; when he should be tired of sojourning there, he might quit the
chateau, remain absent as long as it pleased him, and return when it
suited his fancy. It is hardly necessary to say that the wild boar
allowed itself to be muzzled; that very evening a hired carriage
conducted the chemist, the sorcerer, the magician Boiviel, to the
Chateau de Voisenon. "I shall have my potable gold at last," thought the
triumphant Abbe, radiant with hope and exultation.

Installed at the chateau, the Abbe Boiviel conformed himself with a very
good grace to the monachal existence led by its inmates. The good
regimen of the house tended also to considerably soften the former
asperities of his demeanor; he spoke no more of Japan, but neither did
he speak of the potable gold, although Voisenon on several occasions
endeavored to obtain from him an explanation on this essential point.
Whenever our asthmatical abbe would lead the conversation towards
subjects relating to chemistry or alchemy, Boiviel would either avoid a
direct reply or else fall into a state of profound taciturnity: and yet
all his debts had been paid, including the various outstanding accounts
due to his numerous landlords, and his dinners at the Croix de
Lorraine--that memorable tavern, where all the abbes who received
fifteen sous for every mass said at St. Sulpice were accustomed to feed
daily. Several cassocks had also been purchased for him, several pairs
of stockings, and many shirts.

After a three months' residence at the chateau he had become fat, fresh,
and rosy, such as he had never before been at any previous epoch of his
life. Emboldened by the friendship he had shown to his guest, Voisenon
ventured one day to say to the Abbe Boiviel, that, skeptical and
atheistical as they falsely imagined him to be in the world, he
possessed, nevertheless, an absolute faith in alchemy; he denied neither
the philosopher's stone, nor the universal panacea, nor even the potable
gold. Now did he, or did he not, believe in potable gold? This was a
home-thrust Boiviel could no longer recoil; he _did_ believe in it; but
according to his idea the audacious chemist committed a great sin in
composing it: it was, so to speak, as though attacking the decrees of
creation to change into liquid what had been ordained a metal. A
sorcerer troubled with religious scruples appeared a strange spectacle
to the Abbe de Voisenon and one, too, that rather embarrassed him. He
did not, however, entirely