"But I am a scholar, Messer Blondel, not a physician, much less a practitioner of the ancillary art, which I take to be but a base and mechanical handicraft." "Yet, chemistry--you pursue that ?" the other rejoined with a glance at the farther table and its load of strange-looking phials and retorts.
"As an amusement," Basterga replied with a gesture of haughty deprecation.

"A parergon, if you please.

I take it, a man may dip into the mystical writings of Paracelsus without prejudice to his Latinity; and into the cabalistic lore of the school of Cordova without losing his taste for the pure oratory of the immortal Cicero.

Virgil himself, if we may believe Helinandus, gave the weight of his great name to such sports.

And Cornelius Agrippa, my learned forerunner in Geneva----" "Went something farther than that!" the Syndic struck in with a meaning nod, twice repeated.