CHAPTER V. 

 RUDOLPH AND THE "GOLDEN KNIGHT/' 



"By fire 



Of sooty coal th'empiric alchemist 

 Can turn, or holds it possible to turn, 

 Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold." 



Milton. 



OHN DEE'S seance with the "holy stone" in 

 Rudolph's private apartment raised his reputation 

 to a prodigious height; a further display of philo- 

 sophical instruments whose use was little under- 

 stood by the Emperor, and of a magic mirror together with 

 an exhibition of Catoptromancy, secured for the Englishman 

 the fullest confidence of this eccentric patron of science. Dee 

 was assigned one of the best equipped laboratories on the 

 Hradschin, and with the useful Kelley went to work with 

 renewed zeal at the search for the Philosophers' stone. At 

 first the costly materials and apparatus were supplied by the 

 , Emperor's orders with liberality and promptness, but after 

 some time the foreigners had to avail themselves of the con- 

 tributions of the gentlemen of the privy chamber, the courtiers 

 and the noble attendants, all of whom had blind faith in 

 transmutation and a willingness to aid in sustaining the 

 labors of such distinguished and skillful adepts. 



Dr. Dee's eldest son, Arthur, already initiated in occult 

 lore, became an assistant in the royal laboratory; having 



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