Marseilles, but was still alive; "and," added she, with a slight smile,
"I often get letters from him. If the Regent of France," said she, "had
listened to me he would be alive now. He was my first friend; he gave me
the name of Egeria, and he married me to M. d'Urfe"

She possessed a commentary on Raymond Lully, which cleared up all
difficult points in the comments of Arnold de Villanova on the works of
Roger Bacon and Heber, who, according to her, were still alive. This
precious manuscript was in an ivory casket, the key of which she kept
religiously; indeed her laboratory was a closed room to all but myself. I
saw a small cask full of 'platina del Pinto', which she told me she could
transmute into gold when she pleased. It had been given her by M. Vood
himself in 1743. She shewed me the same metal in four phials. In the
first three the platinum remained intact in sulphuric, nitric, and
muriatic acid, but in the fourth, which contained 'aqua regia', the metal
had not been able to resist the action of the acid. She melted it with
the burning-glass, and said it could be melted in no other way, which
proved, in her opinion, its superiority to gold. She shewed me some
precipitated by sal ammoniac, which would not precipitate gold.

Her athanor had been alight for fifteen years. The top was full of black
coal, which made me conclude that she had been in the laboratory two or
three days before. Stopping before the Tree of Diana, I asked her, in a
respectful voice, if she agreed with those who said it was only fit to
amuse children. She replied, in a dignified manner, that she had made it
to divert herself with the crystallization of the silver, spirit of
nitre, and mercury, and that she looked upon it as a piece of metallic
vegetation, representing in little what nature performed on a larger
scale; but she added, very seriously, that she could make a Tree of Diana
which should be a very Tree of the Sun, which would produce golden fruit,