I did not find it more difficult to lead you from the delusions of speculative philosophy, to those of implicit faith, than to give you proofs of my miraculous power. A little dexterity, a little success on my part, and a judicious accommodation to circ.u.mstances, delivered you and the Marquis into my power. I gained my purpose, and this was the only miracle in the whole affair.
Duke. However, the effects which you produced, are still so very mysterious to me.--
Alumbrado. And yet every thing was done in a very natural manner.
Duke. How could you know the accident that happened at the Inn at *li*, in the very moment when it took place.
Alumbrado. Because I had preconcerted it with some of my emissaries at *li*. You now will comprehend how I could know the day and the hour, and how that incident could agree so exactly with my prediction.
Duke. What end did you mean to gain by that deception?
Alumbrado. The throwing down of the picture by an invisible hand, was to give you a hint that a higher power had decreed the dethronement of the King.
Duke. However, the appeasing of the tempestuous sea could be no delusion, nor an accident. Through what extraordinary means did you effect it?
Alumbrado. Mere precaution enabled me to effect it. Experience had taught me that oil possesses the extraordinary quality of restoring the equilibrium of the water, if violently agitated, and of smoothing the swelling waves. For that reason I have been used never to make a voyage without carrying some casks of oil with me; and I had taken the same precaution when I went on board of the vessel in which you had taken your pa.s.sage. Having left you, I ordered my people to beat off the hoops of the casks and throw them overboard. The oil instantly spread over the surface of the water and calmed the agitated waves.*
[* Pliny long ago knew that extraordinary quality of the oil, and in our times it has been confirmed by the experiments of the immortal Franklin. Mr. Osorezkowsky, the celebrated Russian academician, experienced the same on his physical voyage, and our modern seamen in general are no strangers to that effect of the oil, and frequently make use of it in dangerous surges.]
Duke. [After a pause] It was your intention to persuade me to return to Lis*n, and you have gained your aim by that expedient; but what would you have done if no tempest had afforded you an opportunity of deceiving me by a pretended miracle?
Alumbrado. I should have watched another opportunity, and devised other artifices; for it was with that view that I accompanied you on your voyage without your knowledge.
Duke. By what means did you preserve your life, under the hands of the royal banditti?
Alumbrado. The whole scene you beheld from the top of the turret was pre-concerted by me. The fellows who attacked me, neither had been sent by the King, nor were they banditti, but had been previously instructed by me how to act; their pistols were charged only with powder, and their poniards did not wound me. This will explain to you the whole miracle.
Duke. Not sent by the King, did you say. He then had no design against my life?
Alumbrado. No, the King never had the least idea of such a deed.
Duke. Villainous! villainous! to deceive me thus!--And with what view did you devise that horrid fraud?
Alumbrado. I wanted to inflame your father"s mind with resentment against the King. Nay, I will tell you more. It was my work that the King treated you with so much coldness, and neglected to raise your family: for I had represented you and your father to him, by one of my agents, as persons who beheld his new dignity with envious eyes. Through these mutual exasperations, I gained the advantage of increasing your personal antipathy against the King, and of turning it, at length, into hatred that had all the appearance of just resentment.
Duke. Ah! I now begin to penetrate the whole atrocity of your artful wiles. Then it was you who has excited the King against me and my family, and formed the plots against his life?
Alumbrado. What would it avail me to deny the charge?
Duke. And yet it seemed as if you had not been concerned in the conspiracy. The design against the King had already been determined, and still you withheld your consent and a.s.sistance.
Alumbrado. And not without reason. I would not expose myself. The grand Inquisitor and the Primate took care to gain you to our purpose without your suspecting it, while I was directing the plot behind the curtain; I should have destroyed my own work if I had stepped forth too soon. My seeming backwardness spurred you on, and screened me from suspicion.
However, after I had performed the last fict.i.tious miracle, I thought myself sufficiently secured against all suspicion, and calculated that it would be reasonable to command you in the name of G.o.d to take an active part in the conspiracy.
Duke. After the last fict.i.tious miracle? Do you mean that incident by which you showed yourself proof against ball and dagger?
Alumbrado. I do. The miracle will appear very natural to you when I tell you that I had filled the powder-horn, which I had conveyed secretly from your apartment, with a powder of my own invention, which could not carry the ball farther than five steps. Having placed myself seven steps distant from the gun, I was far enough out of harm"s way. I requested to be fired at twice, in order to empty the powder-horn of its contents, a precaution that prevented you from discovering, afterwards, the real nature of the powder. The dagger with which I stabbed myself, had also been previously made for that purpose, and could do me no harm. The blade of it, which was not much pointed, snapped back into the hollow handle on the smallest resistance, which made you believe that it had penetrated my breast. A spring which forced it again into its former situation, rendered it entirely impossible for you to discover the fraud.
Duke. What views had you in making me believe that you was invulnerable?
Alumbrado. Was it not to be expected that you would repose the utmost reliance on the a.s.sistance of a man who should appear to you proof against b.a.l.l.s and daggers?
However, I have, as yet, explained to you only the particular views I had in performing fict.i.tious miracles, and now will tell you that every one of them tended to effect a general end, which was nothing less than to persuade you and the Marquis to believe that G.o.d was working and speaking through me. Our plot was so hazardous, the circ.u.mstances so unfavourable, and success so improbable, that we had reason to apprehend you would shrink back from your resolution, when you should have pondered more maturely the danger which it was attended with. For this reason I thought it most prudent to appear to you to be an organ of the G.o.dhead, because it was to be expected that you would fear no danger whatever, if you should be persuaded that our design was the work of G.o.d, and supported by his omnipotent power; for with G.o.d nothing is impossible. In order to corroborate you in that belief, I advised you to have recourse to prayer.----
Duke. Daring wretch! how could you run that risk?
Alumbrado. Why not? you had already taken your resolution before you implored G.o.d to signify his will to you. The execution of our plan had been, some time since, the principle idea that prevailed in your mind, and forced itself upon you on every occasion, and, of course, in your prayers too; it was, therefore, very natural that in the latter case, you should mistake for a decree of G.o.d, what, in reality, was nothing else but the voice of your provoked pa.s.sions. I entertained not the least apprehension that devotion would produce more pious sentiments in your mind, because the sophistry of your pa.s.sions, and the two prelates had already persuaded you that our design was just; I rather expected that the fervour of your prayer, particularly at night, would increase the fermentation of your blood, and animate you with additional courage to execute our plan.
Duke. Infernal spirit! but no! thou art worse than Satan! for he respects the temples and altars, but thou hast laid thy snares even in those sacred places. Prayers and faith, these sacred treasures of man become in thy hand tools of seduction; and thou dost not tremble at the idea of being accountable to the all-seeing Judge for thy villainous deeds?--What wouldst thou have done, daring wretch! if a ray of divine illumination had dispelled my errors?
Alumbrado. I was not afraid of that. You could expect no such illumination from above, because your own reason would have pointed out to you the illegality of your design, if you had consulted your own good sense rather than your pa.s.sions. G.o.d does not work miracles while we can be instructed by natural means.
Duke. But suppose he had, for how canst thou prescribe limits to the wisdom of G.o.d, suppose he had, nevertheless, condescended to open mine eyes through his holy spirit?
Alumbrado. (carelessly.) I then should have had recourse to a natural expedient--which I intended to adopt in case of emergency. You will recollect that you missed a sheet of your treatise on the Manicheean system; it was I who purloined it. If you had shrunk back from your engagement, I would have threatened you with all the terrors of the Inquisition; the sheet was written by you and the grand Inquisitor my friend; consequently now as other choice was left you, than either to make good your engagement or to experience all the horrors of that tribunal.
Duke, shuddering with horror. Lead me back to my dungeon, lest the aspect of this monster should poison me intirely.
The day after the trial, the son of the gaoler brought me a letter, which, to my utter astonishment, was from the Duke, and contained the following lines*: * * * * * *
(To be continued.)
[* This letter is the same which is prefixed to the beginning of these Memoirs.]
A PENEGYRIC UPON IMPUDENCE.
Orators and men of wit have frequently amused themselves with maintaining paradoxes. Thus, Erasmus has written a penegyric upon _folly_: Montaigne has said fine things upon _ignorance_, which he somewhere calls "the softest pillow a man can lay his head upon:" and Cardan, in his Encomium Neronis, has, I suppose, defended every vice and every folly. It is astonishing to me, that no one has yet done justice to _impudence_; which has so many advantages, and for which so much may be said. Did it never strike you, what simple, naked, uncompounded _impudence_ will do? what strange and astonishing effects it will produce? Aye, and without birth, without property, without principle, without even artifice and address, without indeed any single quality, but "the front of three-fold bra.s.s."
Object not folly, vice, or villainy however black: these are puny things: from a visage truly bronzed and seared, from features muscularly fixed and hardened, issues forth a broad overpowering glare, by which all these are as totally hid, as the spots of the sun by the l.u.s.tre of his beams. Were this not so, how is it, that impudence shall make impressions to advantage; shall procure admission to the highest personages, _and no questions asked_; shall suffice (in short) to make a man"s fortune, where no modest merit could even render itself visible?
I ask no more to insure success, than that there be but enough of it: without success a man is ruined and undone there being no mean. Should one ravage half the globe, and destroy a million of his fellow-creatures, yet, if at length he arrive at empire, as Caesar did, he shall be admired while living as an hero, and adored perhaps almost as a G.o.d when dead: though, were the very same person, like Cataline, to fail in the attempt, he would be hanged as a scoundrel robber, and his name devoted to infamy or oblivion.
But to proceed. Pray, what do you think the elder Pliny suggests, when he affirms it to be "the prerogative of the Art of Healing, that any man, who professes himself a physician, is instantly received as such?"
He certainly suggests, that such sort of professors in his days, like itinerant and advertising phisicians, had a more than ordinary portion of that bold, self-important and confident look and manner, which, with a very little heightening, may justly be called impudence. And what but this could enable a little paltry physician, of no name or character, to gain so mighty an ascendency over such a spirit, as that of Lewis XI. of France? Read the account in Philip de Comines; and then blame me, if you can, for thinking so highly of this accomplishment.--True it is, Lewis was afraid of death even to horror, and so as not to bare the sound of the word; and I grant, that on this same fear the empire of physic, is in a great measure founded.
Pope Gregory VII. who governed the church from 1073 to 1085, is celebrated for having carried ecclesiastical dominion to the height: for he was the first who maintained and established, that popes, by excommunication, may depose kings from their states, and loose subjects from their allegiance. And how did he effect this? Not by genius or eloquence; not by a knowledge of canon law, and the const.i.tutions of the holy see; no, nor by the arts of policy and grimaces of his religion (with all which others had been endowed as well as he) but by a most insolent, daring, usurping spirit. He seized the papal chair by force, as it were threw the church into confusion to gratify his ambition; made kings his slaves, and bishops his creatures; and established in his own person a tyranny over things both spiritual and temporal.---But my admiration of impudence transports me too far: I will say no more upon it.
[[Source:
Possible sources include: _Sylva: or, The wood: being a collection of anecdotes, dissertations, characters, apophthegms, original letters, bons mots, and other little things_, 1786, "by a society of the learned".]]
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