Читать книгу Prince and Heretic - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Magister Gustave Vanderlinden, astrologer and alchemist to that great Protestant Prince, His Highness Augustus, Elector of Saxony, sat somewhat gloomily in the laboratory of his house at Leipsic.

It was August, and the sun fell merrily through the diamond panes of the casements on to the dusty and mysterious objects which filled the high and narrow chamber.

In one corner stood a large furnace with two ovens, a tripod and pot, and a wide chimney above; on the shelves near, on the ground, and on the fire were all manner of vessels and pots and retorts of glass, of porcelain, and of metal.

Near by stood a large quadrant, beautifully engraved, a huge celestial globe swung in a frame of polished ebony, a small telescope of brass and wood, and a little desk or table covered with curious objects such as compasses, a large portion of loadstone, several seals, drawings, diagrams, and charts.

The other end of the room was occupied by a large and fine clock of very exact workmanship, and two shelves of rare books and manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, English, French, German, and High Dutch.

Beyond, a door opened into an inner room stored with chemicals, vases, jars, and boxes in considerable confusion. The owner of this apartment was a man in the prime of life, tall and spare, wearing a long, plain, frieze gown and a flat black velvet bonnet, round his neck hung a charm consisting of several Hebrew letters on a fine gold chain; his face was thin, and his expression discontented and weary.

He was, indeed, an unsatisfied man; though he held a good position at the Electoral Court, and the Elector never undertook any action without consulting his charts, it was neither in philosophy nor astrology that his interest lay. He was an alchemist, and his life was devoted to the magnum opus—the discovery of the wonderful stone which should heal all diseases, turn all metal to gold fairer than that found in the earth, and confer eternal youth—the secret of secrets of Aristotle, the goal of Hermetic philosophy.

He had traversed the greater part of Europe on this quest, and even travelled in the East, gaining much curious knowledge and meeting other Hermetic philosophers, but twenty years of wandering had brought him no nearer his object, and poverty had driven him to his native land and to the protection of the Elector.

Within the last few days an experiment which consisted of the combination of the essential mercury, silver, oil of olives, and sulphur—so many times distilled, rectified, dissolved, and fused, that the process had taken three years—had utterly failed in the final projections, and the baffled alchemist was struggling with a despair not unmixed with bitterness, the bitterness of the continued barrenness of his long, earnest, and painful labours.

He was roused from his weary, almost apathetic musings by one of his assistants coming to tell him the Elector was below. Vanderlinden rose with a sigh, pulled off his black cap, and went down into the humble parlour where His Highness waited.

"The experiment?" asked the Elector, as the philosopher entered his presence.

"It has failed, Highness," replied Vanderlinden; he very much disliked discussing with a layman the Great Act, the holy and mysterious science, but could not refuse to do so with the patron who supplied the money for these experiments. To his present relief the Elector made no further comment on the eternal search for the philosopher's stone; he merely shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, I did not come to talk of that," he said, "but of the wedding."

Vanderlinden repressed a sigh; there was no need to ask whose wedding his master referred to. To all Saxony, nay, to all Germany and the low countries, it was the wedding; it had been in debate for nearly three years, and during that period the Elector had consulted his astrologer so frequently on the likely success, failure, or general results of this union, that he had a whole cabinet of charts and diagrams by which the fortunes of the famous couple had been told according to every possible form of divination, and the chances, good and evil, of the marriage had been expounded in every possible way. Vanderlinden had discussed it, argued it with his master, drawn horoscopes of bride and groom, exhausted his skill in foretelling their future, and, therefore, he was heartily tired of the subject, and his spirits fell when he heard his master again introduce it. He wished the interview over and himself back at his books—he had suddenly recalled that in the works of Raymond Lully he had once seen a good formula for making the famous red and white powder which is the first step towards the stone itself—but he had to conceal his impatience, for the marriage was as important to the Elector as the magnum opus was to the philosopher.

"Yes," continued His Highness, "I wish to be further heartened, encouraged, and advised about this marriage."

He leant back in his chair and keenly looked at the alchemist. He was a fine knight of great bodily strength and pleasing appearance, his expression and manner conveyed force and dignity and a kind of candid simplicity; he was a strict Protestant according to the Augsburg Confession, and, amid the confusion of creeds that then bewildered men, he stood out clearly as one of the foremost Princes of Germany to defy the Pope and support the Reformed Faith; this was his great, perhaps his only, distinction.

"I wish you," he added thoughtfully, "to draw me another chart, and to once more try if the numbers promise good luck or ill."

"Nay," replied Vanderlinden hastily, "I have done all that is possible, Highness; it is but folly to again and again search for an answer to the same question. By no method I tried did I get a result—therefore this marriage will mean confusion, or else the future of it is hid from us."

The Elector was not satisfied with this ambiguous answer; he wanted a definite reply from his oracles, a direct announcement from the fates.

He sat a little while gloomily, his blunt-featured face overcast, meanwhile the alchemist standing patiently before him, fingering the flat black cap.

"You know well enough," remarked the Prince at length, "that if I could send some well-tested augury, some pleasant prophecy to the Landgrave of Hesse, it might overcome some of the bitterness of his opposition."

Vanderlinden doubted this; he had himself been sent as an envoy to Cassel with the mission of trying to persuade the old Landgrave to give his consent to this marriage that was so near the Elector's heart, and he had found Philip of Hesse extremely determined and not a little bigoted.

He ventured to say as much.

"I know," replied the Elector. "He has indeed made such a sturdy opposition that I have been tempted to wish him taken to his rest this last year."

"But why does Your Highness still trouble about the obstinacy of the Landgrave Philip when you have decided on the wedding, when the very cakes are being baked, the dresses made, and the groom is already on the road?" asked the alchemist wearily.

"I trouble," said His Highness, "because all the responsibility is mine, and it is no light responsibility to wed the daughter of the Elector Maurice to a Papist Prince."

Vanderlinden had heard the Elector say this many times before; he certainly thought that this match was about as incongruous as any could well be—an opinion shared by most of the Elector's subjects—for it meant uniting the Lady Anne, daughter of the Great Prince who had checked and humiliated Charles V, with a Romanist noble who had been page to that Emperor and was now high in favour with King Philip, his son; but the alchemist had, as did others, to bow to the reasons, personal and political, which had caused the Elector to urge on this marriage in face of the equally stern opposition of the Romish King of Spain and the Protestant Landgrave of Hesse—the grandfather and part guardian of the bride. He therefore took refuge in a vague answer—

"Your Highness has successfully overcome all difficulties, and there is little use in repenting at the last minute—"

"I do not repent," interrupted the Elector, rising and frowning, "but I have taken a great deal on myself, and in such matters it is ill to stand alone."

The alchemist had no consolation to offer, no advice to give, since both advice and consolation had long ago been exhausted. It seemed, too, mere weakness on the part of the Elector to still be torturing himself with doubts as to the wisdom of a marriage which could not now be prevented.

"Have you ready the talisman for the bride?" asked the Elector abruptly.

Vanderlinden drew from the pocket of his robe a boxwood case about an inch square, and gave it to his master.

The Prince opened it and took out the jewel it contained: this was a triangle of gold to represent the Trinity, interclasped by a green enamel serpent, symbol of eternity (since it had its tail in its mouth and therefore neither beginning nor end), in the middle of the convolutions of the reptile was a clear diamond (for purity) set on a little square of virgin gold which bore the Hebrew letters signifying "God Guard Thee."

The Elector turned the curious little jewel, which was carefully and beautifully fashioned, about in his strong soldier's fingers and examined it with an air of approval.

"God grant," he said, in a tone of sincerity, "that this keep her from Popish errors and follies; but it is difficult for a young maid to stand alone in a foreign country and not follow the ways of it, eh, Vanderlinden?"

He placed the little case in the embroidered purse that hung at his waist, gave the alchemist a preoccupied farewell, and left the house with a heavy step and a little click of his long gilded spurs. Vanderlinden waited until he heard the clang of His Highness's horse's hoofs over the cobbles, then he returned to his laboratory.

One of his assistants, young Hans Gottman, was leaning from the window watching the departure of the Elector, another was heating over the clear furnace some clay vases sealed with lead.

Vanderlinden caught Hans Gottman by the white apron.

"Fetch me the manuscripts of Rhasis, Alfarabi and Geber," he said. "They are locked in the chest in the still-room."

Young Hans withdrew his head and shoulders from the window.

"You know those sages by heart, master," he replied, half in irony, half in flattery.

"True," replied Vanderlinden, "but there may be something the meaning of which I have not completely understood, and it is very necessary that we start another experiment at once."

"The last cost thirteen thousand thalers," remarked the young man doubtfully.

The alchemist frowned away this unpleasant truth. "Bring me also," he said, "Le livre de la Philosophic Naturelle des Métaux of Bernard Trévisan, and the works of Raymond Lully."

But the young man still lingered; he was more interested in the world about him than in the science of his master.

"Did His Highness come about the marriage?" he asked.

The alchemist vented on his assistant the impatience he had concealed from the Prince.

"Am I never to hear the last of this marriage?" he cried. "I would the maid was wedded and gone, then maybe we should have a little peace in Leipsic."

"But it is a wicked thing," cried Hans, "to marry a Princess of the true faith to a Popish noble—a friend of King Philip, a friend of the Bishop of Arras—one who hates the Reformed Religion. I have some right to talk, master, for my father fought under the Elector Maurice against the late Emperor. Who thought then that the only child of the Elector would wed with the minion of the Emperor? A shame and a scandal it is to the country, and His Highness should be above sacrificing a young maid to the idolaters—"

Thus grumbling he went into the still-room to search for the manuscripts his master required. The other assistant, a stout young Burgundian, by name Walter de la Barre, had now brought his pots to the right heat and set them aside to cool.

He came forward, wiping his hands which were stained with clay and lead.

"Did the Elector command you to the feast, Magister?" he asked. "I heard to-day it was to be in the town hall, for the palace is not large enough and all attending are to bring their own butlers and cooks and plate, and there is to be a three days' tourney—"

"Walter! Walter!" interrupted Vanderlinden sternly. "Is it a wonder that your metals will not fuse, your minerals dissolve, that your liquids turn, and your furnaces fall out when your head is full of such idleness as this?

"How often have I told you that it is the spirit and not the mind shall conquer in this pursuit of ours? Leave these worldly, silly things and fix your thoughts on the great mystery, the awful secret which God is pleased to withhold from us."

The young man flushed, and turned again to his furnace which he was keeping at white heat for the melting of more lead wherewith to seal a further row of pots containing a strange solution with which Vanderlinden was experimenting. Hans returned with the three rolls of manuscript and the book. The alchemist, with a severe injunction to them to keep up the furnace and refrain from idle speech, withdrew to his private chamber in the roof or gables, where he usually meditated and struggled with the problems he discovered in the mystical writings and oblique instructions, veiled hints and tortuous references of the ancient sages and masters.

The two young men, as soon as they were alone, at once went to the window and leant out, squeezing themselves together with some difficulty, for the casement was narrow.

The furnace made the chamber intolerably hot, and both sighed with relief at the comparative coolness of the summer breeze on their flushed faces.

Leipsic—roofs, gables, towers, spires—spread before them, pleasantly glimmering in the gold dust of the heat and softly outlined against the rich blue of the August sky.

There was an air of festival, of languor, of midsummer joyousness abroad, the little figures below in the street all looked as if they were making holiday; it seemed as if no one in the city was working, troubling, or grieving.

The two youths at the window sighed with contentment, rested the elbows of their stained sleeves on the warm sill, and forgot the furnace, the chemicals, the minerals, and all the materials of the vases, pots, and bottles in the chambers behind them.

"If I were a knight," said Hans, "I would offer myself as a champion to the Lady Anne to challenge this Romanist and rescue her from him. What would she be doing now, Walter—weeping perhaps?"

"Have you ever seen her?" asked the Burgundian.

"Never; she is kept close in the castle, poor soul."

"Well, it is a cruel thing," agreed Walter, "to exile a young girl from her home and her faith for some whim of policy no one understands."

"Nay, the reason is simple," replied Hans. "If the Lady Anne were to marry a German Prince who might put forward some claims, what of the Elector's position? whereas wedded to a great foreign noble she will give her uncle no trouble at all, at least so said Graf von Gebers to the master the other day, and he added he would not marry his daughter to a Papist to save his head, but then, as I said, the Elector is afraid—If the Lady Anne had been a man she would have had Saxony."

"But these great ones," remarked Walter, "they marry regardless of their faith."

"As to that," said Hans wisely, "all is confusion. A king will burn at the stake a subject who is of the true faith, yet take a Protestant to wife if it suits him. Who shall explain these great ones? But it is an ill thing," added the young man earnestly, "to ask a man to die for what he believes and then to wed his Princess to one of those who are his executioners. King Philip burns the Protestants whenever the Holy Inquisition can seize them, yet our Protestant Princess is to be wed to the friend of King Philip!"

"A question of policy," said the young Burgundian vaguely. "They always say that State reasons policy."

"I say it is a cursed marriage and one which God will not bless," returned the Lutheran with some heat.

"So declares the old Landgrave Philip," remarked Walter, "but what is the use? And we may as well see the festivities, I hear they are to cost a hundred thousand thalers and a three days' tourney—"

"For the great ones where will there be a place for you or I?"

"Oh, like enough we shall get on behind the rope as well as another. It would be a gracious thing to see the Elector tilt, and the Princess will be there in her grand dress—we must go—"

"The furnace!" cried the other with a start. "If we let that out we are not like to see much of the Lady Anne's wedding."

They withdrew their heads hastily from the window and applied themselves to the furnace, which was already beginning to turn a dead colour at the outside.

While these two young men bent their perspiring faces over the fire that was to be the womb (they hoped) of the philosopher's stone, and discussed the marriage of the Elector's ward, Philip of Spain in the Escorial, Margaret of Parma and the Bishop of Arras in Brussels, the old Landgrave of Hesse in Cassel, the Emperor in Vienna, and the King of France at the Louvre were all occupied, more or less completely, with this same marriage, for the groom was one of King Philip's most important subjects—his father's most intimate page and confidant, and also, in his own right, a person of unusual riches, power, and position, one of the first cavaliers of his age, an extremely popular noble, and a man already, in his first youth, distinguished as soldier and governor; therefore all these rulers and statesmen were so keenly considering his marriage.

The name of the bridegroom—a name obnoxious to the Lutherans of Germany as belonging to a great Papist noble—was William of Nassau, Prince of Orange.