Approaching near the end of his life, and having no children, he chose his burial place in the parish church of St Jacques-la-Boucherie, before the crucifix. To this end he made a contract with the wardens of the church, which is mentioned in his testament. He then disposed of his property and goods to the church and to the poor, as may be seen in his will, which is lodged in the archives of St Jacques. It is dated the 22nd November 1416, and begins thus:--“To all those to whom these present letters shall come, I, Annegny du Castel, chevalier, counsellor chambellan of the King, our Sire, Keeper of the Prevot of Paris, greeting: Know ye, that before Hugues de la Barre and Jean de la Noe, notary clerks of the King, at the Chatelet, was established personally, Nicholas Flamel, scrivener, sound in body and mind, speaking clearly, with good and true understanding,” &c. It fills four sheets of parchment, which are sewed one to the end of the other, like the rolls of ancient writing. It contains thirty-four articles; in the twentieth he bequeaths to his relations the sum of forty livres. He lived three years after making this will, dying about 1419. * * * * * Hostile criticism has endeavoured to destroy the testimony which the history of Flamel affords to the reality of transmutation, and has adopted various means. It has attempted to disprove his wealth by reducing his munificence, representing him simply as an honest bourgeois, who, thanks to his economy and his assiduity, acquired a comfortable competence, which a childless condition enabled him to devote to works of benevolence, and to the erection of public buildings on a moderate scale. The alchemical testaments and treatises attributed to him are condemned one and all as absolutely spurious. The chief expositor of this view is the Abbé L. Vilain in his _Essai sur une Histoire de Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie_, published in duodecimo at Paris, in 1758, and again in a _Histoire Critique de Nicolas Flamel et de Pernel sa Femme_, Paris, 1782, &c. It must be granted out of hand that all the alchemical compositions which have passed under the name of Flamel are open to more or less suspicion, and some are undoubtedly forgeries. The work on metallic transmutation, which is the earliest traceable treatise, was unheard of till a hundred and forty-three years after the death of its accredited author. It was published in the year 1561 by Jacques Goharry. _Le Grand Eclaircissement_ first saw the light in 1628, when the editor, who apparently abounded in Flamel manuscripts, promised the publication in addition of _La Joie Parfaite de Moi, Nicolas Flamel, et de Pernelle, ma Femme_, which has not, however, appeared.