"Now," as the priest quaintly put it, "just as there are veins in man's body, and fissures in the earth, so are there arteries in the air; and to each spirit its own arteries. When, therefore, the spirit of water is properly besought, it descends from its abode, the moon, by its appropriate paths, and dispossesses the spirit of fire, which sinks back again to the charcoal whence it came." And of course the hot water is no longer hot.
This happy result is worked to easier perfection amid the purity of the peaks. It is, of course, an irrelevant detail that water at those altitudes should boil at a lower temperature. The thin air of the peaks is, for purely pious reasons, conducive to all manner of etherealization.
In addition to the lunar action on the boiling water, the performer himself is, so the priest said, temporarily possessed by the lunar spirit, and so is rendered insensible to the heat, which, as we just saw, does not exist, so that the second action might seem to savor of the superfluous. A double negative of the sort appears, however, to make assurance doubly sure.
When the man returned, clothed and in
