k
elsewhere remedies for the cure of his asthma, which became more and
more troublesome as he began to get into years. As he was constantly
speaking of his disease to everybody, and as everybody--at least all
those who wished to get into his good graces--spoke of it to him, he
learned one day that there existed in some garret of Paris a certain
abbe deeply learned in all the mysteries of occult chemistry, an adept
of the great Albert, the master of masters in empirical art. Like all
sorcerers, and all _savants_ of the eighteenth century, this abbe was
represented as being in a state of frightful misery and destitution. He
who possessed the secrets of plants and minerals, of fire and light, of
the generation of beings, had not the wherewithal to procure himself a
decent _soutane_, nor even a morsel of bread. Though, by the efforts of
his magic, he had reached a dizzy height on the paths of knowledge, it
was, alas! a fact but too true, that he was unable to maintain himself
more than a month in the same apartment--perhaps on account of his
indifference to the interests of his landlords. For all that he was a
marvellous being, inventing specifics for the cure of all diseases, and
consequently of asthma among the rest. It was even whispered, but
secretly and mysteriously, and with a sort of awe--for they were very
superstitious, though very atheistical, in the eighteenth century--that
all these specifics were comprised in one remedy, namely, the
celebrated AURUM POTABILE, or fluid gold. Now every one knows, or at
least ought to know, that potable gold, that is, gold in a cold and
fluid state, like wine, triumphs over every malady to which the human
frame is subject: it is health itself, perpetual youth, and would be no
less than immortality had not Paracelsus, who, they say, also possessed
the secret of potable gold, unfortunately died at the age of
thirty-three, or thirty-five: thus establishing a fatal argument against
its virtues in this respect. But one thought now possessed
Voisenon--that of getting hold, somehow or other, of this magic abbe,
and of enticing him to his chateau; but an insensate and monstrous
desire was this--a desire almost impossible to be satisfied, for it was
stated that this Prometheus repelled all advances. Persecuted by the
faculty, censured by the ecclesiastical tribunal, maltreated by the
police, who would not suffer anything in the shape of gold-making, he
had, in his savage misanthropy, renoun