". The first pursued and arcanum through the medium ofbooks, the other engaged in practical efforts to effect transmutation. M. Figuier states that in the forties of the last century he frequentedthe laboratory of a certain Monsieur L., which was the rendezvous of thealchemists in Paris. When Monsieur L`s pupils left the laboratory for theday, the modern adepts dropped in one by one, and Figuier relates howdeeply impressed he was by the appearance and costumes of these strange men. In the daytime, he frequently encountered them in the public libraries,buried in gigantic folios, and in the evening they might be seen pacing thesolitary bridges with eyes fixed in vague contemplation upon the first palestars of night. A long cloak usually covered the meager limbs, and theiruntrimmed beards and matted locks lent them a wild appearance. They walkedwith a solemn and measured gait, and used the figures of speech employed bythe medieval illumines. Their expression was generally a mixture of themost ardent hope and fixed despair. Among the adepts who sought thelaboratory of Monsieur L., Figuier remarked especially a young man, inwhose habits and language he could nothing in common with those of hisstrange companions. He confounded the wisdom of the alchemical adept withthe tenets of the modern scientist in the most singular fashion, andmeeting him one day at the gate of the Observatory, M. Figuier renewed thesubject of their last discussion, deploring that " a man of his gifts couldpursue the semblance of a chimera." Without replying, the young adept ledhim into the Observatory garden, and proceeded to reveal to him themysteries of modern alchemical science. The young man proceeded to fix a limit to the researches of the modernalchemists. Gold, he said, according to the ancient authors, as threedistinct properties: (1) that of resolving the baser metals into itself,and interchanging and metamorphosing all metals into one another; (2) ...
