A CONVERSATION LITTLE APPERTAINING TO THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY.--RESEARCHES INTO HUMAN FATE.--THE PREDICTION.
On entering the apartment he found Lucilla seated on a low stool beside
the astrologer. She looked up when she heard his footsteps; but her
countenance seemed so dejected, that he turned involuntarily to that
of Volktman for explanation. Volktman met his gaze with a steadfast and
mournful aspect.
“What has happened?” asked the Englishman: “you seem sad,--you do not
greet me as usual.”
“I have been with the stars,” replied the visionary.
“They seem but poor company,” rejoined the Englishman; “and do not
appear to have much heightened your spirits.”
“Jest not, my friend,” said Volktman; “it was for the loss of thee I
looked sorrowful. I perceive that thou wilt take a journey soon, and
that it will be of no pleasant nature.”
“Indeed!” answered the Englishman, smilingly. “I ask leave to question
the fact: you know better than any man how often, through an error
in our calculations, through haste, even through an over-attention,
astrological predictions are exposed to falsification; and at present I
foresee so little chance of my quitting Rome, that I prefer the earthly
probabilities to the celestial.”
“My schemes are just, and the Heavens wrote their decrees in their
clearest language,” answered the astrologer. “Thou art on the eve of
quitting Rome.”
“On what occasion?”
The astrologer hesitated--the young visitor pressed the question.
“The lord of the fourth house,” said Volktman, reluctantly, “is located
in the eleventh house. Thou knowest to whom the position portends
disaster.”
“My father!” said the Englishman, anxiously, and turning pale; “I think
that position would relate to him.”
“It doth,” said the astrologer, slowly.
“Impossible! I heard from him to-day; he is well--let me see the
figures.”
The young man looked over the mystic hieroglyphics of the art,
inscribed on a paper that was placed before the visionary, with deep and
scrutinising attention. Without bewildering the reader with those words
and figures of weird sound and import which perplex the uninitiated, and
entangle the disciple of astrology, I shall merely observe that there
was one point in which the judgment appeared to admit doubt as to the
signification. The Englishman insisted on the doubt; and a very learned
and edifying debate was carried on between pupil and master, in the heat
of which all recollection of the point in dispute (as is usual in such
cases) evaporated.
“I know not how it is,” said the Englishman, “that I should give any
credence to a faith which (craving your forgiveness) most men out of
Bedlam concur, at this day, in condemning as wholly idle and absurd.
For it may be presumed that men only incline to some unpopular theory
in proportion as it flatters or favours them; and as for this theory of
yours--of ours, if you will--it has foretold me nothing but misfortune.”
“Thy horoscope,” replied the astrologer, “is indeed singular and
ominous: but, like my daughter, the exact minute (within almost a whole
hour) of thy birth seems unknown; and however ingeniously we, following
the ancients, have contrived means for correcting nativities, our
predictions (so long as the exact period of birth is not ascertained)
remain, in my mind, always liable to some uncertainty. Indeed, the
surest method of reducing the supposed time to the true--that of
‘Accidents,’ is but partially given, as in thy case; for, with a
negligence that cannot be too severely blamed or too deeply lamented,
thou hast omitted to mark down, or remember, the days on which
accidents--fevers, broken limbs, &c.--occurred to thee; and this
omission leaves a cloud over the bright chapters of fate----”
“Which,” interrupted the young man, “is so much the happier for me, in
that it allows me some loophole for hope.”
“Yet,” renewed the astrologer, as if resolved to deny his friend any
consolation, “thy character, and the bias of thy habits, as well as the
peculiarities of thy person--nay even the moles upon thy skin--accord
with thy proposed horoscope.”
“Be it so!” said the Englishman, gaily. “You grant me, at least, the
fairest of earthly gifts--the happiness of pleasing that sex which alone
sweetens our human misfortunes. That gift I would sooner have, even
accompanied as it is, than all the benign influences without it.”
“Yet,” said the astrologer, “shalt thou even there be met with
affliction; for Saturn had the power to thwart the star Venus, that was
disposed to favour thee, and evil may be the result of the love thou
inspirest. There is one thing remarkable in our science, which is
especially worthy of notice in thy lot. The ancients, unacquainted with
the star of Herschel, seem also scarcely acquainted with the character
which the influence of that wayward and melancholy orb creates. Thus,
the aspect of Herschel neutralises, in great measure, the boldness and
ambition, and pride of heart, thou wouldst otherwise have drawn from the
felicitous configuration of the stars around the Moon and Mercury at
thy birth. That yearning for something beyond the narrow bounds of the
world, that love for reverie, that passionate romance, yea, thy
very leaning, despite thy worldly sense, to these occult and starry
mysteries;--all are bestowed on thee by this new and potential planet.”
“And hence, I suppose,” said the Englishman, interested (as the
astrologer had declared) in spite of himself, “hence that opposition
in my nature of the worldly and romantic; hence, with you, I am the
dreaming enthusiast; but the instant I regain the living and motley
crowd, I shake off the influence with ease, and become the gay pursuer
of social pleasures.”
“Never _at heart gay,_” muttered the astrologer; “Saturn and Herschel
make not sincere mirth-makers.” The Englishman did not hear or seem to
hear him.
“No,” resumed the young man, musingly, “no! it is true that there is
some counteraction of what, at times, I should have called my natural
bent. Thus, I am bold enough, and covetous of knowledge, and not deaf
to vanity; and yet I have no ambition. The desire to rise seems to
me wholly unalluring: I scorn and contemn it as a weakness. But what
matters it? so much the happier for me if, as you predict, my life
be short. But how, if so unambitious and so quiet of habit, how can I
imagine that my death will be violent as well as premature?”
It was as he spoke that the young Lucilla, who, with fixed eyes and lips
apart, had been drinking in their conversation suddenly rose and left
the room. They were used to her comings in and her goings out without
cause or speech, and continued their conversation.
“Alas!” said the visionary; “can tranquillity of life, or care, or
prudence, preserve us from our destiny? No sign is more deadly, whether
by accident or murder, than that which couples Hyleg with Orion and
Saturn. Yet, thou mayest pass the year in which that danger is foretold
thee; and, beyond that time, peace, honour, good fortune, await thee.
Better to have the menace of ill in early life than in its decline.
Youth bears up against misfortune; but it withers the heart, and crushes
the soul of age!”
“After all,” said the young guest, haughtily, “we must do our best to
contradict the starry evils by our own internal philosophy. We can
make ourselves independent of fate; that independence is better than
prosperity!” Then, changing his tone, he added,--“But you imagine that,
by the power of other arts, we may control and counteract the prophecies
of the stars----”
“How meanest thou?” said the astrologer, hastily. “Thou dost not suppose
that alchymy, which is the servant of the heavenly host, is their
opponent?”
“Nay,” answered the disciple, “but you allow that we may be enabled to
ward off evils, and to cure diseases, otherwise fatal to us, by the gift
of Uriel and the charm of the Cabala?”
“Surely,” replied the visionary; “but then I opine that the discovery of
these precious secrets was foretold to us by the Omniscient Book at our
nativity; and, therefore, though the menace of evils be held out to us,
so also is the probability of their correction or our escape. And I
must own (pursued the enthusiast) that, to me, the very culture of those
divine arts hath given a consolation amidst the evils to which I have
been fated; so true seems it, that it is not in the outer nature, in
the great elements, and in the bowels of the earth, but also within
ourselves that we must look for the preparations whereby we are to
achieve the wisdom of Zoroaster and Hermes. We must abstract ourselves
from passion and earthly desires. Lapped in a celestial reverie, we must
work out, by contemplation, the essence from the matter of things: nor
can we dart into the soul of the Mystic World until we ourselves have
forgotten the body; and by fast, by purity, and by thought, have become,
in the flesh itself, a living soul.”
Much more, and with an equal wildness of metaphysical eloquence, did the
astrologer declare in praise of those arts condemned by the old Church;
and it doth indeed appear from reference to the numerous works of the
alchymists and magians yet extant, somewhat hastily and unjustly. For
those books all unite in dwelling on the necessity of virtue,
subdued passions and a clear mind, in order to become a fortunate and
accomplished cabalist--a precept, by the way, not without its policy;
for, if the disciple failed, the failure might be attributed to his
own fleshly imperfections, not to any deficiency in the truth of the
science.
The young man listened to the visionary with an earnest and fascinated
attention. Independent of the dark interest always attached to
discourses of supernatural things more especially, we must allow, in the
mouth of a fervent and rapt believer, there was that in the language and
very person of the astrologer which inexpressibly enhanced the effect
of the theme. Like most men acquainted with the literature of a country,
but not accustomed to daily conversation with its natives, the English
words and fashion of periods that occurred to Volktman were rather those
used in books than in colloquy; and a certain solemnity and slowness of
tone accompanied with the frequent, almost constant use of the pronoun
singular--the thou and the thee, gave a strangeness and unfamiliar
majesty to his dialect that suited well with the subjects on which he
so loved to dwell. He himself was lean, gaunt, and wan; his cheeks were
drawn and hollow; and thin locks, prematurely bleached to grey, fell in
disorder round high, bare temples, in which the thought that is not of
this world had paled the hue and furrowed the surface. But, as may be
noted in many imaginative men, the life that seemed faint and chill in
the rest of the frame, collected itself, as in a citadel, within the
eye. Bright, wild, and deep, the expression of those blue large orbs
told the intense enthusiasm of the mind within; and, even somewhat
thrillingly, communicated a part of that emotion to those on whom they
dwelt. No painter could have devised, nor even Volktman himself, in the
fulness of his northern phantasy, have sculptured forth a better image
of those pale and unearthly students who, in the darker ages, applied
life and learning to one unhallowed vigil, the Hermes or the Gebir
of the alchymist’s empty science--dreamers, and the martyrs of their
dreams.
In the discussion of mysteries which to detail would only weary while it
perplexed the reader, the enthusiasts passed the greater portion of the
night; and when at length the Englishman rose to depart, it cannot be
denied that a solemn and boding emotion agitated his breast.
“We have talked,” said he, attempting a smile, “of things above this
nether life; and here we are lost, uncertain. On one thing, however, we
can decide; life itself is encompassed with gloom; sorrow and anxiety
await even those upon whom the stars shed their most golden influence.
We know not one day what the next shall bring!--no; I repeat it; no--in
spite of your scheme, and your ephemeris, and your election of happy
moments. But, come what will, Volktman, come all that you foretell to
me; crosses in my love, disappointment in my life, melancholy in my
blood, and a violent death in the very flush of my manhood,--Me: at
least, Me! my soul, my heart, my better part, you shall never cast down,
nor darken, nor deject. I move in a certain and serene circle; ambition
cannot tempt me above it, nor misfortune cast me below!”
Volktman looked at the speaker with surprise and admiration; the
enthusiasm of a brave mind is the only fire broader and brighter than
that of a fanatical one.
“Alas! my young friend,” he said, as he clashed the hand of his guest,
“I would to Heaven that my predictions may be wrong: often and often
they have been erroneous,” added he bowing his head humbly; “they may be
so in their reference to thee. So young, so brilliant, so beautiful too;
so brave, yet so romantic of heart, I feel for all that may happen to
thee--ay, far, far more deeply than aught which may be fated to myself;
for I am an old man now, and long inured to disappointment; all the
greenness of my life is gone: even could I attain to the Grand Secret
the knowledge methinks would be too late. And, at my birth, my lot was
portioned out unto me in characters so clear, that, while I have had
time to acquiesce in it, I have had no hope to correct and change it.
For Jupiter in Cancer, removed from the Ascendant, and not impedited of
any other star, betokened me indeed some expertness in science, but a
life of seclusion, and one that should bring not forth the fruits that
its labour deserved. But there is so much in thy fate that ought to be
bright and glorious, that it will be no common destiny marred, should
the evil influences and the ominous seasons prevail against thee. But
thou speakest boldly--boldly, and as one of a high soul, though it be
sometimes clouded and led astray. And I, therefore, again and again
impress upon thee, it is from thine own self, thine own character, thine
own habits, that all evil, save that of death, will come. Wear, then, I
implore thee, wear in thy memory, as a jewel, the first great maxim
of alchymist and magian:--‘Search thyself--correct thyself--subdue
thyself:’ it is only through the lamp of crystal that the light will
shine duly out.”
“It is more likely that the stars should err,” returned the Englishman,
“than that the human heart should correct itself of error: adieu!”
He left the room, and proceeded along a passage that led to the outer
door. Ere he reached it, another door opened suddenly, and the face of
Lucilla broke forth upon him. She held a light in her hand; and as she
gazed on the Englishman, he saw that her face was very pale, and that
she had been weeping. She looked at him long and earnestly, and the look
affected him strangely; he broke silence, which at first it appeared to
him difficult to do.
“Good night, my pretty friend,” said he: “shall I bring you some flowers
to-morrow?”
Lucilla burst into a wild eltritch laugh; and abruptly closing the door,
left him in darkness.
The cool air of the breaking dawn came freshly to the cheek of our
countryman; yet, still, an unpleasant and heavy sensation sat at his
heart. His nerves, previously weakened by his long commune with the
visionary, and the effect it had produced, yet tingled and thrilled
with the abrupt laugh and meaning countenance of that strange girl, who
differed so widely from all others of her years. The stars were growing
pale and ghostly, and there was a mournful and dim haze around the moon.
“Ye look ominously upon me,” said he, half aloud, as his eyes fixed
their gaze above; and the excitement of his spirit spread to his
language: “ye on whom, if our lore be faithful, the Most High hath
written the letters of our mortal doom. And if ye rule the tides of the
great deep, and the changes of the rolling year, what is there out of
reason or nature in our belief that ye hold the same sympathetic and
unseen influence over the blood and heart, which are the character (and
the character makes the conduct) of man?” Pursuing his soliloquy of
thought, and finding reasons for a credulity that afforded to him but
little cause for pleasure or hope, the Englishman took his way to St.
Sebastian’s gate.
There was, in truth, much in the traveller’s character that corresponded
with that which was attributed and destined to one to whom the heavens
had given a horoscope answering to his own; and it was this conviction
rather than any accidental coincidence in events, which had first led
him to pore with a deep attention over the vain but imposing prophecies
of judicial astrology. Possessed of all the powers that enable men to
rise; ardent, yet ordinarily shrewd; eloquent, witty, brave, and,
though not what may be termed versatile, possessing that rare art of
concentrating the faculties which enables the possessor rapidly and
thoroughly to master whatsoever once arrests the attention, he yet
despised all that would have brought these endowments into full and
legitimate display. He lived only for enjoyment. A passionate lover
of women, music, letters, and the arts, it was society, not the world,
which made the sphere and end of his existence. Yet was he no vulgar and
commonplace epicurean: he lived for enjoyment; but that enjoyment was
mainly formed from elements wearisome to more ordinary natures. Reverie,
contemplation, loneliness, were at times dearer to him than the softer
and more Aristippean delights. His energies were called forth in
society, but he was scarcely social. Trained from his early boyhood to
solitude, he was seldom weary of being alone. He sought the crowd, not
to amuse himself, but to observe others. The world to him was less as a
theatre on which he was to play a part, than as a book in which he loved
to decipher the enigmas of wisdom. He observed all that passed around
him. No sprightly cavalier at any time; the charm that he exercised at
will over his companions was that of softness, not vivacity. But amidst
that silken blandness of demeanour, the lynx eye of Remark never slept.
He penetrated character at a glance, but he seldom made use of his
knowledge. He found a pleasure in reading men, but a fatigue in
governing them. And thus, consummately skilled as he was in the science
du monde, he often allowed himself to appear ignorant of its practice.
Forming in his mind a beau ideal of friendship and of love, he never
found enough in the realities long to engage his affection. Thus,
with women he was considered fickle, and with men he had no intimate
companionship. This trait of character is common with persons of genius;
and, owing to too large an overflow of heart, they are frequently
considered heartless. There is always, however, danger that a character
of this kind should become with years what it seems; what it soon learns
to despise. Nothing steels the affections like contempt.
The next morning an express from England reached the young traveller.
His father was dangerously ill; nor was it expected that the utmost
diligence would enable the young man to receive his last blessing. The
Englishman, appalled and terror-stricken, recalled his interview
with the astrologer. Nothing so effectually dismays us, as to feel a
confirmation of some idea of supernatural dread that has already found
entrance within our reason; and of all supernatural belief, that of
being compelled by a predecree, and thus being the mere tools and
puppets of a dark and relentless fate, seems the most fraught at once
with abasement and with horror.
The Englishman left Rome that morning, and sent only a verbal and
hasty message to the astrologer, announcing the cause of his departure.
Volktman was a man of excellent heart; but one would scarcely like to
inquire whether exultation at the triumph of his prediction was not with
him a far more powerful sentiment than grief at the misfortune to his
friend!