Pasque Dieu!” resumed Tourangeau, after a short silence; “you put me in a very embarrassing position, Maître Claude. I looked to obtaining two opinions from you, one as to my health, the other as to my star.”

“Monsieur,” returned the Archdeacon, “if that is your idea, you would have done better not to waste your health in mounting my stairs. I do not believe in medicine, and I do not believe in astrology.”

“Is that so?” exclaimed the good man in surprise.

Coictier burst into a forced laugh.

“You must admit now that he’s mad,” he said in low tones to Tourangeau; “he does not believe in astrology.”

“How can any one possibly believe,” continued Dom Claude, “that every ray of a star is a thread attached to a man’s head?”

“And what do you believe in then?” cried Tourangeau.

The Archdeacon hesitated for a moment, then, with a sombre smile which seemed to give the lie to his words, he answered, “Credo in Deum.”

Dominum nostrum,” added Tourangeau, making the sign of the cross.

“Amen,” said Coictier.

“Reverend sir,” resumed Tourangeau, “I am charmed to my soul to find you so firm in the faith. But, erudite scholar that you are, have you reached the point of no longer believing in science?”

“No!” cried the Archdeacon, grasping Tourangeau’s arm, while a gleam of enthusiasm flashed in his sunken eye; “no, I do not deny science. I have not crawled so long on my belly with my nails dug in the earth through all the innumerable windings of that dark mine, without perceiving in the far distance—at the end of the dim passage—a light, a flame, a something; the reflection, no doubt, from that dazzling central laboratory in which the patient and the wise have come upon God.”

“And finally,” interrupted Tourangeau, “what do you hold for true and certain?”

“Alchemy!”

Coictier exclaimed aloud, “Pardieu, Dom Claude, there is doubtless much truth in alchemy, but why blaspheme against medicine and astrology?”

“Null is your science of man, your science of the heavens null,” said the Archdeacon imperiously.

“But that’s dealing hardly with Epidaurus and Chaldea,” returned the physician with a sneering laugh.

“Listen, Messire Jacques. I speak in all good faith. I am not physician to the King, and his Majesty did not give me a Labyrinth in which to observe the constellations. Nay, be not angry, but listen to what I say: what truths have you extracted from the study—I will not say of medicine, which is too foolish a matte—but from astrology? Explain to me the virtues of the vertical boustrophedon,3 or the treasures contained in the numeral ziruph, and in those of the numeral zephirod.”

“Will you deny,” said Coictier, “the sympathetic influence of the clavicula, and that it is the key to all cabalistic science?”

“Errors, Messire Jacques! None of your formulas have anything definite to show, whereas alchemy has its actual discoveries. Can you contest such results as these, for instance—ice, buried underground for


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