CHAPTER VII
ST. MARK'S BALSAM
The death of the great king, and the first transactions of the
Regency, left little leisure to Abbé Malletort for the thousand
occupations of his every-day life. With the busy
churchman, to stagnate was a cessation of existence. As
some men study bodily health and vigour, carefully attending
to the development of their frames by constant and
unremitting exercise, so did the Abbé preserve his intellect
in the highest possible training by its varied use, and seemed
to grudge the loss of every hour in which he either omitted
to learn something new or lay a fresh stepping-stone for
the employment of knowledge previously acquired. Like
Juvenal's Greek, he studied all the sciences in turn, but his
labour was never without an object, nor had he the slightest
scruples in applying its results to his own advantage.
Malletort was qualified to deal with the most consummate
knave, but he might have been unconsciously out-*manœuvred
by a really honest man, simply from his own
habitual disregard of the maxim, as true in ethics as in
mathematics, which teaches that the shortest way from any
one given point to another is a straight line.
The Abbé had therefore many irons in his fire, careful, however, so to hold them that he should preserve his own fingers from being burnt; and amongst others, he often applied his spare hours to the study of chemistry.
Now in the time of which I am speaking the tree of knowledge had not been entirely denuded of its parasite credulity. Science and superstition were not yet finally divorced, and the philosopher's stone was still eagerly sought
