For fifteen years he continued his preliminary experiences, and at the end of that time he had purchased a perfect knowledge of all the highways and byways of alchemical rogueries, and was intimately acquainted with an enormous variety of substances, mineral, metallic, and otherwise, which did not apparently enter into the composition of the stone philosophical. He calculates the cost of these experiences to have been roughly six thousand crowns. He had laboured in vain to congeal, dissolve, and sublime common salt, sal ammoniac, every variety of alum, and copperas. He even proceeded upon ordure, both of man and beasts, by distillation, circulation, and sublimation. These experiments, based on the literal interpretation of the allegories of the turba philosophorum, again resulted in failure, and at last discouraged beyond words at the loss of his time and his fortune, he betook himself to prayer, hoping to discover the aim of the alchemists by the grace and favour of God. In conjunction with a magistrate of his country, he subsequently endeavoured to compose the philosophical stone with sea salt as the chief ingredient. He rectified it fifteen times during the space of a year and a half without finding any alteration in its nature, whereupon he abandoned the process for another proposed by the magistrate, namely, the dissolution of silver and mercury by means of aquafortis. These dissolutions, undertaken separately, were left to themselves for a year, and then combined and concentrated over hot ashes to reduce their original volume to two-thirds. The residuum of this operation, placed in a narrow crucible, was exposed to the action of the solar rays, and afterwards to the air, in the hopes that it would crystallize. Twenty-two phials were filled with the mixture, and five years were devoted to the whole operation, but at the end of that period no crystallization had taken place, and thus was this operation abandoned, like the rest, as a failure.
Bernard Trévisan was now forty-six years old, and at the end of his experimental resources he determined to travel in search of true alchemists. In this manner he met with a monk of Citeaux, Maître Geofroi de Lemorier, who was in possession of a hitherto unheard of process. They purchased two thousand hens’ eggs, hardened them in boiling water, and removed the shells, which they calcined in a fire. They separated the whites from the yolks, which they putrified in horse manure. The result was distilled thirty several times for the extraction of a white and red water. These operations were continually repeated with many variations, and vainly occupied eight years more of the toil-worn seeker’s life.
Disappointed, disheartened, but still pertinaciously adhering to his search after the Grand Secret, Trévisan now set to work with a protonotary of Bruges, whom he describes as a great theologian, and who pretended to extract the stone from sulphate of iron (copperas) by distillation with vinegar. They began by calcining the sulphate for three months, when it was soaked in the vinegar, which had been eight times distilled. The mixture was placed in an alembic, and distilled fifteen times daily for a year, at the end of which the seeker was rewarded by a quartan fever which consumed him for fourteen months, and which almost cost him his life.
He was scarcely restored to health when he heard from a clerk that Maître Henry, the confessor of the German Emperor, Frederick III., was in possession of the philosophical stone. He immediately set out for Germany, accompanied by some baffled sons of Hermes like himself. They contrived, par grands moyens et grands amis, to be introduced to the confessor, and began to work in conjunction with him. Bernard contributed ten marks of silver, and the others thirty-two, for the indispensable expenses of the process, which consisted in the combination of mercury, silver, oil of olives, and sulphur. The whole was dissolved over a moderate fire, and continually stirred. In two months it was placed in a glass phial, which they covered with clay, and afterwards with hot ashes. Lead, dissolved in a crucible, was added after three weeks, and the product of this fusion was subjected to refinement. At the end of these operations the imperial confessor expected that the silver which had entered into the combination would be augmented at least by a third, but, on the contrary, it was reduced to a fourth.
Bernard Trévisan in utter despair determined to abandon all further experiments. The resolution was applauded by his family, but in two months the Circean power of the secret chemistry had asserted its former dominion over the whole being of its martyr, who, in a fever of eagerness, recommenced his travels, and visited Spain, Italy, England, Scotland, Holland, Germany, and France. Then, anxious to drink at the oriental fountains of alchemy, he spent several years in Egypt, Persia, and Palestine, after which he passed into southern Greece, visiting remote convents and experimenting in conjunction with monks of reputation in the science. In every country he found there were alchemists at work, but of those who were successful he could hear no account. The true philosophers declined to make themselves known, while impostors, in search of the credulous, presented themselves on all sides. Bernard expended in these travels, and in false operations connected with them, about thirteen thousand crowns, and was forced to sell an estate which yielded eight thousand German florins per annum. He was now sixty-two years of age, and as he had been deaf to the remonstrances of his family, he saw himself despised and on the threshold of want and misery. He endeavoured to conceal his poverty, and fixed on the Isle of Rhodes, wherein to live entirely unknown. Now, at Rhodes he became acquainted with un grand clerc et religieux, who was addicted to philosophy, and commonly reported to be enjoying the philosophical stone. He managed to borrow eight thousand florins, and laboured with this monk in the dissolution of gold, silver, and corrosive sublimate; he accomplished so much in the space of three years that he expended the funds he had raised, and was again at the end of his resources. Thus, effectually prevented from continuing the practice, he returned to the study of the philosophers, and after eight years, at the age of seventy-three, he professes to have discovered their secret. By comparing the adepts and examining in what things they agree, and in what they differ, he judged that the truth must lie in those maxims wherein they were practically unanimous. He informs us that it was two years before he put his discovery to the test; it was crowned with success, and notwithstanding the infirmities of old age, he lived for some time in the enjoyment of his tardy reward.
The chief work of Trévisan is La Philosophie Naturelle des Métaux. He insists on the necessity of strong and discreet meditation in all students of Hermetic philosophy. Their operations must wait on nature, and not nature on their arbitrary processes. Mercury is said to be the water of metals, “in which, by a mutual alteration, it assumes in a convertible manner their mutations.” Gold is simply quicksilver coagulated by the power of sulphur. The secret of dissolution is the whole mystery of the art, and it is to be accomplished not by means of fire, as some have supposed, but, with the help of mercury, in an abstruse manner, which is not really indicated by the adept. The work of nature is assisted by alchemy, which mingles ripe gold with quicksilver, the gold comprising in itself a well-digested sulphur, by which it matures the mercury to the “anatide proportion” of gold, subtilising the elements and wonderfully abbreviating the natural process for producing the precious metal of the mines.
JOHN FONTAINE.
The life of this artist is buried in the obscurity of his closet or laboratory, where he divided his time between attention to his furnaces and the composition of curious verses. He was alive at Valenciennes in the year 1413. His Hermetic poem, Aux Amoureux de Science, has been printed several times. The author announces that he is an adept, and describes in an allegorical manner, after the fashion of the “Romance of the Rose,” and in the same quaint and beautiful tongue, the different processes which enter into the art of transmutation. His little work may be profitably studied by the neophytes of practical alchemy, though its benefits are of a negative kind, but its paradise of dainty devices and its old world nature pictures are better suited to the poet and the poetic interpretation of symbols.
THOMAS NORTON.
The scientific methods of Ripley were followed by this alchemist, who was born in the city of Bristol. He wrote anonymously, but the initial syllables in the six first lines, and the first line in the seventh chapter of his “Ordinall of Alchemy,” compose the following couplet:—