d boast that he had made the coveted discovery.

The fate of a certain indiscreet alchemist, supposed by many to have
been Seton, a Scotchman, was not an uncommon one. Word having been
brought to the elector of Saxony that this alchemist was in Dresden
and boasting of his powers, the elector caused him to be arrested and
imprisoned. Forty guards were stationed to see that he did not escape
and that no one visited him save the elector himself. For some time the
elector tried by argument and persuasion to penetrate his secret or to
induce him to make a certain quantity of gold; but as Seton steadily
refused, the rack was tried, and for several months he suffered torture,
until finally, reduced to a mere skeleton, he was rescued by a rival
candidate of the elector, a Pole named Michael Sendivogins, who drugged
the guards. However, before Seton could be "persuaded" by his new
captor, he died of his injuries.

But Sendivogins was also ambitious in alchemy, and, since Seton was
beyond his reach, he took the next best step and married his widow.
From her, as the story goes, he received an ounce of black powder--the
veritable philosopher's stone. With this he manufactured great
quantities of gold, even inviting Emperor Rudolf II. to see him work
the miracle. That monarch was so impressed that he caused a tablet to be
inserted in the wall of the room in which he had seen the gold made.

Sendivogins had learned discretion from the misfortune of Seton, so that
he took the precaution of concealing most of the precious powder in a
secret chamber of his carriage when he travelled, having only a small
quantity carried by his steward in a gold box. In particularly dangerous
places, he is said to have exchanged clothes with his coachman, making
the servant take his place in the carriage while he mounted the box.

About the middle of the seventeenth century alchemy took such firm root
in the religious field that it became the basis of the sect known as
the Rosicrucians. The name was derived from the teaching of a German
philosopher, Rosenkreutz, who, having been healed of a dangerous illness
by an Arabian supposed to possess the philosopher's stone, returned home
and gathered about him a chosen band of friends, to whom he imparted the
secret. This sect came rapidly into prominence, and for a short time at
least created a sensation in Europe, and at the time were credited
with having "refined and spiritualized" alchemy. But by the end