The philosopher reached up to a shelf and lifted down a big glass jar filled with a curious amber-coloured paste that might have been frozen honey.
‘You see that,’ said he. ‘If I were to place that beneath a castle wall and set a flame to it I could blow a hole in the ramparts big enough to march an army through, a score abreast. And then what use would be their archers and cross-bowmen? The King, I reckon, would give me the price of half his realm for fifty barrels of that paste, in time of war.—But,’ (he set the heavy jar back upon the shelf) ‘I do not work for the destruction of Man. That stuff, there, I discovered by accident—and nearly lost my life when first it exploded.’
‘What are all these papers?’ asked Anne, examining a pile of parchment sheets that lay on a side-table.
‘Oh, that’s a book I’m writing,’ said Johannes.
‘What’s it about?’ asked Anne, who, while she was very proud of what little reading she could do, was quite unable to make head or tail of this.
‘It’s a book on chemistry—a first book, an easy one,’ said the philosopher. ‘But it’s in Latin. Can you read Latin?’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ said Anne in an airy tone which might mean that it was only by chance that she had not yet mastered that language. ‘But why do you write it in Latin?’
‘Because,’ said Johannes, ‘Latin is the only language that all the world speaks—or, that is, that all the world reads—in books.’
‘You have written many books, Sir?’ asked Giles.
‘Yes, quite a few,’ said the philosopher.