Part 45 (1/2)
”Yes,” replied the priest; ”'tis Augustin Nypho who writes it, that Italian doctor who had a bearded demon who acquainted him with all things. However, we will descend, and I will explain it to you with the text before us.”
”Thanks, master,” said Charmolue, bowing to the earth. ”By the way, I was on the point of forgetting. When doth it please you that I shall apprehend the little sorceress?”
”What sorceress?”
”That gypsy girl you know, who comes every day to dance on the church square, in spite of the official's prohibition! She hath a demoniac goat with horns of the devil, which reads, which writes, which knows mathematics like Picatrix, and which would suffice to hang all Bohemia.
The prosecution is all ready; 'twill soon be finished, I a.s.sure you! A pretty creature, on my soul, that dancer! The handsomest black eyes! Two Egyptian carbuncles! When shall we begin?”
The archdeacon was excessively pale.
”I will tell you that hereafter,” he stammered, in a voice that was barely articulate; then he resumed with an effort, ”Busy yourself with Marc Cenaine.”
”Be at ease,” said Charmolue with a smile; ”I'll buckle him down again for you on the leather bed when I get home. But 'tis a devil of a man; he wearies even Pierrat Torterue himself, who hath hands larger than my own. As that good Plautus saith,--
'_Nudus vinctus, centum pondo, es quando pendes per pedes_.'
The torture of the wheel and axle! 'Tis the most effectual! He shall taste it!”
Dom Claude seemed absorbed in gloomy abstraction. He turned to Charmolue,--
”Master Pierrat--Master Jacques, I mean, busy yourself with Marc Cenaine.”
”Yes, yes, Dom Claude. Poor man! he will have suffered like Mummol.
What an idea to go to the witches' sabbath! a butler of the Court of Accounts, who ought to know Charlemagne's text; _Stryga vel masea_!--In the matter of the little girl,--Smelarda, as they call her,--I will await your orders. Ah! as we pa.s.s through the portal, you will explain to me also the meaning of the gardener painted in relief, which one sees as one enters the church. Is it not the Sower? He! master, of what are you thinking, pray?”
Dom Claude, buried in his own thoughts, no longer listened to him.
Charmolue, following the direction of his glance, perceived that it was fixed mechanically on the great spider's web which draped the window.
At that moment, a bewildered fly which was seeking the March sun, flung itself through the net and became entangled there. On the agitation of his web, the enormous spider made an abrupt move from his central cell, then with one bound, rushed upon the fly, which he folded together with his fore antennae, while his hideous proboscis dug into the victim's bead. ”Poor fly!” said the king's procurator in the ecclesiastical court; and he raised his hand to save it. The archdeacon, as though roused with a start, withheld his arm with convulsive violence.
”Master Jacques,” he cried, ”let fate take its course!” The procurator wheeled round in affright; it seemed to him that pincers of iron had clutched his arm. The priest's eye was staring, wild, flaming, and remained riveted on the horrible little group of the spider and the fly.
”Oh, yes!” continued the priest, in a voice which seemed to proceed from the depths of his being, ”behold here a symbol of all. She flies, she is joyous, she is just born; she seeks the spring, the open air, liberty: oh, yes! but let her come in contact with the fatal network, and the spider issues from it, the hideous spider! Poor dancer! poor, predestined fly! Let things take their course, Master Jacques, 'tis fate! Alas! Claude, thou art the spider! Claude, thou art the fly also!
Thou wert flying towards learning, light, the sun. Thou hadst no other care than to reach the open air, the full daylight of eternal truth; but in precipitating thyself towards the dazzling window which opens upon the other world,--upon the world of brightness, intelligence, and science--blind fly! senseless, learned man! thou hast not perceived that subtle spider's web, stretched by destiny betwixt the light and thee--thou hast flung thyself headlong into it, and now thou art struggling with head broken and mangled wings between the iron antennae of fate! Master Jacques! Master Jacques! let the spider work its will!”
”I a.s.sure you,” said Charmolue, who was gazing at him without comprehending him, ”that I will not touch it. But release my arm, master, for pity's sake! You have a hand like a pair of pincers.”
The archdeacon did not hear him. ”Oh, madman!” he went on, without removing his gaze from the window. ”And even couldst thou have broken through that formidable web, with thy gnat's wings, thou believest that thou couldst have reached the light? Alas! that pane of gla.s.s which is further on, that transparent obstacle, that wall of crystal, harder than bra.s.s, which separates all philosophies from the truth, how wouldst thou have overcome it? Oh, vanity of science! how many wise men come flying from afar, to dash their heads against thee! How many systems vainly fling themselves buzzing against that eternal pane!”
He became silent. These last ideas, which had gradually led him back from himself to science, appeared to have calmed him. Jacques Charmolue recalled him wholly to a sense of reality by addressing to him this question: ”Come, now, master, when will you come to aid me in making gold? I am impatient to succeed.”
The archdeacon shook his head, with a bitter smile. ”Master Jacques read Michel Psellus' '_Dialogus de Energia et Operatione Daemonum_.' What we are doing is not wholly innocent.”
”Speak lower, master! I have my suspicions of it,” said Jacques Charmolue. ”But one must practise a bit of hermetic science when one is only procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical court, at thirty crowns tournois a year. Only speak low.”
At that moment the sound of jaws in the act of mastication, which proceeded from beneath the furnace, struck Charmolue's uneasy ear.