and endow churches. Nicholas thought so too, especially
when he began to find that his elixir could not keep off death, and that
the grim foe was making rapid advances upon him. He richly endowed the
church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, near the Rue de Marivaux, where he
had all his life resided, besides seven others in different parts of the
kingdom. He also endowed fourteen hospitals, and built three chapels.

The fame of his great wealth and his munificent benefactions soon spread
over all the country, and he was visited, among others, by the celebrated
doctors of that day, Jean Gerson, Jean de Courtecuisse, and Pierre
d'Ailli. They found him in his humble apartment, meanly clad, and eating
porridge out of an earthen vessel; and with regard to his secret, as
impenetrable as all his predecessors in alchymy. His fame reached the ears
of the king, Charles VI., who sent M. de Cramoisi, the Master of Requests,
to find out whether Nicholas had indeed discovered the philosopher's
stone. But M. de Cramoisi took nothing by his visit; all his attempts to
sound the alchymist were unavailing, and he returned to his royal master
no wiser than he came. It was in this year, 1414, that he lost his
faithful Petronella. He did not long survive her, but died in the
following year, and was buried with great pomp by the grateful priests of
St. Jacques de la Boucherie.

The great wealth of Nicholas Flamel is undoubted, as the records of
several churches and hospitals in France can testify. That he practised
alchymy is equally certain, as he left behind several works upon the
subject. Those who knew him well, and who were incredulous about the
philosopher's stone, give a satisfactory solution of the secret of his
wealth. They say that he was always a miser and a usurer; that his journey
to Spain was undertaken with very different motives from those pretended
by the alchymists; that, in fact, he went to collect debts due from Jews
in that country to their brethren in Paris, and that he charged a
commission of fully cent per cent in consideration of the difficulty of
collecting and the dangers of the road; that when he possessed thousands,
he lived upon almost nothing; and was the general money-lender, at
enormous profits, to all the dissipated young men at the French court.

Among the works written by Nicholas Flamel on the subject of alchymy is
_The Philosophic Summary_, a poem, reprinted in 1735, as an appendix to
the third volume of t