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!”

“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.