In the following month Alaski with his visitors passed to Cracow, the
residence of the kings of Poland. Here they remained five months, Dee
and Kelly perpetually amusing the Pole with the extraordinary virtue
of the stone, which had been brought from heaven by an angel, and
busied in a thousand experiments with the elixir, and many tedious
preparations which they pronounced to be necessary, before the
compound could have the proper effect. The prophecies were uttered
with extreme confidence; but no external indications were afforded, to
shew that in any way they were likely to be realised. The experiments
and exertions of the laboratory were incessant; but no transmutation
was produced. At length Alaski found himself unable to sustain the
train of followers he had brought out of England. With mountains of
wealth, the treasures of the world promised, they were reduced to the
most grievous straits for the means of daily subsistence. Finally the
zeal of Alaski diminished; he had no longer the same faith in the
projectors that had deluded him; and he devised a way of sending them
forward with letters of recommendation to Rodolph II, emperor of
Germany, at his imperial seat of Prague, where they arrived on the
ninth of August.

Rodolph was a man, whose character and habits of life they judged
excellently adapted to their purpose. Dee had a long conference with
the emperor, in which he explained to him what wonderful things the
spirits promised to this prince, in case he proved exemplary of life,
and obedient to their suggestions, that he should be the greatest
conqueror in the world, and should take captive the Turk in his city
of Constantinople. Rodolph was extremely courteous in his reception,
and sent away Dee with the highest hopes that he had at length found
a personage with whom he should infallibly succeed to the extent of