Marie Grubbe, Jens Peter Jacobsen [historical books to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Jens Peter Jacobsen
- Performer: -
Book online «Marie Grubbe, Jens Peter Jacobsen [historical books to read .TXT] 📗». Author Jens Peter Jacobsen
that the most lowborn quacksalver could not entertain such vulgar
superstitions as they do. They even put their faith in that widely
disseminated though shameful delusion that making gold is like
concocting a sleeping potion or a healing pillula, that if one has the
correct ingredients, ‘t is but to mix them together, set them over the
fire, and lo! the gold is there. Such lies are circulated by
catch-pennies and ignoramuses—whom may the devil take! Cannot the
fools understand that if ‘t were so simple a process, the world would
be swimming in gold? For although learned authors have held, and
surely with reason, that only a certain part of matter can be
clarified in the form of gold, yet even so we should be flooded. Nay,
the art of the gold maker is costly and exacting. It requires a
fortunate hand, and there must be certain constellations and
conjunctions in the ascendant if the gold is to flow properly. ‘T is
not every year that matter is equally gold-yielding. You have but to
remember that it is no mere distillation nor sublimation but a very
re-creating of nature that is to take place. Nay, I will dare to say
that a tremor passes over the abodes of the spirits of nature whenever
a portion of the pure, bright metal is freed from the
thousand-year-old embrace of materia vilis.”
“Forgive my question,” said Ulrik Frederik, “but do not these occult
arts imperil the soul of him who practises them?”
“Indeed no,” said Burrhi; “how can you harbor such a thought? What
magician was greater than Solomon, whose seal, the great as well as
the small, has been wondrously preserved to us unto this day? And who
imparted to Moses the power of conjuring? Was it not Sabaoth, the
spirit of the storm, the terrible one?” He pressed the stone in one of
his rings to his lips. “‘Tis true,” he continued, “that we know great
names of darkness and awful words, yea, fearful mystic signs which if
they be used for evil, as many witches and warlocks and vulgar
soothsayers use them, instantly bind the soul of him who names them in
the fetters of Gehenna; but we call upon them only to free the sacred
primordial element from its admixture of and pollution by dust and
earthly ashes; for that is the true nature of gold; it is the original
matter that was in the beginning and gave light before the sun and the
moon had been set in their appointed places in the vault of heaven.”
They talked thus at length about alchemy and other occult arts until
Ulrik Frederik asked whether Burrhi had been able to cast his
horoscope by the aid of the paper he had sent him through Ole Borch a
few days earlier.
“In its larger aspects,” replied Burrhi, “I might prognosticate your
fate, but when the nativity is not cast in the very hour a child is
born, we fail to get all the more subtle phenomena, and the result is
but little to be depended upon. Yet some things I know. Had you been
of citizen birth and in the position of a humble physician, then I
should have had but joyful tidings for you. As it is, your path
through the world is not so clear. Indeed, the custom is in many ways
to be deplored by which the son of an artisan becomes an artisan, the
merchant’s son a merchant, the farmer’s son a fanner, and so on
throughout all classes. The misfortune of many men is due to nothing
else but their following another career than that which the stars in
the ascendant at the time of their birth would indicate. Thus if a
man born under the sign of the ram in the first section becomes a
soldier, success will never attend him, but wounds, slow advancement,
and early death will be his assured portion, whereas, if he had chosen
a handicraft, such as working in stone or wrought metals, his course
would have run smooth. One who is born under the sign of the fishes,
if in the first section, should till the soil, or if he be a man of
fortune, should acquire a landed estate, while he who is born in the
latter part should follow the sea, whether it be as the skipper of a
smack or as an admiral. The sign of the bull in the first part is for
warriors, in the second part, for lawyers. The twins, which were in
the ascendant at the time of your birth, are, as I have said before,
for physicians in the first part and for merchants in the second. But
now let me see your palm.”
Ulrik Frederik held out his hand, and Burrhi went to the triangle of
horseshoes, touching them with his shoes as a tight-rope dancer rubs
his soles over the waxed board before venturing out on the line. Then
he looked at the palm.
“Ay,” said he, “the honor line is long and unbroken; it goes as far as
it may go without reaching a crown. The luck line is somewhat blurred
for a time, but farther on it grows more distinct. There is the life
line; it seems but poor, I grieve to say. Take great care until you
have passed the age of seven and twenty, for at that time your life is
threatened in some sinister and secret fashion, but after that the
line becomes clear and strong and reaches to a good old age. There is
but one offshoot—ah, no, there is a smaller one hard by. You will
have issue of two beds, but few in each.”
He dropped the hand.
“Hark,” he said gravely, “there is danger before you, but where it
lurks is hidden from me. Yet it is in no wise the open danger of war.
If it should be a fall or other accident of travel, I would have you
take these triangular malachites; they are of a particular nature.
See, I myself carry one of them in this ring; they guard against
falling from horse or coach. Take them with you and carry them ever on
your breast, or if you have them set in a ring, cut away the gold
behind them, for the stone must touch if it is to protect you. And
here is a jasper. Do you see the design like a tree? It is very rare
and most precious and good against stabbing in the dark and liquid
poisons. Once more I pray you, my dear young gentleman, that you have
a care, especially where women are concerned. Nothing definite is
revealed to me, but there are signs of danger gleaming in the hand of
a woman, yet I know nothing for a certainty, and it were well to guard
also against false friends and traitorous servants, against cold
waters and long nights.”
Ulrik Frederik accepted the gifts graciously and did not neglect the
following day to send the alchemist a costly necklace as a token of
his gratitude for his wise counsel and protecting stones. After that
he proceeded directly to Spain without further interruption.
The house seemed very quiet that spring day when the sound of horses’
hoofs had died away in the distance. In the flurry of leave-taking the
doors had been left open; the table was still set after Ulrik
Frederik’s breakfast, with his napkin just as he had crumpled it at
his plate, and the tracks of his great riding boots were still wet on
the floor. Over there by the tall pier glass he had pressed her to his
heart and kissed and kissed her in farewell, trying to comfort her
with oaths and vows of a speedy return. Involuntarily she moved to the
mirror as though to see whether it did not hold something of his image
as she had glimpsed it a moment ago while locked in his arms. Her own
lonely, drooping figure and pale, tear-stained face met her searching
glance from behind the smooth, glittering surface.
She heard the street door close, and the lackey cleared the table.
Ulrik Frederik’s favorite dogs, Nero, Passando, Rumor, and Delphine,
had been locked in and ran about the room whimpering and sniffing his
tracks. She tried to call them but could not for weeping. Passando,
the tall red foxhound, came to her; she knelt down to stroke and
caress the dog, but he wagged his tail in an absentminded way, looked
up into her face, and went on howling.
Those first days—how empty every thing was and dreary! The time
dragged slowly, and the solitude seemed to hang over her, heavy and
oppressive, while her longing would sometimes burn like salt in an
open wound. Ay, it was so at first, but presently all this was no
longer new, and the darkness and emptiness, the longing and grief came
again and again like snow that falls flake upon flake, until it seemed
to wrap her in a strange, dull hopelessness, almost a numbness that
made a comfortable shelter of her sorrow.
Suddenly all was changed. Every nerve was strung to the most acute
sensitiveness, every vein throbbing with blood athirst for life, and
her fancy teemed like the desert air with colorful images and luring
forms. On such days she was like a prisoner who sees youth slip by,
spring after spring, barren, without bloom, dull and empty, always
passing, never coming. The sum of time seemed to be counted out with
hours for pennies; at every stroke of the clock one fell rattling at
her feet, crumbled, and was dust while she would wring her hands in
agonized life-hunger and scream with pain.
She appeared but seldom at court or in the homes of her family, for
etiquette demanded that she should keep to the house. Nor was she in
the mood to welcome visitors, and as they soon ceased coming, she was
left entirely to herself. This lonely brooding and fretting soon
brought on an indolent torpor, and she would sometimes lie in bed for
days and nights at a stretch, trying to keep in a state betwixt waking
and sleeping which gave rise to fantastic visions. Far clearer than
the misty dream pictures of healthy sleep, these images filled the
place of the life she was missing.
Her irritability grew with every day, and the slightest noise was
torture. Sometimes she would be seized with the strangest notions and
with sudden mad impulses that might almost raise a doubt of her
sanity. Indeed, there was perhaps but the width of a straw between
madness and that curious longing to do some desperate deed merely for
the sake of doing it without the least reason or even real desire for
it.
Sometimes when she stood at the open window leaning against the
casement and looking down into the paved court below, she would feel
an overmastering impulse to throw herself down, merely to do it. But
in that very second she seemed to have actually made the leap in her
imagination and to have felt the cool, incisive tingling that
accompanies a jump from a height. She darted back from the window to
the inmost corner of the room, shaking with horror, the image of
herself lying in her own blood on the hard stones so vivid in her mind
that she had to go back to the window again and look down in order to
drive it away.
Less dangerous and of a somewhat different nature was the fancy that
would seize her when she looked at her own bare arm and traced, in a
kind of fascination, the course of the blue and deep violet veins
under the white
Comments (0)