"These memories were of an older date. They went back to the last century, when you were a youth and a student, an adept in chemistry, I am told."
Fétis started, and turned towards his interlocutor with an ashen countenance, the snuffbox shaking in his tremulous hand.
"Who told you that?" he asked; "who remembers me so long?"
"An old Venetian who happened to hear of you at that time, and who is one of my most intimate friends."
"Will your lordship tell me his name?"
He had recovered himself by this time, and had closed the snuffbox, not without spilling a slight shower of the scented mixture upon his olive-silk knee-breeches.
"Borromeo."
Fétis shook his head.
"I have no memory of such a person. Yes, my lord, I was in Venice forty years ago as a travelling secretary to Mr. Topsparkle. We were both young men in those days, and I was more of a student than I have ever been since that time. The world soon drew me from the study of science; but at three-and-twenty I was full of enthusiasm, hoped to discover the philosopher's stone, to make myself as powerful as Dr. Faustus. Idle dreams, my lord. The world is wiser nowadays. I am told that Sir Richard Steele was the last person who ever cultivated the necromantic arts in England, and that he set up his laboratory at Islington. But even he learnt to laugh at his own delusions."
"But there are more practical studies for the chemist than the arts of Paracelsus or the Geber Arabs," said Lavendale lightly. "My informant told me that you had the repute of being a great toxicologist."