Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
I wrote to my mother and to M. d'Asterac, and I composed the most touching epistle to Jahel. My tears fell on this when I read it over for a second time. "Perhaps," I said to myself, "the faithless girl will cry too, and her tears will mix with mine."
At these words of our host, M. Jerome Coignard, raising his eyes over the thin black broth in his plate, looked uneasily at M. d'Asterac, who continued to say: "But that would still be quite insufficient progress. No honest man can eat animal flesh without disgust, and people cannot call themselves refined as long as they keep slaughter-houses and butchers' shops in their towns.
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.
"You see this pavilion," said M. d'Asterac; "in it lives the most learned of men. Therein Mosaide, one hundred and twenty years old, penetrates, with majestic self-will, the mysteries of nature. He has left Imbonatus and Bartoloni far behind. I wanted to honour myself, gentlemen, by keeping under my roof the greatest cabalist since Enoch, son of Cain.
Without flattering myself I may say that I smell truffles and books at a long distance and I consider myself from now, to be the equal of Peiresc, of Grolier and of Canevarius, who are the princes of bibliophiles." "I consider myself to be over them," said M. d'Asterac quietly, "as this library is a great deal more precious than all those you have named.
I reassured my good mother as well as I could and told her that M. d'Asterac made me work in Greek, which was the language in which the New Testament was written; this pleased her, but she remained pensive. "You'll never guess, my dear Jacquot," she said, "who spoke to me of M. d'Asterac. It was Cadette Saint-Avit, the serving-woman of the Rector of St Benoit.
We lifted him up, all four of us, and put him with the greatest difficulty on the horse, where we tied him as securely as possible. And we went off. I held him on one side, M. d'Anquetil on the other. The postboy led the horse and carried the lantern. M. d'Asterac had returned to his carriage.
On the other hand, I thought in advance how puzzled I should be to reply to M. d'Asterac when he inquired of me after news of the Salamander. What could I say? How was I to avow my reserve and my abstention without betraying my defiance and fear? And after all, without being aware of it, I was curious to try the adventure. I am not credulous.
M. d'Asterac smiled and said: "You are too knowing a man, M. Coignard, not to be acquainted with the Flying Eagle, the Bird of Hermes, the Fowl of Hermogenes, the Head of a Raven, the Green Lion and the Phoenix." "I have been told," said my good master, "that by these names are distinguished the philosopher's stone in its different states.
Could I obtain the good offices of the Sylph assistants of whom that old fool d'Asterac speaks, and who appear, it is said, when they are invoked by the cabalistic name of AGLA "
Word Of The Day
Others Looking