I found something interesting today from ECCO — a French grammar book that uses a sample dialogue about alchemy to teach grammar. In the dialogue, the alchemist is a friend of the conversants who has “run mad on chymistry.” Finally a useful French textbook! Much better than “Jacques donne de l’argent a la vendeuse” or all of the other banal sentences we had in 6th grade. Perhaps an alchemical version would be “Jacques rende la vendeuse en argent.”
That’s hilarious. I should see if the French department wants to use it.