It was the very morning of the execution.  The procession was already on its way to the grand square.  Not a moment was to be lost.  The grand inquisitor was a relation of Don Antonio, though they had never met.  His first impulse was to make himself known; to exert all his family influence, the weight of his name, and the power of his eloquence, in vindication of the alchymist.  But the grand inquisitor was already proceeding, in all his pomp, to the place where the fatal ceremony was to be performed.  How was he to be approached?  Antonio threw himself into the crowd, in a fever of anxiety, and was forcing his way to the scene of horror, where he arrived just in time to rescue Inez, as has been mentioned.

It was Don Ambrosio that fell in their contest.  Being desperately wounded, and thinking his end approaching, he had confessed to an attending father of the inquisition, that he was the sole cause of the alchymist’s condemnation, and that the evidence on which it was grounded was altogether false.  The testimony of Don Antonio came in corroboration of this avowal; and his relationship to the grand inquisitor had, in all probability, its proper weight.  Thus was the poor alchymist snatched, in a manner, from the very flames; and so great had been the sympathy awakened in his case, that for once a populace rejoiced at being disappointed of an execution.

The residue of the story may readily be imagined, by every one versed in this valuable kind of history.  Don Antonio espoused the lovely Inez, and took her and her father with him to Valentia.  As she had been a loving and dutiful daughter, so she proved a true and tender wife.  It was not long before Don Antonio succeeded to his father’s titles and estates, and he and his fair spouse were renowned for being the handsomest and happiest couple in all Valentia.

As to Don Ambrosio, he partially recovered to the enjoyment of a broken constitution and a blasted name, and hid his remorse and disgrace in a convent; while the poor victim of his arts, who had assisted Inez in her escape, unable to conquer the early passion that he had awakened in her bosom, though convinced of the baseness of the object, retired from the world, and became an humble sister in a nunnery.

The worthy alchymist took up his abode with his children.  A pavilion, in the garden of their palace, was assigned to him as a laboratory, where he resumed his researches with renovated ardour, after the grand secret.  He was now and then assisted by his son-in-law; but the latter slackened grievously in his zeal and diligence, after marriage.  Still he would listen with profound gravity and attention to the old man’s rhapsodies, and his quotations from Paracelsus, Sandivogius, and Pietro D’Abano, which daily grew longer and longer.  In this way the good alchymist lived on quietly and comfortably, to what is called a good old age, that is to say, an age that is good for nothing; and unfortunately for mankind, was hurried out of life in his ninetieth year, just as he was on the point of discovering the Philosopher’s Stone.