stupid, and it
was feared by every one that no good could come of him. He entered a
Dominican monastery at an early age; but made so little progress in his
studies, that he was more than once upon the point of abandoning them in
despair, but he was endowed with extraordinary perseverance. As he
advanced to middle age, his mind expanded, and he learned whatever he
applied himself to with extreme facility. So remarkable a change was not
in that age to be accounted for but by a miracle. It was asserted and
believed that the Holy Virgin, touched with his great desire to become
learned and famous, took pity upon his incapacity, and appeared to him in
the cloister where he sat almost despairing, and asked him whether he
wished to excel in philosophy or divinity. He chose philosophy, to the
chagrin of the Virgin, who reproached him in mild and sorrowful accents
that he had not made a better choice. She, however, granted his request,
that he should become the most excellent philosopher of the age; but set
this drawback to his pleasure, that he should relapse, when at the height
of his fame, into his former incapacity and stupidity. Albertus never took
the trouble to contradict the story, but prosecuted his studies with such
unremitting zeal, that his reputation speedily spread over all Europe. In
the year 1244, the celebrated Thomas Aquinas placed himself under his
tuition. Many extraordinary stories are told of the master and his pupil.
While they paid all due attention to other branches of science, they never
neglected the pursuit of the philosopher's stone and the _elixir vitae_.
Although they discovered neither, it was believed that Albert had seized
some portion of the secret of life, and found means to animate a brazen
statue, upon the formation of which, under proper conjunctions of the
planets, he had been occupied many years of his life. He and Thomas
Aquinas completed it together, endowed it with the faculty of speech, and
made it perform the functions of a domestic servant. In this capacity it
was exceedingly useful; but, through some defect in the machinery, it
chattered much more than was agreeable to either philosopher. Various
remedies were tried to cure it of its garrulity, but in vain; and one day,
Thomas Aquinas was so enraged at the noise it made when he was in the
midst of a mathematical problem, that he seized a ponderous hammer and
smashed it to pieces.[31] He was sorry afterwards for what he had done,
and