'Do you seriously believe in these arts?' he asked.
'Do I believe in them? Messere, if God Himself came to me hither at this moment and said to me: "Galeotto, there is no philosopher's stone," I should answer him: "Lord, even as it is true that thou hast created me, so is it true that there is that stone, and that I shall find it."'
After this Leonardo disputed no more, but listened with interest to the speculations of the alchemist. Presently the talk swerved to the possible assistance of the Devil in the occult sciences; the old man, however, would none of this. He declared the Devil to be the weakest, the most miserable, the most impotent of all the creations of God; he himself had faith only in the human mind, and believed that to science all things were possible.
Then suddenly, without any consciousness of an abrupt transition, and as if playing with some agreeable and diverting recollection, he asked whether Messer Leonardo had frequent apparitions of elemental spirits. And when his interlocutor confessed to never having seen any, Galeotto again refused to believe him; and with relish told how the salamander has a body a finger and a half in length, spotted, thin, and harsh, while the sylphide is blue as the sky, transparent, and ethereal. He spoke also of the nymphs and undines that live in the rivers and the sea; of the gnomes, pygmies, and underground dwarfs; of the durgans and dryads, dwellers in trees, and the rare spirits that inhabit precious stones.
'I cannot convey to you,' concluded Galeotto, 'how beneficent and exquisite are these genii!'
'Why, then,' asked Leonardo, 'do they appear only to the elect?'
'Would you have them appear to all? They dread vulgar persons, libertines, materialists, drunkards, and gluttons. They affect the innocent, the childlike, simple ones. They live only where there is no malice nor cunning. Timid and fearful as gazelles they take refuge from human eyes in their native elements.'
And a smile of infinite tenderness illuminated the old man's face, as if at the memory of long-ago dreams.
'What a charming old fool!' thought Leonardo, no longer scornful, but ready to simulate participation in any scientific absurdity to please this man, whom now he treated with affectionate consideration, like a child.
They parted as friends; and the moment he was alone the alchemist plunged into new experiments with the oil of Venus.