ticated facts had been turned outside in; and, in fine, the
world's dread laugh helped not a little to put down the conviction of
ages. That conviction did not relate to the existence of natural
hoards of the precious metal. Such idle dreams were left to the
fanciful and superstitious, whose stores were usually situated in the
bosom of mountains, and guarded by gnomes and demons. The others were
more rational and practical: they sought to obtain their end by means
of legitimate science, based upon virtue and religious faith. This
basis is the only thing that since then has been unanimously
abandoned; for philosophers are still by no means agreed as to the
impossibility of making gold.

Only a few of the gold-seekers of the present day are literary men,
for the pickaxe does not very naturally replace the pen; but at the
time we speak of, almost the whole tribe were authors. Borel, in 1654,
makes the list amount to 4000; but this is an exaggeration; many of
his names being imaginary, and some cut into several pieces. We have
before us, however, a catalogue by a less zealous compiler, brought
between eighty and ninety years further down, containing about 2500
treatises by about 900 authors--a number which we consider not the
least remarkable of the facts connected with the hermetic science. All
these works, with the exception of a small number, are in Latin; and
ten of them are the production of a certain Bernard Trevisan_us_, to
give him his learned name, although he was born at Padua in 1406. We
do not, however, particularise this author on account of the value of
his books, for we are thankful to say we have never seen his _Secret
Work of Chemistry_, or his _Philosophers' Egg_, or, in fact, a single
line he has written;[3] but we look upon him in his personal character
as the very ideal of a gold-seeker; and we are on that account anxious
to rescue his name from the obscurity in which it rests.

Bernard's attachment for his life-long profession was spontaneous,
perhaps instinctive. He had no need to apply himself to make the
precious metals, for he was born with a piece of one of them in his
mouth--the piece which is technically called a silver spoon. He had
the rank of count; and his father, a doctor of medicine, leaving him a
sufficient fortune, he had nothing to do but to enjoy the world in any
way he thought fit. We shall see how he managed. When only fourteen
years of age, he fell in with one of the works of the A