and fears about his daughter, so helpless
and inexperienced. He endeavoured to gather tidings of her from the
man who brought his daily portion of food. The fellow stared, as if
astonished at being asked a question in that mansion of silence and
mystery, but departed without saying a word. Every succeeding attempt
was equally fruitless.

The poor alchymist was oppressed by many griefs; and it was not the
least, that he had been again interrupted in his labours on the very
point of success. Never was alchymist so near attaining the golden
secret--a little longer, and all his hopes would have been realized.
The thoughts of these disappointments afflicted him more even than the
fear of all that he might suffer from the merciless inquisition. His
waking thoughts would follow him into his dreams. He would be
transported in fancy to his laboratory, busied again among retorts and
alembics, and surrounded by Lully, by D'Abano, by Olybius, and the
other masters of the sublime art. The moment of projection would
arrive; a seraphic form would rise out of the furnace, holding forth a
vessel containing the precious elixir; but, before he could grasp the
prize, he would awake, and find himself in a dungeon.

All the devices of inquisitorial ingenuity were employed to ensnare
the old man, and to draw from him evidence that might be brought
against himself, and might corroborate certain secret information that
had been given against him. He had been accused of practising
necromancy and judicial astrology, and a cloud of evidence had been
secretly brought forward to substantiate the charge. It would be
tedious to enumerate all the circumstances, apparently corroborative,
which had been industriously cited by the secret accuser. The silence
which prevailed about the tower, its desolateness, the very quiet of
its inhabitants, had been adduced as proofs that something sinister
was perpetrated within. The alchymist's conversations and soliloquies
in the garden had been overheard and misrepresented. The lights and
strange appearances at night, in the tower, were given with violent
exaggerations. Shrieks and yells were said to have been heard from
thence at midnight, when, it was confidently asserted, the old man
raised familiar spirits by his incantations, and even compelled the
dead to rise from their graves, and answer to his questions.

The alchymist, according to the custom of the inquisition, was kept in
complete ignorance of his acc