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computations and the observations of the
metallurgists, I had succeeded in making gold, and
I believed I could prove it. I sent my proofs
to Rouen to a friendly chemist. He opposed
me with counter-arguments, and for eight days
I could find no flaw in them. Then turning over
by chance the Chemistry of my Master Orfila,
I learned the secret of my mistake.
This old, forgotten, and despised chemical
treatise of 1830 helped me at the critical
moment, and became my oracle. My friends Orfila
and Swedenborg protected, encouraged, and
chastised me. They did not appear to me in
dreams or waking visions, but in small daily
occurrences showed me that they did not leave me
alone in the vicissitudes of my life. The spirits
had become naturalistic like the times, which
were no longer content with visions.
The following, for instance, cannot be explained
by the word, “coincidence.”
I had succeeded in producing spots of gold on
paper, and I wished now to do the same on a
large scale in the furnace. A couple of hundred
experiments failed, and I laid the blow-pipe
aside in despair. One morning, I walked to
the Observatory Avenue, where I often used to
admire the group of the four quarters of the
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