Don Luis picked a magnificent rose from a tree by his side and asked François:
"Is it possible for me to transform this rose, whose proportions, as it is, are larger than those a rose often attains, into a flower double the size and this rose-tree into a shrub twice as tall?"
"Then why did you admit, why did you all admit that Maguennoc could achieve that result, merely by digging up earth in certain parts of the island, at certain fixed hours? That was a miracle; and you accepted it without hesitation, unconsciously."
"But you accepted it as a miracle, that is to say, as a phenomenon which Maguennoc produced by special and, truth to tell, by supernatural means. Whereas I, when I read this detail in M. d'Hergemont's letter, at once--what shall I say?--caught on. I at once established the connection between those monstrous blossoms and the name borne by the Calvary of the flowers. And my conviction was immediate: 'No, Maguennoc is not a wizard. He simply cleared a piece of uncultivated land around the Calvary; and all he had to do, to produce abnormal flowers, was to bring along a layer of mould. So the God-Stone is underneath; the God-Stone which, in the middle-ages, produced the same abnormal flowers; the God-Stone, which, in the days of the Druids, healed the sick and strengthened children.'"
"Therefore," said Patrice, "there is a miracle."
"There is a miracle if we accept the supernatural explanation. There is a natural phenomenon if we look for it and if we find the physical cause capable of giving rise to the apparent miracle."
"But those physical causes don't exist! They are not present."
"They exist, because you have seen monstrous flowers."
"Then there is a stone," asked Patrice, almost chaffingly, "which can naturally give health and strength? And that stone is the God-Stone?"
"There is not a particular, individual stone. But there are stones, blocks of stone, rocks, hills and mountains of rock, which contain mineral veins formed of various metals, oxides of uranium, silver, lead, copper, nickel, cobalt and so on. And among these metals are some which emit a special radiation, endowed with peculiar properties known as radioactivity. These veins are veins of pitchblende which are found hardly anywhere in Europe except in the north of Bohemia and which are worked near the little town of Joachimsthal. And those radioactive bodies are uranium, thorium, helium and chiefly, in the case which we are considering . . ."
