"Arnold de Villeneuve said nothing at all, but his face had grown all at once very white. By-and-by he drew a deep breath. 'I will try to teach you the secrets of that book,' said he, after a while; 'but it will be a long and weary task, for I have first to learn very much myself.'
II.
"That morning at dinner-for they used in those days, Oliver, to dine at ten or eleven o'clock in the morning—Raymond Lulli saw for the first time Agnes de Villeneuve, who was then reputed the most beautiful woman in Paris. It was no wonder that, fresh from the ennui of the solitude of the mountains of Aranda, he should have fallen passionately in love with her. Neither was it strange that Agnes should love him. For this propinquity, Oliver, is a droll affair. It will cause a woman to fall in love with a ghoul, not to speak of one so tall and handsome as Raymond Lulli. So she loved him as passionately as he loved her. It was as natural as for steel and loadstone to come together.
"SUCH WAS THE WORKSHOP IN WHICH THE TWO LABORED TOGETHER."
"In the days and weeks that followed, Arnold de Villeneuve saw nothing of what was passing between the two. In his eyes Raymond Lulli was but a fellow-student. It did not occur to him that passion might find place even in the bosom of such an ardent follower of alchemy as this new scholar of his. He beheld only the philosopher and student; he forgot the man. For months the two labored and toiled like slaves, striving to discover those two secrets contained in the great Geber's book, and hidden beneath the strange formulas, the obscure words, and the mystic pictures. One day they seemed upon the very edge of success, the next day they failed, and had to begin again from the very beginning. The laboratory in which they conducted their great work was one in which Arnold de Villeneuve had already carried forward and completed some of his most secret, delicate, and successful operations. Within the wall of the garden back of his house he had had a hollow passage-way constructed, which ran for some little distance to the deep cellar-like vault that had, perhaps, at one time been the dungeon of some ancient fortress. Beneath this vault or dungeon were three rooms, opening one into another, that had in a far distant period been hewn out of the solid rock. They were the rooms from which you, Oliver, escaped only a little while ago. Two of those rooms were sumptuously and luxuriously furnished; the furthermost was the laboratory where the two great problems were solved—the problem of life and the problem of wealth. Such was the workshop in which the two labored together, occasionally for days at a time; the one sometimes sleeping while the other compounded new formulas or watched the progress of slow emulsions.
"It was, as Arnold de Villeneuve had predicted, a long and toilsome labor which they had undertaken; it was, as the great Geber had said, a tremendous task to climb the steep mountain of knowledge and to pluck the mystic flower of wisdom from the top. But at last the summit was reached. Suddenly, one morning, unexpected success fell upon them like a flash of lightning; for this, like many other successes, happened through an accident-the overturning of a phial (the contents of which it had taken months to prepare) into a mortar in which Raymond was mixing a powder. It all happened in a moment-the accidental brushing of a sleeve-but that one moment was sufficient; the secret of life was discovered. From the secret of life to the secret of wealth was but a step; the one hung upon the other. The very next day they discovered that which shall make us-you, Oliver, and me, whom you may henceforth call 'master'-the richest men in France. Did you know that the diamond and the charcoal are the one and the same thing?"
"No," said Oliver, "I did not; the one is black and the other is white."
Oliver's companion laughed. "There is less difference between black and white, Oliver, and between the charcoal and the diamond, than most people think. Later you will learn that for yourself; just now you must take my word for it. But to resume our narrative. The next morning Raymond and his master, as I have said, produced from the first formula a second, by means of one drop of which they created in a closed crucible, in which five pounds of charcoal had been volatilized, a half-score of diamond crystals of various sizes, and one fine blue-white crystal of nearly eight carats in size. Oliver," cried the speaker, rising in his enthusiasm, and striding up and down the room, "that was, to my belief, the greatest discovery that the world ever saw! Other philosophers have approached the solution of the problem of life, and have prolonged their existence ten, twenty, yes, fifty years; still other philosophers have transmuted the baser metals into gold; but who ever heard of transmuting black charcoal into brilliant diamonds?" He stopped abruptly and turned towards the lad, and Oliver saw the eyes which looked into his blaze with excitement, like the diamonds of which he spoke. "Do you wonder," he cried, "that Raymond Lulli and his master acted like madmen when they opened that retort, and found those sparkling crystals twinkling like stars upon the rough surface of the metal? Ha!"