e piety and
bitterness of his heart, to the erection of convents, and the
performance of masses for souls in purgatory. Don Felix resided for a
long time in the neighbourhood of Valladolid, in a state of
embarrassment and obscurity. He devoted himself to intense study,
having, while at the university of Salamanca, imbibed a taste for the
secret sciences. He was enthusiastic and speculative; he went on from
one branch of knowledge to another, until he became zealous in the
search after the grand Arcanum.

He had at first engaged in the pursuit with the hopes of raising
himself from his present obscurity, and resuming the rank and dignity
to which his birth entitled him; but, as usual, it ended in absorbing
every thought, and becoming the business of his existence. He was at
length aroused from this mental abstraction, by the calamities of his
household. A malignant fever swept off his wife and all his children,
excepting an infant daughter. These losses for a time overwhelmed and
stupefied him. His home had in a manner died away from around him, and
he felt lonely and forlorn. When his spirit revived within him, he
determined to abandon the scene of his humiliation and disaster; to
bear away the child that was still left him beyond the scene of
contagion, and never to return to Castile until he should be enabled
to reclaim the honours of his line.

He had ever since been wandering and unsettled in his abode;--sometimes
the resident of populous cities, at other times of absolute solitudes.
He had searched libraries, meditated on inscriptions, visited adepts of
different countries, and sought to gather and concentrate the rays which
had been thrown by various minds upon the secrets of alchymy. He had at
one time travelled quite to Padua to search for the manuscripts of
Pietro d'Abano, and to inspect an urn which had been dug up near Este,
supposed to have been buried by Maximus Olybius, and to have contained
the grand elixir.[7]

[Footnote 7: This urn was found in 1533. It contained a lesser one, in
which was a burning lamp betwixt two small vials, the one of gold, the
other of silver, both of them full of a very clear liquor. On the
largest was an inscription, stating that Maximus Olybius shut up in
this small vessel elements which he had prepared with great toil.
There were many disquisitions among the learned on the subject. It was
the most received opinion, that this Maximus Olybius was an inhabitant
of Padua, that