The alchemist's initial encounter with the prima materia is characterized by feelings of frustration, bewilderment, disassociation and disintegration.

I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look upon notoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man's shirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.

How they would pay for the project was, troublingly, left unstated.

Hast thou nor shame, nor modesty, nor fear? / That thus thou struttest in the face of God, / Spreading thy peacock's feathers, with their gleam?