This is
      about all that I personally know of the now immortal Von
      Kempelen; but I have thought that even these few details would
      have interest for the public. There can be little question that most of the marvellous rumors
      afloat about this affair are pure inventions, entitled to about
      as much credit as the story of Aladdin’s lamp; and yet, in a case
      of this kind, as in the case of the discoveries in California, it
      is clear that the truth may be stranger than fiction. The
      following anecdote, at least, is so well authenticated, that we
      may receive it implicitly. Von Kempelen had never been even tolerably well off during his
      residence at Bremen; and often, it was well known, he had been
      put to extreme shifts in order to raise trifling sums. When the
      great excitement occurred about the forgery on the house of
      Gutsmuth & Co., suspicion was directed toward Von Kempelen, on
      account of his having purchased a considerable property in
      Gasperitch Lane, and his refusing, when questioned, to explain
      how he became possessed of the purchase money. He was at length
      arrested, but nothing decisive appearing against him, was in the
      end set at liberty. The police, however, kept a strict watch upon
      his movements, and thus discovered that he left home frequently,
      taking always the same road, and invariably giving his watchers
      the slip in the neighborhood of that labyrinth of narrow and
      crooked passages known by the flash name of the ‘Dondergat.’
      Finally, by dint of great perseverance, they traced him to a
      garret in an old house of seven stories, in an alley called
      Flatzplatz,—and, coming upon him suddenly, found him, as they
      imagined, in the midst of his counterfeiting operations. His
      agitation is represented as so excessive that the officers had
      not the slightest doubt of his guilt. After hand-cuffing him,
      they searched his room, or rather rooms, for it appears he
      occupied all the mansarde. Opening into the garret where they caught him, was a closet, ten
      feet by eight, fitted up with some chemical apparatus, of which
      the object has not yet been ascertained. In one corner of the
      closet was a very small furnace, with a glowing fire in it, and
      on the fire a kind of duplicate crucible—two crucibles connected
      by a tube. One of these crucibles was nearly full of lead in a
      state of fusion, but not reaching up to the aperture of the tube,
      which was close to the brim. The other crucible had some liquid
      in it, which, as the officers entered, seemed to be furiously
      dissipating in vapor. They relate that, on finding himself taken,
      Kempelen seized the crucibles with both hands (which were encased
      in gloves that afterwards turned out to be asbestic), and threw
      the contents on the tiled floor. It was now that they hand-cuffed
      him; and before proceeding to ransack the premises they searched
      his person, but nothing unusual was found about him, excepting a
      paper parcel, in his coat-pocket, containing what was afterward
      ascertained to be a mixture of antimony and some unknown
      substance, in nearly, but not quite, equal proportions. All
      attempts at analyzing the unknown substance have, so far, failed,
      but that it will ultimately be analyzed, is not to be doubted. Passing out of the closet with their prisoner, the officers went
      through a sort of ante-chamber, in which nothing material was
      found, to the chemist’s sleeping-room. They here rummaged some
      drawers and boxes, but discovered only a few papers, of no
      importance, and some good coin, silver and gold. At length,
      looking under the bed, they saw a large, common hair trunk,
      without hinges, hasp, or lock, and with the top lying carelessly
      across the bottom portion. Upon attempting to draw this trunk out
      from under the bed, they found that, with their united strength
      (there were three of them, all powerful men), they ‘could not
      stir it one inch.’ Much astonished at this, one of them crawled
      under the bed, and looking into the trunk, said:

      ‘No wonder we couldn’t move it—why it’s full to the brim of old
      bits of brass!’

      Putting his feet, now, against the wall so as to get a good
      purchase, and pushing with all his force, while his companions
      pulled with all theirs, the trunk, with much difficulty, was slid
      out from under the bed, and its contents examined. The supposed
      brass with which it was filled was all in small, smooth pieces,
      varying from the size of a pea to that of a dollar; but the
      pieces were irregular in shape, although more or less
      flat-looking, upon the whole, “very much as lead looks when
      thrown upon the ground in a molten state, and there suffered to
      grow cool.” Now, not one of these officers for a moment suspected
      this metal to be anything _but_ brass. The idea of its being
      _gold_ never entered their brains, of course; how _could_ such a
      wild fancy have entered it? And their astonishment may be well
      conceived, when the next day it became known, all over Bremen,
      that the “lot of brass” which they had carted so contemptuously
      to the police office, without putting themselves to the trouble
      of pocketing the smallest scrap, was not only gold—real gold—but
      gold far finer than any employed in coinage—gold, in fact,
      absolutely pure, virgin, without the slightest appreciable alloy. I need not go over the details of Von Kempelen’s confession (as
      far as it went) and release, for these are familiar to the
      public. That he has actually realized, in spirit and in effect,
      if not to the letter, the old chimaera of the philosopher’s
      stone, no sane person is at liberty to doubt. The opinions of
      Arago are, of course, entitled to the greatest consideration; but
      he is by no means infallible; and what he says of bismuth, in his
      report to the Academy, must be taken _cum grano salis_. The
      simple truth is, that up to this period all analysis has failed;
      and until Von Kempelen chooses to let us have the key to his own
      published enigma, it is more than probable that the matter will
      remain, for years, in statu quo.