OF THE PROLONGATION 



This is all that we know concerning the life and for* 

 tunes of the renowned adept Flamel ; but his hiftory has 

 this peculiarity, that it does not finilh with the death of 

 its hero, but rather does not begin to be interefting till 

 that period. 



Paul Lucas, a man of much knowledge and of 

 various kinds, and, as we fee from his writings, a de- 

 clared enemy to fuperftition, and withal a phyliciaia, 

 and an enlightened perfon, at the beginning of the 

 prefent century, made feveral voyages to the Levant, 

 at the expence of Lewis the fourteenth. In the de- 

 fcription of his fecond voyage # , he relates a curious 

 converfation he fell into with a dervife at Bruffe in the 

 lefler Alia, in relation to Flamel. Paul Lucas came 

 up to a mofque, fituate in a folitary place, where a 

 famous dervife lay interred. In a dwelling adjoining 

 to the mofque lived four dervifes, who received him 

 very courteoufly and engagingly, and treated him with 

 great hofpitality. One of them entered into converfa- 

 tion with Paul Lucas. After they had converted fome 



gioufly miftaken. The jews, fays he, were driven out of France by 

 Philip Auguftus, in the year 1181. therefore two hundred years be- 

 fore Flamel was born. They were a fecond time expelled in the 

 year 1406. But the archives of the church St. Jaques de la Bouche- 

 rie evince that Flamel had built the faid church long before that year. 

 Accordingly, it was impoffible for him to acquire his riches by plun- 

 dering the jews ; inafmuch as at the firfi: expulfion of them he was 

 not born, and was in pofleflion of his wealth long before the fecond. 

 Moreover, adds this great critic, Flamel's own narrative is fo nai've, 

 fo fimple and circumftantial, that one can fcarcely doubt of the 

 truth of it. 



* Voyage du fieur Paul Lucas, fait par ordre du roi. Amfterdam, 

 1 714. 8vo. torn,, i- p. 83. 



time 



