Page:Curiosities of Olden Times.djvu/161

"Hermippus Redivivus" boasted of a certain arcanum animale which would cause any one who used it to be free from injury caused by the inclemency of the weather, from the gray hairs of age, from exhaustion through bodily fatigue, or through mental tension, whom no sickness would enfeeble, but who would reach the term fixed by Providence for his days, free from injury from every foe. I shall prove that Hermippus protracted his life by the use of such an arcanum. For although, hitherto, it has been an unknown arcanum to use the crude breath of little maidens for the prolongation of the mortal existence, still it will be regarded a far higher arcanum if this can be concentrated and cooked into an essence by chymical process, so that it should have in itself the invisible spirit of nature, and the subtilised fundamental principle of life. Let no one consider what I am now about to relate as a fable, but let him hold it as genuine fact. In my youth I had the good fortune to have the entrée of the house of an illustrious personage, whose lady was immeasurably learned in the hermetic science, and laboured at it along with her husband; with her I had the opportunity of discussing the primordial matter of universal substance, which the philosophers have veiled under enigma and fable. She boasted that she had learned the secret of this from an Italian Adeptus at Rome, and thereby she aroused my curiosity to hear what it was: although, at the time, I was by no means slightly acquainted with hermetic philosophy. 149