Among other gifts, James presented Tycho with a dog (depicted in Fig. 24), and this same animal was subsequently the cause of trouble. For it seems that one day the Chancellor of Denmark, Walchendorf, brutally kicked the poor beast; and Tycho, who was very fond of animals, gave him a piece of his mind in no measured language. Walchendorf went home determined to ruin him. King Frederick, however, remained his true friend, doubtless partly influenced thereto by his Queen Sophia, an enlightened woman who paid many visits to Uraniburg, and knew Tycho well. But unfortunately Frederick died; and his son, a mere boy, came to the throne. Now was the time for the people whom Tycho had offended, for those who were jealous of his great fame and importance, as well as for those who cast longing eyes on his estate and endowments. The boy-king, too, unfortunately paid a visit to Tycho, and, venturing upon a decided opinion on some recondite subject, received a quiet setting down which he ill relished. Letters written by Tycho about this time are full of foreboding. He greatly dreads having to leave Uraniburg, with which his whole life has for twenty years been bound up. He tries to comfort himself with the thought that, wherever he is sent, he will have the same heavens and the same stars over his head. Gradually his Norwegian estate and his pension were taken away, and in five years poverty compelled him to abandon his magnificent temple, and to take a small house in Copenhagen. Not content with this, Walchendorf got a Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the value of his astronomical labours. This sapient body reported that his work was not only useless, but noxious; and soon after he was attacked by the populace in the public street. Nothing was left for him now but to leave the country, and he went into Germany, leaving his wife and instruments to follow him whenever he could find a home for them. His wanderings in this dark time--some two years--are not quite clear; but at last the enlightened Emperor of Bohemia, Rudolph II., invited him to settle in Prague. Thither he repaired, a castle was given him as an observatory, a house in the city, and 3000 crowns a year for life. So his instruments were set up once more, students flocked to hear him and to receive work at his hands--among them a poor youth, John Kepler, to whom he was very kind, and who became, as you know, a still greater man than his master. But the spirit of Tycho was broken, and though some good work was done at Prague--more observations made, and the Rudolphine tables begun--yet the hand of death was upon him. A painful disease seized him, attended with sleeplessness and temporary delirium, during the paroxysms of which he frequently exclaimed, _Ne frustra vixisse videar_. ("Oh that it may not appear that I have lived in vain!") Quietly, however, at last, and surrounded by his friends and relatives, this fierce, passionate soul passed away, on the 24th of October, 1601.