Poor fools!" Messer Blondel stared.

Had Basterga, assailing him from a different side, broached the precise story to which, in the case of Agrippa or Albertus Magnus, the Syndic was prepared to give credence, he had certainly received the overture with suspicion if not with contempt.

He had certainly been very far from staking good florins upon it.

But when the experimenter in the midst of the apparatus of science, and surrounded by things which imposed on the vulgar, denied their value, and laughed at the legends of wealth and strength obtained by their means--this fact of itself went very far towards convincing him that Basterga had made a discovery and was keeping it back.
The vital principle, the essential element, the final good, these were fine phrases, though they had a pagan ring.

But men, the Syndic argued, did not spend money, and read much and live laborious days, merely to coin phrases.