mon seigneurs greatest talent as a conversationalist , however , seemed to lie in his ability , through a barrage of pointed , often irrelevant-seeming questions , to open up every topic and make it grander in scale than it had once seemed , as though he were a mad chemist in a room full of closed vials , who , as though overcome by a sudden urge , proceeded to uncap each and every one of these reactive solutions , to allow their fumes to hang in the air , irresolute and forgetful even of their original compositions , but nonetheless liberated from their previously oppressive boundaries .