She possessed a commentary on Raymond Lully, which cleared up all difficult points in the comments of Arnold de Villanova on the works of Roger Bacon and Heber, who, according to her, were still alive.  This precious manuscript was in an ivory casket, the key of which she kept religiously; indeed her laboratory was a closed room to all but myself.  I saw a small cask full of ‘platina del Pinto’, which she told me she could transmute into gold when she pleased.  It had been given her by M. Vood himself in 1743.  She shewed me the same metal in four phials.  In the first three the platinum remained intact in sulphuric, nitric, and muriatic acid, but in the fourth, which contained ‘aqua regia’, the metal had not been able to resist the action of the acid.  She melted it with the burning-glass, and said it could be melted in no other way, which proved, in her opinion, its superiority to gold.  She shewed me some precipitated by sal ammoniac, which would not precipitate gold.

Her athanor had been alight for fifteen years.  The top was full of black coal, which made me conclude that she had been in the laboratory two or three days before.  Stopping before the Tree of Diana, I asked her, in a respectful voice, if she agreed with those who said it was only fit to amuse children.  She replied, in a dignified manner, that she had made it to divert herself with the crystallization of the silver, spirit of nitre, and mercury, and that she looked upon it as a piece of metallic vegetation, representing in little what nature performed on a larger scale; but she added, very seriously, that she could make a Tree of Diana which should be a very Tree of the Sun, which would produce golden fruit, which might be gathered, and which would continue to be produced till no more remained of a certain ingredient.  I said modestly that I could not believe the thing possible without the powder of projection, but her only answer was a pleased smile.

She then pointed out a china basin containing nitre, mercury, and sulphur, and a fixed salt on a plate.

“You know the ingredients, I suppose?” said she.

“Yes; this fixed salt is a salt of urine.”

“You are right.”

“I admire your sagacity, madam.  You have made an analysis of the mixture with which I traced the pentacle on your nephew’s thigh, but in what way can you discover the words which give the pentacle its efficacy?”

“In the manuscript of an adept, which I will shew you, and where you will find the very words you used.”

I bowed my head in reply, and we left this curious laboratory.

We had scarcely arrived in her room before Madame d’Urfe drew from a handsome casket a little book, bound in black, which she put on the table while she searched for a match.  While she was looking about, I opened the book behind her back, and found it to be full of pentacles, and by good luck found the pentacle I had traced on the count’s thigh.  It was surrounded by the names of the spirits of the planets, with the exception of those of Saturn and Mars.  I shut up the book quickly.  The spirits named were the same as those in the works of Agrippa, with which I was acquainted.  With an unmoved countenance I drew near her, and she soon found the match, and her appearance surprised me a good deal; but I will speak of that another time.