"The fame of Yusef Ben Djani was at its height, and Nicholas Jovus, then about four-and-twenty years of age, determined to visit the great master at Bona. The philosopher saw in the young student the material for an even greater than himself. He persuaded him to stay in Bona, and to study the science of demonology under him. It was while there that, with the assistance of his master, Nicholas Jovus superinduced his own will upon the surface of a mirror to such an extent that within it he could at any time see that which he willed to see. It was by means of this mirror that he one time beheld Raymond Lulli, of whom he had often heard, and, circumstances being then peculiarly propitious, beheld at the same time not only Raymond Lulli himself, but the secret of the talisman that he carried in his bosom. And not only did he discover the existence of the talisman, but (Raymond's mind being at that moment concentrated upon the past) he discovered the story of the philosopher's life as I have told it to you, and thus first gained knowledge of those dark chambers below the vault. Yes, Nicholas Jovus saw all this in the mirror just as I have described it to you, Oliver; it was the first and only time, but he never forgot it. "Now soon after Raymond Lulli had reached Rome, after having left Paris, he was taken with a violent fever, from which he wakened, his physicians told him, only to die. But the physicians were mistaken. The next morning when they visited him he was sitting at the table eating a boiled capon, as well a man as you or I. I need to hardly tell you he had used the talisman of life. "Yet it was only with great hesitation, and in the last extremity, that Lulli thus rehabilitated himself with a new body, for by so doing he cut himself off forever from all chance of entering those secret chambers again and recovering the phials, which he now bitterly regretted having left behind him in the first throes of his grief and remorse. For Arnold de Villeneuve, for protection against evil powers, had drawn around the door of those underground chambers a circle upon which he had marked a sign that Raymond Lulli could not pass without leaving his newly-acquired body behind him. "From the time that Raymond Lulli had used the talisman of life to the time that Nicholas Jovus saw him in the mirror, thirty years had elapsed, and yet he appeared as young as upon the day when the Roman physicians had told him that he was to die. "Nicholas Jovus determined to gain that talisman for his own. "Now the young Venetian student had a curious, odd servant, very much attached to him, and not so wicked as one might have thought under the circumstances. Early one morning, before the town was awake, Nicholas Jovus, followed by this servant, left the house of his master and hurried down to the sea-shore. He had looked in his glass and saw that Raymond Lulli was walking there. He met the alchemist not far from where a long quay ran out into the water.