University of Virginia Library

§ 43. Bernard Trévisan.

Bernard Trévisan, a French count of the fifteenth century, squandered enormous sums of money in the search for the Stone, in which the whole of his life and energies were engaged. He seems to have become the dupe of one charlatan after another,

but at last, at a ripe old age, he says that his labours were rewarded, and that he successfully performed the magnum opus. In a short, but rather obscure work, he speaks of the Philosopher's Stone in the following words: "This Stone then is compounded of a Body and Spirit, or of a volatile and fixed Substance, and that is therefore done, because nothing in the World can be generated and brought to light without these two Substances, to wit, a Male and Female: From whence it appeareth, that although these two Substances are not of one and the same species, yet one Stone doth thence arise, and although they appear and are said to be two Substances, yet in truth it is but one, to wit, Argent-vive."18 He appears, however, to have added nothing to our knowledge of chemical science.