more of his life. He was now growing both old and poor; for he was
sixty-two years of age, and had been obliged to sell a great portion
of his patrimony to provide for his expenses. His journey to Persia
had cost upwards of thirteen thousand crowns, about one-half of which
had been fairly melted in his all-devouring furnaces: the other half
was lavished upon the sycophants that he made it his business to
search out in every town he stopped at.

On his return to Treves he found, to his sorrow, that, if not an
actual beggar, he was not much better. His relatives looked upon him
as a madman, and refused even to see him. Too proud to ask for favours
from any one, and still confident that, some day or other, he would be
the possessor of unbounded wealth, he made up his mind to retire to
the island of Rhodes, where he might, in the mean time, hide his
poverty from the eyes of all the world. Here he might have lived
unknown and happy; but, as ill luck would have it, he fell in with a
monk as mad as himself upon the subject of transmutation. They were,
however, both so poor that they could not afford to buy the proper
materials to work with. They kept up each other's spirits by learned
discourses on the Hermetic Philosophy, and in the reading of all the
great authors who had written upon the subject. Thus did they nurse
their folly, as the good wife of Tam O'Shanter did her wrath, "to keep
it warm." After Bernard had resided about a year in Rhodes, a
merchant, who knew his family, advanced him the sum of eight thousand
florins, upon the security of the last-remaining acres of his formerly
large estate. Once more provided with funds, he recommenced his
labours with all the zeal and enthusiasm of a young man. For three
years he hardly stepped out of his laboratory: he ate there, and slept
there, and did not even give himself time to wash his hands and clean
his beard, so intense was his application. It is melancholy to think