Chương Chương 33 · THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.

. 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!”

“I assure 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 glass which is further on, that transparent

obstacle, that wall of crystal, harder than brass, 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

Dæmonum_.’ 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.

“What’s that?” he inquired.

It was the scholar, who, ill at ease, and greatly bored in his

hiding-place, had succeeded in discovering there a stale crust

and a triangle of mouldy cheese, and had set to devouring the

whole without ceremony, by way of consolation and breakfast. As

he was very hungry, he made a great deal of noise, and he

accented each mouthful strongly, which startled and alarmed the

procurator.

“’Tis a cat of mine,” said the archdeacon, quickly, “who is

regaling herself under there with a mouse.”

This explanation satisfied Charmolue.

“In fact, master,” he replied, with a respectful smile, “all

great philosophers have their familiar animal. You know what

Servius saith: ‘_Nullus enim locus sine genio est_,—for there is

no place that hath not its spirit.’”

But Dom Claude, who stood in terror of some new freak on the part

of Jehan, reminded his worthy disciple that they had some figures

on the façade to study together, and the two quitted the cell, to

the accompaniment of a great “ouf!” from the scholar, who began

to seriously fear that his knee would acquire the imprint of his

chin.