us transmutations in Provence. He lingered for
seven or eight months in the Bastille, and died from the effects of his
wound, in the forty-first year of his age.

ALBERT ALUYS.

This pretender to the philosopher's stone was the son, by a former
husband, of the woman Aluys, with whom Delisle became acquainted at the
commencement of his career, in the cabaret by the road-side, and whom he
afterwards married. Delisle performed the part of a father towards him,
and thought he could shew no stronger proof of his regard, than by giving
him the necessary instructions to carry on the deception which had raised
himself to such a pitch of greatness. The young Aluys was an apt scholar,
and soon mastered all the jargon of the alchymists. He discoursed
learnedly upon projections, cimentations, sublimations, the elixir of
life, and the universal alkahest; and on the death of Delisle gave out
that the secret of that great adept had been communicated to him, and to
him only. His mother aided in the fraud, with the hope they might both
fasten themselves, in the true alchymical fashion, upon some rich dupe,
who would entertain them magnificently while the operation was in
progress. The fate of Delisle was no inducement for them to stop in
France. The Provencals, it is true, entertained as high an opinion as ever
of his skill, and were well inclined to believe the tales of the young
adept on whom his mantle had fallen; but the dungeons of the Bastille were
yawning for their prey, and Aluys and his mother decamped with all
convenient expedition. They travelled about the Continent for several
years, sponging upon credulous rich men, and now and then performing
successful transmutations by the aid of double-bottomed crucibles and the
like. In the year 1726, Aluys, without his mother, who appears to have
died in the interval, was at Vienna, where he introduced himself to the
Duke de Richelieu, at that time ambassador from the court of France. He
completely deceived this nobleman; he turned lead into gold (apparently)
on several occasions, and even made the ambassador himself turn an iron
nail into a silver one. The duke afterwards boasted to Lenglet du Fresnoy
of his achievements as an alchymist, and regretted that he had not been
able to discover the secret of the precious powder by which he performed
them.

Aluys soon found that, although he might make a dupe of the Duke de
Richelieu, he could not get any money from him. On the contrary