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FOREWORD.

When I composed my Historical Essay on St. Jacques de la Boucherie Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie was a parish church in Paris. Most of the church was demolished in 1797 during the French Revolution, but its famous bell tower, the Tour Saint-Jacques, still stands today., I had occasion to speak of Nicolas Flamel, a figure as famous for the ideas people have held regarding his fortune as for the use he made of it.

The natural leaning that people have toward the marvelous has not permitted most of the writers who have mentioned Flamel to examine with care what was being told of him. Without evaluating his foundations In this context, "foundations" refers to charitable endowments, such as hospitals, chapels, and houses for the poor, which Flamel established., they have simply counted them; and, judging them to be more substantial than even those established by Kings and Princes; * they have sought their source in means that are either contrary to integrity or so extraordinary as to border on the miraculous.

Although, at heart, it is of relatively little importance to know whether Flamel was rich or not, or whether he possessed the

* Lenglet du Fresnoy, History of Hermetic Philosophy original: "Histoire de la Philosophie Hermétique", Vol. 1, p. 216.