Part 51

Dom Claude shook his wrinkled head: “_Qui non laborat_—” Jehan did not allow him to finish. “Well,” he exclaimed, “to the devil then! Long live joy! I will live in the tavern, I will fight, I will break pots and I will go and see the wenches.” And thereupon, he hurled his cap at the wall, and snapped his fingers like castanets. The archdeacon surveyed him with a gloomy air. “Jehan, you have no soul.” “In that case, according to Epicurius, I lack a something made of another something which has no name.” “Jehan, you must think seriously of amending your ways.” “Oh, come now,” cried the student, gazing in turn at his brother and the alembics on the furnace, “everything is preposterous here, both ideas and bottles!” “Jehan, you are on a very slippery downward road. Do you know whither you are going?” “To the wine-shop,” said Jehan. “The wine-shop leads to the pillory.” “’Tis as good a lantern as any other, and perchance with that one, Diogenes would have found his man.” “The pillory leads to the gallows.” “The gallows is a balance which has a man at one end and the whole earth at the other. ’Tis fine to be the man.” “The gallows leads to hell.” “’Tis a big fire.” “Jehan, Jehan, the end will be bad.” “The beginning will have been good.” At that moment, the sound of a footstep was heard on the staircase. “Silence!” said the archdeacon, laying his finger on his mouth, “here is Master Jacques. Listen, Jehan,” he added, in a low voice; “have a care never to speak of what you shall have seen or heard here. Hide yourself quickly under the furnace, and do not breathe.” The scholar concealed himself; just then a happy idea occurred to him. “By the way, Brother Claude, a form for not breathing.” “Silence! I promise.” “You must give it to me.” “Take it, then!” said the archdeacon angrily, flinging his purse at him. Jehan darted under the furnace again, and the door opened. CHAPTER V. THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK. The personage who entered wore a black gown and a gloomy mien. The first point which struck the eye of our Jehan (who, as the reader will readily surmise, had ensconced himself in his nook in such a manner as to enable him to see and hear everything at his good pleasure) was the perfect sadness of the garments and the visage of this new-corner. There was, nevertheless, some sweetness diffused over that face, but it was the sweetness of a cat or a judge, an affected, treacherous sweetness. He was very gray and wrinkled, and not far from his sixtieth year, his eyes blinked, his eyebrows were white, his lip pendulous, and his hands large. When Jehan saw that it was only this, that is to say, no doubt a physician or a magistrate, and that this man had a nose very far from his mouth, a sign of stupidity, he nestled down in his hole, in despair at being obliged to pass an indefinite time in such an uncomfortable attitude, and in such bad company. The archdeacon, in the meantime, had not even risen to receive this personage. He had made the latter a sign to seat himself on a stool near the door, and, after several moments of a silence which appeared to be a continuation of a preceding meditation, he said to him in a rather patronizing way, “Good day, Master Jacques.” “Greeting, master,” replied the man in black. There was in the two ways in which “Master Jacques” was pronounced on the one hand, and the “master” by preeminence on the other, the difference between monseigneur and monsieur, between _domine_ and _domne_. It was evidently the meeting of a teacher and a disciple. “Well!” resumed the archdeacon, after a fresh silence which Master Jacques took good care not to disturb, “how are you succeeding?” “Alas! master,” said the other, with a sad smile, “I am still seeking the stone. Plenty of ashes. But not a spark of gold.” Dom Claude made a gesture of impatience. “I am not talking to you of that, Master Jacques Charmolue, but of the trial of your magician. Is it not Marc Cenaine that you call him? the butler of the Court of Accounts? Does he confess his witchcraft? Have you been successful with the torture?” “Alas! no,” replied Master Jacques, still with his sad smile; “we have not that consolation. That man is a stone. We might have him boiled in the Marché aux Pourceaux, before he would say anything. Nevertheless, we are sparing nothing for the sake of getting at the truth; he is already thoroughly dislocated, we are applying all the herbs of Saint John’s day; as saith the old comedian Plautus,— ‘Advorsum stimulos, laminas, crucesque, compedesque, Nervos, catenas, carceres, numellas, pedicas, boias.’ Nothing answers; that man is terrible. I am at my wit’s end over him.” “You have found nothing new in his house?” “I’ faith, yes,” said Master Jacques, fumbling in his pouch; “this parchment. There are words in it which we cannot comprehend. The criminal advocate, Monsieur Philippe Lheulier, nevertheless, knows a little Hebrew, which he learned in that matter of the Jews of the Rue Kantersten, at Brussels.” So saying, Master Jacques unrolled a parchment. “Give it here,” said the archdeacon. And casting his eyes upon this writing: “Pure magic, Master Jacques!” he exclaimed. “‘Emen-Hétan!’ ’Tis the cry of the vampires when they arrive at the witches’ sabbath. _Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso!_ ’Tis the command which chains the devil in hell. _Hax, pax, max!_ that refers to medicine. A formula against the bite of mad dogs. Master Jacques! you are procurator to the king in the Ecclesiastical Courts: this parchment is abominable.” “We will put the man to the torture once more. Here again,” added Master Jacques, fumbling afresh in his pouch, “is something that we have found at Marc Cenaine’s house.” It was a vessel belonging to the same family as those which covered Dom Claude’s furnace. “Ah!” said the archdeacon, “a crucible for alchemy.” “I will confess to you,” continued Master Jacques, with his timid and awkward smile, “that I have tried it over the furnace, but I have succeeded no better than with my own.” The archdeacon began an examination of the vessel. “What has he engraved on his crucible? _Och! och!_ the word which expels fleas! That Marc Cenaine is an ignoramus! I verily believe that you will never make gold with this! ’Tis good to set in your bedroom in summer and that is all!” “Since we are talking about errors,” said the king’s procurator, “I have just been studying the figures on the portal below before ascending hither; is your reverence quite sure that the opening of the work of physics is there portrayed on the side towards the Hôtel-Dieu, and that among the seven nude figures which stand at the feet of Notre-Dame, that which has wings on his heels is Mercurius?” “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 assure 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 masca!_—In the matter of the little girl,—Smelarda, as they call her,—I will await your orders. Ah! as we pass 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? Hé! 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 antennæ, while his hideous proboscis dug into the victim’s head. “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 antennæ of fate! Master Jacques! Master Jacques! let the spider work its will!”