nging a notable foreign visitor,
Count Albert Lasky of Bohemia, to dine with Dee, the unhappy doctor was
compelled to send word that he could not provide a proper dinner.
Leicester, moved to pity, reported his plight to the queen, who at once
belied her reputation for niggardliness by bestowing a liberal gift on
the Sage of Mortlake, as Dee was now styled at the Court. The dinner
accordingly took place, and was a tremendous success in more ways than
one.

Lasky turned out to be an exceedingly excitable and impressionable man,
and his curiosity was so aroused by the occult discourse of his host
that he begged to be admitted to the seances. Always alert to the main
chance, Kelley, after a few preliminary sittings of unusual
picturesqueness, inspired the spirits to predict that Lasky would one
day be elected King of Poland. It needed nothing more to induce the
happy and hopeful count to invite both Dee and Kelley to return with him
to Bohemia. He would, he promised, protect and provide for them; they
should live with him in his many turreted castle, and want for nothing.
Here, indeed, was a pleasant way out of their present poverty, and Dee
and Kelley readily gave consent. Nor did they leave England a moment too
soon. Scarcely had they taken ship before a mob, roused to fury by
superstitious fears, broke into the philosopher's house at Mortlake and
destroyed almost everything that they did not steal--furniture, books,
manuscripts, and costly scientific apparatus.

Of this, though, Dee for the moment happily knew nothing. Nor, for all
his long intercourse with the spirits, was he able to foresee that he
was now embarking on a career of tragic adventure that falls to the lot
of few scientists. At first, however, all went well enough. Lasky
entertained his learned guests in lavish fashion, and, assuming their
garb of long, flowing gown, joined heartily with them in the ceremonies
of the seance room. But as time passed and their incantations redounded
in no way to his advantage, he gradually lost patience, and broadly
hinted that they might better transfer their services to another patron.
Whereupon, closely followed by the irrepressible Kelley, Dee removed to
the court of the emperor, Rudolph II, at Prague. He had dedicated one of
his scientific treatises to the emperor's father, and in his simplicity
firmly believed that this would insure him a warm and lasting welcome.
But Rudolph, from the outset, showed himself far from