Felix and the Prophecy of Fate.

The Alchemist Felix and the Duke’s Conspiracy

My name is Felix, an apothecary of sorts and a hobbyist alchemist. I settled in my hometown Montargis because I was born here. I was born to a merchant family, but as soon as I could walk, I started to deviate from my father’s footsteps. I didn’t want to deal with the boring essences and other items he sold. My passion was always with the magical and mysterious elements of the alchemical arts.

I decided to stay in my beloved hometown after my marriage to Louise de Loynes, who is now my wife. We have been married for about three years now. She has always been very supportive of me, even when it came to my crazy experiments. For example, once we tried to mix together sulfur, saltpeter, and cinnabar into one substance – but we accidentally mixed in too much silver nitrate (not knowing at the time that it would react violently to the other substances). The result was that our whole basement room went up in flames. But Louise and I just laughed about it later on. She said that if everyone had a reaction like mine – twisting my face up in pain due to being singed on the face – then they would be so surprised that they would never laugh again! But Louise’s laugh is so infectious that she can make you laugh at almost anything.

One thing that we both share is our enthusiasm for alchemy and our love for experimenting with new things – especially flowers, plants, and herbs that we find in our garden or countryside around Montargis. Herbs are quite rare here though, but when we travel to France’s capital Paris she helps me buy some rarer things such as red coral and real lapis lazuli from exotic places like China or India. She is always willing to help me with these things. In fact, sometimes she goes out of her way to help me get the ingredients that I need for my experiments – even if she does not understand what it will be used for! If only all wives were like Louise!

In fact, it was thanks to her help that led me straight into trouble! It all started about two weeks ago when I was doing some experiments in my basement laboratory, trying out some new combinations of ingredients together as usual one afternoon (Louise was upstairs getting ready for a dinner party we were going to later on). The combination of ingredients this time happened to be quite unusual: white lead (cerussa) and verdigris (copper acetate). Both of them are poisonous! Well, maybe not white lead – at least not usually – but definitely verdigris! The result was a volatile gas which started bubbling up from the crucible containing these ingredients. But before I even had time to stand back away from it, a spark from my torch hit the mixture and set off an explosion which sent molten lead flying all over the place – including splattering onto my face!

If Louise hadn’t been there that day then maybe I would have died or lost an eye or something! She threw herself over me while screaming “Felix!!! What is happening? You fool what have you done?” Luckily she managed to shield me from most of the molten metal with her body until it cooled down enough for her to throw it off of me without getting hurt herself! We both looked at each other with wide eyes due to shock. Then we burst out laughing until tears were rolling down our faces! “Felix…you idiot…why did you do that?” She gasped between laughs while wiping tears away from her eyes. “You should know better than anyone else how dangerous those ingredients are – especially together!! Did you think we needed more money?!” Then she started giggling again so much that she just fell over onto the floor still laughing hysterically at me! It took a few minutes for us both to calm down enough for us both stop laughing so hard that we couldn’t breathe properly anymore.

After this incident, I decided never ever again perform any experiments by myself in case something similar happened again - no matter how simple or harmless looking the experiment might seem! Like this time when Louise heard about chamomile flowers being good for soothing insomnia - well actually I think she read something about it somewhere - so she decided to go out into our garden and pick some flowers herself so I could make some infusions for her use later on (she doesn't know how dangerous picking flowers by yourself can be either!!). As if collecting them by hand wasn't dangerous enough - after picking them she decided against using scissors or a knife when removing their petals because cutting them seemed like such a waste - instead she just bit off their petals using her teeth!!!!

As far as my injuries...well...it's hard not to laugh when someone accidentally hurts themselves by doing something stupid isn't it? To be honest, despite being burned all over my face (not severely though, thank