Arrival at the Castle of M. d’Asterac and Interview with the Cabalist.
On the following day at an early hour we walked, my tutor and I, on the
St Germain road. The snow which covered the earth under the russet
light of the sky, rendered the atmosphere dull and heavy. The road
was deserted. We walked in wide furrows between the walls of
orchards, tottering fences and low houses, the windows of which
looked suspiciously on us. And, after having left behind two or three
tumbledown huts built of clay and straw, we saw in the middle of a
disconsolate heath the Cross of the Sablons. At fifty paces farther
commenced a very large park, closed in by a ruined wall, wherein was
the little door, and on it the knocker representing a horrible-looking
figure with a finger in her mouth. We recognised it easily as the one
the philosopher had described, and used the knocker.
After some rather considerable time, an old servant opened it and made
us a sign to follow him across the untidy park. Statues of nymphs, who
must have seen the boyhood of the late king, secreted under tree ivy
their gloominess and mutilations. At the end of an alley, the sloughs
of which were covered with snow, stood a castle of stone and brick, as
morose as the one of Madrid, which, oddly covered by a high slate roof,
looked like the castle of the Sleeping Beauty in the wood.
Following the silent valet, M. Coignard whispered to me:
“I confess, my son, that this lodging has no smiling appearance. It
shows the ruggedness wherein the customs of Frenchmen were still immured
in the time of King Henry IV., and it drives the soul to gloom and
nearly to melancholy by the state of forlornness in which unhappily
it has been left. How much sweeter it would be to climb the enchanted
hillocks of Tusculum with the hope of hearing Cicero discourse
of virtue, under the firs and pines of his villa so dear to the
philosopher! And have you not observed, my boy, that all along yonder
road neither taverns nor hostels are to be met with, and that it would
be necessary to cross the bridge and go up the hill to the Bergères
to get a drink of fresh wine? There is thereabout a hostel of the _Red
Horse_, where, if I remember well, Madame de St Ernest took me once to
dinner in the company of her monkey and her lover. You can’t imagine,
Tournebroche, how excellent the victuals are there. The _Red Horse_ is
as well known for its morning dinners as for the abundance of horses and
carriages which it has on hire. I convinced myself of it when I followed
to the stables a certain wench who seemed to be rather pretty. But she
was not; it would be a truer saying to call her ugly. But I illuminated
her with the colours of my longings. Such is the condition of men when
left to themselves; they err wretchedly. We are all abused by empty
images; we go in chase of dreams and embrace shadows. In God alone is
truth and stability.”
Meanwhile we ascended, behind the old servant, the disjointed flight of
steps.
“Alas!” said my tutor, “I begin to regret your father’s cookshop, where
we ate such good morsels while explaining Quintilian.”
After having scaled the first flight of large stone stairs, we were
introduced into a saloon, where M. d’Asterac was occupied with writing
near a big fire, in the midst of Egyptian coffins of human form raised
against the walls, their lids painted with sacred figures and golden
faces with long glossy eyes.
Politely M. d’Asterac invited us to be seated and said:
“Gentlemen, I expected you. And as you have both kindly consented to do
me the favour of staying with me, I beg of you to consider this house as
your own. You’ll be occupied in translating Greek texts I have brought
back with me from Egypt. I have no doubt you will do your best to
accomplish this task when you know that it is connected with the work
I have undertaken, to discover the lost science by which man will
be re-established in his original power over the elements. I have no
intention of raising the veil of nature and showing you Isis in her
dazzling nudity; but I will entrust you with the object of my studies
without fear that you’ll betray the mystery, because I have confidence
in your integrity and also in the power I have to guess and to forestall
all that may be attempted against me and to dispose for my vengeance of
secret and terrible forces. From the defaults of a fidelity, of which I
do not doubt; my power, gentlemen, assures me of your silence.
“Know then that man came out of Jehovah’s hands with that perfect
knowledge he has since lost. He was very powerful and very wise when he
was created, that’s to be seen in the books of Moses. But it’s necessary
to understand them. Before all it is clear that Jehovah is not God, but
a grand Demon, because he has created this world. The idea of a God
both perfect and creative is but a reverie of a barbarity worthy of a
Welshman or a Saxon. As little polished as one’s mind may be one cannot
admit that a perfect being tags anything to his own perfection, be it
a hazelnut. That’s common sense; God has no understanding, as he is
endless how could he understand? He does not create, because he ignores
time and space, which are conditions indispensable to all constructions.
Moses was too good a philosopher to teach that the world was created by
God. He took Jehovah for what he really is--for a powerful Demon, or if
he is to be called anything, for the Demiurgos.
“It follows that Jehovah, creating man, gave him knowledge of the
visible and the invisible world. The fall of Adam and Eve, which I’ll
explain to you another day, had not fully destroyed that knowledge of
the first man and the first woman, who passed their teachings on to
their children. Those teachings, on which the domination of nature
relies, have been consigned to the book of Enoch. The Egyptian priests
have kept the tradition which they fixed with mysterious signs on the
walls of the temples and the coffins of the dead. Moses, brought up in
the sanctuary of Memphis, was one of the initiated. His books, numbering
five, perhaps six, contain like very precious archives the treasures of
divine knowledge. You’ll discover there the most beautiful secrets if
you have cleared them of the interpolations which dishonour them; one
scorns the literal and coarse sense, to attach oneself to the most
subtle. I have penetrated to the largest part, as it will appear to you
also later on. Meanwhile, the truth, kept like virgins in the temples of
Egypt, passed to the wizards of Alexandria, who enriched them still
more and crowned them with all the pure gold bequeathed to Greece by
Pythagoras and his disciples, with whom the forces of the air conversed
familiarly. Wherefore, gentlemen, it is convenient to explore the books
of the Hebrews, the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians and those treatises
of the Greeks which are called Gnostic precisely because they possessed
knowledge. I reserve for myself, as is quite equitable, the most
arduous part of this extensive work. I apply myself to decipher those
hieroglyphics which the Egyptians used to inscribe in the temples of
their gods and on the graves of their priests. Having brought over from
Egypt a great number of those inscriptions, I fathom their sense by
means of a key I was able to discover with Clement of Alexandria.
“The Rabbi Mosaïde, who lives in retirement with me, works on the
re-establishment of the true sense of the Pentateuch. He is an old man
very well versed in magic, who has lived seventeen years shut up in the
crypt of the Great Pyramid, where he read the books of Toth. Concerning
yourselves, gentlemen, I intend to employ your knowledge, in reading the
Alexandrian MSS. which I have collected myself in great numbers. There
you’ll find, no doubt, some marvellous secrets, and I do not doubt that
with the help of these three sources of light-the Egyptian, the Hebrew
and the Greek--I’ll soon acquire the means I still want, to command
absolutely nature, visible as well as invisible. Believe me I shall know
how to reward your services by making you in some way participators of
my power.
“I do not speak to you of a more vulgar means to recognise them. At the
point I have reached in my philosophical labours, money is for me but a
trifle.”
Arrived at this part of M. d’Asterac’s discourse my good tutor
interrupted by saying:
“Sir, I’ll not conceal from you that this very money, which seems to
be a trifle to you, is for myself a smarting anxiety, because I have
experienced that it is not easy to earn some and remain an honest man
or even otherwise. Therefore I should be thankful for the assurance you
would kindly give on that subject.”
M. d’Asterac, with a movement which seemed to remove an invisible
object, gave M. Jerome Coignard the wished-for assurance; for myself,
curious as I was of all I saw, I did not wish for anything better than
to enter into a new life.
At his master’s call, the old servant who had opened the door to us
appeared in the study.
“Gentlemen,” said our host, “I give you your liberty till dinner at
noon. Meanwhile I should be very much obliged to you for ascending to
the rooms I have had prepared for you, and let me know that there is
nothing wanting for your comfort. Criton will conduct you.”
Having assured himself that we were following him, silent Criton went
out and began to ascend the stairs. He went up to the roof timbers,
then, having taken some steps down a long passage, he indicated to us
two very clean rooms where fires sparkled. I could never have believed
that a castle as shattered on the outside, the front of which showed
nothing but cracked walls and dark windows, was as habitable in some of
its inner parts. My first care was to know where I was. Our rooms looked
on the fields, the view from them embraced the marshy slopes of
the Seine, extending up to the Calvary of Mont Valérien. Eyeing our
furniture, I could see, laid out on my bed, a grey coat, breeches to
match and a sword. On the carpet were buckle shoes neatly coupled, the
heels joined and the points separated just as if they had of themselves
the sentiment of a fine deportment.
I augured favourably of the liberality of our master, To do him honour,
I dressed very carefully and spread abundantly on my hair the powder a
box full of which I found on a small table. And very welcome were the
laced shirt and white stockings I discovered in one of the drawers of
the chest.
Having put on shirt, stockings, breeches, vest and coat, I walked up
and down my room with hat under the arm, hand on the guard of my
sword, thinking all the time on the looking-glass, and regretting that
Catherine, the lace-maker, could not see me in such finery.
In this way I was occupied for a little while, when M. Jerome Coignard
came into my room with a new neckband and very respectable clerical
garb.
“Tournebroche,” he exclaimed, “is it you, my boy? Never forget that you
owe these fine clothes to the knowledge I have given you. They fit a
humanist like yourself, as who says humanities says also elegance.
But look on me and say if I have a good mien. In this dress I consider
myself to be a very honest man. This M. d’Asterac seems to be tolerably
magnificent. It’s a pity he’s mad. Wise he is in one way, as he calls
his valet Criton, which means judge. And it’s very true that our valets
are the witnesses of all our actions. When Lord Verulam, Chancellor of
England, whose philosophy I esteem but little, entered the great hall
to be tried, his lackeys, who were clad with an opulence by which the
copiousness of the Chancellor’s household could be judged, rose to
render him due honour. Lord Verulam said to them: ‘Sit down, your rising
is my falling.’ As a fact, those knaves, by their extravagance, had
pushed him to ruin and compelled him to do things for which he was
indicted as a peculator. Tournebroche, my boy, always remember this
misfortune of Lord Verulam, Chancellor of England and author of the
‘Novum Organum.’ But to return to that Sire d’Asterac, in whose service
we are; it is a great pity that he is a sorcerer and given to cursed
science. You know, my boy, I pride myself on my delicacy in matters of
faith I find it hard to serve a cabalist who turns our Holy Scriptures
upside down under the pretext to understand them better that way.
However, if he is, as his name and speech indicate, a Gascon nobleman,
we have nothing to be afraid of. A Gascon may make a contract with the
devil and you may be sure that the devil will be done.”
The dinner bell interrupted our conversation.
But while descending the stairs, my kind tutor said: “Tournebroche, my
boy, remember, during the whole meal, to follow all my movements, to
enable you to imitate them. Having dined at the third table of the
Bishop of Seez, I know how to do it. It’s a difficult art. It’s harder
to dine than to speak like a gentleman.”