Jean-Marie Blas De Robles - Where Tigers Are at Home

Suddenly he lowered his voice &, after a quick glance behind him, added in a whisper, “He says he is able to make the Stone, it’s only a question of time & the right method … His whole person exudes saintliness. He is a true sage & it’s clear that he is seeking neither gold nor glory: it was only after I had spent several days begging him that he consented to demonstrate his art to me, but grudgingly, as if he were lowering himself to a practice that was unworthy of his talents.”

“Hmm … You know my opinion on this matter. Also you must permit me to express some doubt as to the abilities of your … your … what did you say he was called?”

As we only learned much later, Sieur Sinibaldus was outraged by Kircher’s attitude. He could not understand how someone could dispute something, regard it with such skepticism, without even having taken the trouble to check the facts. As soon as he left the College, he determined to show my master how blind he had been. To do that he hurried off to said Blauenstein, whom he persuaded — not without difficulty, for the fellow pretended to be reluctant — to come and live with him. He placed both his laboratory & his whole fortune at his disposition, provided he would teach him to make the stone or the powder of projection, the mere contact with which, as he had established de visu , turned the basest matter into gold.

Blauenstein’s wife was a young Chinese woman called Mei-li, whose mysterious, silent beauty contributed to the alchemist’s aura of unsuspected powers. Mei-li, Blauenstein said — while maintaining a discreet silence about how he had met her during a journey to China — was the sister of the “Grand Imperial Physician attached to the Chamber of Remedies,” a man who was versed in the art of alchemy & had taught him many secrets taken from ancient grimoires. To anyone who flattered him enough, Blauenstein would willingly, but with many signs of respect & precautions, show a pile of notebooks covered in Chinese characters that he claimed, with no great danger of contradiction, were a compendium of alchemical knowledge.

This strange couple thus settled bag & baggage in the luxurious apartment Sieur Sinibaldus put at their disposal in his own mansion. No sooner had they arrived than a new athanor had to be constructed for the laboratory, the old one not being suitable, & a number of very rare & very expensive ingredients had to be ordered to start the long process that would lead to the Great Work.

When Sinibaldus admitted his ignorance of the products required & of the means of procuring them, Blauenstein offered to obtain them himself & at the best price, solely out of friendship for his host. The good doctor’s moneybags suffered a severe flux, but the alchemist insisted, despite his victim’s protestations of trust, on producing all the bills justifying his expenses: fifty thousand ducats for a pound of Persian zingar & ten ounces of powdered scolopendra; eighty-five thousand ducats for realgar, orpiment & indigo; the same amount for a small piece of bezoar from a llama; a hundred thousand ducats for tacamahac resin, Turkestan salt & green alum plus a quantity of other materials that were less rare but hardly less expensive, such as cinnabar, powdered mummy & rhinoceros horn, fresh sparrow-hawk feces or wolves’ testicles … Although substantial, Sinibaldus’s resources were dwindling dangerously; &, as if by an effect of Divine Providence, those of the alchemist were increasing proportionately.

During Blauenstein’s planned absences, supposedly to seek out these inestimable materials but in reality to salt away the ducats he saved on his purchases, Mei-li & Sinibaldus had the task of looking after the alchemical furnace & watching over the slow sublimation of sulphur & mercury. Using the heat of the laboratory as an excuse, the beautiful Chinese always appeared in a silk négligée, which would fall open at the slightest movement, revealing, as if inadvertently, quivering charms deliberately left free. Her hair, exquisitely combed & tied at the back, was covered in pearls & topped with a little bamboo bonnet, with an outer shell of silk from which a tuft of red horsehair stuck up. In this transparent semiundress, she would prostrate herself, with much waggling of the rump, before a little altar she had made herself with Christ alongside hideous idols from her own country; also — still in order to encourage heaven to look favorably on the Great Work — she would shamelessly engage in lascivious & languorous dances.

It was not long before poor Sinibaldus was captivated by all this. Only three months after having taken the devil into his home, half-ruined, his willpower paralyzed by love, his senses inflamed by her courtesan’s tricks, he would have sold his soul for a kiss. But, although keeping his passion at boiling point with a thousand lubricious wiles, the hussy was careful not to allow him the least liberty; with her simpering ways, she seemed made to show the extent to which intemperate desires can be aroused when self-interest & avarice lend a hand.

These machinations lasted until the dupe was judged ready for culling & on St. John’s Eve Blauenstein announced that the Great Work was entering its final stage. All the necessary ingredients had been meticulously weighed out, filtered & decanted prior to being added to the broth of sulphur, mercury & antimony that had been simmering in the crucible for so long.

“In two weeks to the day and the hour the mixture will have attained the sublime perfection extolled by the Ancients. Then all that will be left will be to precipitate this liquid matter with the bezoar stone & you will see — born before your very eyes! — the famous “Green Lion,” the wonderful substance that assures you both wealth & immortality. But the alchemical process is not simply a question of purifying inert materials, in order to work it requires an analogous decantation of the body & the mind without which we will not be able to witness the final miracle. To this end I am going to retire to a monastery with the bezoar stone & will pray without cease for these two weeks. My wife, who was initiated into the most divine secrets by her brother, will tend the alchemical vessel on her own. As for you, my dear friend & benefactor, you will retire to your room to pray, merely taking some food to Mei-li twice a day. The slightest infraction of these simple rules will put an end to our hopes for good …”

Much moved by this, Sinibaldus swore that it would be as the alchemist desired & that he would spare neither mortification of the flesh nor prayers to purify his soul.

Blauenstein spent the rest of the night “rectifying” the laboratory: with his wife & Sinibaldus on their knees, he drew on the floor & the walls all kinds of magic pentacles to prevent demons entering the room, recited a number of formulae taken from the Chinese cabbala & placed the furnace under the protection of at least three dozen “sephirotic spirits.” Gesticulating & chanting himself hoarse in the thick clouds of incense he had burning all the time, the alchemist seemed to Sinibaldus like the very incarnation of Trismegistus.

In the early hours of the morning Blauenstein locked his wife in the laboratory, then ceremonially handed the keys over to his host, repeated his orders of the previous evening & left. Exhausted by the sleepless night, Sinibaldus went to his bedroom, where he soon fell asleep, lulled by fond hopes and delusions, beside himself with joy.

Waking around one o’clock, he immediately had a meal prepared, which he took himself to the fair Mei-li. Respecting the alchemist’s orders, he kept his eyes lowered & closed the door immediately after having placed the tray of food on the floor. Back in his bedroom, he flagellated himself for a good while, then immersed himself in prayer until the evening.