“On my arrival at Toulouse, I found that he had a letter from King Henry of Navarre, who was a lover of philosophy, and who requested that I should proceed to Pau, in Berne, to teach him the secret I had received from the stranger at Paris. He would recompense me with three or four thousand crowns. The mention of this sum exhilarated the abbé, and he never let me rest till I set out to wait on the prince. I arrived at Pau in May 1542. I found the prince a very curious personage. By his command I went to work, and succeeded according to the process I knew. When it was finished I obtained the expected recompense, but although the king wished to serve me further, he was dissuaded by the lords of his court, even by those who had engaged me to come to him. He dismissed me with great acknowledgments, desiring me to see if there was anything in his estates which would gratify me, such as confiscations or the like, and that he would give them to me with pleasure. These promises, which meant nothing, did not lead me to entertain the hopes of a courtier, and I returned to the abbé at Toulouse. “On my road I heard of a religious man, who was very skilful in natural philosophy. I went to visit him; he lamented my misfortunes, and said, with a friendly zeal, that he advised me to amuse myself no longer with these various particular operations, which were all false and sophistical, but that I should rather peruse _the best books of the ancient philosophers_, as well to know _the true matter_ as the _right order that should be pursued_ in the practice of this science. “I felt the truth of this safe counsel, but before I put it in execution, I went to see my friend at Toulouse, to give him an account of the eight hundred crowns that we had put in common, and to divide with him the recompense I had received from the King of Navarre. If he proved not content with all I told him, he was still less so at the resolution I had taken to discontinue my operations. Of our eight hundred crowns, we had but eighty-six left. I departed from him, and returned home, intending to go to Paris, and there remain until I was fixed in my theory of reading the works of the adepts. I reached Paris in 1546, and remained there a year, assiduously studying the _Turba Philosophorum_, the good Trévisan, the “Remonstrance of Nature,” and some other of the best books. But as I had no _first principles_, I knew not on what to determine.