“He emptied the purse, which contained neither more nor less than ten gold pieces.
“The indignation of the astrologer was extreme.
“‘Thinks he that for such paltry rate of hire I will practice that celestial science which I have studied with the Armenian Abbot of Istrahoff, who had not seen the sun for forty years; with the Greek Dubravius, who is said to have raised the dead; and have even visited the Scheik Ebn Hali in his cave in the desert of Thebais? No, by Heaven! He that contemns art shall perish through his ignorance. Ten pieces!—a pittance which I am half-ashamed to offer to Toinette to buy her new breast laces.’”
CHAPTER VIII.
DUMAS.
Pharmacy, pure and simple, occupies but a small space in literature, although the disciples of the sister arts of medicine and alchemy have often formed interesting studies for many great writers of fiction.
Unfortunately the scientific knowledge of the average novelist is, as a rule, extremely limited, and the effects they attribute to certain drugs are usually as fabulous as those believed in the dark ages. They tell us of mysterious poisons of untold power, an infinitesimal quantity of which will cause instantaneous death without leaving a trace behind. They also describe anæsthetics so powerful that a whiff from a bottle or the wave of a handkerchief will at once produce insensibility for any period desired. In fact the writer of romance has a pharmacopœia of his own.
But why should we cavil at it or try to analyse it in the prosaic test-tube of modern science.
Exclude the marvellous and mysterious, and you kill romance. It performs its mission if it succeeds in interesting and amusing us, so we should be lenient if it errs in mere matters of science.
The art of the romancer reaches its height when it succeeds in mixing the possible with the impossible so that we can scarce perceive it.