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Virgil replied:

“If your Highness will go into another room, I can show in secret what the Turks are now doing.”

“But how you can make me see what the Turks are doing is more than I can understand,” replied the Emperor. “However, let us go, if it be only to see what fancy thou hast in thy head.”

Then the Emperor rose, and giving his arm to Virgil, went to a room apart, where the magician showed and explained to him (per filo e per segna) all that the Turks were about. And the Emperor was amazed at seeing clearly what Virgil had promised to show. Then he gave to Virgil the thousand crowns with his own hand, and was ever from that day his friend. And so Virgil rose in the world.

In this tale there is as quaint and naïve a mixture of traditions and ideas as one could desire. The fair Helen, in her tower of Troy, becomes Danae visited by Jupiter, and as the narrator had certainly seen Dantzic Golden Water, or some other cordial with gold-leaf in it, the story of the shower is changed into aureated wine. It is evident that the one who recast the legend endeavoured to make this incident intelligible. All the rest is mediæval. “Gold,” says Helen, “will preserve my beauty.” Thus the aurum potabile of the alchemists was supposed to do the same as Paracelsus declared.