Drost Aage retired to rest in silence, but he vainly tried to sleep. He
was uncertain whether he ought not instantly to have captured the two
overbearing Hanseatics on the ground of their former menace at Sjoeberg;
here they were no longer ambassadors and privileged persons. If they
had circulated false coin, and openly protected an outlaw upon Danish
ground, they might with strict justice be called to account. The
knowledge that the base Kagge still lived also disquieted him; but what
still more banished sleep from the Drost's eyes, was the idea of the
mysterious Master Thrand, and his wondrous arts. That a human being
possessed such a power over nature as to be able to imitate the thunder
and lightning of the heavens, with all their terrific effects, appeared
to him an amazing prodigy, and what the enthusiastic Master Laurentius
had said of the still deeper views of his master--of the preservation
of youth by a mysterious art, and of the philosopher's stone, as
something actually existent in nature, had especially inspired the
meditative and somewhat visionary Aage with singular musings.
The countenance and mountebank deportment of the little deformed
philosopher, had, indeed, awakened great doubts of his honesty, and
what Aage had comprehended of his expressions appeared to him strange
and confused, as opposed to what he had been piously taught in
childhood regarding the highest and eternal truths in which, despite
his unhappy excommunication, he had been confirmed by his confessor,
Master Petrus de Dacia, who had succeeded in making him at peace with
himself and the church. But the Iceland clerk's ardent enthusiasm for
Master Thrand and his worldly wisdom had not been without its effect;
and Aage was forced to confess there lay an acuteness and intelligence
in the little mountebank's eye which he had never seen equalled in any
of the pious and learned men he knew. Laurentius's open and ingenuous
countenance bore witness also to the truth of his testimony as to what
he had seen and admired in the disciple of the famous Roger Bacon; and
the longer Aage pondered on what he had heard, the more doubts and
strange thoughts crowded upon his mind. Master Thrand's contempt of the
age in which he lived, and the confidence with which he expressed
himself respecting the only true revelation of nature with which he
was, above all, conversant, had also excited a feeling of strange and
painful uneasiness in Aage's mind. The melancholy knight had often,
when oppressed by the thought of his excommunication, sought peace and
tranquillity in the contemplation of nature in lonely nights under a
calm and starry sky, without, however, feeling able to dispense with
the comfort and consolation of the church. He now stood, with his arms
folded, in his sleeping chamber, gazing out on the gloomy heavens.
"Were it possible!" said he to himself. "Am I wandering here with all
my contemporaries in thick darkness? Know we neither our own nature nor
that around us? Are all our purposes and energies but as the gropings
of the blind, without aim or object? Will the time come when children
will jeer at us as erring fools and insane dreamers, scared by what did
not exist, and amused by empty juggling? Can this be? Can even that
which is most high and sacred, which we have believed in and lived for
with our fathers--for which thousands of inspired martyrs have died
with a halo of glory around their beaming countenances--for which our
pilgrims and Crusaders wend to Jerusalem, and renounce all the riches
and treasures of this world--which was the spring of action in our
ancestors' lives as our own, and made them heroes and conquerors in
life and death--could all that be dreaming, deception, and ignorance?
Could the existence and achievements of whole centuries have been a
monstrous lie? No! No! If yonder fellow be not a liar and a cheat,
there is neither truth, nor life, nor redemption, nor salvation." He
shrunk with horror from his own thoughts. A sound now reached his ears
which, at this moment, almost struck him with dismay. He fancied he
once more heard the voice of the mysterious stranger close beside him.
"Darest thou not yet face the naked truth? my dear Laurentius!" sounded
the shrill voice of the philosopher, slowly and solemnly through the
thin wooden partition of the adjoining chamber. "Dost thou dread to
enter into the holy calling of a Leccar Brother, and priest of nature?
Dost thou tremble at an initiation into the great church of the world,
of which we are all originally priests; we who have eyes for truth, and
courage to announce it, despite the repeated outcry of the fools of
thirteen centuries! Look, I open unto thee the great sanctuary in the
name of truth and science, and in the sight of that deity who dwells in
the breast of the initiated. Cast off the miserable prejudices of thy
time! Throw down the phantom thou callest the Church, and a saving
faith, with the same strength with which thou hast rejected the
senseless fables of heathenism! Cast off all that was not given thee
when thou becamest a human being! Rid thyself of all exploded and worn
out doctrines--cast off the whole puerile tissue of phantasms and
visions of crude ages, which thou callest Revelation! Divest thyself of
thy preconceptions regarding the essence of things, and of all the pomp
and imagery thou callest poetry! Then gaze freely around thee, and tell
me what remains!"
"Nothing! nothing! learned master!" answered the voice of the young
Icelander, in a desponding tone.
"Yes, assuredly!" was the answer; "thou thyself remainest, and great
eternal nature, and, if thou wilt, a great and mighty deity, which is
the soul and life of this nature of which thou art thyself a part--all
truth, all wisdom lie slumbering and buried there. Wake it if thou
canst! Call forth deity in thyself and in nature! Rule it by that
mighty art! Ask boldly, and force it to respond!"
"That I am not able to do, my wise master!" said the voice of the young
Icelander, within the partition; "but could I wake lifeless nature, and
force her to solve the mysteries I gaze upon, would she answer aught
else than what the dead have ever answered the living, what the dead
Vola[11] answered Odin in our ancient poems, what the spirit of Samuel
answered Saul in the presence of the Witch of Endor:--'Thou shalt die!
to-morrow thou shalt die!'"
"Well," resumed the philosopher, "were the answer not much more
cheering, if it were but truth could a philosopher, a Leccar Brother, a
priest of nature and truth demand or wish it otherwise? You _will_ have
flattery, you _will_ all of you be cheated and deceived--therefore you
cling so fast to that flattering lie, but hate and persecute truth as
ungodliness, heresy, or devilry--therefore are popes and bishops, like
the prophets and evangelists of old, still able to lead the whole human
race blindfold round in an eternal circle of error from one age to
another until they have their eyes opened, and see that they stand
where their blind fathers stood, by the closed book of nature, which
amid their dreaming they have forgotten to open through the lapse of
ages. Look! there thou standest, my pupil! and art ready to despair,
because all that fair jugglery hath vanished and been blown away by my
breath as it were a spider's web, or bubbles of air! and thou seest
nought but one enormous lifeless body which I call nature.--But look!
the lifeless body wakes! 'Tis deity, and yet our slave,--obedient to
the mightier manifestation of deity within us. Only through our means
can nature's deity awake to consciousness and self-knowledge. In us,
and in our will alone lives the only true God we should obey. Courage,
Laurentius!--courage! Truth must make its way--the slumbering and
disguised god of nature must be wakened and unveiled. It must open to
us its vast recesses, it must restore to us what it hath robbed and
hidden--the philosopher's stone must be found, even though its workings
should seem to us eternal death and petrifaction."
All was again hushed in the adjoining chamber; Aage had thrown open a
window, and the cool night air streamed in upon him; the sky had become
clear--Aage raised his eyes towards the starry vault, he grasped the
cross-hilt of his sword, a heavy load oppressed his heart, he bent his
knee in silent devotion, and rose, feeling that his prayer was answered
by the return of a calm and cheerful frame of mind. "To God be thanks
and praise! I know better however," he said, with a feeling of
consolation. "He, within there, is a liar and deceiver, as surely as
_He_ above is love itself! and He whom He sent unto us was the way, the
truth, and the life!" Aage was now about to betake himself to rest, but
the voice of the learned Master Thrand again caught his ear. The young
Icelander he heard no more. German was now spoken, but in a low
whispering tone, and the talk seemed to be on worldly matters. Aage
tried not to overhear anything; it was repugnant to his feelings, and
appeared to him dishonourable and unworthy, to become a concealed
witness to the secrets of others. He thought of knocking to give notice
of his presence and the thinness of the partition; but, at this moment,
he heard the name of "Grand" mentioned, and he started. The whispering
continued for a long time afterwards, and he caught words which caused
him the greatest uneasiness. The talk was of the king and Junker
Christopher, of the outlaws, of death, and downfall; but what it was he
could neither hear nor comprehend, with any distinctness. At last all
became silent. He conjectured that his foreign neighbour had left the
inn, and towards morning Aage fell asleep. When he was awakened at dawn
by his squire, in order to embark in a Swedish vessel, he had dreamt
the most marvellous things. He fancied he had beheld an entirely
changed world; without monasteries and monks, without fortified
castles, without the images of the Madonna and the saints, without
kings and thrones, even without women and children, and with nothing
but men, with keen staring eyes and diminutive and deformed bodies,
like Master Thrand's. At last it seemed to him that the sun was burnt
out and hung, like a great black coal, over his head; that the moon and
all the stars were pulled down and used instead of stones, for fences
and inclosures round small withered cabbage gardens. All trees and
flowers were torn up and peeled into fibres; all birds and animals lay
slaughtered and cut open; and the little hump-backed men sat, with
great spectacles, examining the putrified carcases. All that he
beheld,--the whole subverted and disjointed world, seemed to him at
last metamorphosed into one enormous mass of stone, and a terrific
voice sounded over the petrified world, and cried "Behold! _This_ is
thy world! _this_ is thy God! _this_ is the philosopher's stone!" Amid
his dismay at hearing this voice, Aage awakened, just as his brisk
squire knocked at his door, still so confused by his dream that he
could not distinguish between what he had dreamed, and what he thought
he had heard from behind the partition.