philosopher's stone, and tell fortunes. This was a happier idea; he
soon increased in substance, and had wherewithal to live comfortably.
He, therefore, took unto himself his wife Petronella, and began to
save money; but continued to all outward appearance as poor and
miserable as before. In the course of a few years, he became
desperately addicted to the study of alchymy, and thought of nothing
but the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and the universal
alkahest. In the year 1257, he bought by chance an old book for two
florins, which soon became the sole study and object of his life. It
was written with a steel instrument upon the bark of trees, and
contained twenty-one, or as he himself always expressed it, three
times seven, leaves. The writing was very elegant and in the Latin
language. Each seventh leaf contained a picture and no writing. On the
first of these was a serpent swallowing rods; on the second, a cross
with a serpent crucified; and on the third, the representation of a
desert, in the midst of which was a fountain with serpents crawling
from side to side. It purported to be written by no less a personage
than "Abraham, patriarch, Jew, prince, philosopher, priest, Levite,
and astrologer;" and invoked curses upon any one who should cast eyes
upon it, without being a sacrificer or a scribe. Nicholas Flamel never
thought it extraordinary that Abraham should have known Latin, and was
convinced that the characters on his book had been traced by the hands
of that great patriarch himself. He was at first afraid to read it,
after he became aware of the curse it contained; but he got over that
difficulty by recollecting that, although he was not a sacrificer, he
had practised as a scribe. As he read he was filled with admiration,
and found that it was a perfect treatise upon the transmutation of
metals. All the process was clearly explained; the vessels, the
retorts, the mixtures, and the proper times and seasons for the
experiment. But as ill-luck would have it, the possession of the