surrounding life are varied.  Yes, sire, the subtle element which we call life takes its rise beyond the visible worlds; creation divides that principle according to the centres into which it flows; and all beings, even the lowest, share it, taking so much as they can take of it at their own risk and peril.  It is for them to protect themselves from death,—­the whole purpose of alchemy lies there, sire.  If man, the most perfect animal on this globe, bore within himself a portion of the divine, he would not die; but he does die.  To solve this difficulty, Socrates and his school invented the Soul.  I, the successor of so many great and unknown kings, the rulers of this science, I stand for the ancient theories, not the new.  I believe in the transformations of matter which I see, and not in the possible eternity of a soul which I do not see.  I do not recognize that world of the soul.  If such a world existed, the substances whose magnificent conjunction produced your body, and are so dazzling in that of Madame, would not resolve themselves after your death each into its own element, water to water, fire to fire, metal to metal, just as the elements of my coal, when burned, return to their primitive molecules.  If you believe that a certain part of us survives, we do not survive; for all that makes our actual being perishes.  Now, it is this actual being that I am striving to continue beyond the limit assigned to life; it is our present transformation to which I wish to give a greater duration.  Why! the trees live for centuries, but man lives only years, though the former are passive, the others active; the first motionless and speechless, the others gifted with language and motion.  No created thing should be superior in this world to man, either in power or in duration.  Already we are widening our perceptions, for we look into the stars; therefore we ought to be able to lengthen the duration of our lives.  I place life before power.  What good is power if life escapes us?  A wise man should have no other purpose than to seek, not whether he has some other life within him, but the secret springs of his actual form, in order that he may prolong its existence at his will.  That is the desire which has whitened my hair; but I walk boldly in the darkness, marshalling to the search all those great intellects that share my faith.  Life will some day be ours,—­ours to control.”

“Ah! but how?” cried the king, rising hastily.

“The first condition of our faith being that the earth belongs to man, you must grant me that point,” said Lorenzo.

“So be it!” said Charles de Valois, already under the spell.

“Then, sire, if we take God out of this world, what remains?  Man.  Let us therefore examine our domain.  The material world is composed of elements; these elements are themselves principles; these principles resolve themselves into an ultimate principle, endowed with motion.  The number THREE is the formula of creation:  Matter, Motion, Product.”