At this moment a foolish fly, courting the March sunshine, threw itself against the net, and was caught fast. Warned by the shaking of his web, the enormous spider darted out of his central cell, and with one bound rushed upon the fly, promptly doubled it up, and with its horrible sucker began scooping out the victim’s head. “Poor fly!” said the King’s attorney, and lifted his hand to rescue it. The Archdeacon, as if starting out of his sleep, held back his arm with a convulsive clutch.

“Maître Jacques,” he cried, “let fate have its way!”

Maître Jacques turned round in alarm; he felt as if his arm were in an iron vice. The eye of the priest was fixed, haggard, glaring, and remained fascinated by the horrible scene between the spider and the fly.

“Ah, yes!” the priest went on, in a voice that seemed to issue from the depths of his being, “there is a symbol of the whole story. She flies, she is joyous, she has but just entered life; she courts the spring, the open air, freedom; yes, but she strikes against the fatal web— the spider darts out, the deadly spider! Hapless dancer! Poor, doomed fly! Maître Jacques, let be— it is fate! Alas! Claude, thou art the spider. But Claude, thou art also the fly! Thou didst wing thy flight towards knowledge, the light, the sun. Thy one care was to reach the pure air, the broad beams of truth eternal; but in hastening towards the dazzling loophole which opens on another world— a world of brightness, of intelligence, of true knowledge— infatuated fly! insensate sage! thou didst not see the cunning spider’s web, by destiny suspended between the light and thee; thou didst hurl thyself against it, poor fool, and now thou dost struggle with crushed head and mangled wings between the iron claws of Fate! Maître Jacques, let the spider work its will!”

“I do assure you,” said Charmolue, who gazed at him in bewilderment, “that I will not touch it. But in pity, master, loose my arm; you have a grip of iron.”

The Archdeacon did not heed him. “Oh, madman!” he continued, without moving his eyes from the loophole. “And even if thou couldst have broken through that formidable web with thy midge’s wings, thinkest thou to have attained the light! Alas! that glass beyond— that transparent obstacle, that wall of crystal harder than brass, the barrier between all our philosophy and the truth— how couldst thou have passed through that? Oh, vanity of human knowledge! how many sages have come fluttering from afar to dash their heads against thee! How many clashing systems buzz vainly about that everlasting barrier!”

He was silent. These last ideas, by calling off his thoughts from himself to science, appeared to have calmed him, and Jacques Charmolue completely restored him to a sense of reality by saying: “Come, master, when are you going to help me towards the making of gold? I long to succeed.”

The Archdeacon shrugged his shoulders with a bitter smile.

“Maître Jacques, read Michael Psellus’s Dialogus de Energia et Operatione Damonum. What we are doing is not quite innocent.”

“Speak lower, master! I have my doubts,” said Charmolue. “But one is forced to play the alchemist a little when one is but a poor attorney in the Ecclesiastical Court at thirty crowns tournois a year. Only let us speak low.”

At this moment a sound of chewing and crunching from the direction of the furnace struck on the apprehensive ear of Maître Jacques.

“What is that?” he asked.

It was the scholar, who, very dull and cramped in his hiding-place, had just discovered a stale crust and a corner of mouldy cheese, and had without more ado set to work upon both by way of breakfast