"I have told you already," the goldsmith said, in a gentle and serious tone, "that my ways of looking at life, and at things in general, have been rendered exceptionally acute by a long--aye, a marvellously long--course of experience. As regards my living in seclusion, I know that wherever I should appear, I should produce a rather extraordinary effect, as a result, not only of my nature in general, but more especially of a certain power which I possess; so that my living quietly in Berlin here might not be a very easy matter. I keep thinking of a certain person who, in many respects, might have been an ancestor of mine: so marvellously like me in every respect, in body and mind too, that there are times not a few when I almost believe (perhaps it may be fancy) that I am that person. I mean a Swiss of the name of Leonhard Turnhäuser zum Thurm, who lived at the court of the Elector Johann Georg, about the year 1582. In those days, as you know, every chemist was supposed to be an alchemist, and every astronomer was called an astrologer; so Turnhäuser was very probably both. It is certain, at all events, that he did most wonderful things, and, _inter alia_, was a very marvellous doctor. Unfortunately, he had a trick of putting his finger in every pie, and getting conspicuously mixed up in all that was going on. This made him envied and hated; just as people who have money and make a display with it, though it may be never so well earned, bring enemies about their throats. Thus it came about that people made the Elector believe that Turnhäuser could make gold, and that, if he did not do so, he had his reasons for so abstaining. Then his enemies came to the Elector and said--'See what a cunning, shameless rascal this is. He boasts of powers which he does not possess, and carries on sorceries and Jewish deceptions, for which he ought to be burned at the stake like Lippolt the Jew.' Turnhäuser had been a goldsmith by trade, and this came out. Then everybody said he had none of the knowledge imputed to him, though he had given the most incontrovertible proofs of it in open day. They even said that he had never, himself, written any of the sage and clever books and important prognostications which he published, but had paid others to do them. In short, envy, hatred, and calumny brought matters so far that he was obliged to leave Berlin in the most secret manner, to escape the fate of the Jew Lippolt; then his enemies said he had gone to the Catholics for protection. But »that is not true. He went to Saxony, and worked at his trade there, though he did not give up the study and practice of his science."