Читать книгу The Banner of the Bull: Three Episodes in the Career of Cesare Borgia - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 5

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In that shrewd chapter of his upon a prince’s choice of ministers—of which I shall presently have more to say—Messer Niccoló Macchiavelli discovers three degrees in the intelligence of mankind. To the first belong those who understand things for themselves by virtue of their own natural endowments; to the second those who have at least the wit to discern what others understand; and to the third those who neither understand things for themselves nor yet through the demonstrations which others afford them. The first are rare and excellent, since they are the inventive and generative class; the second are of merit, since if not actually productive, they are at least reproductive; the third, being neither one nor the other, but mere parasites who prey for their existence—and often profitably—upon the other two, are entirely worthless.

There is yet a fourth class which the learned and subtle Florentine appears to have overlooked, a class which combines in itself the attributes of those other three. In this class I would place the famous Corvinus Trismegistus, who was the very oddest compound of inventiveness and stupidity, of duplicity and simplicity, of deceit and credulity, of guile and innocence, of ingenuity and ingenuousness, as you shall judge.

To begin with, Messer Corvinus Trismegistus had mastered—as his very name implies—all the secrets of Nature, of medicine, and of magic; so that the fame of him had gone out over the face of Italy like a ripple over water.

He knew, for instance, that the oil of scorpions captured in sunshine during the period of Sol in Scorpio—a most essential condition this—was an infallible cure for the plague. He knew that to correct an enlargement of the spleen, the certain way was to take the spleen of a goat, apply it for four-and-twenty hours to the affected part, and thereafter expose it to the sun; in a measure as the goat’s spleen should desiccate and wither, in such measure should the patient’s spleen be reduced and restored to health. He knew that the ashes of a wolf’s skin never failed as a remedy for baldness, and that to arrest bleeding at the nose nothing could rival an infusion from the bark of an olive-tree, provided the bark were taken from a young tree in the case of a young patient, and from an old tree in the case of an old patient. He knew that serpents stewed in wine, and afterwards eaten, would make sound and whole a leper, by conferring upon him the serpent’s faculty of changing its skin.

Deeply, too, was he versed in poisons and enchantments, and he made no secret—so frank and open was his nature—of his power to conjure spirits and, at need, to restore the dead to life. He had discovered an elixir vitæ that preserved him still young and vigorous at the prodigious age of two thousand years, which he claimed to have attained; and another elixir, called Acqua Celeste—a very complex and subtle distillation this—that would reduce an old man’s age by fifty years, and restore to him his lost youth.

All this and much more was known to Corvinus the Thrice-Mage, although certain folk of Sadducaic mind have sought to show that the sum of his knowledge concerned the extent to which he could abuse the credulity of his contemporaries and render them his dupes. Similarly it was alleged—although his adherents set it down to the spite and envy that the great must for ever be provoking in the mean—that his real name was just Pietro Corvo, a name he got from his mother, who kept a wineshop in Forli, and who could not herself with any degree of precision have named his father. And these deriders added that his having lived two thousand years was an idle vaunt, since there were still many alive who remembered to have seen him as an ill-kempt, dirty urchin wallowing in the kennels of his native town.

Be all that as it may, there is no denying that he had achieved a great and well-deserved renown, and that he waxed rich in his mean dwelling in Urbino—that Itala Atene, the cradle of Italian art and learning. And to wax rich is, after all, considered by many to be the one outward sign of inward grace, the one indubitable proof of worth. To them, at least, it follows that Messer Corvinus was worthy.

This house of his stood in a narrow street behind the Oratory of San Giovanni, a street of crazy buildings that leaned across to each other until, had they been carried a little higher, they must have met in a Gothic arch, to exclude the slender strip of sky which, as it was, remained visible.

It was a quarter of the town admirably suited to a man of the magician’s studious habits. The greater streets of Urbino might tremble under the tramp of armed multitudes in those days when the Lord Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna, was master of the city, and the peaceful, scholarly Duke Guidobaldo a fugitive outcast. Down that narrow, ill-paved gap of sordid dwellings came no disturbers of the peace. So that Corvinus Trismegistus was left to pursue his studies unmolested, to crush his powders, and distill his marvellous elixirs.

Thither to seek his help and his advice came folk from every quarter of Italy. Thither in the first hour of a fair June night, about a fortnight after Cesare Borgia’s occupation of Urbino, came, attended by two grooms, the Lady Bianca de’ Fioravanti. This Lady Bianca was the daughter of that famous Fioravanti who was Lord of San Leo, the only fortress in Guidobaldo’s territory which, emboldened by its almost impregnable position, still held out in defiance of the irresistible Valentinois.

With much had heaven blessed Madonna Bianca. Wealth was hers and youth, and a great name; culture and a beauty that has been the subject of some songs. And yet, with all these gifts, there was still something that she lacked—something without which all else was vain; something that brought her by night, a little fearfully, to the grim house of Messer Corvinus as a suppliant. To attract the less attention she came on foot and masked, and with no more attendance than just that of her two grooms. As they entered the narrow street, she bade one of these extinguish the torch he carried. Thereafter, in the dark, they had come, almost groping, stumbling on the rough kidney stones, to the magician’s door.

“Go knock, Taddeo,” she bade one of her servants.

And on her words there happened the first of those miracles by which Madonna Bianca was to be convinced beyond all doubting of the supernatural quality of the powers that Messer Corvinus wielded.

Even as the servant took his first step towards the door, this opened suddenly, apparently of itself, and in the passage appeared a stately, white-robed Nubian bearing a lanthorn. This he now raised, so that its yellow shafts showered their light upon Madonna and her followers. There was, of course, no miracle in that. The miracle lay in another apparition. In the porch itself, as if materialized suddenly out of the circumambient gloom, stood a tall, cloaked figure, black from head to foot, the face itself concealed under a black vizor. This figure bowed, and waved Madonna onward into the house.

She drew back in fear; for, having come to a place of wonders, expecting wonders, she accounted it but natural that wonders she should find, and it never entered her mind to suppose that here was but another who sought Corvinus, one who had arrived ahead of her, and in response to whose earlier knock it was that the door had opened, just a courteous gentleman who stood now deferring to her sex and very obvious importance.

Devoutly she crossed herself, and observing that the act did not cause this black famulus—as she supposed him—to dissolve and vanish, she reflected that at least his origin could not be dæmoniac, took courage and went in, for all that her knees shook under her as she passed him.

The supposed famulus followed close upon her heels, the grooms came last, together and something cowed, though they were men she had chosen for the stoutness of their courage. The gloom, the uncanny gentleman in black, the grinning Nubian, all teeth and eyeballs, affected them unpleasantly.

The Nubian closed the door and barred it, the metal ringing shrilly as it fell. Then he faced about to ask them formally what and whom they sought. It was the lady who answered, unmasking as she spoke.

“I am Bianca de’ Fioravanti, and I seek the very learned Messer Corvinus Trismegistus.”

The Nubian bowed silently, bade her follow, and moved down the long stone passage, his lanthorn swinging as he went, and flinging its yellow disc of light to and fro upon the grimy walls. Thus they came to a stout oaken door studded with great nails of polished steel, and by this into a bare ante-room. There were dried rushes on the floor, a wooden bench was set against the wall, and upon a massive, four-legged table stood an oil-lamp, whose ruddy, quivering flame, ending in a pennon of black smoke, shed a little light and a deal of smell.

Their guide waved a brown hand towards the bench.

“Your lackeys may await your excellency here,” said he.

She nodded, and briefly gave her order to the grooms. They obeyed her, though with visible reluctance. Then the Nubian opened a second door, at the chamber’s farther end. He drew aside a heavy curtain, with a startling clash of metal rings, and disclosed what seemed at first no more than a black gap.

“The dread Corvinus Trismegistus bids you enter,” he announced.

For all the stoutness of her spirit the Lady Bianca now drew back. But as her eyes remained fixed upon the gap, she presently saw the gloom in part dispelled, and dimly she began to perceive some of the furnishings of that inner room. She took courage, bethought her of the great boon she sought at the magician’s hands, and so crossed the dread threshold and passed into that mysterious chamber.

After her, in close attendance, ever silent, came the gentleman of the mask. Believing him to be of the household of the mage, and his attendance a necessary condition, she made no demur to it; whilst the Nubian, on the other hand, supposing him, from his mask and the richness of his cloak, to be her companion, made no attempt to check his ingress.

Thus, together, these two passed into the dim twilight of the room. The curtains rasped together again behind them, and the door clanged sepulchrally.

Madonna peered about her, her breath shortened, her heart beating unduly. A line of radiance along the ceiling, mysterious of source, very faintly revealed her surroundings to her: three or four chairs, capacious and fantastically carved, a table of plain wood against the wall immediately before her, crowded with strange vessels of glass and of metal that gleamed as they were smitten by rays of the faint light. No window showed. From ceiling to floor the chamber was hung with black draperies; it was cold and silent as the tomb, and of the magician there was no sign.

The eeriness of the place increased her awe, trammelled her reason, and loosed her imagination. She sat down to await the advent of the dread Corvinus. And then the second miracle took place. Chancing to look round in quest of that black famulus who had materialized to escort her, she discovered, to her infinite amazement, that he had vanished. As mysteriously as he had first taken shape in the porch before her eyes, had he now dissolved again and melted away into the all-encompassing gloom.

She caught her breath at this, and then, as if something had still been needed to scatter what remained of her wits, a great pillar of fire leapt suddenly into being in mid-chamber, momentarily to blind her and to wring from her a cry of fear. As suddenly it vanished, leaving a stench of sulphur in the air; and then a voice, deep, booming, and immensely calm, rang in her ears.

“Fear not, Bianca de’ Fioravanti. I am here. What do you seek of me?”

The poor, overwrought lady looked before her in the direction of the voice, and witnessed the third miracle.

Gradually before her eyes, where there had been impenetrable gloom—where, indeed, it had seemed to her that the chamber ended in a wall—she saw a man, an entire scene, gradually assume shape and being as she watched. Nor did it occur to her that it might be her eyesight’s slow recovery from the blinding flash of light that conveyed to her this impression of gradual materialization. Soon it was complete—in focus, as it were, and quite distinct.

She beheld a small table or pulpit upon which stood a gigantic open tome, its leaves yellow with a great age, its colossal silver clasps gleaming in the light from the three beaks of a tall-stemmed bronze lamp of ancient Greek design, in which some aromatic oil was being burned. At the lamp’s foot a human skull grinned horribly. To the right of the table stood a tripod supporting a brazier in which a mass of charcoal was glowing ruddily. At the table itself, in a high-backed chair, sat a man in a scarlet gown, his head covered by a hat like an inverted saucepan. His face was lean and gaunt, the nose and cheek-bones very prominent; his forehead was high and narrow, his red beard bifurcate, and his eyes, which were turned full upon his visitor, reflecting the cunningly set light, gleamed with an uncanny penetration.

Behind him, in the background, stood crucible and alembic, and above these an array of shelves laden with phials, coffers, and retorts. But of all this she had the most fleeting and subconscious of impressions. All attention of which she was capable was focussed upon the man himself. She was, too as one in a dream, so bewildered had her senses grown by all that she had witnessed.

“Speak, Madonna,” the magician calmly urged her. “I am here to do your will.”

It was encouraging, and would have been still more encouraging had she but held some explanation of the extraordinary manner of his advent. Still overawed, she spoke at last, her voice unsteady.

“I need your help,” said she. “I need it very sorely.”

“It is yours, Madonna, to the entire extent of my vast science.”

“You—you have great learning?” she half-questioned, half-affirmed.

“The limitless ocean,” he answered modestly, “is neither so wide nor so deep as my knowledge. What is your need?”

She was mastering herself now; and if she faltered still and hesitated it was because the thing she craved was not such as a maid may boldly speak of. She approached her subject gradually.

“You possess the secret of great medicines,” said she, “of elixirs that will do their work not only upon the body, but at need upon the very spirit?”

“Madonna,” he answered soberly, “I can arrest the decay of age, or compel the departed spirit of the dead to return and restore the body’s life. And since it is Nature’s law that the greater must include the less, let that reply suffice you.”

“But can you—” She paused. Then, impelled by her need, her last fear forgotten now that she was well embarked upon the business, she rose and approached him. “Can you command love?” she asked, and gulped. “Can you compel the cold to grow impassioned, the indifferent to be filled with longings? Can you—can you do this?”

He pondered her at some length.

“Is this your need?” quoth he, and there was wonder in his voice. “Yours or another’s?”

“It is my need,” she answered low. “My own.”

He sat back, and further considered the pale beauty of her, the low brow, the black, lustrous tresses in their golden net, the splendid eyes, the alluring mouth, the noble height and shape.

“Magic I have to do your will at need,” he said slowly; “but surely no such magic as is Nature’s own endowment of you. Can he resist the sorcery of those lips and eyes—this man for whose subjection you desire my aid?”

“Alas! He thinks not of such things. His mind is set on war and armaments. His only mistress is ambition.”

“His name,” quoth the sage imperiously. “What is his name—his name and his condition?”

She lowered her glance. A faint flush tinged her cheeks. She hesitated, taken by a fluttering panic. Yet she dared not deny him the knowledge he demanded, lest, vexed by her refusal, he should withhold his aid.

“His name,” she faltered at length, “is Lorenzo Castrocaro—a gentleman of Urbino, a condottiero who serves under the banner of the Duke of Valentinois.”

“A condottiero blind to beauty, blind to such warm loveliness as yours, Madonna?” cried Corvinus. “So anomalous a being, such a lusus naturæ will require great medicine.”

“Opportunity has served me none too well,” she explained, almost in self-defence. “Indeed, circumstance is all against us. My father is the castellan of San Leo, devoted to Duke Guidobaldo, wherefore it is natural that we should see but little of one who serves under the banner of the foe. And so I fear that he may go his ways unless I have that which will bring him to me in despite of all.”

Corvinus considered the matter silently awhile, then sighed. “I see great difficulties to be overcome,” said that wily mage.

“But you can help me to overcome them?”

His gleaming eyes considered her.

“It will be costly,” he said.

“What’s that to me? Do you think I’ll count the cost in such a matter?”

The wizard drew back, frowned, and wrapped himself in a great dignity.

“Understand me,” said he with some asperity. “This is no shop where things are bought and sold. My knowledge and my magic are at the service of all humanity. These I do not sell. I bestow them freely and without fee upon all who need them. But if I give so much, so very much, it cannot be expected that I should give more. The drugs I have assembled from all corners of the earth are often of great price. That price it is yours to bear, since the medicine is for your service.”

“You have such medicine, then!” she cried, her hands clasping in sudden increase of hopefulness.

He nodded his assent.

“Love philtres are common things enough, and easy of preparation in the main. Any rustic hag who deals in witchcraft and preys on fools can brew one.” The contempt of his tone was withering. “But for your affair, where great obstacles must be surmounted, or ever the affinities can be made to respond, a drug of unusual power is needed. Such a drug I have—though little of it, for in all the world there is none more difficult to obtain. Its chief component is an extract from the brain of a rare bird—avis rarissima—of Africa.”

With feverish fingers she plucked a heavy purse from her girdle and splashed it upon the table. It fell against the grinning skull, and thus cheek by jowl with each other, lay Life’s two masters—Death and Gold.

“Fifty ducats!” she panted in her excitement. “Will that suffice?”

“Perhaps,” said he, entirely disdainful. “Should it fall something short, I will myself add what may be lacking.” And with contemptuous fingers, eloquent of his scorn of mere profit, he pushed the purse aside, a thing of no account in this transaction.

She began to protest that more should be forthcoming. But he nobly overbore her protestations. He rose, revealing the broad, black girdle that clasped his scarlet robe about his waist, all figured with the signs of the zodiac wrought in gold. He stepped to the shelves, and took from one of them a bronze coffer of some size. With this he returned to the table, set it down, opened it, and drew forth a tiny phial—a slender little tube of glass that was plugged and sealed.

It contained no more than a thread of deep amber fluid—a dozen drops at most. He held it up so that it gleamed golden in the light.

“This,” he said, “is my elixirium aureum, my golden elixir, a rare and very subtle potion, sufficient for your need.” Abruptly he proffered it to her.

With a little cry of gratitude and joy she held out avid hands to take the phial. But as her fingers were about to close upon it, he snatched it back, and raised a hand impressively to restrain her.

“Attend to me,” he bade her, his glittering eye regarding her intensely. “To this golden elixir you shall add two drops of your own blood neither more nor less; then contrive that Messer Lorenzo drink it in his wine. But all must be done while the moon is waxing; and, in a measure, as the moon continues to grow, so will his passion mount and abide in him. And before that same moon shall have begun to wane again this Lorenzo Castrocaro will come to you, though the whole world lie between you, and he will be your utter and absolute slave. The present is a propitious time. Go, and be you happy.”

She took the phial, which he now relinquished, and broke into thanks.

But imperiously, by a wave of the hand and a forbidding look, he stemmed her gratitude. He smote a little gong that stood by.

There was the sound of an opening door. The curtains parted with a clash, and the white-robed Nubian appeared salaaming on the threshold, waiting to reconduct her.

Madonna Bianca bowed to the great magician, and departed overawed by the majesty of his demeanour. She had passed out, and still the Nubian waited on the threshold—waited for the man he had admitted with her. But Corvinus, knowing naught of his slave’s motive for lingering, bade him harshly begone; whereupon the curtains were drawn together again, and the door was closed.

Left alone, the magician flung off the great mantle of overawing dignity, descended from the lofty indifference to gain, natural enough in one who is master of the ages, and became humanly interested in the purse which Madonna Bianca had left him. Drawing wide the mouth of it, he emptied the golden contents on to the vast page of his book of magic. He spread the glittering mass, and fingered it affectionately, chuckling in his red beard. And then, quite suddenly, his chuckle was echoed by a laugh, short, abrupt, contemptuous, and sinister.

With a startled gasp Corvinus looked up, his hands spreading to cover and protect the gold, his eyes dilating with a sudden fear, a fear that swelled at what he saw. Before him, in mid-chamber, surged a tall figure all in black—black cloak, black cap, and black face, out of which two gleaming eyes considered him.

Trembling in every fibre, white of cheek, his mouth and eyes agape, a prey to a terror greater far than any it had ever been his lot to inspire in others, the wizard stared at the dread phantom, and assumed—not unnaturally it must be confessed—that here was Satan come to claim his own at last.

There fell a pause. Corvinus attempted to speak, to challenge the apparition. But courage failed him; terror struck him dumb.

Presently the figure advanced, silent-footed, menacing; and the wizard’s knees were loosened under him. He sank gibbering into his high-backed chair, and waited for death with Hell to follow. At least, you see, he knew what he deserved.

The apparition halted at last, before the table, within arm’s length of Corvinus, and a voice came to break the awful spell, a voice infinitely mocking yet unquestionably, reassuringly human.

“Greetings, Thrice-Mage!” it said.

It took Corvinus some moments to realize that his visitor was mortal, after all, and some further moments to recover some semblance of self-possession. An incipient chagrin mingling with the remains of his fears, he spoke at last.

“Who art thou?” he cried, the voice, which he would fain have rendered bold, high-pitched and quavering.

The cloak opened, displaying a graceful well-knit figure in sable velvet that was wrought with golden arabesques. From a girdle studded with great fiery rubies hung a long and heavy dagger, whose hilt and scabbard were of richly chiselled gold. On the backs of the black velvet gloves diamonds hung and sparkled like drops of water, to complete the sombre splendour of the man’s apparel. One of the hands was raised to pluck away the vizor and disclose the youthful, aquiline, and very noble countenance of Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna.

Corvinus recognized him on the instant, and recognizing him was far from sure that things would have been worse had his visitor been the devil, as he had at first supposed. “My lord!” he cried, profoundly amazed, profoundly uneasy. And, thinking aloud in his consternation, he added the question, foolish in a master of all secrets: “How came you in?”

“I too, know something of magic,” said the tawny-headed young duke, and there was mockery in his voice and in the smile he bent upon the wizard.

He did not think it necessary to explain that all the magic he had employed had been to enter as if in attendance upon Madonna Bianca de’ Fioravanti, and then to slip silently behind the black arras with which, to serve his purposes of deception, Messer Corvinus hung his walls.

But the magician was not duped. Who makes the image does not worship it. The truth—the precise truth—of magic was known undoubtedly to Corvinus, and it therefore follows that he could not for a moment suppose that the means by which the Duke had gained admittance had been other than perfectly natural ones. Anon the Nubian should be keenly questioned, and if necessary as keenly whipped. Meanwhile, the Duke himself must claim attention, and Corvinus—knowing himself a rogue—was far from easy.

But if he was not easy at least he was master of an inexhaustible store of impudence, and upon this he made now a heavy draught. To cover his momentary discomfiture, he smiled now as inscrutably as the Duke. Quickly he thrust the gold back into the purse, never heeding a coin that fell and rolled away along the floor. He tossed that purse aside, and, retaining his seat what time his highness remained standing, he combed his long, bifurcate beard.

“Betwixt your magic and mine, Magnificent, there is some difference,” he said, with sly suggestion.

“I should not be here else,” replied the Duke; and abruptly he proceeded to the matter that had brought him. “It is said you have found an elixir that restores the dead to life.”

“It is rightly said, my lord,” replied the wizard with assurance. He was becoming master of himself again.

“You have tested it?” quoth Cesare.

“In Cyprus, three years ago, I restored life to a man who had been dead two days. He is still living, and will testify.”

“Your word suffices me,” said the Duke; and the irony was so sly that Corvinus was left wondering whether irony there had been. “At need, no doubt, you would make proof of it upon yourself?”

Corvinus turned cold from head to foot, yet answered boldly of very necessity:

“At need, I would.”

Valentinois sighed as one who is content, and Corvinus took heart again.

“You have this elixir at hand?”

“Enough to restore life to one man—just that and no more. It is a rare and very precious liquor, and very costly, as you may perceive, Magnificent.”

“Derived, no doubt, from the brain of some rare bird of Africa?” the Duke mocked him.

By not so much as a flicker of the eyelid did Corvinus acknowledge the hit.

“Not so, Magnificent,” he replied imperturbably. “It is derived from——”

“No matter!” said the Duke. “Let me have it!”

The magician rose, turned to his shelves, and sought there awhile. Presently he came back with a phial containing a blood-red liquid.

“It is here,” he said, and he held the slender vessel to the light, so that it glowed like a ruby.

“Force apart the teeth of the dead man, and pour this draught down his throat. Within an hour he will revive, provided the body has first been warmed before a fire.”

Valentinois took the phial slowly in his gloved fingers. He considered it, his countenance very thoughtful.

“It cannot fail to act?” he questioned.

“It cannot fail, Magnificent,” replied the mage.

“No matter how the man may have died?”

“No matter how, provided that no vital organ shall have been destroyed.”

“It can conquer death by poison?”

“It will dissolve and dissipate the poison, no matter what its nature, as vinegar will melt a pearl.”

“Excellent!” said the Duke, and he smiled his cold, inscrutable smile. “And now another matter, Thrice-Mage.” He thoughtfully fingered his tawny beard. “There is a rumour afoot in Italy, spread, no doubt, by yourself to further the thieving charlatan’s trade you drive, that the Sultan Djem was poisoned by the Holy Father, and that the poison—a poison so subtle and miraculous that it lay inert in the Turk for a month before it slew him—was supplied to his Holiness by you.”

The Duke paused as if for a reply, and Corvinus shivered again in fear, so coldly sinister had been the tone.

“That is not true, Magnificent. I have had no dealings with the Holy Father, and I have supplied him with no poisons. I know not how Messer Djem may have died, nor have I ever said I did.”

“How, then, comes this story current, and your name in it?”

Corvinus hastened to explain. Explanations were a merchandise with which he was well stocked.

“It may be thus. Of such a poison I possess the secret, and some there have been who have sought it from me. Hence, no doubt, knowing that I have it and conceiving that it was used, the vulgar have drawn conclusions, as the vulgar will, unwarrantably.”

Cesare smiled.

“ ’Tis very subtle, Trismegistus.” And he nodded gravely. “And you say that you have such a poison? What, pray, may be its nature?”

“That, Magnificent, is secret,” was the answer.

“I care not. I desire to know, and I have asked you.”

There was no heat in the rejoinder. It was quite cold—deadly cold. But it had more power to compel than any anger. Corvinus fenced no more; he made haste to answer.

“It consists chiefly of the juice of catapuce and the powdered yolk of an egg, but its preparation is not easy.”

“You have it at hand?”

“Here, Magnificent,” replied the mage.

And from the same bronze coffer whence he had taken the love-philtre—the golden elixir—he drew now a tiny cedar box, opened it, and placed it before the Duke. It contained a fine yellow powder.

“One drachm of that will kill thirty days after it has been administered, two drachms in half the time.”

Cesare sniffed it and eyed the mage sardonically.

“I desire to make experiment,” said he. “How much is here?”

“Two drachms, highness.”

The Duke held out the box to Corvinus.

“Swallow it,” he bade him calmly.

The mage drew back in an alarm that almost argued faith in his own statement. “My lord!” he cried, aghast.

“Swallow it,” Cesare repeated, without raising his voice.

Corvinus blinked and gulped.

“Would you have me die, my lord?”

“Die? Do you, then, confess yourself mortal, Thrice-Mage—you, the great Corvinus Trismegistus, whose knowledge is wide and deep as the limitless ocean, you who are so little sensible to the ills and decay of the flesh that already you have lived two thousand years? Is the potency of this powder such that it can slay even the immortals?”

And now, at last, Corvinus began to apprehend the real scope of Cesare’s visit. It was true that he had set it about that the Sultan Djem had been poisoned, and that he had boasted that he himself had supplied the Borgias with the fabulous secret drug that at such a distance of time had killed the Grand Turk’s brother; and, as a consequence, he had made great profit by the sale of what he alleged was the same poison—a subtle veneno a termine, as he called it—so convenient for wives who were anxious for a change of husbands, so serviceable to husbands grown weary of their wives.

He understood at last that Cesare, informed of the defamatory lie that had procured the mage such profit, had sought him out to punish him. And it is a fact that Corvinus himself, despite his considerable knowledge, actually believed in the drug’s fabulous power to slay at such a distance of time. He had found the recipe in an old MS. volume, with many another kindred prescription, and he believed in it with all the blind credulity of the Cinquecento in such matters, with, in fact, all the credulity of those who came to seek his magician’s aid.

The Duke’s sinister mockery, the extraordinary sense which he ever conveyed of his power to compel, of the futility of attempting to resist his commands, filled Corvinus with an abject dread.

“Highness ... alas! ... I fear it may be as you say!” he cried.

“But even so, of what are you afraid? Come, man, you are trifling! Have you not said of this elixir that it will restore the dead to life? I pledge you my word that I shall see that it is administered to you when you are dead. Come, then; swallow me this powder, and see that you die of it precisely a fortnight hence, or, by my soul’s salvation, I’ll have you hanged for an impostor without giving you the benefit afterwards of your own dose of resurrection.”

“My lord—my lord!” groaned the unfortunate man.

“Now, understand me,” said the Duke. “If this powder acts as you say it will, and kills you at the appointed time, your own elixir shall be given to you to bring you back again to life. But if it kills you sooner, you may remain dead; and if it kills you not at all—why, then I’ll hang you, and publish the truth of the whole matter, that men may know the falsehood of the manner of Djem’s death upon which you have been trading! Refuse me, and——”

The Duke’s gesture was significant.

Corvinus looked into the young man’s beautiful, relentless eyes, and saw that to hope to turn him from his purpose were worse than idle. As soon, then, risk the powder as accept the certainty of the rope, with perhaps a foretaste of hell upon the rack. Besides, some chemical skill he had, and a timely emetic might save him—that and flight. Which shows the precise extent of his faith in his elixir of life.

With trembling hands he took the powder.

“See that you spill none of it,” Cesare admonished him, “or the strangler shall valet you, Thrice-Mage!”

“My lord, my lord!” quavered the wretched warlock, his eyes bulging. “Mercy! I ...”

“The poison, or the strangler,” said the Duke.

In despair, and yet heartening himself by the thought of the emetic, Corvinus bore the edge of the box to his ashen lips, and emptied into his mouth the faintly musty contents, Cesare watching him closely the while. When it was done, the appalled magician sank limply to his chair.

The Duke laughed softly, replaced his vizor, and, flinging his ample cloak about him, strode towards the curtains that masked the door.

“Sleep easily, Thrice-Mage,” he said, with infinite mockery. “I shall not fail you.”

Watching him depart, so confidently, so utterly fearless and unconcerned, Corvinus was assailed by rage and a fierce temptation to extinguish the light and try conclusions with Cesare in the dark, summoning the Nubian to his aid. It was with that thought in his mind that he smote the gong. But, whilst the note of it still rang upon the air, he abandoned a notion so desperate. It would not save him if he were poisoned, whilst if he allowed Cesare to depart unmolested he would be the sooner gone, and the sooner Cesare were gone the sooner would Corvinus be free to administer himself the emetic that was now his only hope.

The curtains flashed back, and the Nubian appeared. On the threshold Cesare paused, and over his shoulder, ever mocking, he flung the warlock his valediction:

“Fare you well, Thrice-Mage!” he said; and, with a laugh, passed out.

Corvinus dashed wildly to his shelves in quest of that emetic, fiercely cursing the Duke of Valentinois and all the Borgia brood.