Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/395

 "The tree of Paracelsus," he remarked. "In the olden time it was accounted magic. With that simple experiment with sodium sulphate dukes and kings may have been beguiled, fortunes won, the lives of great men changed. Those were the palmy days for charlatans, Valeska. It paid well to be an alchemist in the Middle Ages; that is, if you escaped being put to death for it."

As she handed back the tube, he gazed on it thoughtfully for a moment; and then, holding it over a Bunsen burner, warmed the tube. In a few moments the crystals began to melt. The tree shrank and disappeared. He gave it a shake, and the solution was transparent again. He set it in a rack and smiled.

Valeska waited, knowing that this was not mere amusement. It was like him to wait for her to fathom, if she could, what he was thinking. But his mind surpassed hers; she could only follow him at times, though oftener than at first. Here she had no clue.

"It's a moral lesson," he said. "It is a parable of human nature and its mysteries. Why do we become absolutely different persons when we are angry? I am, we'll say, like this clear solution, hermetically sealed from the atmosphere of strife. Open the cork, or drop in a crystal of anger. Immediately, without apparent reason, I am changed; but not so beautifully as this. Warm this tree of acrid bitterness that has sprung up, and I melt into good nature again. Reading Paracelsus, the analogy came into my mind. Thus endeth the first lesson."

And, so saying, he stripped off his working clothes, attired himself in gown and turban, and, as he changed his costume, became again the inscrutable calm Seer,