th a serpent crucified; and on the third, the representation of a
desert, in the midst of which was a fountain, with serpents crawling from
side to side. It purported to be written by no less a personage than
"Abraham, patriarch, Jew, prince, philosopher, priest, Levite, and
astrologer;" and invoked curses upon any one who should cast eyes upon it,
without being "a sacrificer or a scribe." Nicholas Flamel never thought it
extraordinary that Abraham should have known Latin, and was convinced that
the characters on his book had been traced by the hands of that great
patriarch himself. He was at first afraid to read it, after he became
aware of the curse it contained; but he got over that difficulty by
recollecting that, although he was not a sacrificer, he had practised as a
scribe. As he read he was filled with admiration, and found that it was a
perfect treatise upon the transmutation of metals. All the processes were
clearly explained; the vessels, the retorts, the mixtures, and the proper
times and seasons for experiment. But as ill-luck would have it, the
possession of the philosopher's stone, or prime agent in the work, was
presupposed. This was a difficulty which was not to be got over. It was
like telling a starving man how to cook a beef-steak, instead of giving
him the money to buy one. But Nicholas did not despair, and set about
studying the hieroglyphics and allegorical representations with which the
book abounded. He soon convinced himself that it had been one of the
sacred books of the Jews, and that it was taken from the temple of
Jerusalem on its destruction by Titus. The process of reasoning by which
he arrived at this conclusion is not stated.

From some expression in the treatise, he learned that the allegorical
drawings on the fourth and fifth leaves enshrined the secret of the
philosopher's stone, without which all the fine Latin of the directions
was utterly unavailing. He invited all the alchymists and learned men of
Paris to come and examine them, but they all departed as wise as they
came. Nobody could make any thing either of Nicholas or his pictures; and
some even went so far as to say that his invaluable book was not worth a
farthing. This was not to be borne; and Nicholas resolved to discover the
great secret by himself, without troubling the philosophers. He found on
the first page of the fourth leaf, the picture of Mercury attacked by an
old man resembling Saturn or Time. The latter had an hou