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essed against the door, in doing so, it yielded to his touch. In the haste with which Friar Bacon had closed the entrance, the bolt had not been shot. Herbert rose hastily to his feet, and the next moment he was in the cell, looking eagerly round upon the crucibles and alembics, which bore witness to his master's labors. But beyond a general impression of work in hand, there was nothing to be gleaned from this survey. An open parchment volume, in which the Friar had recently been writing, next caught his attention. If the secret should be there in any known language. Hubert knew something of the Hebrew, but nothing yet of Arabic. He was reassured; the characters were familiar to him; the language Latin. He seized the volume, and read the few lines which the Friar had just traced on the last page. They ran thus: "Videas tamen utrum loquar in aenigmate vel secundum veritatem." And, further (which we translate): "He that would see these things shall have the key that openeth and no man shutteth, and when he shall shut no man is able to open again." "But the secret--the secret!" cried Hubert, impatiently, "let me know what 'these things' are!" He hastily turned the leaf back and read again. The passage was that one in the "_Epistola de Secretis_" which spoke of the artificial thunder and lightning, and beneath it was the full and precise receipt for its composition. This at once explained the strange noises and the flashes of light which he had so anxiously noticed. Surprising and gratifying as this discovery might be, there was, Hubert thought, something beyond. Roger Bacon, he reasoned, was not one to practice an experiment like this for mere amusement. It was, he felt certain, a new form of invocation, more potent, doubtless, over the beings of another world, than any charm yet recorded. Be it as it might, he would try whether, from the materials around him, it were not in his power to produce the same result. "Here are all the necessary ingredients," he exclaimed; "this yellowish powder is the well known sulphur, in which I daily bathe the argent-vive; this bitter, glistening substance is the salt of the rock, the _salis petrae_; and this black calcination, the third agent. But the proportions are given, and here stands a glass cucurbit in which they should be mingled. It is of the form my master mostly uses--round, with a small neck and a narrow mouth, to be luted closely, without doubt. He has often told me
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