"It may be. I do not know. In the meantime silence, and keep sober!"
"Ay, ay!"
"But it is more than ay, ay!" Basterga retorted with irritation; with something of the temper, indeed, which he had betrayed at the beginning of the interview. "Scholars die otherwise, but many a broken soldier has come to the wheel! So do you have a care of it! If you do not----"
"I have said I will!" Grio cried sharply. "Enough scolding, master. I"ve a notion you"ll find your own task a little beyond your hand. See if I am not right!" he added. And with this show of temper on his side, he went out and shut the door loudly behind him.
Basterga stood a few moments in thought. At length,
"Dimidium facti, qui bene c[oe]pit, habet!"
he muttered. And shrugging his shoulders he looked about him, judging with an artistic eye the effect which the room would have on a stranger.
Apparently he was not perfectly content with it, for, stepping to one of the long trunks, he drew from it a gold chain, some medals and a jewelled dagger, and flung these carelessly on a box in a corner. He set up the alembics and pipkins which he had overturned, and here and there he opened a black-lettered folio, discovered an inch or two of crabbed Hebrew, or the corner of an illuminated script. A cameo dropped in one place, a clay figure of Minerva set up in another, completed the picture.
His next proceeding was less intelligible. He unearthed from the pile of duo-decimos on the window-seat the steel casket which has been mentioned. It was about twelve inches long and as many wide; and as deep as it was broad. Wrought in high relief on the front appeared an elaborate representation of Christ healing the sick; on each end, below a ma.s.sive ring, appeared a similar design. The box had an appearance of strength out of proportion to its size; and was furnished with two locks, protected and partly hidden by tiny shields.
Basterga handling it gently polished it awhile with a cloth, then bearing it to the inner end of the room he set it on a bracket beside the hearth. This place was evidently made for it, for on either side of the bracket hung a steel chain and padlock; with which, and the rings, the scholar proceeded to secure the casket to the wall. This done, he stepped back and contemplated the arrangement with a smile of contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt.
"It is neither so large as the Horse of Troy," he murmured complacently, "nor so small as the Wafer that purchased Paris. It is neither so deep as h.e.l.l, nor so high as heaven, nor so craftily fastened a wise man may not open it, nor so strong a fool may not smash it. But it may suffice.
Messer Blondel is no Solomon, and may swallow this as well as another thing. In which event, Ave atque vale, Geneva! But here he comes. And now to cast the bait!"
CHAPTER V.
THE ELIXIR VITae.
As the Syndic crossed the threshold of the scholar"s room, he uncovered with an air of condescension that, do what he would, was not free from uneasiness. He had persuaded himself--he had been all the morning persuading himself--that any man might pay a visit to a learned scholar--why not? Moreover, that a magistrate in paying such a visit was but in the performance of his duty, and might plume himself accordingly on the act.
Yet two things like worms in the bud would gnaw at his peace. The first was conscience: if the Syndic did not know he had reason to suspect that Basterga bore the Grand Duke"s commission, and was in Geneva to further his master"s ends. The second source of his uneasiness he did not acknowledge even to himself, and yet it was the more powerful: it was a suspicion--a strong suspicion, though he had met Basterga but twice--that in parleying with the scholar he was dealing with a man for whom he was no match, puff himself out as he might; and who secretly despised him.
Perhaps the fact that the latter feeling ceased to vex him before he had been a minute in the room, was the best testimony to Basterga"s tact we could desire. Not that the scholar was either effusive or abject. It was rather by a frank address which took equality for granted, and by an easy a.s.sumption that the visit had no importance, that he calmed Messer Blondel"s nerves and soothed his pride.
Presently, "If I do not the honour of my poor apartment so pressingly as some," he said, "it is out of no lack of respect, Messer Syndic. But because, having had much experience of visitors, I know that nothing fits them so well as to be left at liberty, nothing irks them so much as to be over-pressed. Here now I have some things that are thought to be curious, even in Padua, but I do not know whether they will interest you."
"Ma.n.u.scripts?"
"Yes, ma.n.u.scripts and the like. This," Basterga lifted one from the table and placed it in his visitor"s hands, "is a facsimile, prepared with the utmost care, of the "Codex Vatica.n.u.s," the most ancient ma.n.u.script of the New Testament. Of interest in Geneva, where by the hands of your great printer, Stephens, M. de Beza has done so much to advance the knowledge of the sacred text. But you are looking at that chart?"
"Yes. What is it, if it please you?"
"It is a plan of the ancient city of Aurelia," Basterga replied, "which Caesar, in the first book of his Commentaries places in Switzerland, but which, some say, should be rather in Savoy."
"Indeed, Aurelia?" the Syndic muttered, turning it about. It was a plan beautifully and elaborately finished, but, like most of the plans of that day, it was without names. "Aurelia?"
"Yes, Aurelia."
"But I seem to--is this water?"
"Yes, a lake," Basterga replied, stooping with a faint smile to the plan.
"And this a river?"
"Yes."
"Aurelia? But--I seem to know the line of this wall, and these bastions.
Why, it is--Messer Basterga," in a tone of surprise, not unmingled with anger--"you play with me! it is Geneva!"
Basterga permitted his smile to become more apparent. "Oh no, Aurelia,"
he said lightly and almost jocosely. "Aurelia in Savoy, I a.s.sure you.
Whatever it is, however, we have no need to take it to heart, Messer Blondel. Believe me, it comes from, and is not on its way to, the Grand Duke"s library at Turin."
The Syndic showed his displeasure by putting the map from him.
"Your taste is rather for other things," Basterga continued, affecting to misunderstand the act. "This illuminated ma.n.u.script, now, may interest you? It is in characters which are probably strange to you?"
"Is it Hebrew?" the Syndic muttered stiffly, his temper still a.s.serting itself.
"No, it is in the ancient Arabic character; that into which the works of Aristotle were translated as far back as the ninth century of our era.
It is a curious treatise by the Arabic sage, Ibn Jasher, who was the teacher of Ibn Zohr, who was the teacher of Averroes. It was carried from Spain to Rome about the year 1000 by the learned Pope Sylvester the Second, who spoke Arabic and of whose library it formed part."
"Indeed!" Blondel responded, staring at it. "It must be of great value.
How came it into your possession, Messer Basterga?"
Basterga opened his mouth and shut it again. "I do not think I can tell you that," he said.
"It contains, I suppose, many curious things?"
"Curious?" Basterga replied impulsively, "I should say so! Why, it was in that volume I found----" And there in apparent confusion he broke off. He laughed awkwardly, and then, "Well, you know," he resumed, "we students find many things interest us which would fail to touch the man of affairs". As if he wished to change the subject, he took the ma.n.u.script from the Syndic"s hand and threw it carelessly on the table.
Messer Blondel thought the carelessness overdone, and, his interest aroused, he followed the ma.n.u.script, he scarcely knew why, with his eyes. "I think I have heard the name of Averroes?" he said. "Was he not a physician?"
"He was many things," Basterga answered negligently. "As a physician he was, I believe, rather visionary than practical. I have his _Colliget_, his most famous work in that line, but for my part, in the case of an ordinary disease, I would rather trust myself," with a shrug of contempt, "to the Grand Duke"s physician."
"But in the case of an extraordinary disease?" the Syndic asked shrewdly.
Basterga frowned. "I meant in any disease," he said. "Did I say extraordinary?"
"Yes," Messer Blondel answered stoutly. The frown had not escaped him.
"But I take it, you are something of a physician yourself?"
"I have studied in the school of Fallopius, the chirurgeon of Padua,"
the scholar answered coldly. "But I am a scholar, Messer Blondel, not a physician, much less a pract.i.tioner of the ancillary art, which I take to be but a base and mechanical handicraft."
"Yet, chemistry--you pursue that?" the other rejoined with a glance at the farther table and its load of strange-looking phials and retorts.