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.