Physician. Be comforted, good madam; the great rage,
You see is cured in him: and yet it is danger
To make him even o'er the time he has lost.
Desire him to go in: trouble him no more,
Till further settling.
KING LEAR.
We left the Emperor Alexius Comnenus at the bottom of a subterranean
vault, with a lamp expiring, and having charge of a prisoner, who
seemed himself nearly reduced to the same extremity. For the first two
or three moments, he listened after his daughter's retiring footsteps.
He grew impatient, and began to long for her return before it was
possible she could have traversed the path betwixt him and the summit
of these gloomy stairs. A minute or two he endured with patience the
absence of the assistance which he had sent her to summon; but strange
suspicions began to cross his imagination. Could it be possible? Had
she changed her purpose on account of the hard words which he had used
towards her? Had she resolved to leave her father to his fate in his
hour of utmost need? and was he to rely no longer upon the assistance
which he had implored her to send?
The short time which the Princess trifled away in a sort of gallantry
with the Varangian Hereward, was magnified tenfold by the impatience of
the Emperor, who began to think that she was gone to fetch the
accomplices of the Caesar to assault their prince in his defenceless
condition, and carry into effect their half-disconcerted conspiracy.
After a considerable time, filled up with this feeling of agonizing
uncertainty, he began at length, more composedly, to recollect the
little chance there was that the Princess would, even for her own sake,
resentful as she was in the highest degree of her husband's ill
behaviour, join her resources to his, to the destruction of one who had
so generally showed himself an indulgent and affectionate father. When
he had adopted this better mood, a step was heard upon the staircase,
and after a long and unequal descent, Hereward, in his heavy armour, at
length coolly arrived at the bottom of the steps. Behind him, panting
and trembling, partly with cold and partly with terror, came Douban,
the slave well skilled in medicine.
"Welcome, good Edward! Welcome, Douban!" he said, "whose medical skill
is sufficiently able to counterbalance the weight of years which hang
upon him."
"Your Highness is gracious," said Douban--but what he would have
farther said was cut off by a violent fit of coughing, the consequence
of his age, of his feeble habit, of the damps of the dungeon, and the
rugged exercise of descending the long and difficult staircase.
"Thou art unaccustomed to visit thy patients in so rough an abode,"
said Alexius; "and, nevertheless, to the damps of these dreary regions
state necessity obliges us to confine many, who are no less our beloved
subjects in reality than they are in title."
The medical man continued his cough, perhaps as an apology for not
giving that answer of assent, with which his conscience did not easily
permit him to reply to an observation, which, though stated by one who
should know the fact, seemed not to be in itself altogether likely.
"Yes, my Douban," said the Emperor, "in this strong case of steel and
adamant have we found it necessary to enclose the redoubted Ursel,
whose fame is spread through the whole world, both for military skill,
political wisdom, personal bravery, and other noble gifts, which we
have been obliged to obscure for a time, in order that we might, at the
fittest conjuncture, which is now arrived, restore them to the world in
their full lustre. Feel his pulse, therefore, Douban--consider him as
one who hath suffered severe confinement, with all its privations, and
is about to be suddenly restored to the full enjoyment of life, and
whatever renders life valuable."
"I will do my best," said Douban; "but your Majesty must consider, that
we work upon a frail and exhausted subject, whose health seems already
wellnigh gone, and may perhaps vanish in an instant--like this pale and
trembling light, whose precarious condition the life-breath of this
unfortunate patient seems closely to resemble."
"Desire, therefore, good Douban, one or two of the mutes who serve in
the interior, and who have repeatedly been thy assistants in such
cases--or stay--Edward, thy motions will be more speedy; do thou go for
the mutes--make them bring some kind of litter to transport the
patient; and, Douban, do thou superintend the whole. Transport him
instantly to a suitable apartment, only taking care that it be secret,
and let him enjoy the comforts of the bath, and whatever else may tend
to restore his feeble animation--keeping in mind, that he must, if
possible, appear to-morrow in the field."
"That will be hard," said Douban, "after having been, it would appear.
subjected to such fare and such usage as his fluctuating pulse
intimates but too plainly."
"'Twas a mistake of the dungeon-keeper, the inhuman villain, who should
not go without his reward," continued the Emperor, "had not Heaven
already bestowed it by the strange means of a sylvan man, or native of
the woods, who yesterday put to death the jailor who meditated the
death of his prisoner--Yes, my dear Douban, a private sentinel of our
guards called the Immortal, had wellnigh annihilated this flower of our
trust, whom for a time we were compelled to immure in secret. Then,
indeed, a rude hammer had dashed to pieces an unparalleled brilliant,
but the fates have arrested such a misfortune."
The assistance having arrived, the physician, who seemed more
accustomed to act than to speak, directed a bath to be prepared with
medicated herbs, and gave it as his opinion, that the patient should
not be disturbed till to-morrow's sun was high in the heavens. Ursel
accordingly was assisted to the bath, which was employed according to
the directions of the physician; but without affording any material
symptoms of recovery. From thence he was transferred to a cheerful
bedchamber, opening by an ample window to one of the terraces of the
palace, which commanded an extensive prospect. These operations were
performed upon a frame so extremely stupified by previous suffering, so
dead to the usual sensations of existence, that it was not till the
sensibility should be gradually restored by friction of the stiffened
limbs, and other means, that the leech hoped the mists of the intellect
should at length begin to clear away.
Douban readily undertook to obey the commands of the Emperor, and
remained by the bed of the patient until the dawn of morning, ready to
support nature as far as the skill of leechcraft admitted.
From the mutes, much more accustomed to be the executioners of the
Emperor's displeasure than of his humanity, Douban selected one man of
milder mood, and by Alexius's order, made him understand, that the ask
in which he was engaged was to be kept most strictly secret, while the
hardened slave was astonished to find that the attentions paid to the
sick were to be rendered with yet more mystery than the bloody offices
of death and torture.
The passive patient received the various acts of attention which were
rendered to him in silence; and if not totally without consciousness,
at least without a distinct comprehension of their object. After the
soothing operation of the bath, and the voluptuous exchange of the rude
and musty pile of straw, on which he had stretched himself for years,
for a couch of the softest down, Ursel was presented with a sedative
draught, slightly tinctured with an opiate. The balmy restorer of
nature came thus invoked, and the captive sunk into a delicious slumber
long unknown to him, and which seemed to occupy equally his mental
faculties and his bodily frame, while the features were released from
their rigid tenor, and the posture of the limbs, no longer disturbed by
fits of cramp, and sudden and agonizing twists and throes, seemed
changed for a placid state of the most perfect ease and tranquillity.
The morn was already colouring the horizon, and the freshness of the
breeze of dawn had insinuated itself into the lofty halls of the palace
of the Blacquernal, when a gentle tap at the door of the chamber
awakened Douban, who, undisturbed from the calm state of his patient,
had indulged himself in a brief repose. The door opened, and a figure
appeared, disguised in the robes worn by an officer of the palace, and
concealed, beneath an artificial beard of great size, and of a white
colour, the features of the Emperor himself. "Douban," said Alexius,
"how fares it with thy patient, whose safety is this day of such
consequence to the Grecian state?"
"Well, my lord," replied the physician, "excellently well; and if he is
not now disturbed, I will wager whatever skill I possess, that nature,
assisted by the art of the physician, will triumph over the damps and
the unwholesome air of the impure dungeon. Only be prudent, my lord,
and let not an untimely haste bring this Ursel forward into the contest
ere he has arranged the disturbed current of his ideas, and recovered,
in some degree, the spring of his mind, and the powers of his body."
"I will rule my impatience," said the Emperor, "or rather, Douban, I
will be ruled by thee. Thinkest thou he is awake?"
"I am inclined to think so," said the leech, "but he opens not his
eyes, and seems to me as if he absolutely resisted the natural impulse
to rouse himself and look around him."
"Speak to him," said the Emperor, "and let us know what is passing in
his mind."
"It is at some risk," replied the physician, "but you shall be obeyed.
--Ursel," he said, approaching the bed of his blind patient, and then,
in a louder tone, he repeated again, "Ursel! Ursel!"
"Peace--Hush!" muttered the patient; "disturb not the blest in their
ecstacy--nor again recall the most miserable of mortals to finish the
draught of bitterness which his fate had compelled him to commence."
"Again, again," said the Emperor, aside to Douban, "try him yet again;
it is of importance for me to know in what degree he possesses his
senses, or in what measure they have disappeared from him."
"I would not, however," said the physician, "be the rash and guilty
person, who, by an ill-timed urgency, should produce a total alienation
of mind and plunge him back either into absolute lunacy, or produce a
stupor in which he might remain for a long period."
"Surely not," replied the Emperor: "my commands are those of one
Christian to another, nor do I wish them farther obeyed than as they
are consistent with the laws of God and man."
He paused for a moment after this declaration, and yet but few minutes
had elapsed ere he again urged the leech to pursue the interrogation of
his patient. "If you hold me not competent," said Douban, somewhat vain
of the trust necessarily reposed in him, "to judge of the treatment of
my patient, your Imperial Highness must take the risk and the trouble
upon yourself."
"Marry, I shall," said the Emperor, "for the scruples of leeches are
not to be indulged, when the fate of kingdoms and the lives of monarchs
are placed against them in the scales.--Rouse thee, my noble Ursel!
hear a voice, with which thy ears were once well acquainted, welcome
thee back to glory and command! Look around thee, and see how the world
smiles to welcome thee back from imprisonment to empire!"
"Cunning fiend!" said Ursel, "who usest the most wily baits in order to
augment the misery of the wretched! Know, tempter, that I am conscious
of the whole trick of the soothing images of last night--thy baths--thy
beds--and thy bowers of bliss.--But sooner shalt thou be able to bring
a smile upon the cheek of St. Anthony the Eremite, than induce me to
curl mine after the fashion of earthly voluptuaries."
"Try it, foolish man," insisted the Emperor, "and trust to the evidence
of thy senses for the reality of the pleasures by which thou art now
surrounded; or, if thou art obstinate in thy lack of faith, tarry as
thou art for a single moment, and I will bring with me a being so
unparalleled in her loveliness, that a single glance of her were worth
the restoration of thine eyes, were it only to look upon her for a
moment." So saying he left the apartment.
"Traitor," said Ursel, "and deceiver of old, bring no one hither! and
strive not, by shadowy and ideal forms of beauty, to increase the
delusion that gilds my prison-house for a moment, in order, doubtless,
to destroy totally the spark of reason, and then exchange this earthly
hell for a dungeon in the infernal regions themselves."
"His mind is somewhat shattered," mused the physician, "which is often
the consequence of a long solitary confinement. I marvel much," was his
farther thought, "if the Emperor can shape out any rational service
which this man can render him, after being so long immured in so
horrible a dungeon.--Thou thinkest, then," continued he, addressing the
patient, "that the seeming release of last night, with its baths and
refreshments, was only a delusive dream, without any reality?"
"Ay--what else?" answered Ursel.
"And that the arousing thyself, as we desire thee to do, would be but a
resigning to a vain temptation, in order to wake to more unhappiness
than formerly?"
"Even so," returned the patient.
"What, then, are thy thoughts of the Emperor by whose command thou
sufferest so severe a restraint?"
Perhaps Douban wished he had forborne this question, for, in the very
moment when he put it, the door of the chamber opened, and the Emperor
entered, with his daughter hanging upon his arm, dressed with
simplicity, yet with becoming splendour. She had found time, it seems,
to change her dress for a white robe, which resembled a kind of
mourning, the chief ornament of which was a diamond chaplet, of
inestimable value, which surrounded and bound the long sable tresses,
that reached from her head to her waist. Terrified almost to death, she
had been surprised by her father in the company of her husband the
Caesar, and her mother; and the same thundering mandate had at once
ordered Briennius, in the character of a more than suspected traitor,
under the custody of a strong guard of Varangians, and commanded her to
attend her father to the bedchamber of Ursel, in which she now stood;
resolved, however, that she would stick by the sinking fortunes of her
husband, even in the last extremity, yet no less determined that she
would not rely upon her own entreaties or remonstrances, until she
should see whether her father's interference was likely to reassume a
resolved and positive character. Hastily as the plans of Alexius had
been formed, and hastily as they had been disconcerted by accident,
there remained no slight chance that he might be forced to come round
to the purpose on which his wife and daughter had fixed their heart,
the forgiveness, namely, of the guilty Nicephorus Briennius. To his
astonishment, and not perhaps greatly to his satisfaction, he heard the
patient deeply engaged with the physician in canvassing his own
character.
"Think not," said Ursel in reply to him, "that though I am immured in
this dungeon, and treated as something worse than an outcast of
humanity--and although I am, moreover, deprived of my eyesight, the
dearest gift of Heaven--think not, I say, though I suffer all this by
the cruel will of Alexius Comnenus, that therefore I hold him to be
mine enemy; on the contrary, it is by his means that the blinded and
miserable prisoner has been taught to seek a liberty far more
unconstrained than this poor earth can afford, and a vision far more
clear than any Mount Pisgah on this wretched side of the grave can give
us: Shall I therefore account the Emperor among mine enemies? He who
has taught me the vanity of earthly things--the nothingness of earthly
enjoyments--and the pure hope of a better world, as a certain exchange
for the misery of the present? No!"
The Emperor had stood somewhat disconcerted at the beginning of this
speech, but hearing it so very unexpectedly terminate, as he was
willing to suppose, much in his own favour, he threw himself into an
attitude which was partly that of a modest person listening to his own
praises, and partly that of a man highly struck with the commendations
heaped upon him by a generous adversary.
"My friend," he said aloud, "how truly do you read my purpose, when you
suppose that the knowledge which men of your disposition can extract
from evil, was all the experience which I wished you to derive from a
captivity protracted by adverse circumstances, far, very far, beyond my
wishes! Let me embrace the generous man who knows so well how to
construe the purpose of a perplexed, but still faithful friend."
The patient raised himself in his bed.
"Hold there!" he said, "methinks my faculties begin to collect
themselves. Yes," he muttered, "that is the treacherous voice which
first bid me welcome as a friend, and then commanded fiercely that I
should be deprived of the sight of my eyes!--Increase thy rigour if
thou wilt, Comnenus--add, if thou canst, to the torture of my
confinement--but since I cannot see thy hypocritical and inhuman
features, spare me, in mercy, the sound of a voice, more distressing to
mine ear than toads, than serpents,--than whatever nature has most
offensive and disgusting!"
This speech was delivered with so much energy, that it was in vain that
the Emperor strove to interrupt its tenor; although he himself, as well
as Douban and his daughter, heard a great deal more of the language of
unadorned and natural passion than he had counted upon.
"Raise thy head, rash man," he said, "and charm thy tongue, ere it
proceed in a strain which may cost thee dear. Look at me, and see if I
have not reserved a reward capable of atoning for all the evil which
thy folly may charge to my account."
Hitherto the prisoner had remained with his eyes obstinately shut,
regarding the imperfect recollection he had of sights which had been
before his eyes the foregoing evening, as the mere suggestion of a
deluded imagination, if not actually presented by some seducing spirit.
But now when his eyes fairly encountered the stately figure of the
Emperor, and the graceful form of his lovely daughter, painted in the
tender rays of the morning dawn, he ejaculated faintly, "I see!--I
see!"--And with that ejaculation fell back on the pillow in a swoon,
which instantly found employment for Douban and his restoratives.
"A most wonderful cure indeed!" exclaimed the physician; "and the
height of my wishes would be to possess such another miraculous
restorative."
"Fool!" said the Emperor; "canst thou not conceive that what has never
been taken away is restored with little difficulty? He was made," he
said, lowering his voice, "to undergo a painful operation, which led
him to believe that the organs of sight were destroyed; and as light
scarcely ever visited him, and when it did, only in doubtful and
invisible glimmerings, the prevailing darkness, both physical and
mental, that surrounded him, prevented him from being sensible of the
existence of that precious faculty, of which he imagined himself
bereft. Perhaps thou wilt ask my reason for inflicting upon him so
strange a deception?--Simply it was, that being by it conceived
incapable of reigning, his memory might pass out of the minds of the
public, while, at the same time, I reserved his eyesight, that in case
occasion should call, it might be in my power once more to liberate him
from his dungeon, and employ, as I now propose to do, his courage and
talents in the service of the empire, to counterbalance those of other
conspirators."
"And can your imperial Highness," said Douban, "hope that you have
acquired this man's duty and affection by the conduct you have observed
to him?"
"I cannot tell," answered the Emperor; "that must be as futurity shall
determine. All I know is, that it is no fault of mine, if Ursel does
not reckon freedom and a long course of Empire--perhaps sanctioned by
an alliance with our own blood--and the continued enjoyment of the
precious organs of eyesight, of which a less scrupulous man would have
deprived him, against a maimed and darkened existence."
"Since such is your Highness's opinion and resolution," said Douban,
"it is for me to aid, and not to counteract it. Permit me, therefore,
to pray your Highness and the Princess to withdraw, that I may use such
remedies as may confirm a mind which has been so strangely shaken, and
restore to him fully the use of those eyes, of which he has been so
long deprived."
"I am content, Douban," said the Emperor; "but take notice, Ursel is
not totally at liberty until he has expressed the resolution to become
actually mine. It may behove both him and thee to know, that although
there is no purpose of remitting him to the dungeons of the Blacquernal
palace, yet if he, or any on his part, should aspire to head a party in
these feverish times,--by the honour of a gentleman, to swear a
Frankish oath, he shall find that he is not out of the reach of the
battle-axes of my Varangians. I trust to thee to communicate this fact,
which concerns alike him and all who have interest in his
fortunes.--Come, daughter, we will withdraw, and leave the leech with
his patient --Take notice, Douban, it is of importance that you
acquaint me the very first moment when the patient can hold rational
communication with me."
Alexius and his accomplished daughter departed accordingly.