Small, dirty, lean as a skeleton, with hands like claws, eyes like a wild beast's, and the most hideously false smile you ever saw in a human face.

What his history is, nobody knows.

The people at the medical school call him the most extraordinary experimental chemist living.

His ideas astonish the Professors themselves.

The students have named him 'The new Paracelsus.' "I ventured to ask him, one day, if he believed he could make gold.