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Updated: June 27, 2025
I at once became afraid that the fire had broken out at the d'Asterac castle. I quickened my steps, and very soon ascertained that my fears were but too well founded. I discovered the calvary of the Sablons, an opaque black on a background of flame, and I saw nearly all the windows of the castle flaring as for a sinister feast. The little green door was broken in.
My two companions had gone up without being discovered, and reached my room, where we had decided to hide M. d'Anquetil until the moment of escape in the post-chaise, but as I was climbing the second flight of steps I met M. d'Asterac, in a red damask gown, carrying a silver candlestick. He put, as he habitually did, his hand on my shoulder.
But I have doubts about the possibility of a transmutation of metals." With the greatest confidence M. d'Asterac replied: "Nothing is easier, my dear sir, than to bring your uncertainty to an end." He opened an old rickety chest standing in the wall and took out of it a copper coin, bearing the effigy of the late king, and called our attention to a round stain crossing the coin from side to side.
I said to M. d'Asterac that I was glad it was so and he continued: "Men's teeth are a sign of ferocity. Once people are properly fed, their teeth will give way to some ornament similar to the pearls of the Salamander. Then it will become incomprehensible that a lover could, without horror and disgust, contemplate dogs' teeth in the mouth of his beloved." The Library and its Contents
But will you, Tournebroche, in default of a better qualified person, present me to yonder gentleman in black, who wears diamond studs, and whom I reckon to be M. d'Asterac?" "Ah! sir," I replied, "consider the presentation to be made. I have no other feelings but to assist my dear tutor." "Be it so!" said M. d'Anquetil.
It is a great sin to create in such a way creatures who cannot be baptised and who never could have a part in the eternal blessings. You cannot suppose that M. d'Asterac carried those grotesque figures to a priest in their bottles to hold them over the christening font. No godmother could have been found for them."
"Mosaide," continued M. d'Asterac, "not only interprets the books of Moses but also that of Enoch, which is much more important, and which has been rejected by the Christians, who were unable to understand it; like the cock of the Arabian fable, who disdained the pearl fallen in his grain.
Like a Byzantine emperor, some of them wear jewelled clasps on their mantles, others are mailed in ivory plates." "They are the writings of Jewish, Arabian and Persian cabalists," said M. d'Asterac.
And he disappeared in a manner which was strangely sudden. I remained alone before that glass globe, hesitating to unlock it, afraid lest some stupefying exhalation should escape from it. I thought that perhaps M. d'Asterac had put in it, as an artifice, some of those vapours which benumb those who inhale them and make them dream of Salamanders.
I recognised them immediately as those which M. d'Asterac had shown us. The jeweller examined the stones, and looking at the abbe from under his spectacles said: "Sir, these stones would be of great value if they were genuine. But they are not, and no touchstone is needed to find that out.
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