One Hundred Years of Solitude

failure of his undertakings,
and such was his upset that
José Arcadio Buendía himself
relieved him of his duties in
the laboratory, thinking that
he had taken alchemy too
much to heart. Aureliano, of
course, understood that his
brothers affliction did not
have its source in the search
for the philosophers stone but
he could not get into his
confidence. He had lost his
former spontaneity. From an