Bernard Trévisan in utter despair determined to abandon all further experiments. The resolution was applauded by his family, but in two months the Circean power of the secret chemistry had asserted its former dominion over the whole being of its martyr, who, in a fever of eagerness, recommenced his travels, and visited Spain, Italy, England, Scotland, Holland, Germany, and France. Then, anxious to drink at the oriental fountains of alchemy, he spent several years in Egypt, Persia, and Palestine, after which he passed into southern Greece, visiting remote convents and experimenting in conjunction with monks of reputation in the science. In every country he found there were alchemists at work, but of those who were successful he could hear no account. The true philosophers declined to make themselves known, while impostors, in search of the credulous, presented themselves on all sides. Bernard expended in these travels, and in false operations connected with them, about thirteen thousand crowns, and was forced to sell an estate which yielded eight thousand German florins per annum. He was now sixty-two years of age, and as he had been deaf to the remonstrances of his family, he saw himself despised and on the threshold of want and misery. He endeavoured to conceal his poverty, and fixed on the Isle of Rhodes, wherein to live entirely unknown. Now, at Rhodes he became acquainted with _un grand clerc et religieux_, who was addicted to philosophy, and commonly reported to be enjoying the philosophical stone. He managed to borrow eight thousand florins, and laboured with this monk in the dissolution of gold, silver, and corrosive sublimate; he accomplished so much in the space of three years that he expended the funds he had raised, and was again at the end of his resources. Thus, effectually prevented from continuing the practice, he returned to the study of the philosophers, and after eight years, at the age of seventy-three, he professes to have discovered their secret. By comparing the adepts and examining in what things they agree, and in what they differ, he judged that the truth must lie in those maxims wherein they were practically unanimous. He informs us that it was two years before he put his discovery to the test; it was crowned with success, and notwithstanding the infirmities of old age, he lived for some time in the enjoyment of his tardy reward.