"h.e.l.lo! my son," he said, "are you not very happy, having broken off all intercourse with women, and by that escaped all dangers of bad company?
With the august maidens of the air you need not be in fear of quarrels, scuffles, injurious and violent rows which usually occur with creatures following a loose life. In your solitude, which delights the fairies, you enjoy a delicious peace."
I thought at first that he mocked me. But I soon found out that nothing was further from his thoughts.
"I am pleased to have met you, my son," he continued, "and will thank you to come with me to my studio for a moment."
I followed him. He unlocked, with a key nearly an ell long, that confounded room where I had seen the glare of infernal fires. When we were inside the laboratory he asked me to kindly make up the smouldering fire. I threw some short logs into the furnace, where I don"t know what was steaming, exhaling a suffocating odour. While he was occupied with his black cookery, cupellating and matra.s.sing, I remained seated on a settle, and, against my will, closed my eyes. He made me reopen them to admire a green earthenware vessel, with a gla.s.s top, which he had in his hand.
"You ought to know, my son," he said, "that this subliming pot is called aludel. It contains a liquid to be looked at with the greatest attention, as it is nothing less than the mercury of the philosophers.
Do not suppose that it is to keep its present dark colour for ever. Soon it will change to white and in that state will change all metals into silver. Hereafter, by my art and industry, it will turn red, and acquire the virtue of trans.m.u.ting silver into gold. It certainly would be of advantage to you that, shut in this laboratory, you should not leave it before these sublime operations have fully taken place, a process which cannot require more than two or three months. But as to ask you to do so would perhaps be imposing too hard a restriction on your youth, be satisfied, for this time, to observe the preludes of the work, while putting, if you please, as much wood on the fire as possible."
Having said that he returned to his phials and retorts, and I could not help thinking of the sad position wherein ill-luck and imprudence had placed me.
"Alas!" I said to myself, and threw logs into the fire, "at this very moment the constables are searching for my good tutor and myself; perhaps we shall have to go to prison, certainly we have to leave this castle. I have in default of money, at least board and an honourable position. I shall never again dare to stand before M. d"Asterac, who believes me to have pa.s.sed the night in the silent voluptuousness of magic, which perhaps would have been better for me. Alas! I"ll never more see Mosaide"s niece, Mademoiselle Jahel, who at night-time woke me in my room in such a charming way. No doubt she will forget me. Perhaps she"ll love someone else, and bestow on him the same caresses as she gave to me." The idea of such an infidelity became unbearable. But as the world goes, one has to be ready for anything.
"My son," M. d"Asterac began to say again, "you do not sufficiently feed the athanor. I see that you are still not fully convinced of the excellency of fire, which is capable of ripening this mercury and transforming it into the wonderful fruit I expect to gather very soon.
More wood! The fire, my son, is the superior element; I have told you enough, and now I"ll show you an example. On a very cold day last winter, visiting Mosaide in his lodge, I found him sitting, his feet on a warming pan. I observed that the subtle particles of fire escaping from the pan had power enough to inflate and lift up the folds of his gown, wherefrom I inferred, that had the fire been hotter, it would have raised Mosaide himself into the air, of which he is certainly worthy, and that, if it should be possible to close into some kind of a vessel a very large quant.i.ty of such fire particles, it would be possible to sail on the clouds as easily as we sail on the sea, and to visit the Salamanders in their aerial abodes, a problem I shall keep in mind. I do not despair of constructing such a fireship. But let us go back to our work of putting wood on the fire."
He kept me for some time in the glow of the laboratory whence I wanted to escape as quickly as possible, to join Jahel, whom I was anxious to inform of my misfortune. At last he left me, and I thought myself free, a hope shortly to be disappointed by his return.
"It is rather mild this morning," he said, "but the sky is somewhat cloudy. Would it please you to go for a walk in the park with me before returning to the translation of Zosimus the Panopolitan, which will be a great honour to you and your tutor if you finish it as you have begun?"
With much regret I followed him into the park, where he said to me:
"I am not sorry, my son, to be alone with you, to warn you, as it is high time to do, against a great danger by which you may be threatened one day; I reproach myself not to have thought of warning you before, as what I shall communicate to you is of the utmost consequence."
And speaking in this way, he led me through the grand avenue which leads down to the marshes of the Seine, whence Rueil is to be seen and Mont Valerien with its calvary. It was his usual walk. The alley was practicable in spite of some dead trees which had fallen across it.
"It is important for you to know to what you expose yourself by betraying your Salamander. I do not want to interrogate you as to what intercourse you have had with that superhuman person I have been fortunate enough to make you acquainted with. I dare say you feel somewhat reluctant to discuss it. Possibly you deserve praise for that.
If the Salamanders have not, in what concerns the discretion of their lovers, the same ideas that court ladies and tradeswomen have, it is not less true that it is the special quality of beautiful amours to be unutterable, and that it would profane a grand sentiment to spread it abroad.
"But your Salamander (of which I could easily find the name if I had any idle curiosity) has perhaps omitted to give you information about one of the most violent pa.s.sions--jealousy; this character is common to them.
Know well, my son, Salamanders are not to be betrayed without punishment awaiting you. Their vengeance on the perjurer is of the cruelest. The divine Paracelsus gives one example, which will suffice to inspire in you a salutary fear.
"There was in the German town of Staufen a spagyric philosopher who had, like yourself, connection with a Salamander. He was depraved enough to deceive her with a woman, certainly pretty, but not more beautiful than a woman can be. One evening, having supper with his new mistress in company with some friends, they saw a thigh of marvellous beauty shining over their heads. The Salamander exposed it to impress on them all, that she did not deserve the wrong inflicted by her lover; after that the outraged celestial struck down the unfaithful lover with apoplexy. The vulgar, who are made to be deceived, believed his to be a natural death; the initiated knew by whose hand he was slain. I owed you this advice, my son, and this example."
They were less useful to me than M. d"Asterac thought. Listening to them I mused on other subjects of alarm. Without doubt my face must have betrayed the state of anxiety I was in; because the great cabalist, having looked at me, asked me if I was not afraid that an engagement, guarded by conditions so severe, would be troublesome to my youth.
"I am able to rea.s.sure you," he added. "The jealousy of a Salamander is awakened only by rivalry with women, and to speak truly it is more resentment, indignation, disgust, than real jealousy. The souls of the Salamanders are too n.o.ble, their intelligence too subtle, to envy one another, and to give way to a sentiment pertaining to the barbarity wherein humanity is still half plunged. On the contrary they delight to share with their playmates the joys they taste beside a sage, and are pleased to bring to their lovers the most beautiful of their sisters.
Very soon you"ll experience that, as a fact, they push politeness to the point I mentioned, and not a year, nay not six months, will pa.s.s before your room will be the trysting place of five or six daughters of the light, who will untie before you their sparkling girdles. Do not be afraid, my son, to answer their caresses. Your own fairy love will not take umbrage. How could she be offended, wise as she is? And on your side, do not get irritated if your Salamander leaves you for a moment to visit another philosopher. Consider that the proud jealousy men bring into the union of the s.e.xes is but a savage sentiment, founded on the most ridiculous of illusions. It rests on the idea that a woman belongs to you because she has given herself to you, which is nothing but a play on words."
While making this speech, M. d"Asterac had turned into the lane of the mandrakes, where we could see Mosaide"s cottage, half hidden by foliage, when suddenly an appalling voice burst upon us and made my heart beat faster--hoa.r.s.e sounds, accompanied by a sharp gnashing, and on getting nearer the sounds seemed to be modulated, and each phrase ended in a sort of very feeble melody, which could not be listened to without shuddering.
Advancing a few paces we could, by listening closely, understand the sense of the strange words. The voice said:
"Hear the malediction with which Elisha cursed the insolent and mirthful children. Listen to the anathema Barak flung on Meros.
"I curse thee in the name of Archithuriel, who is also called the lord of battles, and holds the flaming sword. I doom thee to perdition in the name of Sardaliphonos, who presents to his master the flowers and garlands of merit offered by the children of Israel.
"Be cursed, hound! Anathema, swine!"
Looking from whence the voice came, we could see Mosaide on the threshold of his house, standing erect, his arms raised, his hands in the form of fangs, with nails crooked, appearing inflamed by the fiery light of the sun. His head was covered with his dirty tiara, and he was enveloped in his gorgeous gown, showing when flying open his meagre bow-legs in ragged breeches. He looked like some begging magician, immortal, and very old. His eyes glared, and he said:
"Be cursed in the name of all globes, be cursed in the name of all wheels, be cursed in the name of the mysterious beasts Ezekiel saw."
Out he stretched his long arms, ending in claws, and continued:
"In the name of the globes, in the name of the wheels, in the name of the mysterious beasts, descend among those who are no more."
We advanced a few paces between the half-grown trees to see the object over which Mosaide extended his arms and his anger, and discovered, to our great surprise, M. Jerome Coignard, hanging by a lapel of his gown on an evergreen thorn bush. The night"s disorder was visible all over his body; his collar and his shoes torn, his stockings smeared with mud, his shirt open, all reminded me of our common misadventures, and, worse than all, the swelling of his nose spoilt entirely the n.o.ble and smiling expression which never left his features.
I ran up to him and unhooked him so luckily off the thorns that only a small piece of his breeches stuck to them. Mosaide, having had his say, re-entered the cottage. As he wore only slippers I could observe that his legs fitted right into the middle of his feet, so that the heel stuck out behind pretty nearly as much as the forefoot in front, a singular deformation, rendering his walking uncouth, which otherwise would have been n.o.ble and full of dignity.
"Jacques Tournebroche! my dear boy," said my tutor, with a sigh, "that Jew must be Isaac Laquedem in person, so to blaspheme in all languages.
He vowed me to a death near and violent with an enormous abundance of metaphors, and he called me a pig in fourteen distinct languages, if I counted them correctly. I could believe him to be the Antichrist, and he does not want some of the signs by which that enemy of G.o.d is to be recognised. Under any circ.u.mstances he is a dirty Jew, and never has the wheel as a brand of infamy been exposed on the vestments of a worse or more rabid miscreant. As for himself, he not only deserves the wheel formerly attached to the garments of Jews, but also that other wheel on which scoundrels have their bones broken."
And my good master, mightily angry in his turn, shook his fist in the direction where Mosaide had disappeared, and accused him of crucifying children and devouring the flesh of new-born babes.
M. d"Asterac went up to him and touched his breast with the ruby he used to wear on his finger.
"It is useful," said the great cabalist, "to know the peculiar qualities of precious stones. Rubies soothe resentments, and you"ll soon see the Abbe Coignard regain his natural suavity."
My dear tutor smiled already, less by virtue of the stone than by the influence of a philosophy which raised this admirable man above all human pa.s.sions, for I feel it my duty to say, at the very moment my narrative becomes clouded and sad, that M. Jerome Coignard has given me examples of wisdom under circ.u.mstances in which it is but rarely met with.
We inquired the cause of the quarrel, but easily understood by the vagueness of his embarra.s.sed replies that he did not intend to satisfy our curiosity. I surmised at once that Jahel was mixed up with it in some way, when I heard with the gnashing of Mosaide"s voice the grating of locks and bolts, and later on the noise, in the lodge, of a violent dispute between uncle and niece. When we tried again to bring my tutor to some explanation, he said:
"Hate for Christians is deeply rooted in every Jew"s heart, and yonder Mosaide is an execrable example of it. I fancy I discovered in his horrible yelpings some parts of the imprecations the Amsterdam synagogue vomited in the last century on a little Dutch Jew called Baruch or Benedict, but better known under the name of Spinoza, for having framed a philosophy which has been perfectly refuted, as soon as it was brought to public knowledge, by excellent theologians. But this old Mordecai has added to it, so it seems to me, many and much more horrible imprecations, and I confess to having somewhat resented them. For a moment I thought of escaping by flight this torrent of abuse, when to my dismay I found myself entangled in yonder thorn, and sticking to it by different parts of my clothes and skin so fast that I really expected to have to leave the one or the other behind me. I should still be there, in smarting agony, if Tournebroche, my dear pupil, had not freed me."
"The thorns count for nothing," said M. d"Asterac, "but I"m afraid, Monsieur l"Abbe, that you have trodden on a mandrake."
"Mandrakes," replied the abbe, "are certainly the least of my cares."
"You"re wrong," said M. d"Asterac. "It suffices to tread on a mandrake to become involved in a love crime, and perish by it miserably."
"Ah! sir," my dear tutor replied, "here are all sorts of dangers, and I become aware that it was necessary to be closely shut in between the eloquent walls of the "Asteracian," which is the queen of libraries. For having left it for a moment only, I get the beasts of Ezekiel thrown at my head, not to speak of anything else."
"Would you kindly give me news of Zosimus the Panopolitan?" inquired M.
d"Asterac.
"He goes on," replied my master; "goes on nicely, though slowly at the moment."
"Do not forget, abbe," said the cabalist, "that possession of the greatest secrets is attached to the knowledge of those ancient texts."
"I think of it, sir, with solicitude," said the abbe.
M. d"Asterac, after this a.s.surance, left us standing at the statue of the faun, who continued to play the flute without taking any notice of his head, fallen into the gra.s.s. He disappeared rapidly between the trees, looking for Salamanders.
My tutor linked his arm in mine with the air of one who can at last speak freely.