If, moved by curiosity or simply wishing to give some purpose to a summer stroll, you climb the spiral staircase leading to the high parts of the building, you should make you way slowly along the path, hollowed out like a channel at the top of the second gallery. Once you are in the vicinity of the main axis of the majestic building, at the re-entrant angle of the North Tower, you will see in the middle of the procession of monsters, a large and striking stone relief of an old man. This is he—the alchemist of Notre Dame. Wearing a Phrygian cap, attribute of the Adept, negligently placed on his long, thickly curling hair, the scholar, dressed in his working cape, is leaning with one hand on the balustrade and stroking his full, silky beard with the other. He is not meditating, he is observing. His eye is fixed; his look is strangely acute. The philosopher's whole attitude suggests extreme emotion. The slope of his shoulders, the forward thrust of his head and chest, betray, indeed, the greatest surprise. Surely that hand of stone is coming to life. Is it illusion? You would think you saw it trembling....

What a splendid figure he is, this old master! Anxiously and attentively he is scrutinizing and enquiring into the evolution of mineral life and finally he contemplates in amazement the prodigy, which his faith alone has let him perceive. And how poor are the modem statues of our learned men—whether they are cast in bronze or sculpted in marble—set beside this venerable figure, so simple, yet so powerfully realistic.

The mysterious Fountain at the foot of the Old Oak.

The artist has come a long way; he has taken false turnings and wandered on doubtful paths; but finally his joy bursts forth! The stream of living water flows at his feet; it gushes out bubbling from the old hollow oak.' Our adept has hit the target. And so, scorning the bow and arrows with which, like Cadmus, he pierced the serpent, he watches the welling of this clear spring, whose virtue as a solvent and whose volatile spirit are indicated to him by a bird, perched on the tree.

But what is this occult Fountain? What is the nature of this powerful solvent, capable of penetrating every metal—gold in particular—and, with the help of the dissolved body, of accomplishing the great task in its entirety? These are such deep riddles, that they have discouraged a considerable number of seekers. All, or almost all, have battered their heads against the impenetrable wall set up by the Philosophers to guard their citadel.

In mythology it is called Libethra and is said to have been a fountain of Magnesia. Near it was another spring, called the Rock. Both of them issued from a large rock, shaped like a woman's bosom, the water seeming to flow like milk from her two breasts. Now, we know that the ancient authors called the matter of the work our Magnesia and that the liquid extracted from this magnesia is called Virgin's Milk. Here, there is a clue. As for the allegory of the mixing or combination of this primitive water, issuing from the Chaos of the Wise, with a second water, different in nature (although of the same kind), this allegory is clear enough and sufficiently expressive. This combination gives rise to a third water which does not wet the hands, which the Philosophers have some-times called Mercury, sometimes Sulphur, according to whether they were considering the quality of this water or its physical aspect.