your reason all matters except those of our holy religion. Stuff and
nonsense all these globes and powders, with all the other follies of
the cabala and the spagyric art."

I imagined I could hear him talk like that in the interval between
two pinches of snuff, and I really did not know what to reply to
such a Christian speech. On the other hand, I thought in advance how
puzzled I should be to reply to M. d'Asterac when he inquired of me
after news of the Salamander. What could I say? How was I to avow my
reserve and my abstention without betraying my defiance and fear?
And after all, without being aware of it, I was curious to try the
adventure. I am not credulous. On the contrary I am marvellously
inclined to doubt, and by this inclination to brave common-sense, as
well as evidence and everything else. Of the strangest things that
may be told me, I say to myself, "Why not?" This "Why not?" wronged
my natural intelligence in sight of that globe. This "Why not?"
pushed me towards credulity, and it may be interesting to remark, on
this occasion, to believe in nothing means to believe in everything,
and that the mind is not to be kept too free and too vacant, for
fear that commodities of extravagant form and weight should enter by
a loophole, commodities of a kind which could not find room in minds
reasonably and tolerably well furnished with belief. And while, with
my hand on the wax seal, I remembered what my mother had narrated to
me of the magic bottle, my "Why not?" whispered to me that perhaps,
after all, aerial fairies may be visible through the dust of the
sun. But as soon as this idea, having entered into my mind, began to
become easy therein, I found it to be odd, absurd and grotesque.
Ideas, when they impose themselves, very soon become impudent. But
few are apt to be better than pleasant passers-by; and, decidedly,
this very one had somehow an air of madness. During the time I asked