The Queen Pedauque Part 8

I asked my teacher if it was possible that a disguise could have such an effect on nature and if the shape of the child could follow that of a garment. M. Jerome Coignard advised me not to believe it.

"Jacques Tournebroche, my son," he said, "remember always that a good mind repels all that is contrary to reason, except in matters of faith, wherein it is convenient to believe implicitly. Thank G.o.d! I have never erred about the dogmas of our very holy religion, and I trust to find myself in the same disposition in the article of death."

Conversing in this manner we arrived at the castle. The roof seemed in a red glow in the dark. Out of one in dark shadows. We heard the roaring of the fire, like fiery rain under the dense smoke wherewith the sky was veiled. We both believed the flames to be devouring the building. My good tutor tore his hair and moaned:

"My Zosimus, my papyrus, my Greek MSS.! Help! Help! my Zosimus!"

Running up the great lane over puddles of water reflecting the glare of the fire, we crossed the park buried in dark shadows. We heard the roaring of the fire, which filled the sombre staircase. Two at a time we ran up the steps, stopping now and again to listen whence came that appalling noise.

It appeared to us to come from a corridor on the third floor where we had never been. In that direction we fumbled our way, and seeing through the slits of a door the red brightness, we knocked with all our might on the panel. It opened at once.

M. d'Asterac, who opened the door, stood quietly before us. His long black figure seemed to be enveloped in flaming air. He asked quietly on what pressing business we were looking for him at so late an hour. There was no conflagration but a terrible fire, burning in a big furnace with reflectors, which as I have since learned are called athanors. The whole of the rather large room was full of gla.s.s bottles with long necks twined round gla.s.s tubes of a duck-beak shape, retorts, resembling chubby cheeks out of which came noses like trumpets, crucibles, cupels, matra.s.ses, cucurbits and vases of all forms.

My dear old tutor wiping his face s.h.i.+ning like live coals said:

"Oh, sir, we were afraid that the castle was alight like straw. Thank G.o.d, the library is not burning. But are you practising the spagyric art, sir?"

"I do not want to conceal from you," said M. d'Asterac, "that I have made great progress in it, but withal I have not found the theorem capable of rendering my work perfect. At the moment you knocked at the door I was picking up the Spirit of the World, and the Flower of Heaven, which are the veritable Fountains of Youth. Have you some understanding of alchemy, Monsieur Coignard?"

The abbe replied that he had got some notions of it from certain books, but that he considered the practice of it to be pernicious and contrary to religion. M. d'Asterac smiled and said:

"You are too knowing a man, M. Coignard, not to be acquainted with the Flying Eagle, the Bird of Hermes, the Fowl of Hermogenes, the Head of a Raven, the Green Lion and the Phoenix."

"I have been told," said my good master, "that by these names are distinguished the philosopher's stone in its different states. But I have doubts about the possibility of a trans.m.u.tation of metals."

With the greatest confidence M. d'Asterac replied:

"Nothing is easier, my dear sir, than to bring your uncertainty to an end."

He opened an old rickety chest standing in the wall and took out of it a copper coin, bearing the effigy of the late king, and called our attention to a round stain crossing the coin from side to side.

"That," he said, "is the effect of the stone, which has trans.m.u.ted the copper into silver, but that's only a trifle."

He went back to the chest and took out of it a sapphire the size of an egg, an opal of marvellous dimensions and a handful of perfect fine emeralds.

"Here are some of my doings," he said, "which are proof enough that the spagyric art is not the dream of an empty brain."

At the bottom of the small wooden bowl lay five or six little diamonds, of which M. d'Asterac made no mention. My tutor asked him if they also were of his make, and, the alchemist having acknowledged it:

"Sir," said the abbe, "I should counsel you to show the curious those diamonds prior to the other stones by way of caution. If you let them look first at the sapphire, opal and the emeralds, you run the risk of a persecution for sorcery, because everyone will say that the devil alone was capable of producing such stones. Just as the devil alone could lead an easy life in the midst of these furnaces, where one has to breathe flames. As far as I am concerned, having stayed a single quarter of an hour, I am already half baked."

Letting us out, with a friendly smile M. d'Asterac spoke as follows:

"Well knowing what to think of the devil and the Other, I willingly consent to speak of them with persons who believe in them. The devil and the Other are, as it were, characters; one may speak of them just as of Achilles and Thersites. Be a.s.sured, gentlemen, if the devil is like what he is said to be, he does not live in so subtle an element as fire. It is wholly wrong to place so villainous a beast in the sun. But as I had the honour to say, Master Tournebroche, to the Capuchin so dear to your mother, I reckon that the Christians slander Satan and his demons. That in some unknown world there may exist beings still worse than man is possible, but hardly conceivable. Certainly, if such exist, they inhabit regions deprived of light, and if they are burning, it would be in ice, which, as a fact, causes the same smarting pain, and not in ill.u.s.trious flames among the fiery daughters of the stars. They suffer because they are wicked, and wickedness is an evil; but they can only suffer from chilblains. With regard to your Satan, gentlemen, who is a horror for your theologians, I do not consider him to be despicable, if I judge him by all you say of him, and, should he peradventure exist, I would think him to be, not a nasty beast, but a little Sylph, or at least a Gnome, and a metallurgist a trifle mocking but very intelligent."

My tutor stopped his ears with his fingers and took to flight so as not to hear anything more.

"What impiety, Tournebroche, my boy," he exclaimed, when we reached the staircase. "What blasphemies! Have you felt all the odium in the maxims of that philosopher? He pushes atheism to a joyous frenzy, which makes me wonder. But this indeed renders him almost innocent, for being apart from all belief, he cannot tear up the Holy Church like those who remain attached to her by some half-severed, still bleeding limb. Such, my son, are the Lutherans and the Calvinists, who mortify the Church till a separation occurs. On the contrary, atheists d.a.m.n themselves alone, and one may dine with them without committing a sin. That's to say, that we need not have any scruple about living with M. d'Asterac, who believes neither in G.o.d nor devil. But did you see, Tournebroche, my boy, the handful of little diamonds at the bottom of the wooden bowl?--the number of which apparently he did not know, and which seemed to be of pure water. I have my doubts about the opal and the sapphires, but those diamonds looked genuine." When we reached our chambers we wished each other a very good-night.

CHAPTER XI

The Advent of Spring and its Effects--We visit Mosade

Up till springtime my tutor and myself led a regular and secluded life.

All the mornings we were at work shut up in the gallery, and came back here after dinner as if to the theatre. Not as M. Jerome Coignard used to say, to give ourselves in the manner of gentlemen and valets a paltry spectacle, but to listen to the sublime, if contradictory, dialogues of the ancient authors.

In this way the reading and translating of the Panopolitan advanced quickly. I hardly contributed to it. Such kind of work was above my knowledge and I had enough to do to learn the figure that the Greek letters make on papyrus. Sometimes I a.s.sisted my tutor by consulting the authors who could enlighten him in his researches, and foremost Olympiodorus and Plotinus, with whom since then I have remained familiar. The small services I was able to render him increased considerably my self-esteem.

After a long sharp winter I was on the way to become a learned person, when the spring broke in suddenly with her gallant equipage of light, tender green and singing birds; the perfume of the lilacs coming into the library windows caused me vague reveries, out of which my tutor called me by saying:

"Jacquot Tournebroche, please climb up that ladder and tell me if that rascal Manethon does not mention a G.o.d Imhotep, who by his contradictions tortures one like a devil."

And my good master filled his nose with tobacco and looked quite content.

On another occasion he said:

"My boy, it is remarkable how great an influence our garments have on our moral state. Since my neckband has become spotted with different sauces I have dropped upon it I feel a less honest man. Now that you are dressed like a marquis, Tournebroche, does not the desire tickle you to a.s.sist at the toilet of an opera girl, and to put a roll of spurious gold pieces on a faro-table--in one word, do you not feel yourself to be a man of quality? Do not take what I say amiss, and remember that it is sufficient to give a coward a busby to make him hasten to become a soldier and be knocked on the head in the king's service. Tournebroche, our sentiments are composed of a thousand things we cannot detect for their smallness, and the destiny of our immortal soul depends sometimes on a puff too light to bend a blade of gra.s.s. We are the toy of the winds. But pa.s.s me, if you please, 'The Rudiments of Vossius,' the red edges of which I see stand out under your left arm."

On this same day, after dinner at three o'clock, M. d'Asterac led us, my teacher and myself, to walk in the park. He conducted us to the west, where Rueil and Mont Valerien are visible. It was the deepest and most desolate part. Ivy and gra.s.s, cropped by the rabbits, covered the paths, now and then obstructed by large trunks of dead trees. The marble statues on both sides of the way smiled, unconscious of their ruin. A nymph, with her broken hand near her mouth, made a sign to a shepherd to remain silent. A young faun, his head fallen to the ground, still tried to put his flute to his lips. And all these divine beings seemed to teach us to despise the injuries inflicted by time and fortune. We followed the banks of a ca.n.a.l where the rainwater nourished the tree frogs. Round a circus rose sloping basins where pigeons went to drink.

Arrived there we went by a narrow pathway driven through a coppice.

"Walk with care," said M. d'Asterac. "This pathway is somewhat dangerous, as it is lined by mandrakes which at night-time sing at the foot of the trees. They hide in the earth. Take care not to put your feet on them; you will get love sickness or thirst after wealth, and would be lost, because the pa.s.sions inspired by mandrakes are unhappy."

I asked how it was possible to avoid the invisible danger. M. d'Asterac replied that one could escape it by means of intuitive divination, and in no other way.

"Besides," he added, "this pathway is fatal."

It went on in a direct line to a brick pavilion, hidden under ivy, which no doubt had served in time gone by as a guard house. There the park came to an end close to the monotonous marshes of the Seine.

"You see this pavilion," said M. d'Asterac; "in it lives the most learned of men. Therein Mosade, one hundred and twenty years old, penetrates, with majestic self-will, the mysteries of nature. He has left Imbonatus and Bartoloni far behind. I wanted to honour myself, gentlemen, by keeping under my roof the greatest cabalist since Enoch, son of Cain. Religious scruples have prevented Mosade taking his place at my table, which he supposes to be a Christian's, by which he does me too much honour. You cannot conceive the violence of hate, of this sage, of everything Christian. I had the greatest difficulty to make him dwell in the pavilion, where he lives alone with his niece, Jahel. Gentlemen, you shall not wait longer before becoming acquainted with Mosade and I will at once present both of you to this divine man."

And having thus spoken, M. d'Asterac pushed us inside the pavilion, where between MSS. strewn all round was seated in a large arm-chair an old man with piercing eyes, a hooked nose, and a couple of thin streams of white beard growing from a receding chin; a velvet cap, formed like an imperial crown, covered his bald skull, and his body, of an inhuman emaciation, was wrapped up in an old gown of yellow silk, resplendent but dirty.

Right piercing looks were turned on us, but he gave no sign that he noticed our arrival. His face had an expression of painful stubbornness, and he slowly rolled between his rigid fingers the reed which served him for writing.

"Do not expect idle words from Mosade," said M. d'Asterac to us. "For a long time this sage does not communicate with anyone but the genii and myself. His discourses are sublime. As he will never converse with you, gentlemen, I'll endeavour to give you in a few words an idea of his merits. First he has penetrated into the spiritual sense of the books of Moses, after that into the value of the Hebrew characters, which depends on the order of the letters of the alphabet. This order has been thrown into confusion from the eleventh letter forward. Mosade has re-established it, which Atrabis, Philo, Avicenne, Raymond Lully, P. de la Mirandola, Reuchlin, Henry More and Robert Flydd have been unable to do. Mosade knows the number of the gold which corresponds to Jehovah in the world of spirits, and you must agree, gentlemen, that that is of infinite consequence."

My dear tutor took his snuff-box in hand, presented it civilly to us, took a pinch himself and said:

"Do you not believe, M. d'Asterac, that this sort of knowledge is the very kind to bring one to the devil at the end of this transient life?

"After all, this sire Mosade plainly errs in his interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. When our Lord expired on the cross for the salvation of mankind the synagogue felt a bandage slip over her eyes, she staggered like a drunken woman and the crown fell from her head. Since then the interpretation of the Old Testament is confined to the Catholic Church, to which in spite of my many iniquities I belong."

At these words Mosade, like a goat G.o.d, smiled in a hideous manner, and said to my dear tutor, in a slow and musty voice sounding as from far away: