Page:Tycho brahe.djvu/49

Rh replaced the lost piece by another made of a composition of gold and silver. Gassendi, who recounts all these details, adds that Willem Jansson Blaev, who spent two years with Tycho at Hveen, had told him that Tycho always carried in his pocket a small box with some kind of ointment or glutinous composition, which he frequently rubbed on his nose. The various portraits which we possess of Tycho show distinctly that there was something strange about the appearance of his nose, but one cannot see with certainty whether it was the tip or the bridge that was injured, though it seems to be the latter. A very venomous enemy of his, Reymers Bär, of whom we shall hear more farther on, says that it was the upper part of the nose which Tycho had lost.

As already remarked above, Tycho does not seem to have taken many observations about this time, but on the 9th April 1567 an eclipse of the sun took place which he observed. At Rostock the eclipse was of about seven digits, but at Rome it was total, and the solar corona was seen by Clavius. In the summer of 1567 Tycho paid a visit to his native country, but he does not appear to have been altogether pleased with his reception there, and at the end of the year he returned to Rostock, where he arrived on the 1st January 1568. Already, at six o'clock on the following morning, he commenced to take observations, though he had not an instrument at hand, and therefore had to content himself with noting down the positions of Jupiter and Saturn among the stars. On the 14th he wrote a letter to