Flamel, Perrenelle

Section 5 (p.205-228) on Alchemy Insight into alchemy The witness of an African goldsmith "Nature can oversome Nature" The story of Nicholas Flamel and his wife Perrenelle. Ebook available from Fictionwise and Amazon... 

And do you really believe this—No, no, my friend, Flamel is living still — neither he nor his vife are dead It is not above three years since I left both the one and the other in the Indies he is one of my best friends They have been living in various countries long after they had their own coffins buried (Barrett 43). Long-lived and wealthy, Flamel and Perrenelle make an exemplary, functional, childless chemical couple. 

The frescoe shows both Flamel and his wife Perrenelle kneeling. 

Below The Last Coin, by Steen. The Alchemist s wife sees their last coin disappear as her husband tries once again to produce gold. Perrenelle Flamel was fortunate —most alchemists wives are shown hi/contemporary prints and paintings as desperately poor, surrounded by hungry children. 

Three months later, Flamel made his first transmutation into gold. For a long time he was worried that Perrenelle, who was oveijoyed at the final outcome of so many years of experiments. 

Because she was now well past the age for bearing children, Perrenelle suggested that their riches should be devoted to charity. She and Flamel founded and endowed "fourteen hospitals, three chapels, and seven churches, in the city of Paris, all which we had new built from the ground, and enriched with great gifts and revenues, with many reparations in their churchyards. We also have done at Boulogne about as much as we have done at Paris, not to speak of the charitable acts which we both did to particular poor people, principally to widows and orphans.. . "... 

According to the Turk, Flamel had realized the danger he was in if ever the news got out that he possessed the Philosopher s Stone. Perrenelle had therefore feigned illness and had gone to Switzerland, leaving Nicholas to announce her death. He buried a log in her grave. After several years he in his turn carried out the same deception. Nearly a century later, in 1761, Flamel and his wife were reported to have attended a performance of the opera in Paris, and there were many other stories of a similar nature. 

Now comes the most remarkable part of Flamel s story, clothed in a wealth of circumstantial detail Then the first time that I made protection he resumes, was upon Mercuric, whereof 1 turned halfe a pound, or thereabouts, into pure Silver, better than that of the Mine, as I my sclfe assayed, and made others assay many times. This was upon a Munday, the 17. of Jamary about noone, in my house, Perrenelle onely being present in the ycere of the restoring of mankind, 1383. And afterwards, following alwayes my Booke, from word to word, I made proiection of the Red stone upon the like quantity of Mercuric, in the... 

Flamel s story gives one of the earliest and most graphic accounts of an alleged transmutation to it, indeed, has sometimes been ascribed that frantic search for the Philosopher s Stone w hich certain writers have termed the mania of the fifteenth century, Flamel s narrative ends with a detailed account of the numerous benefactions which he and Perrenelle had made to the city of Paris at the time when he wrote this Commentaries in the yeere one thousand foure hundred and thirteene ... 

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