THE WITCHES' SABBATH--1494
'Heaven above--heaven below,
Stars above--stars below,
All which is over man--under him shows;
Glory to him who the riddle readeth!'
TABULA SMARAGDINA.
I
In an obscure outskirt of Milan, near the Porta Vercellina, the Customs
House, and the canal called the Acqua Cantarana, stood an old house,
very solitary, and remarkable for the smoke which day and night ascended
in large spirals from an immense, winding, and blackened chimney. Here
dwelt Monna Sidonia, the wise woman. The upper floor she hired to Messer
Galeotto Sacrobosco, an alchemist; and in the lower she lived herself
with Cassandra, his niece, the young daughter of Luigi Sacrobosco, a
celebrated traveller, who had traversed Greece, the islands of the
Archipelago, Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt, in the quest for specimens of
ancient art. He possessed himself of all that came to hand: a Greek
marble, or a trifle of amber, a sham inscription from the tomb of Homer,
a new tragedy by Euripides, or a peroration by Demosthenes. Some thought
him a great man, but others dubbed him an impostor; and not a few
believed him crazy. His imagination was so enthralled by pagan
recollections that though to the last a good Catholic, he prayed to the
Olympian Hermes, and regarded Wednesday (_Mercoledi_) his day, as one
singularly propitious for mercantile ventures. No toil, no privations,
daunted him in his enterprises. On one occasion, having already put out
ten leagues to sea, he returned to copy an inscription of which
accident had informed him. Having lost his collection in a shipwreck,
his hair turned white with grief. If asked why he so plagued himself and
spent his days in such sore labour, he always replied:--
'I desire to raise the dead.'
In the little town of Mistra, near the ruins of Lacedæmon, he met a
maiden of extraordinary beauty, resembling the statues of Artemis. She
was the daughter of a poor and drunken village deacon; Luigi married her
and took her to Italy with a new copy of the Iliad, the fragments of a
Hecate, and the shreds of an earthenware amphora.
To the pair was born a daughter, whom they called Cassandra, Luigi being
at that time impassioned for Æschylean tragedy. The wife died, and the
father was off on his wanderings, so the child was left to the care of
Demetrius Chalcondylas, a learned Greek from Constantinople who had been
brought to Milan by the Sforzas. This old man of seventy, a
double-faced, cunning, and secretive person, pretended a vast zeal for
the Catholic Church; in his heart, however, like Cardinal Bessarione,
and most of the immigrant Greeks, he was a disciple of the last of the
masters of the ancient wisdom, Gemistus Pletho, the Replete with
Learning, the neoplatonist who had died forty years before at Mistra,
where Luigi had become enamoured of his Artemis. This man had been
affirmed by his disciples to be a re-incarnation of the illustrious
Plato himself; the theologians, on the contrary, maintained that he had
revived the anti-Christian heresies of Julian the Apostate, and that he
was to be fought not by argument and controversy, but by the Inquisition
and the stake. Chiefly they accused him on account of certain words
uttered to his disciples three years before his death. He had said: 'But
a few years after I shall have died, one sole Truth shall reign over all
peoples and nations, and men shall unite in the single faith' (_unam
eandemque religionem universum orbem esse suscepturam_). Being
questioned whether he meant the faith of Christ or of Mahomet, he
answered: 'Neither the one nor yet the other, but a faith which in
naught shall differ from the ancient paganism' (_neutram, inquit, sed a
gentilitate non differentem_).
Cassandra was bred by Chalcondylas in strict though feigned Christian
piety. Overhearing, however, much neoplatonic talk, and not
understanding its philosophical subtleties, the maid wove for herself a
fantastic dream of the coming Resurrection of the Gods. On her breast
she wore a talisman against fever, a present from her father; it was a
gem representing Dionysus as a naked youth, with thyrsus and
vine-branch, a rearing panther trying to lick the grapes in his hand.
Sometimes, when quite alone, she would hold her amethyst up to the sun
and gaze into its purple depths until her head swam, and she saw the god
in a vision, living, and ever young and adorable.
Messer Luigi ruined himself at last in his quest for treasures, and died
miserably of a putrid fever in a shepherd's hut beside the ruins of a
Phoenician temple, which he had himself discovered. Soon after,
Galeotto, his brother, who also had wandered for many years in pursuit,
not of antiquities but of the philosopher's stone, came to Milan,
established himself in the little house by the Vercellina gate, and took
his niece to live with him.
She still, however, frequented the house of Chalcondylas, and thither
came Giovanni Boltraffio to execute some copying for Messer Giorgio
Merula.
Encountering Cassandra again, Giovanni remembered the talk he had
overheard between her and Zoroastro about the poisoned tree, and he
shuddered. Many told him the maiden was a sorceress, but her charm was
not to be resisted, and almost every evening when his work was done he
sought her in the lonely cottage by the Vercellina gate. They sat on a
hillock together above the dark and silently swift waters of the canal,
not far from the sluice gates near the convent of St. Radegonda. A
scarce visible path, tangled with elder-bushes, wormwood, and nettles,
led to the little hillock; no one ever passed that way, and there the
two met and loitered and talked long together.
II
It was a sultry evening; at rare intervals a gust came flying, raising
the white dust and rustling in the leaves. It passed by, leaving the
stillness stiller than before. Nothing was heard but the dull, seemingly
subterranean growl of distant thunder, and against this low,
threatening, and solemn roar, the broken shrillness of a lute and the
drunken song of the customs-collector celebrating the Sunday feast in
the neighbouring tavern. At times a flash broke across the clouds, and
then for a moment the little house with the brick chimney, and the black
smoke of the alchemist's furnace, the long lean sacristan fishing from
the bank, the straight canal with the rows of larches and willows, the
flat-bottomed barges from the Lago Maggiore bringing white marble for
the cathedral, and drawn by sorry horses, their loose towing-ropes and
the long whips of the drivers dipping in the water--all stood out sharp
and clear against the prevailing blackness. All was again wrapped in
gloom, save for the alchemist's fire always vividly glowing. It was
reflected in the Cantarana, whence came noisome odours of stagnant
backwaters, rotting fern-leaves, tar, and decaying wood.
Giovanni and Cassandra were in their accustomed haunt.
''Tis tedious!' cried the girl, stretching herself wearily and snapping
her delicate white fingers behind her head; 'every day the same dull
round. To-day as yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day. That same foolish
sacristan catching nothing; the same filthy smoke from Messer Galeotto's
workshop, where he, too, eternally seeks what he will never find; the
same boats towed by the same hateful horses; the same cracked lute! Ah,
if it would but change! If the French would come and rid us of Milan! if
the sacristan would catch a fish, or my uncle find some gold. _Dio Mio!_
what weariness!'
'I know!' cried Giovanni. 'I also at times find life so wearisome that I
am fain to die. But Fra Benedetto taught me a prayer very prevalent
against the demon of discontent. Shall I recite it for you?'
'Nay, Giovanni. It is long since I have been able to pray to your God.'
'My God? What god is there but my God? the only God?'
A quick flash, like the lightning of the storm, illumined her face;
never had it seemed to him so mystic, so unearthly, so fair. She was
silent for a time, passing her hand over the dark aureole of her hair.
'Hearken, friend. It was long ago--yonder--in my native land. I was
scarce more than a babe. My father had taken me with him on a journey.
We visited the ruins of an ancient temple. They stood high on a
promontory; the sea was around us and the screaming gulls; the waves
were breaking endlessly on black rocks, sharp as needles, and covered
with salt foam, which rose and fell, running off the sharp points of the
rocks in a seething stream. He found a half-faded inscription on the
fragment of a marble slab. I sat long alone on the temple steps,
listening to the sea and breathing in its freshness, mixed with the
scent of the sea-herbs. Then I went into the abandoned shrine. The
columns were yellow, but scarce crumbled by time, and between them the
azure sky seemed dark. There were poppies growing in the crevices
between the stones--pink poppies--the poppies of Greece! It was quite
still, but for that muffled roar of the waves which filled the temple as
if with the voices of prayer. And I fell on my knees and prayed to the
god who had once been enshrined there--unknown and now rejected by men.
I kissed his marble steps, and I wept and loved him because no one on
earth loved him any more, nor prayed to him--because he was dead. Never
since have I prayed so fervently! And that temple--it was the temple of
DIONYSUS!'
'By the love of God, Cassandra, what are you saying? This Dionysus, whom
you call God, exists not, nor did exist.'
'Did he not?' cried the girl, scornfully; 'then why teach the holy
fathers, whom you reverence, that the gods, banished in the days of the
conquering Jesus, were changed into most potent demons? How could
Giorgio da Novara, the great astronomer, learn by exact observation that
the conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn produced the teaching of Moses;
with Mars, that of the Chaldeans; with Venus, that of Mahomet; with
Mercury, that of Christ; and that conjunction with the moon--future for
him--would bring the teaching of Antichrist and the Resurrection of the
Gods?'
The storm was drawing nearer, the thunder roared louder, the flashes
grew ever brighter, heavy clouds were spreading overhead, yet still the
broken lute sobbed forth its insistent melody on the threatening air.
'O madonna!' cried Boltraffio clasping his hands, 'do you not see that
'tis the devil who is tempting you that he may lure you to the abyss!
Eternal curses upon him!'
The girl turned, laid both hands on his shoulders, and said:--
'And does he not tempt you also? Why did you leave your sainted
teacher, Benedetto? Why did you enter into the school of the impious
Leonardo? What brings you hither unto me? Do you not know I am a witch?
Are you not affrighted lest you lose your soul talking here with me?'
'The strength of the Lord defend us!' he stammered, shuddering.
She silently drew near him, fixing him with her wondrous eyes. At that
moment the lightning rent the cloud and flashed on her pale face. Was
she the goddess who had risen before Giovanni's awestruck gaze from her
tomb on the Hill of the Mill?
''Tis she!' he thought in terror. 'She has found me again, the White
She-devil!'
He would have risen, but his forces seemed to have left him. He felt the
girl's hot breath on his cheek, and listened as she whispered:--
'Will you that I reveal everything to you? Will you fly with me thither
where He is? Ah, it is good there! _There_ is no weariness; nothing
maketh ashamed. There all things are permitted as in Paradise!'
A cold sweat broke out on Giovanni's brow, but curiosity impelled him,
and in a low voice he asked:--
'Where?'
'_Al Sabbato!_' she answered with passionate languor, her lips almost
touching his cheek.
A peal of thunder, now quite overhead, shook earth and sky, rolling
through the air in majestic reverberation, like the laugh of unseen
giants. Then slowly it died away into the great silence.
And then rang out the melancholy peaceful sound of the convent bell, the
evening Angelus. Giovanni made the sign of the cross.
'It is late,' said the girl rising; 'I must return homeward. Do you see
those torches, there on the road? 'Tis the duke coming to visit Messer
Galeotto, who is to show him an interesting experiment with lead. He
thinks it can be turned into gold.'
True it was, the tramping of hoofs was heard coming from the Porta
Vercellina. Cassandra lingered for a moment, then darted through the
tangled elder-bushes and disappeared.
III
Messer Galeotto had consumed his whole life in the search for the
philosopher's stone. Having finished his medical course at Bologna
University, he had entered as _famulus_ the service of Count Bernardo
Trevisani, renowned as an adept in the occult sciences. Afterwards, for
fifteen years, he had sought the transforming mercury in all possible
substances; in volatile salts, bismuth, arsenic, human blood, gall, and
hair, in animals and plants. In this fashion the six thousand ducats of
his patrimony had been dissipated in the smoke which ascended from his
chimney. He must needs live on the wealth of others. Money-lenders cast
him into prison; he escaped; and for eight years experimented with eggs,
destroying some twenty thousand. Next he studied copperas with Maestro
Enrico, the papal pronotary, fell ill from the poisonous fumes, lay in
bed for fourteen months, and, deserted by every one, came near dying.
Having endured all humiliations and persecutions, starvation, beggary,
contempt, and even judicial torture, he wandered as an itinerant
artificer through France, Spain, the countries of the Empire, Holland,
Greece, Persia, Palestine, Northern Africa. At last, old and worn out,
but not yet disillusioned, he returned to Lombardy, where Il Moro
promised him the office of court alchemist.
At Milan, in the lonely cottage by the Porta Vercellina, he had set up
his laboratory. It was a large chamber, in the middle of which was a
clumsy stove of fire-proof earth divided into compartments, and fitted
with valves, crucibles and bellows. In one corner of the room was a pile
of refuse. The working-table was heaped with every sort of complicated
apparatus, cubes, rectifiers, receivers, retorts, funnels, mortars,
test-tubes, bottles, baths. A pungent smell was given off by poisonous
alkalis and acids. Here the seven gods of Olympus, the seven heavenly
planets, a whole occult and mystic universe had its counterpart in
metal: the sun in gold, the moon in silver, Venus in brass, Mars, iron,
Saturn, lead, Jupiter, tin, and Mercury in quicksilver. Here were
substances with barbaric names which struck terror into the profane.
Here were wolf's milk, the iron of Achilles, anacardines, asterites
(clear-shining stones, having in the midst an image of a full moon),
androgyna, and rhaponticum, aristolochia or hart-wort (for giving ease
in childbirth); and a priceless drop of the blood of a lion which had
cost years to obtain, a gem, red as a ruby, which cures all diseases and
blesses with eternal youth.
At his table sat the alchemist, meagre, small, wrinkled as an old
mushroom, but still alert and tireless. His head supported on his two
hands, Messer Galeotto was gazing intently at a retort, in which with
low noise and bubbling was burning oil of Venus, a clear green fluid.
The candle that burned by the philosopher's side sent an emerald light
through the retort on an ancient parchment folio, a work by the Arab
chemist Djabira Abdallah.
Hearing voices and footsteps on the stair, Galeotto rose, threw a glance
round the laboratory to make sure all was ready, signed to his silent
_famulus_ to throw fuel on the furnace, and sallied forth to meet his
guests.
IV
They were a merry company of knights and dames, just risen from supper
and Malvoisie. Leonardo was there, and Marliani, the court physician, a
man profoundly versed in alchemy. The ladies entered, and the quiet cell
of the student was filled with perfumes, with the rustle of silk, with
light chatter and laughter like the hum of birds. One damsel overturned
a retort with her hanging sleeve, another meddling with a piece of iron
slag cut her dainty glove, another spilt the mercury on the table and
screamed with delight on seeing the living silver drops.
'And shall we really see Messer Satan in the fire at the moment of the
lead's conversion?' asked Madonna Filiberta of her Spanish lover; 'is it
not a sin to assist at such experiments?'
The alchemist whispered in Leonardo's ear:--
'Believe me, Messere, I hold myself much honoured by your visit.' And he
warmly clasped his hand, adding before Leonardo could respond:--
'Oh, I know, I know! 'Tis a secret from the crowd; but we understand
each other, do we not?'
Then with a smile of great affability he said aloud:--
'With licence from my most illustrious protector, the renowned duke, and
of all these loveliest ladies, I will adventure, now to exhibit the
divine metamorphosis. Will you all condescend to lend me your honourable
attention?'
First he showed his crucible, a melting-pot with thick sides of
fire-proof clay; he begged each one to examine it, and tap it, and
convince himself there was no concealed deception, while he animadverted
on the frauds of pretended philosophers who were wont to have vessels
with false bottoms in which gold had been placed, not made. He also
craved inspection of the pewter, the fuel, the bellows, and all else, to
prove his good faith. Then the lead was chopped into small pieces and
consigned to the crucible, which was then put on the hottest place of
the furnace. The silent, cross-eyed _famulus_--so pale, corpse-like and
surly, that one of the ladies near fainted, believing him the expected
Messer Satan--began to work a huge pair of bellows, and the fire quickly
leaped into flame. Galeotto meanwhile entertained his visitors with
conversation, and awakened general mirth by calling his science of
alchemy _casta meretrix_, who had many lovers but deluded them all,
offered easy conquest to everybody, but had so far yielded to the
embraces of none.
Luigi Marliani, the court physician, a fat, taciturn, gloomy man with a
dignified and intelligent face, lost patience with this chatter, and
wiping his brow, cried out:--
'Messer Galeotto, methinks 'tis time for business. Your metal is already
bubbling.'
Galeotto opened a little blue paper packet which contained a bright
yellow powder, viscous and sparkling, like highly polished glass. It had
a strong smell of burnt sea-salt. This was the momentous tincture, the
long-sought, priceless jewel of alchemy, the wonder-working _lapis
philosophorum_.
With the point of a knife he detached a speck of the powder no larger
than a turnip-seed, wrapped it in a ball of bees-wax, and tossed it into
the boiling pewter.
'And what do you consider the strength of that solution?' asked
Marliani.
'One to two thousand eight hundred and twenty of the metal to be
converted,' replied Galeotto. 'Naturally my solution is not yet
perfected, but shortly, I hope, the figures will be one to a million.
Then it will suffice to take of it the weight of a grain of millet, to
dissolve it in a barrel of water containing the parings of a hazelnut;
and finally, to sprinkle your vines therewith; in result you will have
your vintage in May. _Mare tingerem si Mercurius esset._ I would turn
the sea into gold had I competency in quicksilver.'
Marliani turned away with a shrug. This bombast infuriated him, and he
hinted the impossibility of such transformations by arguments supported
by Aristotle.
'Have patience, _domine magister_,' said Galeotto with a smile; 'in a
little space I will propound to you such a syllogism as not all your
logic can confute.'
Therewith he threw a handful of white powder in the fire. Clouds of
thick smoke filled the laboratory. Hissing and crackling, up leapt a
many-coloured flame, changing like a rainbow from blue to green, from
red to yellow. The spectators were alarmed, and Filiberta afterward
swore that at the instant the flame was purple, she saw in it the face
of the Devil. The alchemist with a long hooked iron raised the lid of
the crucible. The metal, white-hot, bubbled and hissed and gurgled. Then
the lid was replaced; the bellows soughed and whistled, and when ten
minutes later a thin iron rod was dipped into the molten liquid, all saw
hanging on its end a yellow drop.
'Ready!' cried the alchemist.
The pot was now removed from the furnace and allowed to cool. Then
before the astounded spectators, there fell from it, sparkling and
resounding on the earthen floor, a bar of gold. The alchemist pointed
dramatically, and exclaimed:--
'_Solve mihi hunc syllogismum!_'
'Unheard of! Incredible! Against all the laws of nature and of logic!'
murmured Marliani in stupefaction.
The face of Galeotto was white, his eyes glowed with the fire of
inspiration, and looking up to heaven, he cried:--
'_Laudetur Deus in æternum!_ Praise God in eternity who deigns to give
part of his infinite power unto us, the most abject of his creatures.'
The gold was tested with sulphuric acid. It proved to be purer than the
finest of Hungary or Arabia. The company pressed about the venerable
philosopher, congratulating him, and wringing his hands. Il Moro took
him aside.
'You serve me in fidelity and truth, Messer Galeotto?'
'I would I had more lives than one, that I might dedicate them all to
your Excellency,' replied the alchemist.
'Then, Galeotto, beware lest any of the other princes----'
'_Illustrissimo_, if there be one of them who shall get even a scent of
it, have me hanged for a hound.' And after a pause he added, bowing very
low, 'I would pray of your Excellency----'
'What? Again?'
'God is my witness, 'tis for the last time.'
'How much?'
'Five thousand ducats.'
The duke reflected, reduced the sum by a thousand, and promised. It was
now late; Madonna Beatrice might be anxious; the company hastened to
take their leave, each one receiving from the alchemist a fragment of
the new-made gold. Only Leonardo remained behind.
V
When they were alone Galeotto said to him, 'Well, Master, what think you
of my experiment?'
'The gold was in the rods,' replied Leonardo dryly.
'What rods? What do you mean, Sir?'
'The rods with which you stirred the molten metal. I saw all.'
'Did you not yourself examine all my utensils?'
'These rods were not those we examined.'
'Not those! Master, permit me----'
'Have I not told you I saw everything?' repeated Leonardo with a smile.
'Be not obstinate, Galeotto. The gold was concealed in hollow rods
tipped with wood. When the wooden ends were consumed in the molten mass,
the gold fell into it.'
The old man's legs shook; over his face spread a look at once abject and
pathetic. Leonardo touched him on the shoulder.
'Fear not, Messer Galeotto, none shall know. I am no tale-bearer.'
The impostor seized his hand feverishly and cried:--
'You will not betray me?'
'No. I wish you no ill. But, Messer Galeotto, why these frauds?'
'Oh, Messer Leonardo,' cried the other, and immediately the boundless
despair in his eyes was transfigured by a flash of hope, 'I swear to you
by God, that if I seem to have practised deception, 'tis but for the
welfare of the duchy, for the triumph of science, and because my
deception shall endure but a brief space. For, Messer Leonardo, truth it
is that I have verily found the philosopher's stone. I do not assert
that I have it yet in my possession, but I know that it already exists.
That is to say, it as good as exists; for I have found the way, and you
know that the way is everything. Three or four more experiments, and lo!
it is accomplished. What was I to do, Messere? Is not the discovery of
so grand a truth justification for so small a deception?'
'Nay, Messer Galeotto,' replied Leonardo gravely, 'to what purpose would
you play with me at blind-man's-buff? You know right well, even as I
know, that the transmutation of metals is a baseless dream: that there
is no philosopher's stone, nor can be one. Alchemy, necromancy, black
magic, all these sciences not founded on mathematics and exact
experiment are delusion or deception--flags of charlatans, swelled but
by the bellying of the wind, after which runs the gaping herd,
applauding it knows not what.'
His eyes round and bright with astonishment, the alchemist hung on the
lips of the master, and when Leonardo stopped he did not reply.
Presently, however, he nodded his head intelligently and winked.
'Ah! ah! Messer Leonardo, but this will not serve. Am I not of the
initiated? And do we not all know that thou thyself art the prince of
alchemists, the possessor of the most recondite mysteries of nature, the
new Hermes Trismegistus, the new Prometheus.'
'I?'
'Thou thyself, Master.'
'Call you this jesting, Messer Galeotto?'
'Contrariwise. 'Tis you, Messer Leonardo, who would jest. How astute and
impenetrable you are! In my time I have seen many who were jealous of
their secrets of science, never an one like you.'
Leonardo looked at him searchingly; he strove in vain to be angry. He
smiled involuntarily.
'Do you seriously believe in these arts?' he asked.
'Do I believe in them? Messere, if God Himself came to me hither at this
moment and said to me: "Galeotto, there is no philosopher's stone," I
should answer him: "Lord, even as it is true that thou hast created me,
so is it true that there is that stone, and that I shall find it."'
After this Leonardo disputed no more, but listened with interest to the
speculations of the alchemist. Presently the talk swerved to the
possible assistance of the Devil in the occult sciences; the old man,
however, would none of this. He declared the Devil to be the weakest,
the most miserable, the most impotent of all the creations of God; he
himself had faith only in the human mind, and believed that to science
all things were possible.
Then suddenly, without any consciousness of an abrupt transition, and as
if playing with some agreeable and diverting recollection, he asked
whether Messer Leonardo had frequent apparitions of elemental spirits.
And when his interlocutor confessed to never having seen any, Galeotto
again refused to believe him; and with relish told how the salamander
has a body a finger and a half in length, spotted, thin, and harsh,
while the sylphide is blue as the sky, transparent, and ethereal. He
spoke also of the nymphs and undines that live in the rivers and the
sea; of the gnomes, pygmies, and underground dwarfs; of the durgans and
dryads, dwellers in trees, and the rare spirits that inhabit precious
stones.
'I cannot convey to you,' concluded Galeotto, 'how beneficent and
exquisite are these genii!'
'Why, then,' asked Leonardo, 'do they appear only to the elect?'
'Would you have them appear to all? They dread vulgar persons,
libertines, materialists, drunkards, and gluttons. They affect the
innocent, the childlike, simple ones. They live only where there is no
malice nor cunning. Timid and fearful as gazelles they take refuge from
human eyes in their native elements.'
And a smile of infinite tenderness illuminated the old man's face, as if
at the memory of long-ago dreams.
'What a charming old fool!' thought Leonardo, no longer scornful, but
ready to simulate participation in any scientific absurdity to please
this man, whom now he treated with affectionate consideration, like a
child.
They parted as friends; and the moment he was alone the alchemist
plunged into new experiments with the oil of Venus.
VI
All this time Monna Sidonia, the mistress of the house, and Cassandra
sat before an immense open fireplace in the room below Messer Galeotto's
laboratory. Their supper of coarse vegetables was stewing on the hearth,
and the old woman with unvarying motion of her wrinkled finger spun the
linen thread with her distaff. Cassandra watched her idly, and
thought:--
'Always the same thing. To-day as yesterday, to-morrow as to-day. The
cricket chirps, the mouse squeaks, the spindle hums. There is a
crackling in the dry sticks on the hearth, and I smell turnips and
garlic.'
Presently the old woman began prating in her usual way; saying that she
was not rich, whatever the people might say about her money-pot buried
in the vineyard. That was all an idle tale. The truth was, she was
ruining herself for Galeotto and his niece. She had too much heart, that
was it, or she would never keep them, the two of them hanging on to her
neck like a pair of millstones. And of a truth Cassandra was no longer a
child, and ought to be thinking of the future; her uncle would die some
day or other, and leave her as poor as Job. She might at least get a
husband. She might at least accept the hand of the rich horsedealer at
Abbiategrasso, who had the folly to run after her. He was not young, but
he was a staid, God-fearing man without any bees in his bonnet; had a
good business and a mill, and an olive-press. What more did she want?
Cassandra listened in silence; but tedium sat on her like a nightmare;
seized her by the throat and suffocated her. She felt an irresistible
longing to break out into rebellious weeping and rage.
Monna Sidonia fished in the pot for a succulent turnip, mashed it up
with grape-juice, and munched with apparent appetite; but the young
girl, submissive though with growing desperation, stretched herself and
interlaced her fingers behind her hair. After supper the old woman, like
a wearied Fate, nodded over her distaff, and her talk died down into
disconnected mumbling. Then Cassandra drew forth her talisman, and the
firelight shining through its purple depths, she studied the figure of
the naked god, and her heart filled with love for the beautiful Hellenic
deities.
She sighed heavily, concealed her amulet, and said diffidently:--
'Monna Sidonia! to-night at Barco di Ferrara and at Benevento there is
the gathering. Aunt! good kind aunt! we will not dance. We will go only
to see. We will come back at once. I will do whatever you wish; I will
even try to get a present out of the horsedealer--only be kind for once.
Let us fly! let us fly together--now--at once!'
And the girl's eyes sparkled hungrily. The beldame surveyed her
curiously; then her blue and withered lips parted in a smile which
displayed her one tusk-like yellow tooth, and her face lit up with a
hideous joy.
'Ah, you wish it? Very much, do you? You have caught the taste? Was
there ever such a girl? For my part, I am ready to fly every night. But
see you here, Cassandra, you take the sin on your own soul. To-night I
wasn't even thinking of it. I'll do it only for your sake, out of my too
great goodness of heart.'
Without haste the old woman went about the room, shut the shutters,
stuffed rags into the chinks, locked all doors, poured water on the
fire, lighted a black candle endued with magical properties, and from an
iron locker took an earthen vessel containing a pungent ointment. She
made show of being deliberate and sensible, but her hands shook as
though she were drunk, her sunken eyes were at times turbid, at times
they sparkled like coals. Cassandra had dragged the two great troughs
used for the kneading of dough into the centre of the room.
Now Monna Sidonia stripped herself, and sitting astride of a broomstick
on one of the troughs, she smeared herself with the ointment which she
had taken from the locker. A hideous odour filled the room; the
medicament, infallible for making witches fly, was composed of poisonous
lettuce, hemlock, nightshade, mandragora, poppy, henbane, serpent's
blood, and the fat of unchristened children.
Cassandra could not look at the hag's deformity. At the eleventh hour
she recoiled.
'What are you about?' grumbled the crone; 'are you going to leave me to
fly alone? Come--make haste. Take your clothes off.'
'All right. But, Monna Sidonia, put the light out. I can't do it in the
light.'
'Bah! what modesty! Never mind, there'll be no modesty on the mountain.'
She blew out the candle, making the sign of the cross with the left hand
for the pleasing of the devil, her master.
Then the girl rapidly undressed, knelt in the trough, and smeared
herself.
In the darkness the old woman was heard mumbling the senseless
disconnected words of an incantation.
'Emen Hetan, Emen Hetan, Palu, Baalberi, Astaroth, help us. Agora,
Agora, Patrisa, come and help us!'
Cassandra eagerly snuffed the strong odour of the unguent. Her skin
burned; her head swam; delicious thrills ran down her back. Red and
green interlacing circles swam before her eyes, she heard the abandoned
stridulous voice of Monna Sidonia as if from afar.
'Garr-r! Garr-r-r! Up! Up! Don't knock your head! We fly! We fly!'
VII
Forth from the chimney-top flew Cassandra astride on the soft hide of a
black goat. Ravished, panting, with exaltation filling her soul, she
screamed like a young swift, plunging for the first time through the
blue air.
'Garr-r! Up! Up! We fly! We fly!'
The deformed and withered body of Aunt Sidonia flew beside her on a
broomstick; her thin hair streaming in the blast.
'To the north! To the north!' yelled the hag, managing her broomstick
like a horse.
Cassandra burst into peals of laughter, remembering poor Messer Leonardo
and his cumbrous mechanism.
Now she ascended, and the black clouds rolled together beneath her; now
they burned blue in the flashes of jagged lightning. But above the
clouds the sky was clear. A full moon shone, huge and round as a
millstone, and so near she could touch it with her hand. Affrighted, she
guided the goat downwards again, and he plunged with her headlong into
the void.
'Devil of a wench, you'll break your neck,' screamed Sidonia.
Now they were skimming so close to the ground that they brushed the
rustling meadow-grasses; will-o'-the-wisps guided their course past old
tree-trunks gleaming with rottenness; while the owl, the bittern, and
the goatsucker mourned plaintively among the reeds.
Presently they flew across the summits of the Alps, their icy spars
glittering in the moonshine; and again they dropped to the surface of
the sea. Cassandra, scooping water in her hand, tossed it in the air,
and rejoiced in the sapphire splashes.
Momently their pace increased, and they came up with and distanced
fellow-travellers; a sorcerer with long grey hair, in a tub; an
ecclesiastic on a muck-rake, red, gorbellied, jovial as Silenus himself;
a golden-haired, blue-eyed lass on a broom, a young and red-haired
vampire on a grunting porker, and a hundred others.
'Whence come you, little sister?' cried Sidonia, and twenty voices
answered her.
'From Candia! From the Isles of Greece! From Valenza! From the Brocken!
From Mirandola, Benevento, from the caves and the fjords!'
'Whither go ye?'
'To Biterne! To Biterne! For the marriage of the great goat, the Buck of
Biterne. Fly! Fly! Haste to the supper.' And they passed over the dreary
plain like a cloud of rooks on a whirlwind. The moon shone purple, and
against it in the distance gleamed the cross upon a village church. The
vampire hurled herself against it, tore away the cross and the great
bell, casting them far off into the swamp, where they sank with a
despairing clang. The vampire barked like a joyous dog, and the
flaxen-headed lass on the cantering broomstick clapped her little hands
with glee.
VIII
The moon was now hidden by the clouds. Torches flared with flames of
green and blue, and upon the chalky plateau the black shadows of the
dancing witches spread and wheeled and interlaced and disentwined.
'Garr-r! Garr-r! 'Tis the Sabbath! 'Tis the Sabbath! From right to left!
From right to left!'
They flew and they danced in their endless thousands like the withered
and perishing autumn leaves. In their midst sat Hircus Nocturnus, the
great he-goat, enthroned upon the mountain.
'Garr-r! Garr-r-r. Praise to the great Becco Notturno! The Buck of
Biterne! The Buck of Biterne! Our wars are ended! Rejoice ye and
rejoice!'
There was a screeching of pipes made of dead men's bones; the drum,
stretched with the skin of the hanged, was beaten with the tail of a
wolf. A loathsome stew was boiling in a vast cauldron, not seasoned with
salt, for salt is abhorrent to the lord of that place.
Black were-cats were there dancing, lustful and emerald-eyed; slender
maidens white as lilies; a shapeless capering incubus, grey as a spider;
shuddering nuns; on a low bank, a white-bodied, plump, gigantic witch,
with a stupid and good-natured face, was suckling two newly-hatched
demons, already greedy and malicious. Three-year-old children, not yet
admitted to the revelry, were feeding herds of toads, dressed as
cardinals, with the sacred Host in their claws.
Sidonia and Cassandra joined the dance which sucked them in and whirled
them away like a howling storm.
'Garr-r-r! from right to left! From right to left!'
Long wet whiskers like those of a walrus swept Cassandra's neck; a thin
winding tail tickled her face, she was impudently pinched and bitten,
hateful endearments were whispered in her ears. She made no resistance;
the wilder the merrier; the more shameless the more intoxicating.
Suddenly petrifaction fell on the assembly; all voices were hushed, all
movement was arrested. From the black throne, surrounded by terror,
where sat the great Unknown, came a dull hoarse roar, like the growl of
an earthquake.
'Receive you my gifts! To the weak, my strength; my pride to the humble;
to the poor-spirited, my wisdom; to the afflicted, my joy. Receive my
gifts!'
Then an old man of venerable aspect, his grey beard flowing--one of the
fathers of the Holy Inquisition, at the same time patriarch of the
sorcerers, and celebrant of the Black Mass, chanted in solemn tones:--
'_Sanctificetur nomen tuum per universum mundum et libera nos ab omni
malo!_ Be in awe, ye faithful ones, and fall prostrate!'
They knelt, falling on their knees with a crash, and as from one voice
resounded the Sorcerer's Confession:--
'_Credo in Deum patrem Luciferum, qui creavit coelum et terram. Et in
filium suum Beelzebub._'
When the last sounds had died away, and there was renewed stillness, the
same voice of the Unknown, deafening as an earthquake cried:--
'Bring hither my bride--my stainless dove!'
And the old man with the flowing beard inquired:--
'What is the name of thy bride, thy stainless dove?'
'Madonna Cassandra! Madonna Cassandra!' roared the great voice.
Hearing the pronouncement of her name, the girl's blood froze in her
veins. Her hair stood erect.
'Madonna Cassandra! Cassandra!' rang the cry from the crowd. 'Where
hideth she? Where is our sovereign? _Ave Arcisponsa Cassandra!_'
She hid her face and would have fled; but bony fingers, claws, antennæ,
and probosces, and the hairy legs of spiders seized her; and dragged her
trembling before the throne. The rank odour of a goat, and a chill as of
death smote her; she closed her eyes in dread. Then he upon the throne
cried: 'Come!'
Her head hanging, she saw at her feet a fiery cross gleaming through the
darkness. She made a supreme effort, took a step forward, and raised her
eyes.
Then a miracle took place.
The goat's skin fell from him as the scales from a sloughing snake; she
was face to face with Dionysus the Olympian; thyrsis and vine-branch in
his hands, a smile of eternal joy upon his lips, the panther at his feet
pawing at the grapes.
And the _Sabbato diabolico_ changed into the divine orgies of Bacchus;
the witches became Mænads, the monstrous demons were kindly goat-footed
Satyrs; the chalk rocks were colonnades of shining marble, lighted by
the sun, and between them in the distance was the purple sea. The
radiant gods of Hellas, surrounded by an aureole of fire, were gathering
in the clouds, and the Satyrs and the Bacchantes, beating their
timbrels, cutting their breasts with knives, squeezing the grape-juice
into goblets of gold, and mingling it with their blood, danced and
circled and sang:--
'Glory to Dionysus! Glory to Dionysus! The gods have risen! Glory to the
eternal gods!'
And Bacchus, the ever young, opened his arms to Cassandra. His voice was
like thunder, shaking earth and sky as he cried:--
'Come hither my bride! my stainless dove!'
And she sank into the god's embrace.
IX
From the distance sang the morning cry of the cock, and a sharp odour of
fog and smoke greeted the nostrils. Slowly through the air came the
sound of a bell, and at this sound the mountain was convulsed. Again the
Mænads became the monstrous hags, the Satyrs or Fauns were demons, and
the beautiful Dionysus resolved once more into the hideous and fetid
Hircus Nocturnus.
'Homewards! Fly! Escape!'
'They have stolen my muck-rake!' the gorbellied ecclesiastic roared
despairingly.
'Hog! return to me!' screamed the red-haired vampire, shivering and
coughing in the mountain damp.
The setting moon once more shone out from behind the clouds, and in the
pallid crimson of her light, the frightened witches, swarm after swarm,
like unclean flies, streamed away from the mountain.
'Garr-r! Garr-r! Up from the depths! Do not knock your heads. Save
yourselves. Fly!'
The Becco Notturno, bleating lamentably, sank through the earth, leaving
the rotten and stifling odour of sulphur. And slow and solemn the church
bells sounded more triumphantly through the purer air.
X
Cassandra returned to herself in the darkened chamber of the little
house by the Porta Vercellina. She was nauseated as if after
drunkenness. Her head was like lead; her body broken with weariness.
The bell of St. Radegonda was tolling heavily and monotonously. Outside
some one was knocking insistently; someone who had already knocked more
than once.
Cassandra listened, and recognised the voice of her suitor, the
horsedealer from Abbiategrasso.
'For the Lord's love, open, Monna Sidonia! Monna Cassandra! Nay, then,
are ye all gone deaf? I am wet through; would ye have me turn back
through this fury of the elements?'
The girl dragged herself to her feet, crept to the shutters, and pulled
out the rags with which her aunt had wedged them close. The dull light
of a wet day streamed into the room, and fell on the naked crone, still
sleeping a deathly sleep on the floor beside the trough, still stained
with the unguent, and snoring profoundly.
Cassandra peeped out. The weather was detestable; the rain descending in
torrents. Through the network of drops she could see the impatient
lover, beside him his little ass, her head dolorously drooping as she
leaned against the shafts of the cart, in which a calf, its feet tied
together, mooed plaintively, stretching forth its muzzle.
The horsedealer getting no answer knocked louder than ever, and
Cassandra waited to see what would happen. At last one of the laboratory
windows opened, and the old alchemist looked out, his face sullen, as it
generally was in the early morning.
'What's all this noise?' he cried; 'have you gone out of your five wits,
you old devil? Go to hell with you! Can't you see we're all asleep? Take
yourself off!'
'Why insult me thus, Messer Galeotto? I have come on an affair of
importance. I bring a present for your exquisite niece--a sucking
calf----'
'Go to the devil, blockhead,' cried Galeotto, 'you and your calf!'
And the shutter was slammed to. The horsedealer stood for a moment
dumbfounded; then, recovering himself, he knocked again, violently, as
if he would smash the door with his fists.
The donkey's head drooped still lower, the rain pouring in streams off
her long ears.
'God! how dull it all is!' murmured Cassandra, closing her eyes. And she
thought of the frenzy of the Sabbath, the transformation of the Becco
Notturno into Dionysus, the resurrection of the old gods, and she asked
herself:--
'Was it reality or dream? In good sooth, 'twas a dream, and this is the
reality! After Sunday always there is--just Monday!'
'Open! open!' yelled the horsedealer, hoarse and desperate. And the
raindrops plashed monotonously in the miry pools, the calf bleated
piteously, and the bell of the neighbouring convent tolled on, with even
and melancholy strokes.