is the cause," answered the host, pulling aside a large curtain of asbestos, and uncovering a large brick furnace in the centre of which glared two fiery cavities like lions' eyes in the gloom.
This furnace stood in an inner room, centrally, twice the size of the first, unseen from the stone-cloth screen.
"This is rather alarming, meseems," said the prince.
"Only a furnace, my lord."
"But there are different kinds of furnaces; this one strikes me as diabolical, and the smell is not pleasant. What devil's broth are you cooking?"
"What your eminence wants. I believe you will accept a sample of my produce. I was not going to work until to-morrow; but as your eminence changed his mind, I lit the fire as soon as I saw you on the road hither. I made the mixture so that the furnace is boiling, and you can have your gold in about ten minutes. Let me open the ventilator to let in some air."
"What, are these crucibles on the fire——"
"In ten minutes they will pour you out the gold as pure as from any assayer's in christendom."
"I should like to look at them."
"Of course, you can; but you must take the indispensable precaution of putting on this asbestos mask with glass eyes; or the ardent fire will scorch your sight."
"Have a care, indeed! I prize my eyes, and would not give them for the hundred thousand crowns you promised me."
"So I thought, and your lordship's eyes are good and bright."
The compliment did not displease the prince, who was proud of his personal advantages.
"He, he!" he chuckled; "so we are going to see gold made?"
"I expect so, my lord."
"A hundred thousand crowns' worth?"
"There may be a little more, as I mixed up liberally the raw stuff."
"You are certainly a generous magician," said the prince, fastening the fireproof mask on, while his heart throbbed gladly.
"Less than your eminence, though it is kind to praise me for generosity, of which you are a good judge. Will your highness stand a little one side while I lift off the crucible covers?"
He had put on a stone-cloth shirt, and seizing iron pincers, he lifted off an iron cover. This allowed one to see four similar melting pots, each containing a fluid mass, one vermilion red, others lighter but all ruddy.
"Is that gold?" queried the prelate in an undertone, as if afraid by loud speaking to injure the mystery in progress.
"Yes, the four crucibles contain the metal in different stages of production, some having been on eleven hours, some twelve. The mixture is to be thrown into the first mass of ingredients—the living stuff into the gross—at the moment of boiling—that is the secret, which I do not mind communicating to a friend of the science. But, as your eminence may notice, the first crucible is turning white hot; it is time to draw the charge. Will you please stand well back, my lord?"
Rohan obeyed with the same punctuality as a soldier obeying his captain. Dropping the iron pincers, which had already heated to redness, the other ran up to the furnace a carriage on wheels of the same level, the top being an iron block, in which were set eight molds of round shape and the same capacity.
"This is the mold in which I cast the ingots," explained the alchemist.
On the floor he spread a lot of wet oakum wads to prevent the splashing of the metal setting the floor afire. He placed himself between the molds and the furnace, opened a large book, from which he read an incantation, and said, as he caught up long tongs in his hand to clutch the crucible:
"The gold will be splendid, my lord, of the first quality."
"Oh, you are never going to lift that mass single-handed?" exclaimed the spectator.
"Though it weighs fifty pounds, yes, my lord; but do not fear, for few metal-melters have my strength and skill."
"But if the crucible were to burst——"
"That did happen once to me: it was in 1399, while I was experimenting with Nicolas Flamel, in his house by St. Jacques' in the Shambles. Poor Nick almost lost his life, and I lost twenty-seven marks' worth of a substance more precious than gold."
"What the deuse are you telling me? that you were pursuing the great work in 1399 with Nicolas Flamel?"
"Yes, Flamel and I found the way while together fifty or sixty years before, working with Pietro the Good, in Pela town. He did not pour out the crucible quickly enough, and I had a bad eye, the left one, for ten or twelve years, from the steam. Of course you know Pietro's book, the famous 'Margarita Pretiosa,' dated 1330?"
"To be sure; and you knew Flamel and Peter the Good?"
"I was the pupil of one and the master of the other."
While the alarmed prelate, wondered whether this might not be the Prince of Darkness himself and not one of his imps by his side, Balsamo plunged his tongs into the incandescence.
It was a sure and rapid seizure. He nipped the crucible four inches beneath the rim, testing the grip by lifting it just a couple of inches. Then, by a vigorous effort, straining his muscles, he raised the frightful pot from the scorching bed. The tongs reddened almost up to the grasp. On the superheated surface white streaks ran like lightning in a sulphurous cloud. The pot edges deepened into brick red, then browner, while its conical shape appeared rosy and silvery in the twilight of the recess. Finally the molten metal could be spied, forming a violet cream on the top, with golden shivers, which hissed out of the lips of the container, and leaped flaming into the black mold. At its orifice reappeared the gold, spouting up furious and fuming, as if insulted by the vile metal which confined it.
"Number two," said Balsamo, passing to the second mold, which he filled with the same skill and strength.
Perspiration streamed from the founder, while the beholder crossed himself, in the shadow.
It was truly a picture of wild and majestic horror. Illumined by the yellow gleams of the metallic flame, the operator resembled the condemned souls writhing in the Infernos of Dante and Michelangelo, in their caldrons. Add to this the sensation of what was in progress being unheard-of. Balsamo did not stop to take breath between the two drawings of the charges, for time pressed.
"There is little loss," observed he, after filling the second mold. "I let the boiling go on the hundredth of a minute too long."
"The hundredth of a minute?" repeated the cardinal, not trying to conceal his stupefaction.
"Trifles are enormous in the hermetical art," replied the magician simply; "but anyway, here are two crucibles empty and two ingots cast, and they amount to a hundred weight of fine gold."
Seizing the first mold with the powerful tongs, he threw it into a tub of water, which seethed and steamed for a long time; at length he opened it, and drew out an ingot of purest gold in the shape of a sugarloaf, flattened at both ends.
"We shall have to wait nearly an hour for the other two," said Balsamo. "While waiting, would your eminence not like to sit
