lazed fiercely,
appalling the stoutest of heart. There was a tumult of voices, but above
the outcries of the affrighted monks, and of the scared multitude, rose
the loud voice of the Friar, calling upon them to extinguish the flames.
This appeal turned all eyes toward him, and then associating him with an
evil, the cause of which they were unable to comprehend, the
maledictions of the monks broke forth.

"Seize the accursed magician," they shouted; "he has made a fiery
compact with the demon! Already one victim is sacrificed--our turn will
come next! See, here are the mangled limbs of his pupil, Hubert de
Dreux! The fiend has claimed his reward, and borne away his soul. Seize
on the wicked sorcerer, and take him to a dungeon!"

Roger Bacon sate stupefied by the unexpected blow; he had no power, if
he had possessed the will, to offer the slightest resistance to the fury
of the enraged Franciscans, who, in the true spirit of ignorance, had
ever hated him for his acquirements. With a deep sigh for the fate of
the young man, whose imprudence he now saw had been the cause of this
dreadful event, he yielded himself up to his enemies; they tore him from
his palfrey, and with many a curse, and many a buffet, dragged him to
the castle, and lodged him in one of its deepest dungeons.

The flames from the ruined cell died out of themselves; but those which
the envy and dread of Bacon's genius had kindled, were never
extinguished, but with his life.

In the long years of imprisonment which followed--the doom of the stake
being averted only by powerful intercession with the Pope--Bacon had
leisure to meditate on the value of all he had done to enlarge the
understanding and extend the knowledge of his species. "The prelates and
friars," he wrote in a letter which still remains, "have kept me
starving in close prison, nor will they suffer any one to come to me,
fearing lest my writings should come to any other than the Pope and
themselves."

He reflected that of all living men he stood well-nigh alone in the
consciousness that in the greatest of his inventions he had produced a
discovery of incalculable value, but one for which on every account the
time was not ripe.

"I will not die," he said, "without leaving to the world the evidence
that the secret was known to me whose marvelous power future ages shall
acknowledge. But not yet shall it be revealed. Generations must pass
away and the minds of men become better able to endure