The residuum of this operation, placed in a narrow crucible, was exposed to the action of the solar rays, and afterwards to the air, in the hopes that it would crystallize. Twenty-two phials were filled with the mixture, and five years were devoted to the whole operation, but at the end of that period no crystallization had taken place, and thus was this operation abandoned, like the rest, as a failure. Bernard Trévisan was now forty-six years old, and at the end of his experimental resources he determined to travel in search of true alchemists. In this manner he met with a monk of Citeaux, Maître Geofroi de Lemorier, who was in possession of a hitherto unheard of process. They purchased two thousand hens’ eggs, hardened them in boiling water, and removed the shells, which they calcined in a fire. They separated the whites from the yolks, which they putrified in horse manure. The result was distilled thirty several times for the extraction of a white and red water. These operations were continually repeated with many variations, and vainly occupied eight years more of the toil-worn seeker’s life. Disappointed, disheartened, but still pertinaciously adhering to his search after the Grand Secret, Trévisan now set to work with a protonotary of Bruges, whom he describes as a great theologian, and who pretended to extract the stone from sulphate of iron (copperas) by distillation with vinegar. They began by calcining the sulphate for three months, when it was soaked in the vinegar, which had been eight times distilled. The mixture was placed in an alembic, and distilled fifteen times daily for a year, at the end of which the seeker was rewarded by a quartan fever which consumed him for fourteen months, and which almost cost him his life. He was scarcely restored to health when he heard from a clerk that Maître Henry, the confessor of the German Emperor, Frederick III., was in possession of the philosophical stone. He immediately set out for Germany, accompanied by some baffled sons of Hermes like himself. They contrived, _par grands moyens et grands amis_, to be introduced to the confessor, and began to work in conjunction with him. Bernard contributed ten marks of silver, and the others thirty-two, for the indispensable expenses of the process, which consisted in the combination of mercury, silver, oil of olives, and sulphur. The whole was dissolved over a moderate fire, and continually stirred. In two months it was placed in a glass phial, which they covered with clay, and afterwards with hot ashes. Lead, dissolved in a crucible, was added after three weeks, and the product of this fusion was subjected to refinement. At the end of these operations the imperial confessor expected that the silver which had entered into the combination would be augmented at least by a third, but, on the contrary, it was reduced to a fourth.