er secrets of art. But content
you, Master Varney, it is no part of my policy to suffer such
interlopers to interfere in my trade. He pries into no mysteries more,
I warrant you, for, as I well believe, he hath been wafted to heaven on
the wing of a fiery dragon--peace be with him! But in this retreat of
mine shall I have the use of mine elaboratory?"

"Of a whole workshop, man," said Varney; "for a reverend father abbot,
who was fain to give place to bluff King Hal and some of his courtiers,
a score of years since, had a chemist's complete apparatus, which he was
obliged to leave behind him to his successors. Thou shalt there occupy,
and melt, and puff, and blaze, and multiply, until the Green Dragon
become a golden goose, or whatever the newer phrase of the brotherhood
may testify."

"Thou art right, Master Varney," said the alchemist setting his teeth
close and grinding them together--"thou art right even in thy very
contempt of right and reason. For what thou sayest in mockery may in
sober verity chance to happen ere we meet again. If the most venerable
sages of ancient days have spoken the truth--if the most learned of
our own have rightly received it; if I have been accepted wherever I
travelled in Germany, in Poland, in Italy, and in the farther Tartary,
as one to whom nature has unveiled her darkest secrets; if I have
acquired the most secret signs and passwords of the Jewish Cabala, so
that the greyest beard in the synagogue would brush the steps to make
them clean for me;--if all this is so, and if there remains but one
step--one little step--betwixt my long, deep, and dark, and subterranean
progress, and that blaze of light which shall show Nature watching her
richest and her most glorious productions in the very cradle--one
step betwixt dependence and the power of sovereignty--one step betwixt
poverty and such a sum of wealth as earth, without that noble secret,
cannot minister from all her mines in the old or the new-found world; if
this be all so, is it not reasonable that to this I dedicate my future
life, secure, for a brief period of studious patience, to rise above the
mean dependence upon favourites, and THEIR favourites, by which I am now
enthralled!"

"Now, bravo! bravo! my good father," said Varney, with the usual
sardonic expression of ridicule on his countenance; "yet all this
approximation to the philosopher's stone wringeth not one single crown
out of my Lord Leicester's pouch, and far less