“I was in great admiration, and desired to know where and how he obtained them. He answered, ‘A foreigner, who dwelt some days in my house, said he was a lover of this science, and came to reveal it to me. He taught me various arts--first, of ordinary stones and chrystals, to make rubies, chrysolites, sapphires, &c., much more valuable than those of the mine; and how in a quarter of an hour to make an oxide of iron, one dose of which would infallibly cure the pestilential dysentery, or bloody flux; also how to make a metallic liquor to cure all kinds of dropsies most certainly and in four days; as also a limpid, clear water, sweeter than honey, by which in two hours of itself, in hot sand, it would extract the tincture of garnets, corals, glasses, and such like.’ He said more, which I, Helvetius, did not observe, my mind being occupied to understand how a noble juice could be drawn out of minerals to transmute metals. He told me his said master caused him to bring a glass of rain-water, and to put some silver leaf into it, which was dissolved therein within a quarter of an hour, like ice when heated. ‘Presently he drank to me the half, and I pledged him the other half, which had not so much taste as sweet milk, but whereby, methought, I became very light-headed. I thereupon asked if this were a philosophical drink, and wherefore we drank this potion; but he replied, I ought not to be so curious.’ By the said master’s directions, a piece of a leaden pipe being melted, he took a little sulphureous powder out of his pocket, put a little of it on the point of a knife into the melted lead, and after a great blast of the bellows, in a short time he poured it on the red stones of the kitchen chimney. It proved most excellent pure gold, which the stranger said brought him into such trembling amazement that he could hardly speak; but his master encouraged him saying, ‘Cut for thyself the sixteenth part of this as a memorial, and give the rest away among the poor,’ which the stranger did, distributing this alms, as he affirmed, if my memory fail not, at the Church of Sparenda. ‘At last,’ said he, ‘the generous foreigner taught me thoroughly this divine art.’