that was ordinarily used to hang around his waist the huge 

 keys of his office. His body was delivered to the executioner 

 who transported it to the usual place of judgment, a public 

 square in the Hradschin quarter, where he hacked the body 

 to pieces, cut off the hands and feet and gouged out the 

 tongue and heart ; the mutilated remains were then buried. 

 In spite of this public execution the people living in the pre- 

 cincts of the Castle maintained that Rucky's ghost still wan- 

 dered about the buildings and had been seen riding a goat, 

 accompanied by six cats ; to appease this popular clamor the 

 body was afterwards dug up and burned. 



Rudolph's death brought troublous times to several other 

 members of the court, many were arrested for political rea- 

 sons, including the antiquarians Froschel and Hans Hey den, 

 the librarian Hastal, and the artist Johann Kiirbach who 

 was a baptized Jew. Besides these the discoverer of perpetual 

 motion, Cornelius Drebbel, was temporarily incarcerated. 



Rudolph II. of Germany never married, though he sent 

 ambassadors to the royal courts of several nations to make 

 inquiries about marriageable Princesses, and he is said to 

 have been betrothed at different times to the Infanta Isabella, 

 to Maria de Medici, to a Princess of Lothringen, to a 

 daughter of the Archduke Carl and to a daughter of the 

 Grand Duke of Russia. 



Rudolph's whole reign of thirty-five years was marked by 

 persecutions and intolerance on his side and by discontent 

 and insurrection on that of his subjects, yet Bohemia is cre- 

 dited with attaining under his rule the ' 'golden period" of 

 its existence; perhaps this gold was no more genuine than 

 that produced in the crucibles of his alchemists. 



Partisan historians, attempting to establish the verity of 

 transmutation, narrate that Rudolph II. left twenty-four 

 hundred weight of gold and sixty hundred weight of silver 



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