Great travell hath the gentle Calidore
And toyle endured...
There on a day,--He chaunst to spy a sort of shepheard groomes,
Playing on pipes and caroling apace.
...He, there besyde
Saw a faire damzell.
--Spenser, “Faerie Queene,” cant. ix.
For a considerable period the pupil of Mejnour was now absorbed in
labour dependent on the most vigilant attention, on the most minute and
subtle calculation. Results astonishing and various rewarded his toils
and stimulated his interest. Nor were these studies limited to chemical
discovery,--in which it is permitted me to say that the greatest marvels
upon the organisation of physical life seemed wrought by experiments
of the vivifying influence of heat. Mejnour professed to find a
link between all intellectual beings in the existence of a certain
all-pervading and invisible fluid resembling electricity, yet distinct
from the known operations of that mysterious agency--a fluid that
connected thought to thought with the rapidity and precision of the
modern telegraph, and the influence of this fluid, according to Mejnour,
extended to the remotest past,--that is to say, whenever and wheresoever
man had thought. Thus, if the doctrine were true, all human knowledge
became attainable through a medium established between the brain of the
individual inquirer and all the farthest and obscurest regions in the
universe of ideas. Glyndon was surprised to find Mejnour attached to the
abstruse mysteries which the Pythagoreans ascribed to the occult science
of NUMBERS. In this last, new lights glimmered dimly on his eyes; and
he began to perceive that even the power to predict, or rather to
calculate, results, might by-- (Here there is an erasure in the MS.)
....
But he observed that the last brief process by which, in each of these
experiments, the wonder was achieved, Mejnour reserved for himself,
and refused to communicate the secret. The answer he obtained to his
remonstrances on this head was more stern than satisfactory:
“Dost thou think,” said Mejnour, “that I would give to the mere pupil,
whose qualities are not yet tried, powers that might change the face of
the social world? The last secrets are intrusted only to him of whose
virtue the Master is convinced. Patience! It is labour itself that is
the great purifier of the mind; and by degrees the secrets will grow
upon thyself as thy mind becomes riper to receive them.”
At last Mejnour professed himself satisfied with the progress made by
his pupil. “The hour now arrives,” he said, “when thou mayst pass the
great but airy barrier,--when thou mayst gradually confront the terrible
Dweller of the Threshold. Continue thy labours--continue to surpass
thine impatience for results until thou canst fathom the causes. I leave
thee for one month; if at the end of that period, when I return, the
tasks set thee are completed, and thy mind prepared by contemplation
and austere thought for the ordeal, I promise thee the ordeal shall
commence. One caution alone I give thee: regard it as a peremptory
command, enter not this chamber!” (They were then standing in the room
where their experiments had been chiefly made, and in which Glyndon, on
the night he had sought the solitude of the mystic, had nearly fallen a
victim to his intrusion.)
“Enter not this chamber till my return; or, above all, if by any search
for materials necessary to thy toils thou shouldst venture hither,
forbear to light the naphtha in those vessels, and to open the vases on
yonder shelves. I leave the key of the room in thy keeping, in order to
try thy abstinence and self-control. Young man, this very temptation is
a part of thy trial.”
With that, Mejnour placed the key in his hands; and at sunset he left
the castle.
For several days Glyndon continued immersed in employments which
strained to the utmost all the faculties of his intellect. Even the most
partial success depended so entirely on the abstraction of the mind, and
the minuteness of its calculations, that there was scarcely room for any
other thought than those absorbed in the occupation. And doubtless this
perpetual strain of the faculties was the object of Mejnour in works
that did not seem exactly pertinent to the purposes in view. As the
study of the elementary mathematics, for example, is not so profitable
in the solving of problems, useless in our after-callings, as it is
serviceable in training the intellect to the comprehension and analysis
of general truths.
But in less than half the time which Mejnour had stated for the duration
of his absence, all that the mystic had appointed to his toils was
completed by the pupil; and then his mind, thus relieved from the
drudgery and mechanism of employment, once more sought occupation in dim
conjecture and restless fancies. His inquisitive and rash nature grew
excited by the prohibition of Mejnour, and he found himself gazing
too often, with perturbed and daring curiosity, upon the key of the
forbidden chamber. He began to feel indignant at a trial of constancy
which he deemed frivolous and puerile. What nursery tales of Bluebeard
and his closet were revived to daunt and terrify him! How could the
mere walls of a chamber, in which he had so often securely pursued his
labours, start into living danger? If haunted, it could be but by those
delusions which Mejnour had taught him to despise,--a shadowy lion,--a
chemical phantasm! Tush! he lost half his awe of Mejnour, when he
thought that by such tricks the sage could practise upon the very
intellect he had awakened and instructed! Still he resisted the impulses
of his curiosity and his pride, and, to escape from their dictation, he
took long rambles on the hills, or amidst the valleys that surrounded
the castle,--seeking by bodily fatigue to subdue the unreposing mind.
One day suddenly emerging from a dark ravine, he came upon one of those
Italian scenes of rural festivity and mirth in which the classic age
appears to revive. It was a festival, partly agricultural, partly
religious, held yearly by the peasants of that district. Assembled
at the outskirts of a village, animated crowds, just returned from a
procession to a neighbouring chapel, were now forming themselves into
groups: the old to taste the vintage, the young to dance,--all to be
gay and happy. This sudden picture of easy joy and careless ignorance,
contrasting so forcibly with the intense studies and that parching
desire for wisdom which had so long made up his own life, and burned at
his own heart, sensibly affected Glyndon. As he stood aloof and gazing
on them, the young man felt once more that he was young. The memory of
all he had been content to sacrifice spoke to him like the sharp voice
of remorse. The flitting forms of the women in their picturesque attire,
their happy laughter ringing through the cool, still air of the autumn
noon, brought back to the heart, or rather perhaps to the senses, the
images of his past time, the “golden shepherd hours,” when to live was
but to enjoy.
He approached nearer and nearer to the scene, and suddenly a noisy
group swept round him; and Maestro Paolo, tapping him familiarly on the
shoulder, exclaimed in a hearty voice, “Welcome, Excellency!--we are
rejoiced to see you amongst us.” Glyndon was about to reply to this
salutation, when his eyes rested upon the face of a young girl leaning
on Paolo’s arm, of a beauty so attractive that his colour rose and his
heart beat as he encountered her gaze. Her eyes sparkled with a roguish
and petulant mirth, her parted lips showed teeth like pearls; as if
impatient at the pause of her companion from the revel of the rest,
her little foot beat the ground to a measure that she half-hummed,
half-chanted. Paolo laughed as he saw the effect the girl had produced
upon the young foreigner.
“Will you not dance, Excellency? Come, lay aside your greatness, and be
merry, like us poor devils. See how our pretty Fillide is longing for a
partner. Take compassion on her.”
Fillide pouted at this speech, and, disengaging her arm from Paolo’s,
turned away, but threw over her shoulder a glance half inviting, half
defying. Glyndon, almost involuntarily, advanced to her, and addressed
her.
Oh, yes; he addresses her! She looks down, and smiles. Paolo leaves them
to themselves, sauntering off with a devil-me-carish air. Fillide speaks
now, and looks up at the scholar’s face with arch invitation. He shakes
his head; Fillide laughs, and her laugh is silvery. She points to a gay
mountaineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon feel
jealous? Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more? He
offers his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry.
What! is it so, indeed! They whirl into the noisy circle of the
revellers. Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, and
breaking thy brains on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide bounds
along! How her lithesome waist supples itself to thy circling arm!
Tara-ra-tara, ta-tara, rara-ra! What the devil is in the measure that
it makes the blood course like quicksilver through the veins? Was there
ever a pair of eyes like Fillide’s? Nothing of the cold stars there! Yet
how they twinkle and laugh at thee! And that rosy, pursed-up mouth that
will answer so sparingly to thy flatteries, as if words were a waste of
time, and kisses were their proper language. Oh, pupil of Mejnour! Oh,
would-be Rosicrucian, Platonist, Magian, I know not what! I am ashamed
of thee! What, in the names of Averroes and Burri and Agrippa and Hermes
have become of thy austere contemplations? Was it for this thou didst
resign Viola? I don’t think thou hast the smallest recollection of the
elixir or the Cabala. Take care! What are you about, sir? Why do you
clasp that small hand locked within your own? Why do you--Tara-rara
tara-ra tara-rara-ra, rarara, ta-ra, a-ra! Keep your eyes off those
slender ankles and that crimson bodice! Tara-rara-ra! There they go
again! And now they rest under the broad trees. The revel has whirled
away from them. They hear--or do they not hear--the laughter at the
distance? They see--or if they have their eyes about them, they SHOULD
see--couple after couple gliding by, love-talking and love-looking. But
I will lay a wager, as they sit under that tree, and the round sun goes
down behind the mountains, that they see or hear very little except
themselves.
“Hollo, Signor Excellency! and how does your partner please you? Come
and join our feast, loiterers; one dances more merrily after wine.”
Down goes the round sun; up comes the autumn moon. Tara, tara, rarara,
rarara, tarara-ra! Dancing again; is it a dance, or some movement gayer,
noisier, wilder still? How they glance and gleam through the night
shadows, those flitting forms! What confusion!--what order! Ha, that is
the Tarantula dance; Maestro Paolo foots it bravely! Diavolo, what
fury! the Tarantula has stung them all. Dance or die; it is fury,--the
Corybantes, the Maenads, the--Ho, ho! more wine! the Sabbat of the
Witches at Benevento is a joke to this! From cloud to cloud wanders the
moon,--now shining, now lost. Dimness while the maiden blushes; light
when the maiden smiles.
“Fillide, thou art an enchantress!”
“Buona notte, Excellency; you will see me again!”
“Ah, young man,” said an old, decrepit, hollow-eyed octogenarian,
leaning on his staff, “make the best of your youth. I, too, once had
a Fillide! I was handsomer than you then! Alas! if we could be always
young!”
“Always young!” Glyndon started, as he turned his gaze from the fresh,
fair, rosy face of the girl, and saw the eyes dropping rheum, the yellow
wrinkled skin, the tottering frame of the old man.
“Ha, ha!” said the decrepit creature, hobbling near to him, and with a
malicious laugh. “Yet I, too, was young once! Give me a baioccho for a
glass of aqua vitae!”
Tara, rara, ra-rara, tara, rara-ra! There dances Youth! Wrap thy rags
round thee, and totter off, Old Age!