Having said that he returned to his phials and retorts, and I could not help thinking of the sad position wherein ill-luck and imprudence had placed me. “Alas!” I said to myself, and threw logs into the fire, “at this very moment the constables are searching for my good tutor and myself; perhaps we shall have to go to prison, certainly we have to leave this castle. I have in default of money, at least board and an honourable position. I shall never again dare to stand before M. d’Asterac, who believes me to have passed the night in the silent voluptuousness of magic, which perhaps would have been better for me. Alas! I’ll never more see Mosaide’s niece, Mademoiselle Jahel, who at night-time woke me in my room in such a charming way. No doubt she will forget me. Perhaps she’ll love someone else, and bestow on him the same caresses as she gave to me.” The idea of such an infidelity became unbearable. But as the world goes, one has to be ready for anything. “My son,” M. d’Asterac began to say again, “you do not sufficiently feed the athanor. I see that you are still not fully convinced of the excellency of fire, which is capable of ripening this mercury and transforming it into the wonderful fruit I expect to gather very soon. More wood! The fire, my son, is the superior element; I have told you enough, and now I’ll show you an example. On a very cold day last winter, visiting Mosaide in his lodge, I found him sitting, his feet on a warming pan. I observed that the subtle particles of fire escaping from the pan had power enough to inflate and lift up the folds of his gown, wherefrom I inferred, that had the fire been hotter, it would have raised Mosaide himself into the air, of which he is certainly worthy, and that, if it should be possible to close into some kind of a vessel a very large quantity of such fire particles, it would be possible to sail on the clouds as easily as we sail on the sea, and to visit the Salamanders in their aerial abodes, a problem I shall keep in mind. I do not despair of constructing such a fireship. But let us go back to our work of putting wood on the fire.” He kept me for some time in the glow of the laboratory whence I wanted to escape as quickly as possible, to join Jahel, whom I was anxious to inform of my misfortune. At last he left me, and I thought myself free, a hope shortly to be disappointed by his return. “It is rather mild this morning,” he said, “but the sky is somewhat cloudy. Would it please you to go for a walk in the park with me before returning to the translation of Zosimus the Panopolitan, which will be a great honour to you and your tutor if you finish it as you have begun?” With much regret I followed him into the park, where he said to me: