ittle
trade, but who knew how to change lead into very good gold, gave the King
of Sweden a lingot which he had made, weighing at least one hundred
pounds. The king immediately caused it to be coined into ducats; and
because he knew positively that its origin was such as had been stated to
him, he had his own arms graven upon the one side, and emblematical
figures of Mercury and Venus on the other. I (continued Monconis) have one
of these ducats in my possession; and was credibly informed that, after
the death of the Lubeck merchant, who had never appeared very rich, a sum
of no less than one million seven hundred thousand crowns was found in his
coffers."[47]

[47] _Voyages de Monconis_, tome ii. p. 379.

Such stories as these, confidently related by men high in station, tended
to keep up the infatuation of the alchymists in every country of Europe.
It is astonishing to see the number of works which were written upon the
subject during the seventeenth century alone, and the number of clever men
who sacrificed themselves to the delusion. Gabriel de Castaigne, a monk of
the order of St. Francis, attracted so much notice in the reign of Louis
XIII., that that monarch secured him in his household, and made him his
Grand Almoner. He pretended to find the elixir of life, and Louis expected
by his means to have enjoyed the crown for a century. Van Helmont also
pretended to have once performed with success the process of transmuting
quicksilver, and was in consequence invited by the Emperor Rudolph II. to
fix his residence at the court of Vienna. Glauber, the inventor of the
salts which still bear his name, and who practised as a physician at
Amsterdam about the middle of the seventeenth century, established a
public school in that city for the study of alchymy, and gave lectures
himself upon the science. John Joachim Becher of Spire acquired great
reputation at the same period, and was convinced that much gold might be
made out of flint-stones by a peculiar process, and the aid of that grand
and incomprehensible substance the philosopher's stone. He made a
proposition to the Emperor Leopold of Austria to aid him in these
experiments; but the hope of success was too remote, and the present
expense too great, to tempt that monarch, and he therefore gave Becher
much of his praise, but none of his money. Becher afterwards tried the
States-General of Holland with no better success.

With regard to the innumerable tricks by w