The balm and stillness of a summer’s night enveloped a spacious piazza
in the city of Shylock and Desdemona. The sky teemed with light
drifting clouds through which the beaming of the full moon broke at
intervals upon some lamp-lit palace, thronged and musical, for it was a
night of festivity, or silvered the dull creeping waters. Ever and anon
some richly attired young patrician descended the steps of one or other
of these mansions, and hurried across the wide area to the canal
stairs, where his gondola awaited him. Whoever did this could not but
observe a tall female figure, which, cloaked and masked, walked
backwards and forwards across the piazza, regarding no one, yet with an
air that seemed to invite a companion.
More than one of the young nobles approached the presumably fair
peripatetic, and, with courtesy commonly in inverse ratio to the amount
of wine he was carrying home, proffered his escort to his gondola.
Whenever this happened the figure removed her mask and unclasped her
robe, and revealed a sight which for one moment rooted the young man to
the earth and in the next sent him scampering to his bark. For the
countenance was a death’s head, and the breast was that of a mouldering
skeleton.
At last, however, a youth presented himself who, more courageous or
more tipsy than his fellows, or more helplessly paralysed with horror
than they, did not decline the proffered caress, and suffered himself
to be drawn within the goblin’s accursed embrace. Valiant or
pot-valiant, great was his relief at finding himself clasped, instead
of by a loathsome spectre, by a silver-haired man of noble presence,
yet with a countenance indescribably haggard and anxious.
“Come, my son,” he cried, “hasten whither the rewards of thy
intrepidity await thee. Impouch the purse of Fortunatus! Indue the
signet of Solomon!”
The young man hesitated. “Is there nought else?” he cautiously
demanded. “Needs it not that I should renounce my baptism? Must I not
subscribe an infernal compact?”
“In thy own blood, my son,” cheerfully responded the old gentleman.
“Peradventure,” hesitatingly interrogated the youth, “peradventure you
are _he_?”
“Not so, my son, upon honour,” returned the mysterious personage. “I am
but a distressed magician, at this present in fearful straits, from
which I look to be delivered by thee.”
The youth gazed some moments at his companion’s head, and then still
more earnestly at his feet. He then yielded his own hand to him, and
the pair crossed the piazza, almost at a run, the magician ever
ejaculating, “Speed! speed!”
They paused at the foot of a lofty tower, doorless and windowless, with
no visible access of any kind. But the magician signed with his hand,
pronounced some cabalistical words, and instantly stone and lime fell
asunder and revealed an entrance through which they passed, and which
immediately closed behind them. The youth quaked at finding himself
alone in utter darkness with he knew not what, but the wizard whistled,
and a severed hand appeared in air bearing a lamp which illuminated a
long winding staircase. The old man motioned to the youth to precede
him, nor dared he refuse, though feeling as though he would have given
the world for the very smallest relic of the very smallest saint. The
distorted shadows of the twain, dancing on stair and wall with the
wavering lamp-shine, seemed phantoms capering in an infernal revel, and
he glanced back ever and anon weening to see himself dogged by some
frightful monster, but he saw only the silver hair and sable velvet of
the dignified old man.
After the ascent of many steps a door opened before them, and they
found themselves in a spacious chamber, brightly, yet from its size
imperfectly illumined by a single large lamp. It was wainscoted with
ebony, and the furniture was of the same. A long table was covered with
scrolls, skulls, crucibles, crystals, star-charts, geomantic figures,
and other appurtenances of a magician’s calling. Tomes of necromantic
lore lined the walls, which were yet principally occupied with crystal
vessels, in which foul beings seemed dimly and confusedly to agitate
themselves.
The magician signed to his visitor to be seated, sat down himself and
began:
“Brave youth, ere entering upon the boundless power and riches that
await thee, learn who I am and why I have brought thee here. Behold in
me no vulgar wizard, no mere astrologer or alchemist, but a compeer of
Merlin and Michael Scott, with whose name it may be the nurse of thy
infancy hath oft-times quelled thy froward humours. I am Peter of
Abano, falsely believed to have lain two centuries buried in the
semblance of a dog under a heap of stones hurled by the furious
populace, but in truth walking earth to this day, in virtue of the
compact now to be revealed to thee. Hearken, my son! Vain must be the
machinations of my enemies, vain the onslaughts of the rabble, so long
as I fulfil a certain contract registered in hell’s chancery, as I have
now done these three hundred years. And the condition is this, that
every year I present unto the Demon one who hath at my persuasion
assigned his soul to him in exchange for power, riches, knowledge,
magical gifts, or whatever else his heart chiefly desireth; nor until
this present year have I perilled the fulfilment of my obligation.
Seest thou these scrolls? They are the assignments of which I have
spoken. It would amaze thee to scan the subscriptions, and perceive in
these the signatures of men exemplary in the eyes of their fellows,
clothed with high dignities in Church and State—nay sometimes redolent
of the very odour of sanctity. Never hath my sagacity deceived me until
this year, when, smitten with the fair promise of a youth of singular
impishness, I omitted to take due note of his consumptive habit, and
have but this afternoon encountered his funeral. This is the last day
of my year, and should my engagement be unredeemed when the sun attains
the cusp of that nethermost house of heaven which he is even now
traversing, I must become an inmate of the infernal kingdom. No time
has remained for nice investigation. I have therefore proved the
courage of the Venetian youth in the manner thou knowest, and thou
alone hast sustained the ordeal. Fail not at my bidding, or thou
quittest not this chamber alive. For when the Demon comes to bear me
away, he will assuredly rend thee in pieces for being found in my
company. Thou hast, therefore, everything to gain and nothing to lose
by joining the goodly fellowship of my mates and partners. Delay not,
time urges, night deepens, they that would drink thy blood are abroad.
Hearest thou not the moaning and pelting of the rising storm, and the
muttering and scraping of my imprisoned goblins? Save us, I entreat, I
command, save us both!”
Screaming with agitation the aged sorcerer laid a scroll engrossed with
fairly written characters before the youth, stabbed the latter’s arm
with a stylus that at once evoked and collected the crimson stream,
thrust this into his hand and strove to guide it to the parchment,
chanting at the same time litanies to the infernal powers. The crystal
flagons rang like one great harmonica with shrill but spirit-stirring
music; volumes of vaporous perfumes diffused themselves through the
apartment, and an endless procession of treasure-laden figures defiled
before the bewildered youth. He seemed buried in the opulence of the
world, as he sat up to his waist in gold and jewels; all the earth’s
beauty gazed at him through eyes brilliant and countless as the stars
of heaven; courtiers beckoned him to thrones; battle-steeds neighed and
pawed for his mounting; laden tables allured every appetite; vassals
bent in homage; slaves fell prostrate at his feet. Now he seemed to
collect or disperse legions of spirits with the waving of a wand; anon,
as he pronounced a spell, golden dragons glided away from boughs laden
with golden fruits. Well for him, doubtless, that in him Nature had
kneaded from ordinary clay as unimaginative a youth as could be found
in Venice: yet even so, dazzled with glamour, intoxicated with
illusion, less and less able to resist the cunningly mingled caresses,
entreaties, and menaces of Abano, he could not refrain from tracing a
few characters with the stylus, when, catching reflected in a mirror
the old magician’s expression of wolfish glee, he dropped the
instrument from his grasp, and cast his eye upwards as if appealing to
Heaven. But every drop of blood seemed frozen in his frame as he beheld
an enormous claw thrust through the roof, member as it seemed of some
being too gigantic to be contained in the chamber or the tower itself.
Cold, poignant, glittering as steel, it rested upon a socket of the
repulsive hue of jaundiced ivory, with no vestige of a foot or anything
to relieve its naked horror as, rigid and lifeless, yet plainly with a
mighty force behind it, it pointed at the magician’s heart. As Abano,
following the youth’s eye, caught sight of the portent, his visage
assumed an expression of frantic horror, his spells died upon his lips,
and the gorgeous figures became grinning apes or blotchy toads: madly
he seized the young man’s hand, and strove to force him to complete his
signature. The robust youth felt as an infant in his grasp, but ere the
stylus could be again thrust upon him the first stroke of the midnight
hour rang through the chamber, and instantly the gigantic talon pierced
Abano from breast to back, projecting far beyond his shoulders, and
swept him upwards to the roof, through which both disappeared without
leaving a trace of their passage.
Horror and thankfulness rushed together into the young man’s mind, and
there contended for some brief instants: but as the last stroke sounded
all the crystal vials shivered with a stunning crash, and their hellish
inmates, rejoicing in their deliverance, swarmed into the chamber. All
made for the youth, who, tugged, clawed, fondled, bitten, beslimed,
blinded, deafened, beset in every way by creatures of indescribable
loathsomeness, grasped frantically as his sole weapon, the stylus; but
it had become a writhing serpent. This was too much, sense forsook him
on the spot.
On recovering consciousness he found himself stretched on a pallet in
the dungeons of the Inquisition. The Inquisitors sat on their
tribunals; black-robed familiars flitted about, or waited attentive
upon their orders; one expert in ecclesiastical jurisprudence proved
the edge of an axe, and another heated pincers in a chafing-dish;
dismal groans pierced the massy walls; two sturdy fellows, stripped to
the waist, adjusted the rollers of a rack. A surgeon approached the
bedside, bearing a phial and a lancet. The youth screamed and again
became insensible.
But his affright was groundless. The Inquisitors had already taken
cognisance of Abano’s scrolls, and found that, touching these at least,
he had spoken sooth. Besides kings, princes, ministers, magistrates,
and other secular persons who had owed their success in life to
dealings with the devil under his mediation, the infernal bondsmen
included so many pillars of the Church and champions of the Faith;
prelates plenty, abbots in abundance, cardinals not a few, a (some
whispered _the_) Pope; above all, so many of the Inquisitors
themselves, that further inquiry could evidently nowise conduce to
edification. The surgeon, therefore, infused an opiate into the veins
of the unconscious youth, and he came to himself upon a galley speeding
him to the holy war in Cyprus, where he fell fighting the Turk.