“My bad success could not make me desist. I again raised four hundred crowns on my property; the abbé did the same, and I set out for Paris, a city containing more alchemists than any other in the world. I resolved to remain there as long as the eight hundred crowns lasted, or until I succeeded in my object. This journey drew on me the displeasure of my relations, and the censure of my friends, who imagined I was a studious lawyer. However, I made them believe that the design of my sojourn in Paris was the purchase of a situation in the law courts. “After travelling for fifteen days I arrived at Paris in January 1539. I remained a month almost unknown, but no sooner had I visited the furnace makers and conversed with some amateurs than I became acquainted with more than a hundred artists, who were all at work in different ways. Some laboured to extract the mercury of metals and afterwards to fix it. A variety of systems were held by others, and scarcely a day passed in which some of them did not visit me, even on Sundays and the most sacred festivals of the Church, to hear what I had done. “In these conversations one said:--‘If I had the means to begin again, I should produce something good.’ Another--‘Would that my vessel had been strong enough to resist the force of what it contained.’ Another--‘If I had possessed a round copper vessel well closed, I would have fixed mercury with silver.’ There was not one without a reasonable excuse for his failure, but I was deaf to all their discourses, recollecting my experience as the dupe of similar expectations. “I was tempted, nevertheless, by a Greek who had a process with cinnabar, which failed. At the same time I became acquainted with a strange gentleman, newly arrived, who often, in my presence, sold the fruit of his operations to the goldsmiths. I was a long time frequenting his company, but he did not consent to inform me of his secret. At last I prevailed over him, but it was only a refinement of metals more ingenious than the rest. I failed not to write to the abbé, at Toulouse, enclosing a copy of the process of the stranger, and imagining that I had attained some useful knowledge, he advised me to remain another year at Paris, since I had made so good a beginning. “After all, as to the philosophers’ stone, I succeeded no better than before. I had been three years at Paris, and my money was nearly expended, when I had a letter from the abbé, informing me that he had something to communicate, and that I should join him as soon as possible.