CHAPTER XVII.
Alch. Thou always speakest riddles. Tell me if thou art that fountain of which Bernard Lord Trevizan writ?
Merc. I am not that fountain, but I am the water. The fountain compasseth me about.
Sandivogius, New Light of Alchymy.
The Prince di——— was not a man whom Naples could suppose to be addicted to superstitious fancies. Still, in the south of Italy, there was then, and there still lingers, a certain spirit of credulity, which may, ever and anon, be visible amidst the boldest dogmas of their philosophers and sceptics. In his childhood, the Prince had learned strange tales of the ambition, the genius, and the career of his grandsire — and secretly, perhaps influenced by ancestral example, in earlier youth he himself had followed science, not only through her legitimate course, but her antiquated and erratic windings. I have, indeed, been shown in Naples a little volume, blazoned with the arms of the Visconti, and ascribed to the nobleman I refer to, which treats of alchymy in a spirit half-mocking and half-reverential.
Pleasure soon distracted him from such speculations, and his talents, which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagant intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation with some-
