e unreached paradise of his despair.

That the secret existed, there could be no doubt; for it was a part of
Trevisan's creed that it was born before the Flood; that it was
revealed to the Israelites in their passage through the Desert; and
that it had thus been handed down through the various generations of
men. In his own travels, there was no want of true philosophers here,
there, and everywhere. But they were alone; they kept their science to
themselves; and they fixed upon the inquirer a stony gaze, which
petrified his heart. Pretenders, on the contrary, were as open as
day--there was no end to their civilities: but their favours were
expensive; they cost altogether, including his travelling expenses,
about 13,000 crowns; and he was at length obliged to sell an estate
which had produced him the agreeable little revenue of 8000 German
florins.

Bernard was now sixty-two years of age, within a year of his grand
climacteric. He had succeeded in divesting himself by degrees of all
his property, with the exception of what afforded him a very bare
subsistence; and his relatives, incensed at a conduct which their
ignorance of science prevented them from appreciating, had turned
their backs upon him. Poor, friendless, and alone, he had hatched his
_Philosophers' Egg_ to some purpose; and now what was he to do? He
must, in the first place, find some cheap retirement, where he could
at least live; and accordingly he set out for a place he had visited
in his travels--the island of Rhodes. Why he should have chosen the
island of Rhodes more than any other island, or an island more than
any part of the mainland, it would be difficult to tell. But Bernard
speedily saw that he had been conducted thither by the hand of
destiny; for in his solitary wanderings he encountered a monk whom he
at once recognised as a kindred spirit. It would be too long to tell
how they fell into talk about the Companions of Cadmus, the Doves of
Diana, the Dragon, the Serpent, and the Nymphs; of the Male, the
Female, and the Hermaphrodite; of the Hermetic Sulphur which exists in
gold, and of the means of coagulating with this sulphur the sacred
Mercury. Suffice it to say, that their conversation excited in them an
intense desire to experiment, and an absolute conviction that the
collision of two such intellects would strike out the sublime spark of
truth. But how to manage? Gold could not be made without the aid of
gold; and they had not a piece betwe