Alchemy, the rock on which the peace and fortune of numbers have been wrecked, was still more fatal to Noel Pigard Dubois, a restless and certainly unprincipled adventurer, whom it deprived of liberty and life. He was a native of Coulomiers, adopted his father’s profession, that of a surgeon, then abandoned it, and voyaged to the Levant, where he spent four years. During his stay in the East, he studied the occult sciences. Returning to Paris, he passed there four years of an obscure and often intemperate existence, associating chiefly with pretenders to alchemical knowledge. Caprice, or a sudden fit of devotion, next induced him to enter a Capuchin convent, but he appears to have speedily become tired of restraint, and accordingly he scaled the walls and escaped. At the expiration of three years he re-embraced a monastic life, took the vows, and was ordained a priest, in which character he was known by the name of Father Simon. The quicksilver of his disposition seemed at length to be fixed, for he continued to wear the monkish habit during ten years; but he verified the proverb that the cowl does not make the monk, his unquiet spirit was again roused into action, and he fled into Germany. There he became a convert to the doctrines of Luther, and once more devoted himself to seeking for the philosopher’s stone. Hoping, perhaps, that there would be more believers, or fewer rivals, in his own country than in Germany, he retraced his steps to Paris. Probably he was himself half dupe, half knave, almost believing that he had really found the great secret, but resolved at all events, to turn his supposed skill to his own advantage. His first step was to abjure protestantism; his next was to marry under a fictitious name. Rumours of his wonderful hermetic discoveries were speedily bruited about. They procured him the acquaintance of an Abbé Blondeau, an evidently credulous man, who introduced him to Father Joseph, the favourite and confident of Richelieu, as a person who might be useful to the state. For the services which Dubois was to render, it was stipulated that his past misdeeds should be buried in oblivion. France was at that time groaning under a heavy load of taxation, money was raised by the most abominable exactions; and, consequently, it was but just that an individual who promised to procure supplies more innocently than by grinding the face of the people, should be forgiven for offences which, though deserving of punishment, were somewhat less iniquitous than systematic tyranny and extortion.