"This is Cosmo's concern," said Lorenzo, turning to his brother.
Cosmo took the child's little hand and studied it carefully.
"Monsieur," said Charles IX. to the elder man, "if you are compelled to deny the existence of the spirit to believe that your enterprise is possible, tell me how it is that you can doubt that which constitutes your power. The mind you desire to annihilate is the torch that illumines your search. Ah, ha! Is not that moving while denying the fact of motion?" cried he, and pleased at having hit on this argument, he looked triumphantly at his mistress.
"Mind," said Lorenzo Ruggieri, "is the exercise of an internal sense, just as the faculty of seeing various objects and appreciating their form and color is the exercise of our sight. That has nothing to do with what is assumed as to another life. Mind—thought—is a faculty which may cease even during life with the forces that produce it."
"You are logical," said the King with surprise. "But alchemy is an atheistical science."
"Materialist, Sire, which is quite a different thing. Materialism is the outcome of the Indian doctrines transmitted through the mysteries of Isis to Chaldæa and Egypt, and brought back to Greece by Pythagoras, one of the demi-gods among men; his doctrine of transmigration is the mathematics of materialism, the living law of its phases. Each of the different creations which make up the earthly creation possesses the power of retarding the impulse that drags it into another form."
"Then alchemy is the science of sciences!" cried Charles IX., fired with enthusiasm. "I must see you at work."
"As often as you will, Sire. You cannot be more eager than the Queen your mother."
"Ah! That is why she is so much attached to you!" cried the King.
"The House of Medici has secretly encouraged our research for almost a century past."