百年孤独是什么文学的代表作 世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第1章Part 3

世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第1章Part 3  

"It's the smell of the devil
" she said.
"Not at all
" Melquíades corrected her. "It has been proven that the devil has sulphuric properties and this is just a little corrosive sublimate."
Always didactic
he went into a learned exposition of the diabolical properties of cinnabar
but úrsula paid no attention to him
although she took the children off to pray. That biting odor would stay forever in her mind linked to the meMory of Melquíades.
The rudimentary laboratory-in addition to a profusion of pots
funnels
retorts
filters
and sieves-was made up of a primitive water pipe
a glass beaker with a long
thin neck
a reproduction of the philosopher's egg
and a still the gypsies themselves had built in accordance with modern descriptions of the three-armed alembic of Mary the Jew. Along with those items
Melquíades left samples of the seven metals that corresponded to the seven plas
the formulas of Moses and Zosimus for doubling the quantity of gold
and a set of notes and sketches concerning the processes of the Great Teaching that would permit those who could interpret them to undertake the manufacture of the philosopher's stone. Seduced by the simplicity of the formulas to double the quantity of gold
José Arcadio Buendía paid court to úrsula for several weeks so that she would let him dig up her colonial coins and increase them by as many times as it was possible to subdivide mercury. úrsula gave in
as always
to her husband's unyielding obstinacy. Then José Arcadio Buendía threw three doubloons into a pan and fused them with copper filings
orpiment
brimstone
and lead. He put it all to boil in a pot of castor oil until he got a thick and pestilential syrup which was more like mon caramel than valuable gold. In risky and desperate processes of distillation
melted with the seven plaary metals
mixed with hermetic mercury and vitriol of Cyprus
and put back to cook in hog fat for lack of any radish oil
úrsula's precious inheritance was reduced to a large piece of burnt hog cracklings that was firmly stuck to the bottom of the pot.