He felt at times impatient at his own weakness, and would endeavour to brush away these cobwebs of the mind.  He would turn his thoughts, with sudden effort, to his occult studies, or occupy himself in some perplexing process; but often, when he had partially succeeded in fixing his attention, the sound of Inez’s lute, or the soft notes of her voice, would come stealing upon the stillness of the chamber, and, as it were, floating round the tower.  There was no great art in her performance; but Antonio thought he had never heard music comparable to this.  It was perfect witchcraft to hear her warble forth some of her national melodies; those little Spanish romances and Moorish ballads, that transport the hearer, in idea, to the banks of the Guadalquivir, or the walls of the Alhambra, and make him dream of beauties, and balconies, and moonlight serenades.

Never was poor student more sadly beset than Antonio.  Love is a troublesome companion in a study, at the best of tunes; but in the laboratory of an alchymist, his intrusion is terribly disastrous.  Instead of attending to the retorts and crucibles, and watching the process of some experiment intrusted to his charge, the student would get entranced in one of these love-dreams, from which he would often be aroused by some fatal catastrophe.  The philosopher, on returning from his researches in the libraries, would find every thing gone wrong, and Antonio in despair over the ruins of the whole day’s work.  The old man, however, took all quietly, for his had been a life of experiment and failure.

“We must have patience, my son,” would he say, “as all the great masters that have gone before us have had.  Errors, and accidents, and delays are what we have to contend with.  Did not Pontanus err two hundred times, before he could obtain even the matter on which to found his experiments?  The great Flamel, too, did he not labour four-and-twenty years, before he ascertained the first agent?  What difficulties and hardships did not Cartilaceus encounter, at the very threshold of his discoveries?  And Bernard de Treves, even after he had attained a knowledge of all the requisites, was he not delayed full three years?  What you consider accidents, my son, are the machinations of our invisible enemies.  The treasures and golden secrets of nature are surrounded by spirits hostile to man.  The air about us teems with them.  They lurk in the fire of the furnace, in the bottom of the crucible, and the alembic, and are ever on the alert to take advantage of those moments when our minds are wandering from intense meditation on the great truth that we are seeking.  We must only strive the more to purify ourselves from, those gross and earthly feelings which becloud the soul, and prevent her from piercing into nature’s arcana.”

“Alas!” thought Antonio, “if to be purified from all earthly feeling requires that I should cease to love Inez, I fear I shall never discover the philosopher’s stone!”