within him of the passage of the electric fluid which is the principle of all fertilization? Would not electricity manifest itself by a greater variety o

errify me; you commit sac

, the key of the Absolute. Conceive if I— I,

is face rose by degrees to inspiration. “I shall make metals,” he

accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride,

oh!

ing her hands. “Claes, God wields

discredit his beloved Science, h

ower?”

, that their substances come, like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign to them. You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have them, can you comb

gistral force, I shal

Pepita. “Oh! my love, my love!

by the sanctity of the feelings that flooded her soul,

you are bound to protect. It is the Evil One alone who is helping you to walk amid these fathomless abysses, these clouds of outer darkness, where the light of faith does not guide you — nothing guides you but a terrible belief in your own faculties! Were it otherwise, would you not have seen that you have wasted nine hundred thousand francs in three years? Oh! do me justice, you, my God on earth! I reproach you not; were we alone I would bring you, on my knees, all I possess and say, ‘Take it, fling it into your furnace, turn it into smoke’; and I should laugh to see it float away in v

she flung herself despairingly at his fee

es if you ask it; but I implore you, do not reduce our children to beggary. Perhaps you cannot love them, Science may have consumed your heart; but oh! do not bequeath them a wretched life in place of the happiness you owe them. Motherhood ha

her feelings as though they had been arrows. She triumphed over her riva

” he said, in the tone of a ma

say that you will not! My noble husband, grant me a woman’s influence on your heart, that influence which is so needful to the happiness of suffering artists, to the troubled minds of great men. You may be harsh to me, angry with me if you will, but let me check you a little for your good.

ugh she seemed to laugh, her heart was violently contracted and could not easily recover the quiet even action that was habitual to it. And yet, as she saw

to be mere electrical machines, yet your gases and your ethereal disengag

based on invisible affinities, intangible, imponderable, which vulgar minds class as moral phenomena, whereas they are physical effect

ive away the Chemistry she had so unfortunat

nces that are equivalents are neu

e me die of grief. I can never bear to see

u. My work is for the glory of my fami

k me in

woman; of her whole person Balthazar saw only h

said. “If I fall back into thought and preoccupation, th

her hand, her greatest beauty — a ha

k more,”

delightful, you can o

tory, and chain up Science,” s

t Chemistry go

!” she cried. “Make me s

hazar’s eyes, as h

. “I have seen you through a ve

dissipate your property, no matter how glorious the object you have in view the world will take little account of it, it will only blame you and yours. But surely, it is enough for a man of your nobl

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