Dom Claude's fame had spread far and wide. It procured for him, at aboutthe epoch when he refused to see Madame de Beaujeu, a visit which helong remembered.
It was in the evening. He had just retired, after the office, tohis canon's cell in the cloister of Notre-Dame. This cell, with theexception, possibly, of some glass phials, relegated to a corner, andfilled with a decidedly equivocal powder, which strongly resembledthe alchemist's "powder of projection," presented nothing strange ormysterious. There were, indeed, here and there, some inscriptions onthe walls, but they were pure sentences of learning and piety, extractedfrom good authors. The archdeacon had just seated himself, by thelight of a three-jetted copper lamp, before a vast coffer crammed withmanuscripts. He had rested his elbow upon the open volume of _Honoriusd'Autun_, _De predestinatione et libero arbitrio_, and he was turningover, in deep meditation, the leaves of a printed folio which he hadjust brought, the sole product of the press which his cell contained. Inthe midst of his revery there came a knock at his door. "Who's there?"cried the learned man, in the gracious tone of a famished dog, disturbedover his bone.
A voice without replied, "Your friend, Jacques Coictier." He went toopen the door.
It was, in fact, the king's physician; a person about fifty years ofage, whose harsh physiognomy was modified only by a crafty eye. Anotherman accompanied him. Both wore long slate-colored robes, furred withminever, girded and closed, with caps of the same stuff and hue. Theirhands were concealed by their sleeves, their feet by their robes, theireyes by their caps.
"God help me, messieurs!" said the archdeacon, showing them in; "Iwas not expecting distinguished visitors at such an hour." And whilespeaking in this courteous fashion he cast an uneasy and scrutinizingglance from the physician to his companion.
"'Tis never too late to come and pay a visit to so considerablea learned man as Dom Claude Frollo de Tirechappe," replied DoctorCoictier, whose Franche-Comte accent made all his phrases drag alongwith the majesty of a train-robe.
There then ensued between the physician and the archdeacon one of thosecongratulatory prologues which, in accordance with custom, at thatepoch preceded all conversations between learned men, and which did notprevent them from detesting each other in the most cordial manner inthe world. However, it is the same nowadays; every wise man's mouthcomplimenting another wise man is a vase of honeyed gall.
Claude Frollo's felicitations to Jacques Coictier bore referenceprincipally to the temporal advantages which the worthy physician hadfound means to extract, in the course of his much envied career, fromeach malady of the king, an operation of alchemy much better and morecertain than the pursuit of the philosopher's stone.
"In truth, Monsieur le Docteur Coictier, I felt great joy on learning ofthe bishopric given your nephew, my reverend seigneur Pierre Verse. Ishe not Bishop of Amiens?"
"Yes, monsieur Archdeacon; it is a grace and mercy of God."
"Do you know that you made a great figure on Christmas Day at the beadof your company of the chamber of accounts, Monsieur President?"
"Vice-President, Dom Claude. Alas! nothing more."
"How is your superb house in the Rue Saint-Andre des Arcs coming on?'Tis a Louvre. I love greatly the apricot tree which is carved on thedoor, with this play of words: 'A L'ABRI-COTIER--Sheltered from reefs.'"
"Alas! Master Claude, all that masonry costeth me dear. In proportion asthe house is erected, I am ruined."
"Ho! have you not your revenues from the jail, and the bailiwick of thePalais, and the rents of all the houses, sheds, stalls, and booths ofthe enclosure? 'Tis a fine breast to suck."
"My castellany of Poissy has brought me in nothing this year."
"But your tolls of Triel, of Saint-James, of Saint-Germainen-Laye arealways good."
"Six score livres, and not even Parisian livres at that."
"You have your office of counsellor to the king. That is fixed."
"Yes, brother Claude; but that accursed seigneury of Poligny, whichpeople make so much noise about, is worth not sixty gold crowns, yearout and year in."
In the compliments which Dom Claude addressed to Jacques Coictier, therewas that sardonical, biting, and covertly mocking accent, and the sadcruel smile of a superior and unhappy man who toys for a moment, by wayof distraction, with the dense prosperity of a vulgar man. The other didnot perceive it.
"Upon my soul," said Claude at length, pressing his hand, "I am glad tosee you and in such good health."
"Thanks, Master Claude."
"By the way," exclaimed Dom Claude, "how is your royal patient?"
"He payeth not sufficiently his physician," replied the doctor, castinga side glance at his companion.
"Think you so, Gossip Coictier," said the latter.
These words, uttered in a tone of surprise and reproach, drew upon thisunknown personage the attention of the archdeacon which, to tell thetruth, had not been diverted from him a single moment since the strangerhad set foot across the threshold of his cell. It had even required allthe thousand reasons which he had for handling tenderly Doctor JacquesCoictier, the all-powerful physician of King Louis XI., to induce himto receive the latter thus accompanied. Hence, there was nothing verycordial in his manner when Jacques Coictier said to him,--
"By the way, Dom Claude, I bring you a colleague who has desired to seeyou on account of your reputation."
"Monsieur belongs to science?" asked the archdeacon, fixing his piercingeye upon Coictier's companion. He found beneath the brows of thestranger a glance no less piercing or less distrustful than his own.
He was, so far as the feeble light of the lamp permitted one to judge,an old man about sixty years of age and of medium stature, who appearedsomewhat sickly and broken in health. His profile, although of a veryordinary outline, had something powerful and severe about it; his eyessparkled beneath a very deep superciliary arch, like a light in thedepths of a cave; and beneath his cap which was well drawn down and fellupon his nose, one recognized the broad expanse of a brow of genius.
He took it upon himself to reply to the archdeacon's question,--
"Reverend master," he said in a grave tone, "your renown has reached myears, and I wish to consult you. I am but a poor provincial gentleman,who removeth his shoes before entering the dwellings of the learned. Youmust know my name. I am called Gossip Tourangeau."
"Strange name for a gentleman," said the archdeacon to himself.
Nevertheless, he had a feeling that he was in the presence of a strongand earnest character. The instinct of his own lofty intellect made himrecognize an intellect no less lofty under Gossip Tourangeau's furredcap, and as he gazed at the solemn face, the ironical smile whichJacques Coictier's presence called forth on his gloomy face, graduallydisappeared as twilight fades on the horizon of night. Stern and silent,he had resumed his seat in his great armchair; his elbow rested asusual, on the table, and his brow on his hand. After a few momentsof reflection, he motioned his visitors to be seated, and, turning toGossip Tourangeau he said,--
"You come to consult me, master, and upon what science?"
"Your reverence," replied Tourangeau, "I am ill, very ill. You are saidto be great AEsculapius, and I am come to ask your advice in medicine."
"Medicine!" said the archdeacon, tossing his head. He seemed to meditatefor a moment, and then resumed: "Gossip Tourangeau, since that is yourname, turn your head, you will find my reply already written on thewall."
Gossip Tourangeau obeyed, and read this inscription engraved above hishead: "Medicine is the daughter of dreams.--JAMBLIQUE."
Meanwhile, Doctor Jacques Coictier had heard his companion's questionwith a displeasure which Dom Claude's response had but redoubled. Hebent down to the ear of Gossip Tourangeau, and said to him, softlyenough not to be heard by the archdeacon: "I warned you that he was mad.You insisted on seeing him."
"'Tis very possible that he is right, madman as he is, Doctor Jacques,"replied his comrade in the same low tone, and with a bitter smile.
"As y
ou please," replied Coictier dryly. Then, addressing thearchdeacon: "You are clever at your trade, Dom Claude, and you are nomore at a loss over Hippocrates than a monkey is over a nut. Medicinea dream! I suspect that the pharmacopolists and the master physicianswould insist upon stoning you if they were here. So you deny theinfluence of philtres upon the blood, and unguents on the skin! You denythat eternal pharmacy of flowers and metals, which is called the world,made expressly for that eternal invalid called man!"
"I deny," said Dom Claude coldly, "neither pharmacy nor the invalid. Ireject the physician."
"Then it is not true," resumed Coictier hotly, "that gout is an internaleruption; that a wound caused by artillery is to be cured by theapplication of a young mouse roasted; that young blood, properlyinjected, restores youth to aged veins; it is not true that two and twomake four, and that emprostathonos follows opistathonos."
The archdeacon replied without perturbation: "There are certain thingsof which I think in a certain fashion."
Coictier became crimson with anger.
"There, there, my good Coictier, let us not get angry," said GossipTourangeau. "Monsieur the archdeacon is our friend."
Coictier calmed down, muttering in a low tone,--
"After all, he's mad."
"_Pasque-dieu_, Master Claude," resumed Gossip Tourangeau, after asilence, "You embarrass me greatly. I had two things to consult youupon, one touching my health and the other touching my star."
"Monsieur," returned the archdeacon, "if that be your motive, youwould have done as well not to put yourself out of breath climbing mystaircase. I do not believe in Medicine. I do not believe in Astrology."
"Indeed!" said the man, with surprise.
Coictier gave a forced laugh.
"You see that he is mad," he said, in a low tone, to Gossip Tourangeau."He does not believe in astrology."
"The idea of imagining," pursued Dom Claude, "that every ray of a staris a thread which is fastened to the head of a man!"
"And what then, do you believe in?" exclaimed Gossip Tourangeau.
The archdeacon hesitated for a moment, then he allowed a gloomy smile toescape, which seemed to give the lie to his response: "_Credo in Deum_."
"_Dominum nostrum_," added Gossip Tourangeau, making the sign of thecross.
"Amen," said Coictier.
"Reverend master," resumed Tourangeau, "I am charmed in soul to see youin such a religious frame of mind. But have you reached the point, greatsavant as you are, of no longer believing in science?"
"No," said the archdeacon, grasping the arm of Gossip Tourangeau, anda ray of enthusiasm lighted up his gloomy eyes, "no, I do not rejectscience. I have not crawled so long, flat on my belly, with my nails inthe earth, through the innumerable ramifications of its caverns, withoutperceiving far in front of me, at the end of the obscure gallery, alight, a flame, a something, the reflection, no doubt, of the dazzlingcentral laboratory where the patient and the wise have found out God."
"And in short," interrupted Tourangeau, "what do you hold to be true andcertain?"
"Alchemy."
Coictier exclaimed, "Pardieu, Dom Claude, alchemy has its use, no doubt,but why blaspheme medicine and astrology?"
"Naught is your science of man, naught is your science of the stars,"said the archdeacon, commandingly.
"That's driving Epidaurus and Chaldea very fast," replied the physicianwith a grin.
"Listen, Messire Jacques. This is said in good faith. I am not theking's physician, and his majesty has not given me the Garden ofDaedalus in which to observe the constellations. Don't get angry, butlisten to me. What truth have you deduced, I will not say from medicine,which is too foolish a thing, but from astrology? Cite to me the virtuesof the vertical boustrophedon, the treasures of the number ziruph andthose of the number zephirod!"
"Will you deny," said Coictier, "the sympathetic force of the collarbone, and the cabalistics which are derived from it?"
"An error, Messire Jacques! None of your formulas end in reality.Alchemy on the other hand has its discoveries. Will you contest resultslike this? Ice confined beneath the earth for a thousand years istransformed into rock crystals. Lead is the ancestor of all metals. Forgold is not a metal, gold is light. Lead requires only four periods oftwo hundred years each, to pass in succession from the state of lead, tothe state of red arsenic, from red arsenic to tin, from tin to silver.Are not these facts? But to believe in the collar bone, in the full lineand in the stars, is as ridiculous as to believe with the inhabitants ofGrand-Cathay that the golden oriole turns into a mole, and that grainsof wheat turn into fish of the carp species."
"I have studied hermetic science!" exclaimed Coictier, "and I affirm--"
The fiery archdeacon did not allow him to finish: "And I have studiedmedicine, astrology, and hermetics. Here alone is the truth." (As hespoke thus, he took from the top of the coffer a phial filled with thepowder which we have mentioned above), "here alone is light! Hippocratesis a dream; Urania is a dream; Hermes, a thought. Gold is the sun; tomake gold is to be God. Herein lies the one and only science. I havesounded the depths of medicine and astrology, I tell you! Naught,nothingness! The human body, shadows! the planets, shadows!"
And he fell back in his armchair in a commanding and inspired attitude.Gossip Touraugeau watched him in silence. Coictier tried to grin,shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly, and repeated in a low voice,--
"A madman!"
"And," said Tourangeau suddenly, "the wondrous result,--have youattained it, have you made gold?"
"If I had made it," replied the archdeacon, articulating his wordsslowly, like a man who is reflecting, "the king of France would be namedClaude and not Louis."
The stranger frowned.
"What am I saying?" resumed Dom Claude, with a smile of disdain. "Whatwould the throne of France be to me when I could rebuild the empire ofthe Orient?"
"Very good!" said the stranger.
"Oh, the poor fool!" murmured Coictier.
The archdeacon went on, appearing to reply now only to his thoughts,--
"But no, I am still crawling; I am scratching my face and knees againstthe pebbles of the subterranean pathway. I catch a glimpse, I do notcontemplate! I do not read, I spell out!"
"And when you know how to read!" demanded the stranger, "will you makegold?"
"Who doubts it?" said the archdeacon.
"In that case Our Lady knows that I am greatly in need of money, and Ishould much desire to read in your books. Tell me, reverend master, isyour science inimical or displeasing to Our Lady?"
"Whose archdeacon I am?" Dom Claude contented himself with replying,with tranquil hauteur.
"That is true, my master. Well! will it please you to initiate me? Letme spell with you."
Claude assumed the majestic and pontifical attitude of a Samuel.
"Old man, it requires longer years than remain to you, to undertake thisvoyage across mysterious things. Your head is very gray! One comes forthfrom the cavern only with white hair, but only those with dark hairenter it. Science alone knows well how to hollow, wither, and dry uphuman faces; she needs not to have old age bring her faces alreadyfurrowed. Nevertheless, if the desire possesses you of putting yourselfunder discipline at your age, and of deciphering the formidable alphabetof the sages, come to me; 'tis well, I will make the effort. I will nottell you, poor old man, to go and visit the sepulchral chambers of thepyramids, of which ancient Herodotus speaks, nor the brick tower ofBabylon, nor the immense white marble sanctuary of the Indian temple ofEklinga. I, no more than yourself, have seen the Chaldean masonry worksconstructed according to the sacred form of the Sikra, nor the temple ofSolomon, which is destroyed, nor the stone doors of the sepulchre of thekings of Israel, which are broken. We will content ourselves with thefragments of the book of Hermes which we have here. I will explain toyou the statue of Saint Christopher, the symbol of the sower, and thatof the two angels which are on the front of the Sainte-Chapelle, and oneof which holds in his hands a vase, the
other, a cloud--"
Here Jacques Coictier, who had been unhorsed by the archdeacon'simpetuous replies, regained his saddle, and interrupted him with thetriumphant tone of one learned man correcting another,--"_Erras amiceClaudi_. The symbol is not the number. You take Orpheus for Hermes."
"'Tis you who are in error," replied the archdeacon, gravely. "Daedalusis the base; Orpheus is the wall; Hermes is the edifice,--that is all.You shall come when you will," he continued, turning to Tourangeau, "Iwill show you the little parcels of gold which remained at the bottom ofNicholas Flamel's alembic, and you shall compare them with the gold ofGuillaume de Paris. I will teach you the secret virtues of the Greekword, _peristera_. But, first of all, I will make you read, one afterthe other, the marble letters of the alphabet, the granite pages of thebook. We shall go to the portal of Bishop Guillaume and of Saint-Jean leRond at the Sainte-Chapelle, then to the house of Nicholas Flamel, RueManvault, to his tomb, which is at the Saints-Innocents, to his twohospitals, Rue de Montmorency. I will make you read the hieroglyphicswhich cover the four great iron cramps on the portal of the hospitalSaint-Gervais, and of the Rue de la Ferronnerie. We willspell out in company, also, the facade of Saint-Come, ofSainte-Genevieve-des-Ardents, of Saint Martin, of Saint-Jacquesde la Boucherie--."
For a long time, Gossip Tourangeau, intelligent as was his glance, hadappeared not to understand Dom Claude. He interrupted.
"_Pasque-dieu_! what are your books, then?"
"Here is one of them," said the archdeacon.
And opening the window of his cell he pointed out with his finger theimmense church of Notre-Dame, which, outlining against the starry skythe black silhouette of its two towers, its stone flanks, its monstroushaunches, seemed an enormous two-headed sphinx, seated in the middle ofthe city.
The archdeacon gazed at the gigantic edifice for some time in silence,then extending his right hand, with a sigh, towards the printed bookwhich lay open on the table, and his left towards Notre-Dame, andturning a sad glance from the book to the church,--"Alas," he said,"this will kill that."
Coictier, who had eagerly approached the book, could not repress anexclamation. "He, but now, what is there so formidable in this: 'GLOSSAIN EPISTOLAS D. PAULI, _Norimbergoe, Antonius Koburger_, 1474.' This isnot new. 'Tis a book of Pierre Lombard, the Master of Sentences. Is itbecause it is printed?"
"You have said it," replied Claude, who seemed absorbed in a profoundmeditation, and stood resting, his forefinger bent backward on the foliowhich had come from the famous press of Nuremberg. Then he added thesemysterious words: "Alas! alas! small things come at the end of greatthings; a tooth triumphs over a mass. The Nile rat kills the crocodile,the swordfish kills the whale, the book will kill the edifice."
The curfew of the cloister sounded at the moment when Master Jacqueswas repeating to his companion in low tones, his eternal refrain, "He ismad!" To which his companion this time replied, "I believe that he is."
It was the hour when no stranger could remain in the cloister. The twovisitors withdrew. "Master," said Gossip Tourangeau, as he took leaveof the archdeacon, "I love wise men and great minds, and I hold youin singular esteem. Come to-morrow to the Palace des Tournelles, andinquire for the Abbe de Sainte-Martin, of Tours."
The archdeacon returned to his chamber dumbfounded, comprehendingat last who Gossip Tourangeau was, and recalling that passage of theregister of Sainte-Martin, of Tours:--_Abbas beati Martini, SCILICET REXFRANCIAE, est canonicus de consuetudine et habet parvam proebendam quamhabet sanctus Venantius, et debet sedere in sede thesaurarii_.
It is asserted that after that epoch the archdeacon had frequentconferences with Louis XI., when his majesty came to Paris, and thatDom Claude's influence quite overshadowed that of Olivier le Daim andJacques Coictier, who, as was his habit, rudely took the king to task onthat account.
CHAPTER II. THIS WILL KILL THAT.