"Pauci quos æquus amavitJupiter aut ardens evexit ad æthera virtusDis geniti potuere,"
"Pauci quos æquus amavitJupiter aut ardens evexit ad æthera virtusDis geniti potuere,"
he mouthed. "But that," he added, looking scornfully at his confederate, "is Greek to you!"
Grio's altered aspect, his crestfallen air owned the virtue of the argument if not of the citation; which he did not understand. He drew a deep breath. "Per Bacco," he said, "if you succeed in doing it, Messer Basterga——"
"I shall do it," Basterga retorted, "if you do not spoil all with your drunken tricks!"
Grio was silent a moment, sunk plainly in reflection. Presently his bloodshot eyes began to travel respectfully and even timidly over the objects about him. In truth the room in which he found himself was worthy of inspection, for it was no common room, either in aspect or furnishing. It boasted, it is true, none of the weirdproperties, the skulls and corpse-lights, dead hands, and waxen masks with which the necromancer of that day sought to impress the vulgar mind. But in place of these a multitude of objects, quaint, curious, or valuable, filled that half of the room which was farther from the fire-hearth. On the wall, flanked by a lute and some odd-looking rubrical calendars, were three or four silver discs, engraved with the signs of the Zodiac; these were hung in such a position as to catch the light which entered through the heavily leaded casement. On the window-seat below them, a pile of Plantins and Elzevirs threatened to bury a steel casket. On the table, several rolls of vellum and papyrus, peeping from metal cylinders, leant against a row of brass-bound folios. A handsome fur covering masked the truckle-bed, but this, too, bore its share of books, as did two or three long trunks covered with stamped and gilded leather which stood against the wall and were so long that the ladies of the day had the credit of hiding their gallants in them. On stools lay more books, and yet more books, with a medley of other things: a silver flagon, and some weapons, a chess-board, an enamelled triptych and the like.
In a word, this half of the room wore the aspect of a library, low-roofed, dark and richly furnished. The other half, partly divided from it by a curtain, struck the eye differently. A stove of peculiar fashion, equipped with a powerful bellows, cumbered the hearth; before this on a long table were ranged a profusion of phials and retorts, glass vessels of odd shapes, and earthen pots. Crucibles and alembics stood in the ashes before the stove, and on a sideboard placed under the window were scattered a set of silver scales, a chemist's mask, and a number of similar objects. Cards bearing abstruse calculations hung everywhere on the walls; andover the fireplace, inscribed in gold and black letters, the Greek word "EUREKA" was conspicuous.
The existence of such a room in the quiet house in the Corraterie was little suspected by the neighbours, and if known would have struck them with amazement. To Grio its aspect was familiar: but in this case familiarity had not removed his awe of the unknown and the magical. He looked about him now, and after a pause:—
"I suppose you do it—with these," he murmured, and with an almost imperceptible shiver he pointed to the crucibles.
"With those?" Basterga exclaimed, and had the other ascribed supernatural virtues to the cinders or the bellows he could not have thrown greater scorn into his words. "Do you think I ply this base mechanic art for aught but to profit by the ignorance of the vulgar? Or think by pots and pans and mixing vile substances to make this, which by nature is this, into that which by nature it is not! I, a scholar? A scholar? No, I tell you, there was never alchemist yet could transmute but one thing—poor into rich, rich into poor!"
"But," Grio murmured with a look and in a voice of disappointment, "is not that the true transmutation which a thousand have died seeking, and one here and there, it is rumoured, has found? From lead to gold, Messer Basterga?"
"Ay, but the lead is the poor alchemist, who gets gold from his patron by his trick. And the gold is the poor fool who finds him in his living, and being sucked, turns to lead! There you have your transmutation."
"Yet——"
"There is no yet!"
"But Agrippa," Grio persisted, "Cornelius Agrippa, who sojourned here in Geneva and of whom, master, you speak daily—was he not a learned man?"
"Ay, even as I am!" Cæsar Basterga answered, swelling visibly with pride. "But constrained, even as I am, to ply the baser trade and stoop to that we see and touch and smell! Faugh! What lot more cursed than to quit the pure ether of Latinity for the lower region of matter? And in place of cultivating theliteræ humaniores, which is the true cultivation of the mind, and sets a man, mark you, on a level with princes, to stoop to handle virgin milk and dragon's blood, as they style their vile mixtures; or else grope in dead men's bodies for the thing which killed them. Which is a pure handicraft and cheirergon, unworthy a scholar, who stoops of right to naught but the goose-quill!"
"And yet, master, by these same things——"
"Men grow rich," Basterga continued with a sneer, "and get power? Ay, and the bastard sits in the chair of the legitimate; and pure learning goes bare while the seekers after the Stone and the Elixir (who, in these days are descending to invent even lesser things and smaller advantages that in the learned tongues have not so much as names) grow in princes' favour and draw on their treasuries! But what says Seneca? 'It is not the office of Philosophy to teach men to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form the soul and the taste.' And Aldus Manucius, vir doctissimus, magister noster," here he raised his hand to his head as if he would uncover, "says also the same, but in a Latinity more pure and translucent, as is his custom."
Grio scratched his head. The other's vehemence, whether he sneered or praised, flew high above his dull understanding. He had his share of the reverence for learning which marked the ignorant of that age: but to what better end, he pondered stupidly, could learning be directed than to the discovery of that which must makeits owner the most enviable of mortals, the master of wealth and youth and pleasure! It was not to this, however, that he directed his objection: theargumentum ad hominemcame more easily to him. "But you do this?" he said, pointing to the paraphernalia about the stove.
"Ay," Basterga rejoined with vehemence. "And why, my friend? Because the noble rewards and the consideration which former times bestowed on learning are to-day diverted to baser pursuits! Erasmus was the friend of princes, and the correspondent of kings. Della Scala was the companion of an emperor; Morus, the Englishman, was the right arm of a king. And I, Cæsar Basterga of Padua, bred in the pure Latinity of our Master Manucius, yield to none of these. Yet am I, if I would live, forced to stoop 'ad vulgus captandum!' I must kneel that I may rise! I must wade through the mire of this base pursuit that I may reach the firm ground of wealth and learned ease. But think you that I am the dupe of the art wherewith I dupe others? Or, that once I have my foot on firm ground I will stoop again to the things of matter and sense? No, by Hercules!" the big man continued, his eye kindling, his form dilating. "This scheme once successful, this feat that should supply me for life, once performed, Cæsar Basterga of Padua will know how to add, to those laurels which he has already gained,
The bays of Scala and the wreath of More,Erasmus' palm and that which Lipsius wore."
The bays of Scala and the wreath of More,Erasmus' palm and that which Lipsius wore."
And in a kind of frenzy of enthusiasm the scholar fell to pacing the floor, now mouthing hexameters, now spurning with his foot a pot or an alembic which had the ill-luck to lie in his path. Grio watched him, and watching him, grew only more puzzled—and more puzzled. Hecould have understood a moral shrinking from the enterprise on which they were both embarked—the betrayal of the city that gave them shelter. He could have understood—he had superstition enough—a moral distaste for alchemy and those practices of the black art which his mind connected with it. But this superiority of the scholar, this aloofness, not from the treachery, but from the handicraft, was beyond him. For that reason it imposed on him the more.
Not the less, however, was he importunate to know wherein Basterga trusted. To rave of Scholarship and Scaliger was one thing, to bring Blondel into the plot which was to transfer Geneva to Savoy and strike the heaviest blow at the Reformed that had been struck in that generation, was another thing and one remote. The Syndic was a trifle discontented and inclined to intrigue; that was true, Grio knew it. But to parley with the Grand Duke's emissaries, and strive to get and give not, that was one thing; while to betray the town and deliver it tied and bound into the hands of its arch-enemy, was another and a far more weighty matter. One, too, to which in Grio's judgment—and in the dark lanes of life he had seen and weighed many men—the magistrate would never be brought.
"Shall you need my aid with him?" he asked after a while, seeing the scholar still wrapt in thought. The question was not lacking in craft.
"Your aid? With whom?"
"With Messer Blondel."
"Pshaw, man," Basterga answered, rousing himself from his reverie. "I had forgotten him and was thinking of that villain Scioppius and his tract against Joseph Justus. Do you know," he continued with a snort of indignation, "that in hisHyperbolimæus, not content with the statement that Joseph Justus left his laundress'sbill at Louvain unpaid, he alleges that I—I, Cæsar Basterga of Padua—was broken on the wheel at Munster a year ago for the murder of a gentleman!"
Grio turned a shade paler. "If this business miscarry," he said, "the statement may prove within a year of the mark. Or nearer, at any rate, than may please us."
Basterga smiled disdainfully. "Think it not!" he answered, extending his arms and yawning with unaffected sincerity. "There was never scholar yet died on the wheel."
"No?"
"No, friend, no. Nor will, unless it be Scioppius, and he is unworthy of the name of scholar. No, we have our disease, and die of it, but it is not that. Nevertheless," he continued with magnanimity, "I will not deny that when Master Pert-Tongue downstairs put our names together so pat, it scared me. It scared me. For how many chances were there against such an accident? Or what room to think it an accident, when he spoke clearly with theanimus pugnandi? No, I'll not deny he touched me home."
Grio nodded grimly. "I would we were rid of him!" he growled. "The young viper! I foresee danger from him."
"Possibly," Basterga replied. "Possibly. In that case measures must be taken. But I hope there may be no necessity. And now, I expect Messer Blondel in an hour, and have need, my friend, of thought and solitude before he comes. Knock at my door at eight this evening and I may have news for you."
"You don't think to resolve him to-night?" Grio muttered with a look of incredulity.
"It may be. I do not know. In the meantime silence, and keep sober!"
"Ay, ay!"
"But it is more than ay, ay!" Basterga retorted with irritation; with something of the temper, indeed, which he had betrayed at the beginning of the interview. "Scholars die otherwise, but many a broken soldier has come to the wheel! So do you have a care of it! If you do not——"
"I have said I will!" Grio cried sharply. "Enough scolding, master. I've a notion you'll find your own task a little beyond your hand. See if I am not right!" he added. And with this show of temper on his side, he went out and shut the door loudly behind him.
Basterga stood a few moments in thought. At length,
"Dimidium facti, qui bene cœpit, habet!"
"Dimidium facti, qui bene cœpit, habet!"
he muttered. And shrugging his shoulders he looked about him, judging with an artistic eye the effect which the room would have on a stranger. Apparently he was not perfectly content with it, for, stepping to one of the long trunks, he drew from it a gold chain, some medals and a jewelled dagger, and flung these carelessly on a box in a corner. He set up the alembics and pipkins which he had overturned, and here and there he opened a black-lettered folio, discovered an inch or two of crabbed Hebrew, or the corner of an illuminated script. A cameo dropped in one place, a clay figure of Minerva set up in another, completed the picture.
His next proceeding was less intelligible. He unearthed from the pile of duo-decimos on the window-seat the steel casket which has been mentioned. It was about twelve inches long and as many wide; and as deep as it was broad. Wrought in high relief on the front appeared an elaborate representation of Christ healing the sick; on each end, below a massive ring, appeared a similar design. The box had an appearance of strength out of proportion to its size; and wasfurnished with two locks, protected and partly hidden by tiny shields.
Basterga handling it gently polished it awhile with a cloth, then bearing it to the inner end of the room he set it on a bracket beside the hearth. This place was evidently made for it, for on either side of the bracket hung a steel chain and padlock; with which, and the rings, the scholar proceeded to secure the casket to the wall. This done, he stepped back and contemplated the arrangement with a smile of contemptuous amusement.
"It is neither so large as the Horse of Troy," he murmured complacently, "nor so small as the Wafer that purchased Paris. It is neither so deep as hell, nor so high as heaven, nor so craftily fastened a wise man may not open it, nor so strong a fool may not smash it. But it may suffice. Messer Blondel is no Solomon, and may swallow this as well as another thing. In which event, Ave atque vale, Geneva! But here he comes. And now to cast the bait!"
Asthe Syndic crossed the threshold of the scholar's room, he uncovered with an air of condescension that, do what he would, was not free from uneasiness. He had persuaded himself—he had been all the morning persuading himself—that any man might pay a visit to a learned scholar—why not? Moreover, that a magistrate in paying such a visit was but in the performance of his duty, and might plume himself accordingly on the act.
Yet two things like worms in the bud would gnaw at his peace. The first was conscience: if the Syndic did not know he had reason to suspect that Basterga bore the Grand Duke's commission, and was in Geneva to further his master's ends. The second source of his uneasiness he did not acknowledge even to himself, and yet it was the more powerful: it was a suspicion—a strong suspicion, though he had met Basterga but twice—that in parleying with the scholar he was dealing with a man for whom he was no match, puff himself out as he might; and who secretly despised him.
Perhaps the fact that the latter feeling ceased to vex him before he had been a minute in the room, was the best testimony to Basterga's tact we could desire. Not that the scholar was either effusive or abject. It was rather by a frank address which took equality for granted, and by an easy assumption that the visit had no importance, that he calmed Messer Blondel's nerves and soothed his pride.
Presently, "If I do not the honour of my poor apartment so pressingly as some," he said, "it is out of no lack of respect, Messer Syndic. But because, having had much experience of visitors, I know that nothing fits them so well as to be left at liberty, nothing irks them so much as to be over-pressed. Here now I have some things that are thought to be curious, even in Padua, but I do not know whether they will interest you."
"Manuscripts?"
"Yes, manuscripts and the like. This," Basterga lifted one from the table and placed it in his visitor's hands, "is a facsimile, prepared with the utmost care, of the 'Codex Vaticanus,' the most ancient manuscript of the New Testament. Of interest in Geneva, where by the hands of your great printer, Stephens, M. de Beza has done so much to advance the knowledge of the sacred text. But you are looking at that chart?"
"Yes. What is it, if it please you?"
"It is a plan of the ancient city of Aurelia," Basterga replied, "which Cæsar, in the first book of his Commentaries places in Switzerland, but which, some say, should be rather in Savoy."
"Indeed, Aurelia?" the Syndic muttered, turning it about. It was a plan beautifully and elaborately finished, but, like most of the plans of that day, it was without names. "Aurelia?"
"Yes, Aurelia."
"But I seem to—is this water?"
"Yes, a lake," Basterga replied, stooping with a faint smile to the plan.
"And this a river?"
"Yes."
"Aurelia? But—I seem to know the line of this wall, and these bastions. Why, it is—Messer Basterga," in atone of surprise, not unmingled with anger—"you play with me! it is Geneva!"
Basterga permitted his smile to become more apparent. "Oh no, Aurelia," he said lightly and almost jocosely. "Aurelia in Savoy, I assure you. Whatever it is, however, we have no need to take it to heart, Messer Blondel. Believe me, it comes from, and is not on its way to, the Grand Duke's library at Turin."
The Syndic showed his displeasure by putting the map from him.
"Your taste is rather for other things," Basterga continued, affecting to misunderstand the act. "This illuminated manuscript, now, may interest you? It is in characters which are probably strange to you?"
"Is it Hebrew?" the Syndic muttered stiffly, his temper still asserting itself.
"No, it is in the ancient Arabic character; that into which the works of Aristotle were translated as far back as the ninth century of our era. It is a curious treatise by the Arabic sage, Ibn Jasher, who was the teacher of Ibn Zohr, who was the teacher of Averroes. It was carried from Spain to Rome about the year 1000 by the learned Pope Sylvester the Second, who spoke Arabic and of whose library it formed part."
"Indeed!" Blondel responded, staring at it. "It must be of great value. How came it into your possession, Messer Basterga?"
Basterga opened his mouth and shut it again. "I do not think I can tell you that," he said.
"It contains, I suppose, many curious things?"
"Curious?" Basterga replied impulsively, "I should say so! Why, it was in that volume I found——" And there in apparent confusion he broke off. He laughed awkwardly, and then, "Well, you know," he resumed, "we students find many things interest us which wouldfail to touch the man of affairs". As if he wished to change the subject, he took the manuscript from the Syndic's hand and threw it carelessly on the table.
Messer Blondel thought the carelessness overdone, and, his interest aroused, he followed the manuscript, he scarcely knew why, with his eyes. "I think I have heard the name of Averroes?" he said. "Was he not a physician?"
"He was many things," Basterga answered negligently. "As a physician he was, I believe, rather visionary than practical. I have hisColliget, his most famous work in that line, but for my part, in the case of an ordinary disease, I would rather trust myself," with a shrug of contempt, "to the Grand Duke's physician."
"But in the case of an extraordinary disease?" the Syndic asked shrewdly.
Basterga frowned. "I meant in any disease," he said. "Did I say extraordinary?"
"Yes," Messer Blondel answered stoutly. The frown had not escaped him. "But I take it, you are something of a physician yourself?"
"I have studied in the school of Fallopius, the chirurgeon of Padua," the scholar answered coldly. "But I am a scholar, Messer Blondel, not a physician, much less a practitioner of the ancillary art, which I take to be but a base and mechanical handicraft."
"Yet, chemistry—you pursue that?" the other rejoined with a glance at the farther table and its load of strange-looking phials and retorts.
"As an amusement," Basterga replied with a gesture of haughty deprecation. "A parergon, if you please. I take it, a man may dip into the mystical writings of Paracelsus without prejudice to his Latinity; and into the cabalistic lore of the school of Cordova without losing his taste for the pure oratory of the immortal Cicero.Virgil himself, if we may believe Helinandus, gave the weight of his great name to such sports. And Cornelius Agrippa, my learned forerunner in Geneva——"
"Went something farther than that!" the Syndic struck in with a meaning nod, twice repeated. "It was whispered, and more than whispered—I had it from my father—that he raised the devil here, Messer Blondel; the very same that at Louvain strangled one of Agrippa's scholars who broke in on him before he could sink through the floor."
Basterga's face took on an expression of supreme scorn. "Idle tales!" he said. "Fit only for women! Surely you do not believe them, Messer Blondel?"
"I?"
"Yes, you, Messer Syndic."
"But this, at any rate, you'll not deny," Blondel retorted eagerly, "that he discovered the Philosopher's Stone?"
"And lived poor, and died no richer?" Basterga rejoined in a tone of increasing scorn.
"Well, for the matter of that," the Syndic answered more slowly, "that may be explained."
"How?"
"They say, and you must have heard it, that the gold he made in that way turned in three days to egg-shells and parings of horn."
"Yet having it three days," Basterga asked with a sneer, "might he not buy all he wanted?"
"Well, I can only say that my father, who saw him more than once in the street, always told me—and I do not know any one who should have known better——"
"Pshaw, Messer Blondel, you amaze me!" the scholar struck in, rising from his seat and adopting a tone at once contemptuous and dictatorial. "Do you not know," he continued, "that the Philosopher's Stone was and is but a figure of speech, which stands as some say for theperfect element in nature, or as others say for the vital principle—that vivifying power which evades and ever must evade the search of men? Do you not know that the sages whose speculations took that direction were endangered by accusations of witchcraft; and that it was to evade these and to give their researches such an aspect as would command the confidence of the vulgar, that they gave out that they were seeking either the Philosopher's Stone, which would make all men rich, or the Elixir Vitæ, which would confer immortality. Believe me, they were themselves no slaves to these expressions; nor were the initiated among their followers. But as time went on, tyros, tempted by sounds, and caught by theories of transmutation, began to interpret them literally, and, straying aside, spent their lives in the vain pursuit of wealth or youth. Poor fools!"
Messer Blondel stared. Had Basterga, assailing him from a different side, broached the precise story to which, in the case of Agrippa or Albertus Magnus, the Syndic was prepared to give credence, he had certainly received the overture with suspicion if not with contempt. He had certainly been very far from staking good florins upon it. But when the experimenter in the midst of the apparatus of science, and surrounded by things which imposed on the vulgar, denied their value, and laughed at the legends of wealth and strength obtained by their means—this fact of itself went very far towards convincing him that Basterga had made a discovery and was keeping it back.
The vital principle, the essential element, the final good, these were fine phrases, though they had a pagan ring. But men, the Syndic argued, did not spend money, and read much and live laborious days, merely to coin phrases. Men did not surround themselves with costly apparatus only to prove a theory that had no practicalvalue. "He has discovered something," Blondel concluded in his mind, "if it be not the Philosopher's Stone or the Elixir of Life. I am sure he has discovered something." And with eyes grown sharp and greedy, the magistrate raked the room.
The scholar stood thoughtful where he had paused, and did not seem to notice him.
"Then do you mean," Blondel resumed after a while, "that all your work there"—he indicated by a nod the chemical half of the room—"has been thrown away?"
"Well——"
"Not quite, I think?" the Syndic said, his small eyes twinkling. "Eh, Messer Basterga, not quite? Now be candid."
"Well, I would not say," Basterga answered coldly, and as it seemed unwillingly, "that I have not derived something from the researches with which I have amused my leisure. But nothing of value to the general."
"Yet something of value to yourself," Blondel said, his head on one side.
Basterga frowned, then shrugged his shoulders. "Well, yes," he said at length, "as it happens, I have. But a thing of no use to any one else, for the simple reason——"
"That you have only enough for yourself!"
The scholar looked astonished and a little offended.
"I do not know how you learned that," he said curtly, "but you are right. I had no intention of telling you as much, but, as you have guessed that, I do not mind adding that it is a remedy for a disease which the most learned physicians do not pretend to cure."
"A remedy?"
"Yes, vital and certain."
"And you discovered it?"
"No, I did not discover it," Basterga replied modestly. "But the story is so long that I will ask you to excuse me."
"I shall not excuse you if you do not favour me with it," the Syndic answered eagerly. As he leaned forward there was a light in his eyes that had not been in them a few minutes before. His hand, too, shook as he moved it from the arm of his chair to his knee. "Nay, but, I pray you, indulge me," he continued, in a tone anxious and almost submissive. "I shall not betray your secrets. I am no philosopher, and no physician, and, had I the will, I could make no use of your confidence."
"That is true," Basterga replied. "And, after all, the matter is simple. I do not know why I should refuse to oblige you. I have said that I did not discover this remedy. That is so. But it happened that in trying, by way of amusement, certain precipitations, I obtained not that which I sought—nor had I expected," he continued, smiling, "to obtain that, for it was the Elixir of Life, which, as I have told you, does not exist—but a substance new in my experience, and which seemed to me to possess some peculiar properties. I tested it in all the ways known to me, but without benefit or enlightenment; and in the end I was about to cast it aside, when I chanced on a passage in the manuscript of Ibn Jasher—the same, in fact, that I showed you a few minutes ago."
"And you found?" The Syndic's attitude as he leaned forward, with parted lips and a hand on each knee, betrayed an interest so abnormal that it was odd that Basterga did not notice it.
Instead, "I found that he had made," the scholar replied quietly, "as far back as the tenth century the same experiment which I had just completed. And with the same result."
"He obtained the substance?"
Basterga nodded.
"And discovered? What?" Blondel asked eagerly. "Its use?"
"A certain use," the other replied cautiously. "Or, rather, it was not he, but an associate, called by him the Physician of Aleppo, who discovered it. This man was the pupil of the learned Rhazes, and the tutor of the equally learned Avicenna, the link, in fact, between them; but his name, for some reason, perhaps because he mixed with his practice a greater degree of mysticism than was approved by the Arabian schools of the next generation, has not come down to us. This man identified the product which had defied Ibn Jasher's tests with a substance even then considered by most to be fabulous, or to be extracted only from the horn of the unicorn if that animal existed. That it had some of the properties of the fabled substance, he proceeded to prove to the satisfaction of Ibn Jasher by curing of a certain incurable disease five persons."
"No more than five?"
"No."
"Why?"
"The substance was exhausted."
Blondel gasped. "Why did he not make more?" he cried. His voice was querulous, almost savage.
"The experiment," Basterga answered, "of which it was the product was costly."
Blondel's face turned purple. "Costly?" he cried. "Costly? When the lives of men hung in the balance."
"True," Basterga replied with a smile; "but I was about to say that, costly as it was, it was not its price which hindered the production of a further supply. The reason was more simple. He could not extract it."
"Could not? But he had made it once?"
"Precisely."
"Then why could he not make it again?" the Syndicasked. He was genuinely, honestly angry. It was strange how much he took the matter to heart.
"He could not," Basterga answered. "He repeated the process again and again, but the peculiar product, which at the first trial had resulted from the precipitation, was not obtained."
"There was something lacking!"
"There was something lacking," Basterga answered. "But what that was which was lacking, or how it had entered into the alembic in the first instance, could not be discovered. The sage tried the experiment under all known conditions, and particularly when the moon was in the same quarter and when the sun was in the same house. He tried it, indeed, thrice on the corresponding day of the year, but—the product did not issue."
"How do you account for that?"
"Probably, in the first instance, an impurity in one of the drugs introduced a foreign substance into the alembic. That chance never occurred again, as far as I can learn, until, amusing myself with the same precipitation, I—I, Cæsar Basterga of Padua," the scholar continued, not boastfully but in a tone thoughtful and almost absent, "in the last year of the last century, hit at length upon the same result."
The Syndic leaned forward; his hands gripped his knees more tightly. "And you," he said, "can repeat it?"
Basterga shook his head sorrowfully. "No," he said, "I cannot. Not that I have myself essayed the experiment more than thrice. I could not afford it. But a correspondent, M. de Laurens, of Paris, physician to the King, has, at the expense of a wealthy patient, spent more than fifteen thousand florins in essays. Alas, without result."
The big man spoke with his eyes on the floor. Hadhe turned them on the Syndic he must have seen that he was greatly agitated. Beads of moisture stood on his brow, his face was red, he swallowed often and with difficulty. At length, with an effort at composure, "Possibly your product—is not, after all, the same as Ibn Jasher's?" he said.
"I tested it in the same way," Basterga answered quietly.
"What? By curing persons of that disease?"
"Yes," Basterga rejoined. "And I would to Heaven," he continued, with the first spirt of feeling which he had allowed to escape him, "that I had held my hand after the first proof. Instead, I must needs try it again and again, and again."
"For nothing?"
Basterga shrugged his shoulders. "No," he said, "not for nothing." By a gesture he indicated the objects about him. "I am not a poor man now, Messer Blondel. Not for nothing, but too cheaply. And so often that I have now remaining but one portion of that substance which all the science of Padua cannot renew. One portion, only, alas!" he repeated with regret.
"Enough to cure one person?" the Syndic exclaimed.
"Yes."
"And the disease?" Blondel rose as he spoke. "The disease?" he repeated. He extended his trembling arms to the other. No longer, even if he wished it, could Basterga feign himself blind to the agitation which shook, which almost convulsed, the Syndic's meagre frame. "The disease? Is it not that which men call the Scholar's? Is it not that? But I know it is."
Basterga with something of astonishment in his face inclined his head.
"And I have that disease! I!" the Syndic cried, standing before him a piteous figure. He raised hishands above his head in a gesture which challenged the compassion of gods and men. "I! In two years——" His voice failed, he could not go on.
"Believe me, Messer Blondel," Basterga answered after a long and sorrowful pause, "I am grieved. Deeply grieved," he continued in a tone of feeling, "to hear this. Do the physicians give no hope?"
"Sons of the Horse-Leech!" the Syndic cried, a new passion shaking him in its turn. "They give me two years! Two years! And it may be less. Less!" he cried, raising his voice. "I, who go to and fro here and there, like other men with no mark upon me! I, who walk the streets in sunshine and rain like other men! Yet, for them the sky is bright, and they have years to live. For me, one more summer, and—night! Two more years at the most—and night! And I, but fifty-eight!"
The big man looked at him with eyes of compassion. "It may be," he said, after a pause, "that the physicians are wrong, Messer Blondel. I have known such a case."
"They are, they shall be wrong!" Blondel replied. "For you will give me your remedy! It was God led me here to-day, it was God put it in your heart to tell me this. You will give me your remedy and I shall live! You will, will you not? Man, you can pity!" And joining his hands he made as if he would kneel at the other's feet. "You can pity, and you will?"
"Alas, alas," Basterga replied, much and strongly moved. "I cannot."
"Cannot?"
"Cannot."
The Syndic glared at him. "Why?" he cried, "Why not? If I give you——"
"If you were to give me the half of your fortune," Basterga answered solemnly, "it were useless! I myself have the first symptoms of the disease."
"You?"
"Yes, I."
The Syndic fell back in his chair. A groan broke from him that bore witness at once to the bitterness of his soul and the finality of the argument. He seemed in a moment shrunk to half his size. In a moment disease and the shadow of death clouded his features; his cheeks were leaden; his eyes, without light or understanding, conveyed no meaning to his brain. "You, too!" he muttered mechanically. "You, too!"
"Yes," Basterga replied in a sorrowful voice. "I, too. No wonder I feel for you. I have not known it long, nor has it proceeded far in my case. I have even hopes, at least there are times when I have hopes, that the physicians may be mistaken."
Blondel's small eyes bulged suddenly larger. "In that event?" he cried hoarsely. "In that event surely——"
"Even in that event I cannot aid you," the big man answered, spreading out his hands. "I am pledged by the most solemn oath to retain the one portion I have for the use of the Grand Duke, my patron. And apart from that oath, the benefits I have received at his hand are such as to give him a claim second only to my necessity. A claim, Messer Blondel, which—I say it sorrowfully—I dare not set aside for any private feeling or private gain."
Blondel rose violently, his hands clawing the air. "And I must die?" he cried, his voice thick with rage. "I must die because hemaybe ill? Because—because——" He stopped, struggling with himself, unable, it seemed, to articulate. By-and-by it became apparent that the pause had another origin, for when he spoke he had conquered his passion. "Pardon me," he said, still hoarsely, but in a different tone—the tone of one who saw that violence could not help him. "I was forgetting myself.Life—life is sweet to all, Messer Basterga, and we cannot lightly see it pass from us. To have life within sight, to know it within this room, perhaps within reach——"
"Not quite that," Basterga murmured, his eyes wandering to the steel casket, chained to the wall beside the hearth. "Still, I understand; and, believe me," he added in a tone of sympathy, "I feel for you, Messer Blondel. I feel deeply for you."
"Feel?" the Syndic muttered. For an instant his eyes gleamed savagely, the veins of his temples swelled. "Feel!"
"But what can I do?"
Blondel could have answered, but to what advantage? What could words profit him, seeing that it was a life for a life, and that, as all that a man hath he will give for his life, so there is nothing another hath that he will take for it. Argument was useless; prayer, in view of the other's confession, beside the mark. The magistrate saw this, and made an effort to resume his dignity. "We will talk another day," he murmured, pressing his hand to his brow, "another day!" And he turned to the door. "You will not mention what I have said to you, Messer Basterga?"
"Not a syllable," his host answered, as he followed him out. The abruptness of the departure did not surprise him. "Believe me, I feel for you, Messer Blondel."
The Syndic acknowledged the phrase by a gesture not without pathos, and, passing out, stumbled blindly down the narrow stairs. Basterga attended him with respect to the outer door, and there they parted in silence. The magistrate, his shoulders bowed, walked slowly to the left, where, turning into the town through the inner gate, the Porte Tertasse, he disappeared. The big man waited a while, sunning himself on the steps, his face towards the ramparts.
"He will come back, oh, yes, he will come back," he purred, smiling all over his large face. "For I, Cæsar Basterga, have a brain. And 'tis better a brain than thews and sinews, gold or lands, seeing that it has all these at command when I need them. The fish is hooked. It will be strange if I do not land him before the year is out. But the bribe to his physician—it was a happy thought: a happy thought of this brain of Cæsar Basterga, graduate of Padua,viri valde periti, doctissimique!"
Thehouse in the Corraterie, near the Porte Tertasse, differed in no outward respect from its neighbours. The same row of chestnut trees darkened its lower windows, the same breezy view of the Rhone meadows, the sloping vineyards and the far-off Jura lightened its upper rooms. A kindred life, a life apparently as quiet and demure, moved within its walls. Yet was the house a house apart. Silently and secretly, it had absorbed and sucked and drawn into itself the hearts and souls and minds of two men. It held for the one that which the old prize above all things in the world—life; and for the other, that which the young set above life—love.
Life? The Syndic did not doubt; the bait had been dangled before his eyes with too much cunning, too much skill. In a casket, in a room in that house in the Corraterie, his life lay hidden; his life, and he could not come at it! His life? Was it a marvel that waking or sleeping he saw only that house, and that room, and that casket chained to the wall; that he saw at one time the four steps rising to the door, and the placid front with its three tiers of windows; at another time, the room itself with its litter of scripts and dark-bound books, and rich furnishings, and phials and jars and strangely shaped alembics? Was it a marvel that in the dreams of the night the sick man toiled up and up and up the narrow staircase, of which every point remained fixed in hismind; or that waking, whatever his task, or wherever he might be, alone or in company, in his parlour or in the Town House, he still fell a-dreaming of the room and the box—the room and the box that held his life?
Had this been the worst! But it was not. There were times, bitter times, dark hours, when the pains were upon him, and he saw his fate clear before him; for he had known men die of the disease which held him in its clutches, and he knew how they had died. And then he must needs lock himself into his room that other eyes might not witness the passionate fits of revolt, of rage and horror, and weak weeping, into which the knowledge cast him. And out of which he presently came back to—the house. His life lay there, in that room, in that house, and he could not come at it! He could not come at it! But he would! He would!
It issued in that always; in some plan or scheme for gaining possession of the philtre. Some of the plans that occurred to him were wild and desperate; dangerous and hopeless on the face of them. Others were merely violent; others again, of which craft was the mainspring, held out a prospect of success. For a whole day the notion of arresting Basterga on a charge of treason, and seizing the steel casket together with his papers, was uppermost. It seemed feasible, and was feasible; nay, it was more than feasible, it was easy; for already there were rumours of the man abroad, and his name had been mentioned at the council table. The Syndic had only to give the word, and the arrest would be made, the search instituted, the papers and casket seized. Nay, if he did not give the word, it was possible that others might.
But when he thought of that step, that irrevocable step, he knew that he would not have the courage to take it. For if Basterga had so much as two minutes' notice, if his ear so much as caught the tread of those who came totake him, he might, in pure malignity, pour the medicine on the floor, or he might so hide it as to defy search. And at the thought—at the thought of the destruction of that wherein lay his only chance of life, his only hope of seeing the sun and feeling again the balmy breath of spring, the Syndic trembled and shook and sweated with rage and fear. No, he would not have the courage. He would not dare. For a week and more after the thought occurred to him, he dared not approach the scholar's lodging, or be seen in the neighbourhood, so great was his fear of arousing Basterga's suspicions and setting him on his guard.
At the end of a fortnight or so, the choice of ways was presented to him in a concrete form; and with an abruptness which placed him on the edge of perplexity. It was at a morning meeting of the smaller council. The day was dull, the chamber warm, the business to be transacted monotonous; and Blondel, far from well and interested in one thing only—beside which the most important affairs of Geneva seemed small as the doings of an ant-hill viewed through a glass—had fallen asleep, or nearly asleep. Naturally a restless and wakeful man, of thin habit and nervous temperament, he had never done such a thing before: and it was unfortunate that he succumbed on this occasion, for while he drowsed the current of business changed. The debate grew serious, even vital. Finally he awoke to the knowledge of place and time with a name ringing in his ears; a name so fixed in his waking thoughts that, before he knew where he was or what he was doing, he repeated it in a tone that drew all eyes upon him.
"Basterga!"
Some knew he had slept and smiled; more had not noticed it, and turned, struck by the strange tone in which he echoed the name. Fabri, the First Syndic,who sat two places from him, and had just taken a letter from the secretary, leaned forward so as to view him. "Ay, Basterga," he said, "an Italian, I take it. Do you know him, Messer Blondel?"
He was awake now, but, confused and startled, inclined to believe that he was on his trial; and that the faint parleyings with treason, small things hard to define, to which he had stooped, were known. Mechanically, to gain time, he repeated the name: "Basterga?"
"Yes," Fabri repeated. "Do you know him?"
"Cæsar Basterga, is it?"
"That is his name."
He was himself now, though his nerves still shook; himself so far as he could be, while ignorant of what had passed, and how he came to be challenged. "Yes, I know him," he said slowly, "if you mean a Paduan, a scholar of some note, I believe. Who applied to me—I dare say it would be six weeks back—for a licence to stay a while in the town."
"Which you granted?"
"In the usual course. He had letters from"—Blondel shrugged his shoulders—"I forget from whom. What of him?" with a steady look at Baudichon the councillor, his life-long rival, and the quarter whence if trouble were brewing it was to be expected. "What of him?" he repeated, throwing himself back in his chair, and tapping the table with his fingers.
"This," Fabri answered, waving the letter which he had in his hands.
"But I do not know what that is," Blondel replied coolly. "I am afraid"—he looked at his neighbour on either side—"was I asleep?"
"I fear so," said one, while the other smiled. They were his very good friends and allies.
"Well, it is not like me. I can say that I am notoften," with a keen look at Baudichon, "caught napping! And now, M. Fabri," he continued with his usual practical air, "I have delayed the business long enough. What is it? And what is that?" He pointed to the letter in the First Syndic's hands.
"Well, it is really your affair in the main," Fabri answered, "since as Fourth Syndic you are responsible for the guard and the city's safety; and ours afterwards. It is a warning," he continued, his eyes reverting to the page before him, "from our secret agent in Turin, whose name I need not mention"—Blondel nodded—"informing us of a fresh attempt to be made on the city before Christmas; by means of rafts formed of hurdles and capable of transporting whole companies of soldiers. These he has seen tried in the River Po, and they performed the work. Having reached the walls by their means the assailants are to mount by ladders which are being made to fit into one another. They are covered with black cloth, and can be laid against the wall without noise. It sounds—circumstantial?" Fabri commented, breaking off and looking at Blondel.
The Syndic nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," he said, "I think so. I think also," he continued, "that with the aid of my friend, Captain Blandano, I shall be able to give a good account of the rafts and the ladders."
Baudichon the councillor interposed. "But that is not all," he muttered, rolling ponderously in his chair as he spoke. He was a stout man with a double chin and a weighty manner; honest, but slow, and the spokesman of the more wealthy burghers. His neighbour Petitot, a man of singular appearance, lean, with a long thin drooping nose, commonly supported him. Petitot, who bore the nickname of "the Inquisitor," represented the Venerable Company of Pastors, and was viewed with especial distaste by the turbulent spirits whom the war had left inthe city, as well as by the lower ranks, who upheld Blondel. In sense and vigour the Fourth Syndic was more than a match for the two precisians: but honesty of purpose has a weight of its own that slowly makes itself felt. "That is not all," Baudichon repeated after a glance at his neighbour and ally Petitot, "I want to know——"
"One moment, M. Baudichon, if you please," Fabri said, cutting him short, amid a partial titter; the phrase "I want to know" was so often on the councillor's lips that it had become ridiculous. "One moment; as you say, that is not all. The writer proceeds to warn us that the Grand Duke's lieutenant, M. d'Albigny, has taken a house on the Italian side of the frontier, and is there constructing a huge petard on wheels which is to be dragged up to the gate——"
"With the ladders and rafts?"
"They seem to belong to another scheme," Fabri said, as he turned back and conned the letter afresh.
"With M. d'Albigny at the bottom of both?"
"Yes."
"Well, if he be not more successful with this," Blondel answered contemptuously, "than he was with the attempt to mine the Arsenal—which ended in supplying us with two or three casks of powder—I think Captain Blandano and I may deal with him."
A murmur of assent approved the boast; but it did not proceed from all. There were men at the table who had children, who had wives, who had daughters, whose faces were grave. Just thirty years had passed over the world since the horrors of the massacre of St. Bartholomew—to be speedily followed by the sack of Antwerp—had paled the cheek of Europe. Just thirty years were to elapse and the sack of Magdeburg was to prove a match and more than a match for both in horror andcruelty. That the Papists, if they entered, would deal more gently with Geneva, the head and front of offence, or extend to the Mother of Heretics mercy which they had refused to her children, these men did not believe. The presence of an enemy ever lurking within a league of their gates, ever threatening them by night and by day, had shaken their nerves. They feared everything, they feared always. In fitful sleep, in the small hours, they heard their doors smashed in; their dreams were disturbed by cries and shrieks, by the din of bells, and the clash of weapons.
To these men Blondel seemed over confident. But no one took on himself to gainsay him in his particular province, the superintendence of the guard; and though Baudichon sighed and Petitot shook his head, the word was left with him. "Is that all, Messer Fabri?" he asked.
"Yes, if we lay it to heart."
"But I want to know," Baudichon struck in, puffing pompously, "what is to be done about—Basterga."
"Basterga? To be sure I was forgetting him," Fabri answered. "What is to be done? What do you say, Messer Blondel? What are we to do about him?"
"I will tell you if you will tell me what the point is that touches him. You forget, Messer Syndic"—with a somewhat sickly smile—"that I was asleep."
"The letter," Fabri replied, returning to it, "touches him seriously. It asserts that a person of that name is here in the Grand Duke's interest, that he is in the secret of these plots, and that we should do well to expel him, if we do not seize and imprison him."
"And you want to know——"
"I want to know," Baudichon answered, rolling in his chair as was his habit when delivering himself, "what you know of him, Messer Blondel."
Blondel turned rudely on him, perhaps to hide a slight ebb of colour from his cheeks. "What I know?" he said.
"Ay, ay."
"No more than you know!"
"But," Petitot retorted in his dry, thin voice, "it was you, Messer Blondel, not Messer Baudichon, who gave him permission to reside in the town."
"And I want to know," Baudichon chimed in remorselessly, "what credentials he had. That is what I want to know!"
"Credentials? Oh, something formal! I don't know what," Blondel replied rudely. He looked to the secretary who sat at the foot of the table. "Do you know?" he asked.
"No, Messer Syndic," the man replied. "I remember that a licence was granted to him in the name of Cæsar Basterga, graduate of Padua; and doubtless—for licences to reside are not granted without such—he had letters, but I do not recall from whom. They would be returned to him with the licence."
"And that is all," Petitot said, his long nose drooping, his inquisitive eyes looking over his glasses, "that you know about him, Messer Blondel?"
Did they know anything, and, if so, what did they know? Blondel hesitated. This persistence, this continual harping on one point, began to alarm him. But he carried it bravely. "Do you mean as to his convictions?" he asked with a sneer.
"No, I mean at all!"
"I want to know," Baudichon added—the parrot phrase began to carry to Blondel's ears the note of fate—"what you know about him."
This time a pause betrayed Blondel's hesitation. Should he admit that he had been to Basterga's lodging; or dared he deny a fact that might imply an intimacygreater than he had acknowledged? A faint perspiration rose on his brow as he decided that he dare not. "I know that he lives in a house in the Corraterie," he answered, "a house beside the Porte Tertasse, and that he is a scholar—I believe of some repute. I know so much," he continued boldly, "because he wrote to thank me for the licence, and, by way of acknowledgment, invited me to visit his lodging to view a rare manuscript of the Scriptures. I did so, and remained a few minutes with him. That is all I know of him. I suppose," with a grim look at Baudichon and the Inquisitor, who had exchanged meaning glances, "it is not alleged that I am in the plot with him? Or that he has confided to me the Grand Duke's plans?"
Fabri laughed heartily at the notion, and the laugh, which was echoed by four-fifths of those at the table, cleared the air. Petitot, it is true, limited himself to a smile, and Baudichon shrugged his shoulders. But for the moment the challenge silenced them. The game passed to Blondel's hands, and his spirits rose. "If M. Baudichon wants to know more about him," he said contemptuously, "I dare say that the information can be obtained."
"The point is," Fabri answered, "what are we to do?"
"As to—what?"
"As to expelling him or seizing him."
"Oh!" The exclamation fell from Blondel's lips before he could stay it. He saw what was coming, and the dilemma in which he was to be placed.
"We have the letter before us," the First Syndic continued, "and apart from it, we know nothing for this person or against him." He looked round the table and met assenting glances. "I think, therefore, that it will be well, to leave it to Messer Blondel. He is responsible for the safety of the city, and it should be for him to say what is to be done."
"Yes, yes," several voices agreed. "Leave it to Messer Blondel."
"You assent to that, Messer Baudichon?"
"I suppose so," the councillor muttered reluctantly.
"Very good," said Fabri. "Then, Messer Blondel, it remains with you to say what is to be done."
The Fourth Syndic hesitated, and with reason; had Baudichon, had the Inquisitor known the whole, they could hardly have placed him in a more awkward dilemma. If he took the course that prudence in his own interests dictated, and shielded Basterga, his action might lay him open to future criticism. If, on the other hand, he gave the word to expel or seize him, he broke at once and for ever with the man who held his last chance of life in the hollow of his hand.
And yet, if he dared adopt the latter course, if he dared give the word to seize, there was a chance, and a good chance, that he would find theremediumin the casket; for with a little arrangement Basterga might be arrested out of doors, or be allured to a particular place and there be set upon. But in that way lay risk; a risk that chilled the current of the Syndic's blood. There was the chance that the attempt might fail; the chance that Basterga might escape; the chance that he might have theremediumabout him—and destroy it; the chance that he might have hidden it. There were so many chances, in a word, that the Syndic's heart stood still as he enumerated them, and pictured the crash of his last hope of life.
He could not face the risk. He could not. Though duty, though courage dictated the venture, craven fear—fear for the loss of the new-born hope that for a week had buoyed him up—carried it. Hurriedly at last, as if he feared that he might change his mind, he pronounced his decision.
"I doubt the wisdom of touching him," he said. "To seize him if he be guilty proclaims our knowledge of the plot; it will be laid aside, and another, of which we may not be informed, will be hatched. But let him be watched, and it will be hard if with the knowledge we have we cannot do something more than frustrate his scheme."
After an interval of silence, "Well," Fabri said, drawing a deep breath and looking round, "I believe you are right. What do you say, Messer Baudichon?"
"Messer Blondel knows the man," Baudichon answered drily. "He is, therefore, the best judge."
Blondel reddened. "I see you are determined to lay the responsibility on me," he cried.
"The responsibility is on you already!" Petitot retorted. "You have decided. I trust it may turn out as you expect."
"And as you do not expect!"
"No; but you see"—and again the Inquisitor looked over his glasses—"you know the man, have been to his lodging, have conversed with him, and are the best judge what he is! I have had naught to do with him. By the way," he turned to Fabri, "he is at Mère Royaume's, is he not? Is there not a Spaniard of the name of Grio lodging there?"
Blondel did not answer and the secretary looked up from his register. "An old soldier, Messer Petitot?" he said. "Yes, there is."
"Perhaps you know him also, Messer Blondel?"
"Yes, I know him. He served the State," Blondel answered quietly. He had winked at more than one irregularity on the part of Grio, and at the sound of the name anger gave place to caution. "I have also," he continued, "my eye upon him, as I shall have it upon Basterga. Will that satisfy you, Messer Petitot?"
The councillor leaned forward. "Fac salvam Genevam!" he replied in a voice low and not quite steady. "Do that, keep Geneva safe—guard well our faith, our wives and little ones—and I care not what you do!" And he rose from his seat.
The Fourth Syndic did not answer. Those few words that in a moment raised the discussion from the low level of detail on which the Inquisitor commonly wasted himself, and set it on the true plane of patriotism—for with all his faults Petitot was a patriot—silenced Blondel while they irritated and puzzled him. Why did the man assume such airs? Why talk as if he and he alone cared for Geneva? Why bear himself as if he and he alone had shed and was prepared to shed his blood for the State? Why, indeed? Blondel snarled his indignation, but made no other answer.
A few minutes later, as he descended the stairs, he laughed at the momentary annoyance which he had felt. What did it matter to him, a dying man, who had the better or who the worse, who posed, or who believed in the pose? It was of moment indeed that his enemies had contrived to fix him with the responsibility of arresting Basterga, or of leaving him at large: that they had contrived to connect him with the Paduan, and made him accountable to an extent which did not please him for the man's future behaviour. But yet again what did that matter—after all? Of what moment was it—after all? He was a dying man. Was anything of moment to him except the one thing which Basterga had it in his power to grant or to withhold, to give or to deny?
Nothing! Nothing!
He pondered on what had passed, and wondered if he had not done foolishly. Certainly he had let slip a grand, a unique opportunity of seizing the man and of snatching theremedium. He had put the chance fromhim at the risk of future blame. Now he was of two minds about it. Of two minds: but of one mind only about another thing. As he veered this way and that in his mind, now cursing his cowardice, and now thanking God that he had not taken the irrevocable step,