The same passion for gold-seeking, which in our day has developed
itself in a new form, raged in Europe from the depth of the middle
ages till the eighteenth century was far advanced. By the arrival of
the latter period, however, a good deal of discredit had been
thrown upon the business; awkward revelations had been made;
well-authenticated facts had been turned outside in; and, in fine, the
world's dread laugh helped not a little to put down the conviction of
ages. That conviction did not relate to the existence of natural
hoards of the precious metal. Such idle dreams were left to the
fanciful and superstitious, whose stores were usually situated in the
bosom of mountains, and guarded by gnomes and demons. The others were
more rational and practical: they sought to obtain their end by means
of legitimate science, based upon virtue and religious faith. This
basis is the only thing that since then has been unanimously
abandoned; for philosophers are still by no means agreed as to the
impossibility of making gold.
Only a few of the gold-seekers of the present day are literary men,
for the pickaxe does not very naturally replace the pen; but at the
time we speak of, almost the whole tribe were authors. Borel, in 1654,
makes the list amount to 4000; but this is an exaggeration; many of
his names being imaginary, and some cut into several pieces. We have
before us, however, a catalogue by a less zealous compiler, brought
between eighty and ninety years further down, containing about 2500
treatises by about 900 authors--a number which we consider not the
least remarkable of the facts connected with the hermetic science. All
these works, with the exception of a small number, are in Latin; and
ten of them are the production of a certain Bernard Trevisan_us_, to
give him his learned name, although he was born at Padua in 1406. We
do not, however, particularise this author on account of the value of
his books, for we are thankful to say we have never seen his _Secret
Work of Chemistry_, or his _Philosophers' Egg_, or, in fact, a single
line he has written;[3] but we look upon him in his personal character
as the very ideal of a gold-seeker; and we are on that account anxious
to rescue his name from the obscurity in which it rests.
Bernard's attachment for his life-long profession was spontaneous,
perhaps instinctive. He had no need to apply himself to make the
precious metals, for he was born with a piece of one of them in his
mouth--the piece which is technically called a silver spoon. He had
the rank of count; and his father, a doctor of medicine, leaving him a
sufficient fortune, he had nothing to do but to enjoy the world in any
way he thought fit. We shall see how he managed. When only fourteen
years of age, he fell in with one of the works of the Arabian
physician Rhasis, and this led him, after four years' labour, to the
fountain-head of the occult philosophy, Geber. The latter, next to
Hermes himself, is the acknowledged chief of the science, and Trevisan
found himself in good hands; although he wished he had made his
acquaintance earlier, as he had already spent to no purpose about 800
crowns. The reader must not suppose that the wealth of adepts vanished
in the common operations of chemistry; for in point of fact, the
material consumed was the material sought for--gold. Some, indeed,
supposed that by subliming or purifying the imperfect metals to a high
enough degree, they might convert them into the perfect one; but in
general it was acknowledged that there was no way of making gold but
by means of gold itself. The philosopher's stone, as it was called,
was a powder containing the pure essence of gold, and how to obtain
this was the question.
Trevisan was not without friends and advisers in the great search.
Philosophers gathered about him like bees; and by their assistance,
together with the formulæ in the works of Geber, he had soon spent
2000 crowns more. But he was not discouraged. He applied to the
treatises of Archelaus, Rufreissa, and Sacro-bosco; associated a monk
with him in his experiments; and in the course of three years had
rectified spirits of wine more than thirty times, till it reached a
point at which no glass was strong enough to hold it. That was very
well; but it cost more than 300 crowns, and he was no nearer his
object than before.
He now began to dissolve, congeal, and sublime common salt,
sal-ammonia, the alums, and copperas; and in distillation,
circulation, and sublimation, he spent twelve busy years, at a cost of
about 6000 crowns. Trevisan almost lost faith in human science, and
set himself earnestly to pray for illumination. In this he was
assisted by a magistrate of his own country; but while invoking divine
aid, they were all the while working away with marine salt. This
substance they continued to rectify for eight months without finding
any change in its nature. It will be seen, that the object of all
these experiments was to find a solvent powerful enough to separate
the essence of gold from its material, the spirit from the body; but
it now struck him like a flash of lightning, that aqua fortis must be
the thing; and throwing himself upon this substance in its state of
greatest intensity, he tried it first upon silver, then upon common
mercury--but all in vain.
However, our Bernard was still in the flower of his age--he was only
forty-six: nothing for a philosopher. He began to travel, with the
view of collecting wisdom in his way; and at length fell in with
Maître Geoffrey Leuvrier, a Cistercian monk, a man after his own
heart. These congenial companions set to work at first upon hens'
eggs, calcining even the shells; till at the end of eight laborious
years, devoted to these and other substances, they had acquired the
skill of at least preparing in an artistic manner the furnaces used in
their operations. After this, he attached himself to another
theological friend, who was prothonotary of Berghes, in Flanders; and
with him he worked during fourteen months in distilling copperas with
vinegar. But the result of the experiments was nothing better than a
quartan-ague.
When Bernard began to get better, the interesting intelligence came to
his ears, that Maître Henry, confessor of the Emperor Ferdinand III.,
possessed the secret of the philosopher's stone. Our adept, therefore,
set out at once for Germany, and by means of the good offices of
friends, and the liberal expenditure of money, obtained an
introduction to the fortunate man. With him he set to work with a good
heart; but after rectifying and dissolving till they were tired, he
found that he had only succeeded in melting away 300 crowns more of
his wealth. The thing grew serious. He was now fifty-eight. He could
afford to dally no longer: it was necessary to find the secret of the
hermetic science at once, or give up the search. Trevisan pondered
over his critical position for two entire months; but at the end of
that time a ray of hope flashed across the gloom of his meditations.
The nature of the hope we do not know; we can only tell what was the
course of action on which it determined him. He arose suddenly from
his depression, and, girding up his loins, began to travel. He went
first to Rome; then to Spain; then to Turkey; then to Greece. He
passed into Egypt; then into Barbary; then visited Rhodes; and then
traversed a portion of Palestine and Persia. He then returned to
France, by way of Messina, and visited England, Scotland, and finally
Germany. Wherever he went, it was the same thing. The phantom he
followed fled as he pursued; and alike in the heart of London, and in
the deserts of the Holy Land, he saw appearing, and then vanishing, in
the distance--
The unreached paradise of his despair.
That the secret existed, there could be no doubt; for it was a part of
Trevisan's creed that it was born before the Flood; that it was
revealed to the Israelites in their passage through the Desert; and
that it had thus been handed down through the various generations of
men. In his own travels, there was no want of true philosophers here,
there, and everywhere. But they were alone; they kept their science to
themselves; and they fixed upon the inquirer a stony gaze, which
petrified his heart. Pretenders, on the contrary, were as open as
day--there was no end to their civilities: but their favours were
expensive; they cost altogether, including his travelling expenses,
about 13,000 crowns; and he was at length obliged to sell an estate
which had produced him the agreeable little revenue of 8000 German
florins.
Bernard was now sixty-two years of age, within a year of his grand
climacteric. He had succeeded in divesting himself by degrees of all
his property, with the exception of what afforded him a very bare
subsistence; and his relatives, incensed at a conduct which their
ignorance of science prevented them from appreciating, had turned
their backs upon him. Poor, friendless, and alone, he had hatched his
_Philosophers' Egg_ to some purpose; and now what was he to do? He
must, in the first place, find some cheap retirement, where he could
at least live; and accordingly he set out for a place he had visited
in his travels--the island of Rhodes. Why he should have chosen the
island of Rhodes more than any other island, or an island more than
any part of the mainland, it would be difficult to tell. But Bernard
speedily saw that he had been conducted thither by the hand of
destiny; for in his solitary wanderings he encountered a monk whom he
at once recognised as a kindred spirit. It would be too long to tell
how they fell into talk about the Companions of Cadmus, the Doves of
Diana, the Dragon, the Serpent, and the Nymphs; of the Male, the
Female, and the Hermaphrodite; of the Hermetic Sulphur which exists in
gold, and of the means of coagulating with this sulphur the sacred
Mercury. Suffice it to say, that their conversation excited in them an
intense desire to experiment, and an absolute conviction that the
collision of two such intellects would strike out the sublime spark of
truth. But how to manage? Gold could not be made without the aid of
gold; and they had not a piece between them. But here the lucky stars
of our philosopher interposed. Bernard fell in with a merchant to whom
his family was known, and his adventures unknown; and the good man had
the kindness to lend him 8000 florins. This was a trifling debt to
incur at a time when he stood on the very brink of the Secret; and the
two friends set to work with a will. They occupied themselves for
three years in dissolving gold and silver; and then discovered that
their fund was exhausted, and that nothing remained to them of all
their labours but the embers of the fire.
Trevisan applied to philosophy for consolation: he set himself to read
attentively Arnold of Villenova. This 'great theologian, skilful
physician, and learned alchemist,' as we are assured by Andreas, a
celebrated lawyer of his day, was in the habit of making gold at
pleasure; but not satisfied with this triumph, he would needs
interfere in the concerns of religion, and more especially scandalised
the whole orthodox world by affirming, 'that the works of charity and
medicine are more agreeable to God than the services of the altar.' He
was likewise the master in the sublime science of the famous Raymond
Lully, who, as is well known to English history (although the fact is
omitted by the historians), converted in one operation 50,000 lbs.
weight of mercury, lead, and tin, into pure gold, which was coined
into rose nobles. Raymond, like his master, was a great theologian,
and the grand aspiration of his life, to which he finally fell a
martyr, was the conversion of the infidels. In reading him, also--for
Bernard was led naturally from one to the other--he was greatly struck
with that blending of religion with science which is observable in
almost all the Hermetic books, where the practical part of
Christianity, the love of God and man, is inculcated as the
fundamental maxim. On this he pondered for eight years, by which time
he had attained the ripe age of seventy-three, and then at length the
mind of the adept opened to the Secret he had been so long and so
blindly pursuing.
His Search was successful. He was now able to separate the pure spirit
from the material gold that had all his life been harmonising and
fusing, and while reading the books of the alchemists, to collect
their truths, and pass over their errors as dross. It was two years
before he had fairly accustomed his mind to this view of the subject;
but his life was prolonged for five years more, during which time,
notwithstanding his poverty and solitude, he probably enjoyed the only
real happiness he had ever known. He reached the age of eighty-four,
and, in the year 1490, gave up his last breath with a smile. If a
bystander had inquired at the moment he was passing away, what it was
which gave this illumination to his countenance, and this tranquillity
to his heart, he would doubtless have answered, _the philosopher's
stone_.
After his death, he obtained the reputation he had missed when living.
His works were widely circulated, and some of them printed so late as
1672. They were reckoned an important help to the student of hermetic
science; and the name of the luckless Bernard Trevisan was always
included in the list of great adepts.