with those used in culinary operations, but the fragments of 

 red saffron of Mars, blue vitriol, and verdigris, together 

 with patches of brown lutes, gave them. an aspect far from 

 appetizing. 



The centre of the smaller room was almost filled with an 

 apparatus conspicuous from its great size and eccentric shape; 

 it consisted of a hollow, metal pipe nearly nine feet high pierc- 

 ed with ten round holes through which passed the lengthened 

 glass necks of alembics below and the shorter necks of re- 

 ceptacles above, the latter supported on brackets fixed to the 

 wall. The necks of the two alembics, connected with cucurbits 

 resting on furnaces, were bent into S-shaped curves so that 

 they entered the central pipe at each of the five openings; 

 water poured in at the top of the pipe was drawn off by a 

 spigot near the base. This imposing apparatus for distilling 

 brandy had been made after a pattern devised many years 

 before by Brunswick, but at the time of which we write 

 was no longer in use having been abandoned for simpler 

 contrivances. 



Suspended from the smoke begrimed rafters was a stuffed 

 crocodile and a rare bird of Asiatic origin, whose brilliant 

 plumage was now entirely concealed by the dust and dirt 

 of years of neglect. 



In the long corridor leading into these rooms lay piles 

 of charcoal, earthenware crucibles, boxes of materials for fire- 

 resisting lutes, and coarser chemical substances, together with 

 utensils of iron, copper and brass, most of them in sad need 

 of scouring. Throughout an air of disorder and carelessness 

 prevailed ; the murky atmosphere was scarcely pierced by the 

 sunbeams admitted through the windows cut at irregular 

 elevations opposite the furnaces. Of furniture properly speak- 

 ing there was very little; a few stools, one chair of comfort- 

 able aspect in front of a still, and a massive table of rude 



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