บทที่ บทที่ 22 · _ABBAS BEATI MARTINI_.

. _ABBAS BEATI MARTINI_.

Dom Claude’s fame had spread far and wide. It procured for him,

at about the epoch when he refused to see Madame de Beaujeu, a

visit which he long remembered.

It was in the evening. He had just retired, after the office, to

his canon’s cell in the cloister of Notre-Dame. This cell, with

the exception, possibly, of some glass phials, relegated to a

corner, and filled with a decidedly equivocal powder, which

strongly resembled the alchemist’s “powder of projection,”

presented nothing strange or mysterious. There were, indeed, here

and there, some inscriptions on the walls, but they were pure

sentences of learning and piety, extracted from good authors. The

archdeacon had just seated himself, by the light of a

three-jetted copper lamp, before a vast coffer crammed with

manuscripts. He had rested his elbow upon the open volume of

Honorius d’Autun, _De predestinatione et libero arbitrio_, and he

was turning over, in deep meditation, the leaves of a printed

folio which he had just brought, the sole product of the press

which his cell contained. In the midst of his revery there came a

knock at his door. “Who’s there?” cried the learned man, in the

gracious tone of a famished dog, disturbed over his bone.

A voice without replied, “Your friend, Jacques Coictier.” He went

to open the door.

It was, in fact, the king’s physician; a person about fifty years

of age, whose harsh physiognomy was modified only by a crafty

eye. Another man accompanied him. Both wore long slate-colored

robes, furred with minever, girded and closed, with caps of the

same stuff and hue. Their hands were concealed by their sleeves,

their feet by their robes, their eyes by their caps.

“God help me, messieurs!” said the archdeacon, showing them in;

“I was not expecting distinguished visitors at such an hour.” And

while speaking in this courteous fashion he cast an uneasy and

scrutinizing glance from the physician to his companion.

“’Tis never too late to come and pay a visit to so considerable a

learned man as Dom Claude Frollo de Tirechappe,” replied Doctor

Coictier, whose Franche-Comté accent made all his phrases drag

along with the majesty of a train-robe.

There then ensued between the physician and the archdeacon one of

those congratulatory prologues which, in accordance with custom,

at that epoch preceded all conversations between learned men, and

which did not prevent them from detesting each other in the most

cordial manner in the world. However, it is the same nowadays;

every wise man’s mouth complimenting another wise man is a vase

of honeyed gall.

Claude Frollo’s felicitations to Jacques Coictier bore reference

principally to the temporal advantages which the worthy physician

had found means to extract, in the course of his much envied

career, from each malady of the king, an operation of alchemy

much better and more certain than the pursuit of the

philosopher’s stone.

“In truth, Monsieur le Docteur Coictier, I felt great joy on

learning of the bishopric given your nephew, my reverend seigneur

Pierre Versé. Is he not Bishop of Amiens?”

“Yes, monsieur Archdeacon; it is a grace and mercy of God.”

“Do you know that you made a great figure on Christmas Day at the

head of your company of the chamber of accounts, Monsieur

President?”

“Vice-President, Dom Claude. Alas! nothing more.”

“How is your superb house in the Rue Saint-André des Arcs coming

on? ’Tis a Louvre. I love greatly the apricot tree which is

carved on the door, with this play of words: ‘A

L’ABRI-COTIER—Sheltered from reefs.’”

“Alas! Master Claude, all that masonry costeth me dear. In

proportion as the house is erected, I am ruined.”

“Ho! have you not your revenues from the jail, and the bailiwick

of the Palais, and the rents of all the houses, sheds, stalls,

and booths of the enclosure? ’Tis a fine breast to suck.”

“My castellany of Poissy has brought me in nothing this year.”

“But your tolls of Triel, of Saint-James, of

Saint-Germain-en-Laye are always good.”

“Six score livres, and not even Parisian livres at that.”

“You have your office of counsellor to the king. That is fixed.”

“Yes, brother Claude; but that accursed seigneury of Poligny,

which people make so much noise about, is worth not sixty gold

crowns, year out and year in.”

In the compliments which Dom Claude addressed to Jacques

Coictier, there was that sardonical, biting, and covertly mocking

accent, and the sad cruel smile of a superior and unhappy man who

toys for a moment, by way of distraction, with the dense

prosperity of a vulgar man. The other did not perceive it.

“Upon my soul,” said Claude at length, pressing his hand, “I am

glad to see you and in such good health.”

“Thanks, Master Claude.”

“By the way,” exclaimed Dom Claude, “how is your royal patient?”

“He payeth not sufficiently his physician,” replied the doctor,

casting a side glance at his companion.

“Think you so, Gossip Coictier,” said the latter.

These words, uttered in a tone of surprise and reproach, drew

upon this unknown personage the attention of the archdeacon

which, to tell the truth, had not been diverted from him a single

moment since the stranger had set foot across the threshold of

his cell. It had even required all the thousand reasons which he

had for handling tenderly Doctor Jacques Coictier, the

all-powerful physician of King Louis XI., to induce him to

receive the latter thus accompanied. Hence, there was nothing

very cordial in his manner when Jacques Coictier said to him,—

“By the way, Dom Claude, I bring you a colleague who has desired

to see you on account of your reputation.”

“Monsieur belongs to science?” asked the archdeacon, fixing his

piercing eye upon Coictier’s companion. He found beneath the

brows of the stranger a glance no less piercing or less

distrustful than his own.

He was, so far as the feeble light of the lamp permitted one to

judge, an old man about sixty years of age and of medium stature,

who appeared somewhat sickly and broken in health. His profile,

although of a very ordinary outline, had something powerful and

severe about it; his eyes sparkled beneath a very deep

superciliary arch, like a light in the depths of a cave; and

beneath his cap which was well drawn down and fell upon his nose,

one recognized the broad expanse of a brow of genius.

He took it upon himself to reply to the archdeacon’s question,—

“Reverend master,” he said in a grave tone, “your renown has

reached my ears, and I wish to consult you. I am but a poor

provincial gentleman, who removeth his shoes before entering the

dwellings of the learned. You must know my name. I am called

Gossip Tourangeau.”

“Strange name for a gentleman,” said the archdeacon to himself.

Nevertheless, he had a feeling that he was in the presence of a

strong and earnest character. The instinct of his own lofty

intellect made him recognize an intellect no less lofty under

Gossip Tourangeau’s furred cap, and as he gazed at the solemn

face, the ironical smile which Jacques Coictier’s presence called

forth on his gloomy face, gradually disappeared as twilight fades

on the horizon of night. Stern and silent, he had resumed his

seat in his great armchair; his elbow rested as usual, on the

table, and his brow on his hand. After a few moments of

reflection, he motioned his visitors to be seated, and, turning

to Gossip Tourangeau he said,—

“You come to consult me, master, and upon what science?”

“Your reverence,” replied Tourangeau, “I am ill, very ill. You

are said to be great Æsculapius, and I am come to ask your advice

in medicine.”

“Medicine!” said the archdeacon, tossing his head. He seemed to

meditate for a moment, and then resumed: “Gossip Tourangeau,

since that is your name, turn your head, you will find my reply

already written on the wall.”

Gossip Tourangeau obeyed, and read this inscription engraved

above his head: “_Medicine is the daughter of

dreams_.—JAMBLIQUE.”

Meanwhile, Doctor Jacques Coictier had heard his companion’s

question with a displeasure which Dom Claude’s response had but

redoubled. He bent down to the ear of Gossip Tourangeau, and said

to him, softly enough not to be heard by the archdeacon: “I

warned you that he was mad. You insisted on seeing him.”

“’Tis very possible that he is right, madman as he is, Doctor

Jacques,” replied his comrade in the same low tone, and with a

bitter smile.

“As you please,” replied Coictier dryly. Then, addressing the

archdeacon: “You are clever at your trade, Dom Claude, and you

are no more at a loss over Hippocrates than a monkey is over a

nut. Medicine a dream! I suspect that the pharmacopolists and the

master physicians would insist upon stoning you if they were

here. So you deny the influence of philtres upon the blood, and

unguents on the skin! You deny that eternal pharmacy of flowers

and metals, which is called the world, made expressly for that

eternal invalid called man!”

“I deny,” said Dom Claude coldly, “neither pharmacy nor the

invalid. I reject the physician.”

“Then it is not true,” resumed Coictier hotly, “that gout is an

internal eruption; that a wound caused by artillery is to be

cured by the application of a young mouse roasted; that young

blood, properly injected, restores youth to aged veins; it is not

true that two and two make four, and that emprostathonos follows

opistathonos.”

The archdeacon replied without perturbation: “There are certain

things of which I think in a certain fashion.”

Coictier became crimson with anger.

“There, there, my good Coictier, let us not get angry,” said

Gossip Tourangeau. “Monsieur the archdeacon is our friend.”

Coictier calmed down, muttering in a low tone,—

“After all, he’s mad.”

“_Pasque-dieu_, Master Claude,” resumed Gossip Tourangeau, after

a silence, “You embarrass me greatly. I had two things to consult

you upon, one touching my health and the other touching my star.”

“Monsieur,” returned the archdeacon, “if that be your motive, you

would have done as well not to put yourself out of breath

climbing my staircase. I do not believe in Medicine. I do not

believe in Astrology.”

“Indeed!” said the man, with surprise.

Coictier gave a forced laugh.

“You see that he is mad,” he said, in a low tone, to Gossip

Tourangeau. “He does not believe in astrology.”

“The idea of imagining,” pursued Dom Claude, “that every ray of a

star is a thread which is fastened to the head of a man!”

“And what then, do you believe in?” exclaimed Gossip Tourangeau.

The archdeacon hesitated for a moment, then he allowed a gloomy

smile to escape, which seemed to give the lie to his response:

“_Credo in Deum_.”

“_Dominum nostrum_,” added Gossip Tourangeau, making the sign of

the cross.

“Amen,” said Coictier.

“Reverend master,” resumed Tourangeau, “I am charmed in soul to

see you in such a religious frame of mind. But have you reached

the point, great savant as you are, of no longer believing in

science?”

“No,” said the archdeacon, grasping the arm of Gossip Tourangeau,

and a ray of enthusiasm lighted up his gloomy eyes, “no, I do not

reject science. I have not crawled so long, flat on my belly,

with my nails in the earth, through the innumerable ramifications

of its caverns, without perceiving far in front of me, at the end

of the obscure gallery, a light, a flame, a something, the

reflection, no doubt, of the dazzling central laboratory where

the patient and the wise have found out God.”

“And in short,” interrupted Tourangeau, “what do you hold to be

true and certain?”

“Alchemy.”

Coictier exclaimed, “Pardieu, Dom Claude, alchemy has its use, no

doubt, but why blaspheme medicine and astrology?”

“Naught is your science of man, naught is your science of the

stars,” said the archdeacon, commandingly.

“That’s driving Epidaurus and Chaldea very fast,” replied the

physician with a grin.

“Listen, Messire Jacques. This is said in good faith. I am not

the king’s physician, and his majesty has not given me the Garden

of Dædalus in which to observe the constellations. Don’t get

angry, but listen to me. What truth have you deduced, I will not

say from medicine, which is too foolish a thing, but from

astrology? Cite to me the virtues of the vertical boustrophedon,

the treasures of the number ziruph and those of the number

zephirod!”

“Will you deny,” said Coictier, “the sympathetic force of the

collar bone, and the cabalistics which are derived from it?”

“An error, Messire Jacques! None of your formulas end in reality.

Alchemy on the other hand has its discoveries. Will you contest

results like this? Ice confined beneath the earth for a thousand

years is transformed into rock crystals. Lead is the ancestor of

all metals. For gold is not a metal, gold is light. Lead requires

only four periods of two hundred years each, to pass in

succession from the state of lead, to the state of red arsenic,

from red arsenic to tin, from tin to silver. Are not these facts?

But to believe in the collar bone, in the full line and in the

stars, is as ridiculous as to believe with the inhabitants of

Grand-Cathay that the golden oriole turns into a mole, and that

grains of wheat turn into fish of the carp species.”

“I have studied hermetic science!” exclaimed Coictier, “and I

affirm—”

The fiery archdeacon did not allow him to finish: “And I have

studied medicine, astrology, and hermetics. Here alone is the

truth.” (As he spoke thus, he took from the top of the coffer a

phial filled with the powder which we have mentioned above),

“here alone is light! Hippocrates is a dream; Urania is a dream;

Hermes, a thought. Gold is the sun; to make gold is to be God.

Herein lies the one and only science. I have sounded the depths

of medicine and astrology, I tell you! Naught, nothingness! The

human body, shadows! the planets, shadows!”

And he fell back in his armchair in a commanding and inspired

attitude. Gossip Touraugeau watched him in silence. Coictier

tried to grin, shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly, and repeated

in a low voice,—

“A madman!”

“And,” said Tourangeau suddenly, “the wondrous result,—have you

attained it, have you made gold?”

“If I had made it,” replied the archdeacon, articulating his

words slowly, like a man who is reflecting, “the king of France

would be named Claude and not Louis.”

The stranger frowned.

“What am I saying?” resumed Dom Claude, with a smile of disdain.

“What would the throne of France be to me when I could rebuild

the empire of the Orient?”

“Very good!” said the stranger.

“Oh, the poor fool!” murmured Coictier.

The archdeacon went on, appearing to reply now only to his

thoughts,—

“But no, I am still crawling; I am scratching my face and knees

against the pebbles of the subterranean pathway. I catch a

glimpse, I do not contemplate! I do not read, I spell out!”

“And when you know how to read!” demanded the stranger, “will you

make gold?”

“Who doubts it?” said the archdeacon.

“In that case Our Lady knows that I am greatly in need of money,

and I should much desire to read in your books. Tell me, reverend

master, is your science inimical or displeasing to Our Lady?”

“Whose archdeacon I am?” Dom Claude contented himself with

replying, with tranquil hauteur.

“That is true, my master. Well! will it please you to initiate

me? Let me spell with you.”

Claude assumed the majestic and pontifical attitude of a Samuel.

“Old man, it requires longer years than remain to you, to

undertake this voyage across mysterious things. Your head is very

gray! One comes forth from the cavern only with white hair, but

only those with dark hair enter it. Science alone knows well how

to hollow, wither, and dry up human faces; she needs not to have

old age bring her faces already furrowed. Nevertheless, if the

desire possesses you of putting yourself under discipline at your

age, and of deciphering the formidable alphabet of the sages,

come to me; ’tis well, I will make the effort. I will not tell

you, poor old man, to go and visit the sepulchral chambers of the

pyramids, of which ancient Herodotus speaks, nor the brick tower

of Babylon, nor the immense white marble sanctuary of the Indian

temple of Eklinga. I, no more than yourself, have seen the

Chaldean masonry works constructed according to the sacred form

of the Sikra, nor the temple of Solomon, which is destroyed, nor

the stone doors of the sepulchre of the kings of Israel, which

are broken. We will content ourselves with the fragments of the

book of Hermes which we have here. I will explain to you the

statue of Saint Christopher, the symbol of the sower, and that of

the two angels which are on the front of the Sainte-Chapelle, and

one of which holds in his hands a vase, the other, a cloud—”

Here Jacques Coictier, who had been unhorsed by the archdeacon’s

impetuous replies, regained his saddle, and interrupted him with

the triumphant tone of one learned man correcting

another,—“_Erras amice Claudi_. The symbol is not the number. You

take Orpheus for Hermes.”

“’Tis you who are in error,” replied the archdeacon, gravely.

“Dædalus is the base; Orpheus is the wall; Hermes is the

edifice,—that is all. You shall come when you will,” he

continued, turning to Tourangeau, “I will show you the little

parcels of gold which remained at the bottom of Nicholas Flamel’s

alembic, and you shall compare them with the gold of Guillaume de

Paris. I will teach you the secret virtues of the Greek word,

_peristera_. But, first of all, I will make you read, one after

the other, the marble letters of the alphabet, the granite pages

of the book. We shall go to the portal of Bishop Guillaume and of

Saint-Jean le Rond at the Sainte-Chapelle, then to the house of

Nicholas Flamel, Rue Manvault, to his tomb, which is at the

Saints-Innocents, to his two hospitals, Rue de Montmorency. I

will make you read the hieroglyphics which cover the four great

iron cramps on the portal of the hospital Saint-Gervais, and of

the Rue de la Ferronnerie. We will spell out in company, also,

the façade of Saint-Côme, of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Ardents, of

Saint Martin, of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie—.”

For a long time, Gossip Tourangeau, intelligent as was his

glance, had appeared not to understand Dom Claude. He

interrupted.

“_Pasque-dieu_! what are your books, then?”

“Here is one of them,” said the archdeacon.

And opening the window of his cell he pointed out with his finger

the immense church of Notre-Dame, which, outlining against the

starry sky the black silhouette of its two towers, its stone

flanks, its monstrous haunches, seemed an enormous two-headed

sphinx, seated in the middle of the city.

The archdeacon gazed at the gigantic edifice for some time in

silence, then extending his right hand, with a sigh, towards the

printed book which lay open on the table, and his left towards

Notre-Dame, and turning a sad glance from the book to the

church,—“Alas,” he said, “