This feat seemed almost a miracle to the four spectators who witnessed it, though a chemist to-day would think nothing of it. To make sugar and alcohol out of an old linen shirt, to make all the colors of the rainbow, to say nothing of medicines and perfumes, and a substance many times sweeter than sugar, out of a thing so black and sticky and generally unpromising as coal tar, are a few of the feats accomplished by the chemists of our own time, but which would have made the alchemists of Frederick's day gasp for breath.
"Here," said the emperor, taking up a long slender vial, "is a specific for many ailments, which I have succeeded in making out of a few drops of water. And here," he went on, taking up a yellow piece of parchment covered with hieroglyphics and strange characters, "is a recipe which came to me from the Orient, and said to have been greatly prized by Hermes Tris-me-gistus." He drew out the long name to its fullest extent, and Le Glorieux whispered to Antoine, "Is it not strange that at his age he can remember such things? If I had a friend of that name and wanted to write him a letter, I could never do it in this world, for by the time I had written the first part of the name I would have forgotten the last of it. Yet this old man rattles it off as easily as if he were telling what he would like for breakfast. It must be because the Germans are used to such long words that nothing in that line staggers them."
"This tells how to make gold," said the emperor, regarding the parchment with great satisfaction. "It begins, 'Catch the flying bird and drown it that it may fly no more.' You would be puzzled at the meaning of that sentence, would you not?" he asked, turning with a superior smile to his audience, all of whom murmured a respectful affirmative, save Le Glorieux, who said, "I should say it was directions as to how to prepare a fowl for the spit. Though I should advise cutting its head off, which is a much quicker and more respectable way than to drown it."
"Ha, ha!" cackled the old emperor. "Wiser men than yourself, Fool, might think the same thing. 'The flying bird' means quicksilver, which is very easy to change into gold."
"Since he knows so well how to make gold, I wonder why he is so stingy," whispered the jester to Antoine. The latter shook his head and made no reply, this being a problem too deep for him to solve.
"But the making of gold," went on Frederick, "is attended with great danger. Nature is very jealous of her riches, and conceals her precious metals in the most inaccessible spots, and in trying to make it we are likely to meet with a terrible explosive."
The emperor took a ring from his finger set with a large diamond. "This stone," said he, "is called the 'indomitable one,' for it is the hardest of all. It is the most beautiful of gems, for it has the flash of the emerald, the gleam of the sapphire, and the glow of the ruby. Around the origin of this stone Nature has woven a mystery; she has allied it to charcoal and other black substances. But I can make it by adding colors to pebbles, as I can make rubies, emeralds, and sapphires."
"Did you make the stone in your ring, Grandfather?" asked the princess innocently.
"No," replied the emperor.
"Why does he not show us one that he has made?" whispered Le Glorieux to Antoine, and it certainly seemed as if the proof of this statement should be forthcoming, since, "If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where is the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?" But a writer of his time assures us that Frederick actually made precious stones out of pebbles, so he must have been content to take the emperor's word for it.