detected, however, he was arrested and condemned to death, 

 and his execution was carried out in a peculiar way as a 

 warning to all alchemical imposters : the Count was clothed 

 in garments decorated with tinsel and hung on gallows 

 covered with shining brass by the aid of a yellow rope. His 

 two ferocious dogs were shot to death at the foot of the 

 gibbet, and their bodies were thrown into the same grave as 

 that which formed the resting-place of Bragadino. 



This took place in 1591, and six years later George 

 Honauer, a 3 r outh of twenty-four 3^ears, who rejoiced in many 

 .high sounding titles, was caught in attempting to cheat the 

 Duke of Wurtemberg, and executed in a similar manner. 



In midsummer, 1590, the citizens of Prague were startled 

 by the ostentatious appearance of an adventurer known as 

 Alessandro Scotta; he paraded the streets in a magnificent 

 coach lined with red velvet, followed by three carriages full 

 of retainers and servants, besides outriders and an armed 

 body-guard ; more than forty richly caparisoned horses were 

 required for his suite. He rented a superbly furnished dwelling 

 in Old Prague, and gave out that this opulence was a small 

 matter to one possessing the Philosophers' stone. Noblemen 

 and courtiers hastened to make his acquaintance, and he 

 soon got an introduction to Rudolph who gave him the use 

 of a chemical workshop. He met with little success, however, 

 for two years later he was reduced to exhibiting sleight of 

 hand and common jugglery to a gaping crowd in the public 

 streets of the city. His subsequent career in Coburg, where 

 he duped the young wife of the Duke, and in Italy, the land 

 of his birth, brought him no credit and less affluence. Scotta 

 seems to have died a natural death, but many of the un- 

 principled charlatans paid a terrible price for their treachery ; 

 some, after suffering horrible tortures, committed suicide in 

 a prison cell; Sebastian Siebenfreund, a contemporary of 



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