Sandivogius, "New Light of Alchymy."

The Prince di -- was not a man whom Naples could suppose to be addicted
to superstitious fancies. Still, in the South of Italy, there was then,
and there still lingers a certain spirit of credulity, which may, ever
and anon, be visible amidst the boldest dogmas of their philosophers and
sceptics. In his childhood, the prince had learned strange tales of the
ambition, the genius, and the career of his grandsire,--and secretly,
perhaps influenced by ancestral example, in earlier youth he himself
had followed science, not only through her legitimate course, but her
antiquated and erratic windings. I have, indeed, been shown in Naples a
little volume, blazoned with the arms of the Visconti, and ascribed
to the nobleman I refer to, which treats of alchemy in a spirit
half-mocking and half-reverential.

Pleasure soon distracted him from such speculations, and his talents,
which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagant
intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation with
something of classic grace. His immense wealth, his imperious pride,
his unscrupulous and daring character, made him an object of no
inconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid court; and the ministers of
the indolent government willingly connived at excesses which allured him
at least from ambition. The strange visit and yet more strange departure
of Mejnour filled the breast of the Neapolitan with awe and wonder,
against which all the haughty arrogance and learned scepticism of his
maturer manhood combated in vain. The apparition of Mejnour served,
indeed, to invest Zanoni with a character in which the prince had not
hitherto regarded him. He felt a strange alarm at the rival he had
braved,--at the foe he had provoked. When, a little before his banquet,
he had resumed his self-possession, it was with a fell and gloomy