The Arcanum
Chapter One
The Fugative
What better in all the world than that divine stone of the
Chymists, yet men in the achieving of it, doe commonly hazard both
their braines and subsistence, and in case they come neer an end,
it is a very good escape their glasses bee not melted or broken,
or evill spirits, as Flamed admonishes, does not through envy
blinde their eys, and spoile all the worke.
JOHN HALL, Paradoxes of Nature, 1650
Escape was the only alternative. He had failed to fulfill his
promise to the king and his life now hung in the balance. On June
21, 1703, a dark-haired twenty-one-year-old prisoner gave the slip
to his unsuspecting guards, stole from the confines of his castle
prison and found his way to the meeting place, where his accomplice
waited with a horse ready harnessed for a journey to freedom.
With a hastily murmured farewell and scarcely a backward glance, the
fugitive mounted his horse and fled speedily through Dresden's
narrow medieval streets. Passing through the fortified city gates
and across the bridge traversing the wide span of the river Elbe, he
hastened ... read full excerpt from: The Arcanum: The Extraordinary True Story ebook
