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Formerly a very eloquent professor of eloquence At the college of Beauvais Very zealous librarian to the Bishop of Seez Author of a fine translation of Zosimus the Panopolitan Which he unhappily left unfinished When overtaken by his premature death He was stabbed on the road to Lyons In the 52nd year of his age By the very villainous hand of a Jew And thus perished the victim of a descendant of the murderer Of Jesus Christ
And now, my boy, you'll greatly oblige me by looking into Vossius for the signification of five or six rather obscure words which the Panopolitan employs, and wherewith one has to do battle in the darkness of that insidious manner which astonished even the willing heart of Ajax, as reported by Homer, prince of poets and historians. These ancient alchemists had a tough style.
"It is rather mild this morning," he said, "but the sky is somewhat cloudy. Would it please you to go for a walk in the park with me before returning to the translation of Zosimus the Panopolitan, which will be a great honour to you and your tutor if you finish it as you have begun?"
But I beg of you not to kill my pupil, Jacques Tournebroche." "Ouf!" exclaimed Catherine, arranging the lace of her chemise on her bosom. "Now I feel easier." "Abbe," replied M. d'Anquetil, "honour compels me to do it." But my kind-hearted tutor went on: "Sir, Jacques Tournebroche is very useful to me for the translation, I have undertaken, of Zosimus the Panopolitan.
His assistance would be particularly useful to me on two or three passages in Zosimus the Panopolitan which are very obscure. Could you not be so good as to give me the means to evoke, if necessary, some Sylph librarian as expert as that of Dijon?" M. d'Asterac replied gravely: "That's a secret, abbe, that I will willingly unveil to you.
Left to itself, the sublimest human reason builds its castles and temples in the air and, truly, M. d'Asterac is a pretty good gatherer of clouds. Truth is in God alone, never forget it, my boy. But this is really the book 'Jmoreth' written by Zosimus the Panopolitan for his sister Theosebia. What a glory and what a delight to read this unique MS. rediscovered by a kind of prodigy!
"Would you kindly give me news of Zosimus the Panopolitan?" inquired M. d'Asterac. "He goes on," replied my master; "goes on nicely, though slowly at the moment." "Do not forget, abbe," said the cabalist, "that possession of the greatest secrets is attached to the knowledge of those ancient texts." "I think of it, sir, with solicitude," said the abbe.
That is a very considerable circumstance." Without interrupting his speech, he took up an armful of MSS. and deposited them on the table. "This," he said, showing a roll of papyrus, "comes from Egypt. It is a book of Zosimus the Panopolitan, which was thought to be lost and which I found myself in a coffin of a priest of Serapis.
For me, a companion of the Muses, and admitted to the silent orgies of meditation of which the rhetor of Madama speaks with so much eloquence, I thank God for having made me a respectable man." At Work on Zosimus the Panopolitan I visit my Home and hear Gossip about M. d'Asterac.
During all the next month or six weeks, M. Coignard applied himself, day and night, just as he had promised, to the reading of Zosimus the Panopolitan. During the meals we partook of at the table of M. d'Asterac the conversation turned on the opinions of the gnostics and on the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians. Being only an ignorant scholar I was of little use to my good master.
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