(What with the Château d'Eau Barracks, and the pale sun caught in the network of overhead tram wires, the Place de la République was a horrible sight. Is there anything quite so out of place as this in Paris?)
" ... sloping upwards, I say, beneath the sky transparent with heat and fringed with yellowish green on the horizon. You might almost think that there was already sulphur in the air. In the distance smoke rises from some sacrifice, one knows not what ...
"Allow me to precede you along the road to show you the way.
"I will pass over the various specimens of antiquity, a Saracen castle, a Norman basilica, itself built between the limbs of a Temple of Juno. We have arrived. Behold us in a desert at the foot of stony moraines coming down from the mountains. In the distance a glittering sword blade rests on this desert: the sea. Cast your eyes down. Hardly had my brother taken possession of the property this summer, than for want of something better to do he reopened some Punic works six weeks ago, which were abandoned twenty-two centuries before. And what do you think happened? He discovered what are possibly the richest sulphur and rock salt deposits in the whole of Sicily. So far everything has been kept very quiet. My brother has only prospected the ground and taken a few preliminary precautions. Naturally he cannot develop the place himself. He quite realizes that to go into partnership spells failure, as would also leasing it; to say nothing of capital being tied up, even if he could find any. So he wants to sell outright."
Behind the hearse and the smell of the lilac wreaths surrounding the procession with a false sense of springtime, Pastafina drew a resinous looking object from the pocket of his pitch-black Raglan overcoat.
"The sample is amazingly rich; it will catch fire a yard away, and burns with a beautiful blue flame. What a find, caro mio! I have got an eight days' option. I was just off to London when I saw you."
Lewis whistled softly to himself for a minute or two, wondering whether he could find out whether any subsidiary ores were present. Then he said abruptly:
"Any trace of mercury?"
"I don't think so."
"Any barytes."