hurt. The trial of these two men lasted several months, 

 Hauser was tortured on the rack, and although he established 

 his innocence, the judge fined him and banished him from 

 Bohemia. 



Early in the first decade of the seventeenth century dis- 

 quieting rumors reached Rudolph concerning the attitude of 

 his brother Matthias, who began to manifest political aspir- 

 ations that treatened to undermine the throne. Matthias 

 sought the friendship of Rudolph's bitterest enemies in the 

 Empire, and his name began to be mentioned as a possible 

 claimant for the crown. Rudolph's privy councillors could 

 not, or would not, give the uneasy monarch satisfactory 

 advice, and he sought private^ to learn the future from the 

 fortune-tellers attached to his court ; the latter warily replied 

 to his inquiries with such oracular sayings as : 



"Te digna sequere." 1 



or with the couplet: 



"Si fortuna juvat, caveto tolli ; 

 Si fortuna tonat, caveto mergi." 2 



The Emperor cautiously sounded the ecclesiastics, but 

 they offered spiritual consolation and moral advice which 

 only irritated his hypochondriacal temperament and failed 

 to remove the deep-seated anxiety. Ominous reports from 

 Eastern provinces of the Empire seemed to confirm the dis- 

 loyalty of Matthias, and the superstitious Rudolph intent on 

 penetrating the future turned to the unlawful art of black 

 magic as a last resort. At that time the master in necro- 

 mancy having the highest reputation was the unscrupulous 

 Doctor Leonhard Vychperger von Erbach, already known to 

 the Emperor as an assistant in his alchemical laboratory. 

 After the Emperor had taken him into his confidence, he dis- 



1 "Follow what is worthy of thee." 



2 "If fortune smiles upon you, be not elated; 



And if she frowns, be not cast down." 



175 



