Gustenhover imprudently made transmutations before numerous people, and the fact was reported to the Emperor Rodolph II., himself an amateur in alchemy. He wrote to the magistrates of Strasburg, directing that the goldsmith should be forthwith sent to him. The order was zealously obeyed, the man arrested, and guarded with vigilance from all possibility of escape. When he discovered that the intention of his imprisonment was to send him to the Emperor at Prague, he divined the whole of the business, and invited the magistrates to meet together, desiring them to bring a crucet and charcoal, and without his approaching to melt some lead. Musket balls were used for the purpose, and when the metal was molten, he handed them a small portion of red powder, which they cast into the crucet, and the result of their calcination was a considerable quantity of pure gold.
When he was brought into the presence of the gold-seeking Emperor, Gustenhover was forced to admit that he had not himself prepared the miraculous powder, and that he was in total ignorance about its nature and composition. The monarch regarded this merely as one of the subterfuges which were common in his experience of jealous adepts. The goldsmith reiterated his protestations in vain; the whole of his powder was speedily exhausted, yet he found himself still set to the now impossible task of making gold. He sought a refuge from the fury of the avaricious wretch, who has been denominated the German Hermes by an alchemical blasphemy accursed by all sons of the doctrine; but he was pursued, dragged back, and immured in the White Tower, where the imperial dragon, blindly and obstinately convinced that the alchemist was concealing his secret, detained him for the rest of his life.
The adept who presented the goldsmith with the auriferous gift of misery, the so-called Hirschborgen, is supposed to be identical with Alexander Sethon, at that period errant, under various disguises, in Germany.
BUSARDIER.
Few particulars are recorded of this adept. He dwelt at Prague with a lord of the Court, and, falling sick, he perceived that his immediate death was inevitable. In this extremity he wrote a letter to his chosen friend Richtausen, at Vienna, begging him to come and abide with him during his last moments. On the receipt of this letter, Richtausen set out, travelling with all expedition, but, on arriving at Prague, he had the mortification to find that the adept was no more. He inquired diligently if he had left anything behind him, and he was informed by the steward of the nobleman with whom he had lodged that a powder alone had been left, which the nobleman seemed anxious to preserve, but which the steward did not know how to use. Upon this information, Richtausen adroitly got possession of the powder, and then departed. The nobleman, hearing of the transaction, threatened to hang his steward if he did not recover the powder, and the latter, judging that no one but Richtausen could have taken it, pursued him, well-armed. He overtook him on the road and presented a pistol to his head, saying he would shoot him if he did not return the powder. Richtausen, seeing there was no other way to preserve his life, acknowledged his possession of the treasure, and pretended to surrender it, but, by an ingenious contrivance, he abstracted a considerable quantity.
He was now the owner of a substance the value of which was fully known to him. He presented himself to the Emperor Ferdinand III., who was an alchemist, and who, aided by his mine-master, Count Russe, took every precaution in making projection with some of the powder given him by Richtausen. He converted three pounds of mercury into gold with one grain. The force of this tincture was one upon 19,470. The emperor is said to have caused a medal to be struck, bearing the effigy of Apollo with the caduceus of Mercury, and the motto—Divina metamorphosis exhibita Praguæ, Jan. 15, anno 1648, in præsentia Sac. Cæs. Majest. Ferdinandi Tertii. The reverse bore another inscription—Raris hæc ut hominibus est ars; ita raro in lucem prodit, laudetur Deus in æternum, qui partem suæ infinitæ potentiæ novis suis abjectissimis creaturis communicat.
Richtausen was ennobled by the title of Baron Chaos.
Among many transformations performed by the same powder was one by the Elector of Mayence in 1651. He made projection with all the precautions possible to a learned and skilful philosopher. The powder, enclosed in gum tragacanth to retain it effectually, was put into the wax of a taper, which was lighted, the wax being then placed at the bottom of a crucet. These preparations were undertaken by the Elector himself. He poured four ounces of quicksilver on the wax, and put the whole into a fire covered with charcoal, above, below, and around. Then they began blowing to the utmost, and in about half an hour, on removing the coals, they saw that the melted gold was over red, the proper colour being green. The baron said that the matter was yet too high, and it was necessary to put some silver into it. The Elector took some coins out of his pocket, put them into the melting-pot, combined the liquefied silver with the matter in the crucet, and having poured out the whole when in perfect fusion into a lingot, he found, after cooling, that it was very fine gold, but rather hard, which was attributed to the lingot. On again melting, it became exceedingly soft, and the master of the mint declared to his highness that it was more than twenty-four carats, and that he had never seen so fine a quality of the precious metal.
ANONYMOUS ADEPT.
Athanasius Kircher, the illustrious German Jesuit, records, in his Mundus Subterraneus, that one of his friends, whose veracity he could not doubt, made him the following relation:—