How difficult could they be? She quickly found out. Nicolas Flamel had couched everything he said in religious terms. To the medieval mind, his comments may have meant something, but not in modern times. How should one interpret: ...let him ask of himself, why the figure of St. Paul is on the right hand, in the place where the custom is to paint St. Peter? And on the other side that of St. Peter, in the place of the figure of St. Paul? Why the figure of St. Paul is clothed in colours white and yellow, and that of Peter in yellow and red? Who the hell knew? Or cared? Flamel’s writings were useless! She didn’t have the background to understand. And anyway, to put alchemy into practice she needed the text Flamel had used—The Book of Abraham the Jew. Only with it could the secret of alchemy be revealed. And it was in Idaho. She got up and paced as she pondered all she'd learned over the past few months about alchemy. The reason her attention turned toward such a bizarre subject was nearly as remarkable as the subject itself.
