The
flowers that he had seen her attend stood in the window; a guitar
leaned against a table, on which stood a crucifix, and before it lay a
missal and a rosary. There reigned an air of purity and serenity about
this little nestling-place of innocence; it was the emblem of a chaste
and quiet mind. Some few articles of female dress lay on the chairs;
and there was the very bed on which she had slept--the pillow on which
her soft cheek had reclined! The poor scholar was treading enchanted
ground; for what fairy land has more of magic in it, than the
bedchamber of innocence and beauty?
From various expressions of the old man in his ravings, and from what
he had noticed on a subsequent visit to the tower, to see that the
fire was extinguished, Antonio had gathered that his patient was an
alchymist. The philosopher's stone was an object eagerly sought after
by visionaries in those days; but in consequence of the superstitious
prejudices of the times, and the frequent persecutions of its
votaries, they were apt to pursue their experiments in secret; in
lonely houses, in caverns and ruins, or in the privacy of cloistered
cells.
In the course of the night, the old man had several fits of
restlessness and delirium; he would call out upon Theophrastus, and
Geber, and Albertus Magnus, and other sages of his art; and anon would
murmur about fermentation and projection, until, toward daylight, he
once more sunk into a salutary sleep.
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