divers maladies, and would be prescribed to patients able to 

 pay in golden ducats. Two apprentices were occupied in 

 chopping bark from a small tree-trunk and in pulverizing the 

 elastic woody fibre ; another was preparing a furnace for the 

 preparation of Crocus Veneris which required varying degrees 

 of heat. Apart from observation von Hirschberg was com- 

 pounding a philtre having aphrodisiac powers, destined to 

 fetch a golden harvest from a credulous lady of the Emperor's 

 household. 



Seated on a stool near a window Dr. Michael Maier was 

 intently examining a manuscript containing numerous secret 

 symbols, the exact meaning of which he was writing between 

 the lines. The few leaves of this modern manuscript consti- 

 tuted a short epistle addressed to Emperor Rudolph by Dr. 

 Johann Bruckner, Professor of Medicine at Konigsberg, and 

 referred by his Majesty to Dr. Maier for interpretation. 

 Rudolph lacked esoteric knowledge of the hermetic characters 

 and believing it to contain the secret of the Philosophers' 

 Stone he had commanded his learned Secretary to decipher it ; 

 this Maier finally completed and the document sent to Rudolph 

 greatly pleased him. 



The letter from Bruckner, or Pontanus, as he generally 

 called himself, was in part as follows; Maier's explanations 

 are also given. 



"TO MY most gracious and exalted Master, the most 

 Potent Lord of the Holy Roman Empire, King of Hungary 

 and Bohemia, RUDOLPHUS II., greeting. I, John Pontanus, 

 have travelled through many countries that I might know 

 the certainty of the Philosophers' Stone; and passing through 

 the universe I found many deceivers, but no true Philosophers, 

 which put me on incessant studying, and making many 

 doubts, till at length I found out the truth. But when I had 



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