3

Dee of course was as skilled in medicine as any doctor of the time. He rendered medical assistance when Thomas Kelly's wife, Lydia, miscarried with twin boys. He notes his own symptoms carefully: "June 19, I had a grudging of the ague. June 22, I did evidently receive the ague and layd down. Jan. 17. The humming in my ears began." Another time "I was very sik uppon two or three sage leaves eten in the morning; better suddenly at night. When I cast them up, I was well."

The coldness between the two became unbearable to Dee, the peacemaker, of whom Aubrey relates that if ever any of his neighbours fell out, "he would not let them alone until he had made them friends." In April, he wrote to Kelly and his wife "2 charitable letters, requiring at theyre hands mutual charity." The same day he made friends with Captain Critzin, and on Sunday, when Jane ws churched after Theodore's birth, received the Communion with her. He hears of some fresh treachery of Pucci, and of Rosenberg's displeasure, but all is forgotten on May 10, when Kelly "did open the great secret to me, God be thanked!" A few days after, "Mistris Kelly received the sacrament, and to me and my wife gave her hand in charity, and we rushed not fromher." The reconciliation does not seem to have been altogether comlete. Every visitor throughout that summer, Edmund Cooper, Joan Kelly's brother; Mr. Thomas Southwell, his friend; Edward Dyer, Francis Garland, and Count Rosenberg, all seem to have tried to patch up the quarrel, but things only grew worse.

The "great secret" opened by Kelly was no doubt the professed secret of the gold. Dee must very soon have found out the true value of this "secret," but apparently he continued to believe that Kelly had honestly transmuted base metal, and was keeping the method to himself. Nothing was less likely than that he would share his knowledge, even with the master who had taught him all he knew. The first essential in alchemy was secrecy. It is characteristic of Dee that he seems to have been more pained at Kelly's want of confidence in him, than chagrined at not knowing the secret. Of jealousy that Kelly was, or seemed to be, the successful alchemist, there is no trace. But Kelly was gradually undermining all Dee's influence and friendship with Rosenberg, who was their one powerful friend. The Viceroy of Bohemia had much influence with the Emperor. He was costantly at the Castle or with Kelly in Prague. Kelly had stolen the old man's best workman, and was now turning all his friends against him. Rosenberg and Kelly were always working in secret, while he was left outside in the cold. "September 15th, the Lord Chancellor cam to Trebona and went away on the 17th. The rancor and dissiumlation now evident to me, God deliver me! I was not sent for." The pathos of the situation is irresistible. The man of a Continental reputation, whom five emperors had honoured, must stand aside and see his upstart pupil made much of and set onthe high-road to fortune. But Fate was more just than she seemed, and Dee, who clung to the honest and true way, had in the end the better lot. Not in ease or success, truly; but who would not rather leave behind him the reputation of a sincere man deluded than that of a deceiver, even though not unmasked? Till then Dee says he had been "chief governor of our philosophical proceedings, but little by little I became hindered and crossed by fine and subtle devices, laid first by the Bohemians, somewhat by Italians, and lastly by my own countrymen."

The strange partnership had now run its tempestuous course to the end, and the heterogeneous colony of English men and women at Trebona was about to break up, never all to meet again. The first to depart was Mistress Kelly, thankful, no doubt, to disentangle herself from the web of pretences, deception and bickerings. On October 17, "Mistress Kelly and the rest rode towards Punchartz in the morning." She was on her way to England, and only once thereafter does this young woman's name enter into our story.