Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/835

Rh art; the beginning of which is to lie, the middle to work, and the end to beg")—have acquired considerable wealth, the source of which it is hard to divine in any other way. M. Louis Figuier has collated the stories of the principal of them in his "History of Alchemy." I purpose in this article to describe some medals which were struck from gold which was said to have been compounded. I have seen one of the pieces, and tried to buy it for purposes of analysis, but the holder would not sell it. Probably an interesting collection might be made of such medals.

In 1312 Raymond Lulle went to the British Islands in an effort to induce Kings Edward III and Robert Bruce to engage in a crusade, and promised to pay all the expenses of the expedition by means of his art. King Edward, more concerned about making gold than about going to the Holy Land, furnished the alchemist with a laboratory in the Tower of London; and there Raymond, according to a declaration in his will, at a single operation converted fifty pounds of mercury, lead, and tin into "gold." This "gold" was used in striking "rare nobles," some of which weighed as much as ten ducats, and must, therefore, have been as large as a French hundred-franc piece. Under the name of Raymond 's nobles, they have been much sought for by English collectors.

King Henry VI granted to several alchemists the right of making gold and silver out of the base metals. The products of their industry were probably used for coining the false money, the emission of which provoked prohibitory measures from the Scotch Parliament. Conrad Barchusen, a Dutch chemist of the beginning of the eighteenth century, assumed that the "gold" of Henry VI was obtained by putting mercury and sulphate of copper in an iron crucible with a little water. The copper, set free by the action of the iron, formed with the mercury an amalgam which, washed and pressed to drive out the soluble substances and the excess of mercury, gave on fusion a metal having the color of gold, but lighter, and readily taking the impress of the die.

At about the same time, Barbe de Cilley—wife of the Emperor Sigismund of Germany—pretended that she had found the philosopher's stone, in order to make her subjects accept an alloy of copper and arsenic for silver, and an alloy of gold, copper, and silver for gold. The alchemist Jean de Laaz solicited from her the privilege of being present at one of her transmutations. He detected the cheat, and was simple enough to reproach her Majesty for having bungled; and for this he barely escaped going to prison.

Jacques Cœur obtained from Charles VI of France, in consideration of his possession of the secret, power to coin money of