Daniel followed these footsteps into the chambers he had once shared. The ground floor was cluttered with alchemical droppings, but not as dangerous as usual, since everything was cold. Daniel shone his lantern around one quiet room and then another. Everything that gave light back was hard mineral stuff, the inert refractory elements to which nature always returned: crusty crucibles, sooty retorts, corroded tongs, black crystals of charcoal, globs of quicksilver trapped in floor-cracks, a box of golden guineas left open next to a window as if to prove to all passers-by that the man who lived here cared nothing for gold.