"Nothing is easier, my dear sir, than to bring your uncertainty to
an end."

He opened an old rickety chest standing in the wall and took out of
it a copper coin, bearing the effigy of the late king, and called
our attention to a round stain crossing the coin from side to side.

"That," he said, "is the effect of the stone, which has transmuted
the copper into silver, but that's only a trifle."

He went back to the chest and took out of it a sapphire the size of
an egg, an opal of marvellous dimensions and a handful of perfect
fine emeralds.

"Here are some of my doings," he said, "which are proof enough that
the spagyric art is not the dream of an empty brain."

At the bottom of the small wooden bowl lay five or six little
diamonds, of which M. d'Asterac made no mention. My tutor asked him
if they also were of his make, and, the alchemist having
acknowledged it:

"Sir," said the abbe, "I should counsel you to show the curious
those diamonds prior to the other stones by way of caution. If you
let them look first at the sapphire, opal and the emeralds, you run
the risk of a persecution for sorcery, because everyone will say
that the devil alone was capable of producing such stones. Just as
the devil alone could lead an easy life in the midst of these
furnaces, where one has to breathe flames. As far as I am concerned,
having stayed a single quarter of an hour, I am already half baked."