CHAPTER VIII. 

 THE MAN WITH A SILVER NOSE. 



"Then he his eye erected 



Into the night so far, 



And keen the course inspected 



Of every twinkling star ; 



The stars his fame transported 



Wide over sea and land; 



And Kings his friendship courted. 



And sought his islet's strand." 



Heiberg. 



[ORTLY after sunrise on a brilliantly clear day, a 

 distinguished company of philosophers, noblemen 

 and princes assembled upon the broad summit of 

 a hill that formed the central point of the little 

 island of Huen off the coast of Denmark ; it was the fifth of 

 August, 1576, just two months before Rudolph II. ascended 

 the throne of Germ any after the death of his father Maximilian. 

 The immediate surroundings of the Danish party were most 

 picturesque; the island, six miles in circumference, was covered 

 with a bright green sward "as trim as any garden lawn," 

 on which browsed horses, cattle and sheep; under cover of 

 the woods sported deer, hares, rabbits and partridges in 

 abundance, and the only other inhabitants of the sea-girt 

 islet were the forty souls who inhabited a hamlet on the 

 water's edge ; from the top of the hill which terminated in a 



74, 



