And yet the cell was not deserted. A man sat in the arm-chair, leaning over the table. Jehan, to whom his back was turned, could see only his shoulders and the back of his skull; but he found no difficulty in recognizing the bald head, which Nature had endowed with an enduring tonsure, as if wishing to mark by this outward symbol the archdeacon’s irresistible clerical vocation.
Jehan recognized his brother; but the door had opened so softly that nothing warned Dom Claude of his presence. The curious student took advantage of this fact to examine the cell at his leisure. A large stove, which he had not at first observed, stood to the left of the arm-chair, under the dormer-window. The rays of light which penetrated that aperture passed through a round cobweb covering the pointed arch of the window with its delicate tracery, in the center of which the insect architect lay motionless, like the nave of this wheel of lacework. Upon the stove were heaped in confusion all sorts of vessels,—earthen flasks, glass retorts, and charcoal ma trasses. Jehan noticed, with a sigh, that there was not a single saucepan.
“The kitchen utensils are cold!” thought he.
Moreover, there was no fire in the stove, and it even seemed as if none had been lighted for a long time. A glass mask, which Jehan noted among the alchemist’s tools, and doubtless used to protect the archdeacon’s face when handling any dangerous substance, lay in one corner, covered with dust, and apparently forgotten. Beside it lay an equally dusty pair of bellows, upon the upper surface of which was the motto, inlaid in copper, “Spira, spera.”ck
Other mottoes were written on the walls, after the manner of the Hermetics, in great number,—some in ink, others engraved with a metal point. Moreover, Gothic letters, Hebrew letters, Greek letters, and Roman letters were used indiscriminately,—the inscriptions overlapping each other haphazardly, the newest effacing the oldest, and all entangled together, like the branches in a thicket, like the pikes in an affray. There was a confused medley of all human philosophy, thought, and knowledge. Here and there one shone out among the rest like a flag among the spear-heads. They were for the most part brief Greek or Latin devices, such as the Middle Ages expressed so well: “Unde? inde?” “Homo homini monstrum.” “Astra, castra, nomen, numen.” “Mγα ββλoν, μ γα kαkóv” “Sapere aude.” “Flat ubi vult,”cl etc. Sometimes a single word without any apparent meaning, “‘Avαγko?αγíα,” which possibly hid a bitter allusion to the monastic system; sometimes a simple maxim of clerical discipline in the form of a regular hexameter, “C?lestem dominum, terrestrem dicito domnum.”cm There were also Hebrew hieroglyphics, of which Jehan, who did not even know much Greek, could make nothing; and the whole was crisscrossed in every direction with stars, figures of men and animals, and intersecting triangles, which contributed not a little to make the blotted wall of the cell look like a sheet of paper which a monkey had bedaubed with an inky pen.
The entire abode, moreover, had a look of general desertion and decay, and the bad condition of the implements led to the conjecture that their owner had for some time been distracted from his labors by other cares.
This owner, however, bending over a huge manuscript adorned with quaint paintings, seemed tormented by a thought which mingled constantly with his meditations,—at least, so Jehan judged from hearing him exclaim, with the pensive pauses of a man in a brown study thinking aloud:— “Yes, Manu said it, and Zoroaster taught it,—the sun is the offspring of fire, the moon of the sun; fire is the central soul of the great whole; its elementary atoms perpetually overflow, and flood the world in boundless currents! At the points where these currents cross in the heavens, they produce light; at their points of intersection on the earth, they produce gold. Light, gold; the same thing! From fire to the concrete state. The difference between the visible and palpable, between the fluid and solid of the same substance, between steam and ice,—nothing more. These are not mere dreams,—it is the general law of Nature. But how are we to wrest from science the secret of this general law? Why, this light which irradiates my hand is gold! these self-same atoms, expanded in harmony with a certain law, only require to be condensed in accordance with another law. And how? Some have fancied it was by burying a sunbeam. Averro?s,—yes, it was Averro?s,—Averro?s interred one under the first column to the left in the sanctuary of the Koran, in the great mosque of Cordova; but the vault may not be opened to see if the operation be successful, until eight thousand years have passed.”