Quentin Durward, Walter Scott [good books to read for beginners .txt] 📗

Sire?” replied the philosopher, “thou, whose step in science was so forward, thy apprehension so quick, thy perseverance so unceasing—art thou not ashamed to turn from the first frown of fortune, like a craven from the first clash of arms? Didst thou propose to become participant of those mysteries which raise men above the passions, the mischances, the pains, the sorrows of life, a state only to be attained by rivalling the firmness of the ancient Stoic, and dost thou shrink from the first pressure of adversity, and forfeit the glorious prize for which thou didst start as a competitor, frightened out of the course, like a scared racer, by shadowy and unreal evils?”

“Shadowy and unreal! frontless as thou art!” exclaimed the King. “Is this dungeon unreal?—the weapons of the guards of my detested enemy Burgundy, which you may hear clash at the gate, are those shadows? What, traitor, are real evils, if imprisonment, dethronement, and danger of life are not so?”

“Ignorance—ignorance, my brother, and prejudice,” answered the sage, with great firmness, “are the only real evils. Believe me that Kings in the plenitude of power, if immersed in ignorance and prejudice, are less free than sages in a dungeon, and loaded with material chains. Towards this true happiness it is mine to guide you—be it yours to attend to my instructions.”

“And it is to such philosophical freedom that your lessons would have guided me?” said the King very bitterly. “I would you had told me at Plessis that the dominion promised me so liberally was an empire over my own passions; that the success of which I was assured, related to my progress in philosophy, and that I might become as wise and as learned as a strolling mountebank of Italy! I might surely have attained this mental ascendency at a more moderate price than that of forfeiting the fairest crown in Christendom, and becoming tenant of a dungeon in Peronne! Go, sir, and think not to escape condign punishment.—There is a Heaven above us!”

“I leave you not to your fate,” replied Martius, “until I have vindicated, even in your eyes, darkened as they are, that reputation, a brighter gem than the brightest in thy crown, and at which the world shall wonder, ages after all the race of Capet [the surname of the kings of France, beginning with Hugh Capet, 987] are mouldered into oblivion in the charnels of Saint Denis.”

“Speak on,” said Louis. “Thine impudence cannot make me change my purposes or my opinion.—Yet as I may never again pass judgment as a King, I will not censure thee unheard. Speak, then—though the best thou canst say will be to speak the truth. Confess that I am a dupe, thou an impostor, thy pretended science a dream, and the planets which shine above us as little influential of our destiny as their shadows, when reflected in the river, are capable of altering its course.”

“And how know'st thou,” answered the Astrologer boldly, “the secret influence of yonder blessed lights? Speak'st thou of their inability to influence waters, when yet thou know'st that ever the weakest, the moon herself—weakest because nearest to this wretched earth of ours—holds under her domination not such poor streams as the Somme, but the tides of the mighty ocean itself, which ebb and increase as her disc waxes and wanes, and watch her influence as a slave waits the nod of a Sultana? And now, Louis of Valois, answer my parable in turn.—Confess, art thou not like the foolish passenger, who becomes wroth with his pilot because he cannot bring the vessel into harbour without experiencing occasionally the adverse force of winds and currents? I could indeed point to thee the probable issue of thine enterprise as prosperous, but it was in the power of Heaven alone to conduct thee thither; and if the path be rough and dangerous, was it in my power to smooth or render it more safe? Where is thy wisdom of yesterday, which taught thee so truly to discern that the ways of destiny are often ruled to our advantage, though in opposition to our wishes?”

“You remind me—you remind me,” said the King hastily, “of one specific falsehood. You foretold yonder Scot should accomplish his enterprise fortunately for my interest and honour; and thou knowest it has so terminated that no more mortal injury could I have received than from the impression which the issue of that affair is like to make on the excited brain of the Mad Bull of Burgundy. This is a direct falsehood.—Thou canst plead no evasion here—canst refer to no remote favourable turn of the tide, for which, like an idiot sitting on the bank until the river shall pass away, thou wouldst have me wait contentedly.—Here thy craft deceived thee.—Thou wert weak enough to make a specific prediction, which has proved directly false.”

“Which will prove most firm and true,” answered the Astrologer boldly. “I would desire no greater triumph of art over ignorance, than that prediction and its accomplishment will afford.—I told thee he would be faithful in any honourable commission.—Hath he not been so?—I told thee he would be scrupulous in aiding any evil enterprise.—Hath he not proved so?—If you doubt it, go ask the Bohemian, Hayraddin Maugrabin.”

The King here coloured deeply with shame and anger.

“I told thee,” continued the Astrologer, “that the conjunction of planets under which he set forth augured danger to the person—and hath not his path been beset by danger?—I told thee that it augured an advantage to the sender—and of that thou wilt soon have the benefit.”

“Soon have the benefit!” exclaimed the King. “Have I not the result already, in disgrace and imprisonment?”

“No,” answered the Astrologer, “the End is not as yet—thine own tongue shall ere long confess the benefit which thou hast received, from the manner in which the messenger bore himself in discharging thy commission.”

“This is too—too insolent,” said the King, “at once to deceive and to insult.—But hence!—think not my wrongs shall be unavenged.—There is a Heaven above us!”

Galeotti turned to depart.

“Yet stop,” said Louis; “thou bearest thine imposture bravely out.—Let me hear your answer to one question and think ere you speak.—Can thy pretended skill ascertain the hour of thine own death?”

“Only by referring to the fate of another,” said Galeotti.

“I understand not thine answer,” said Louis.

“Know then, O King,” said Martius, “that this only I can tell with certainty concerning mine own death, that it shall take place exactly twenty-four hours before that of your Majesty.”

[This story appropriated by Scott was told of Tiberius, whose soothsayer made the prediction that his own death would take place three days before that of the Emperor. Louis received a similar reply from a soothsayer, who had foretold the death of one of his favourites. Greatly incensed, he arranged for the death of the soothsayer when he should leave the royal presence after an interview. When Louis questioned him as to the day of his death, the astrologer answere that “it would be exactly three days before that of his Majesty. There was, of course, care taken that he should escape his destined fate, and he was ever after much protected by the King, as a man of real science, and intimately connected with the royal destinies.” S.... Louis was the slave of his physicians also. Cottier, one of these, was paid a retaining fee of ten thousand crowns, besides great sums in lands and money. “He maintained over Louis unbounded influence, by using to him the most disrespectful harshness and insolence. 'I know,' he said to the suffering King, 'that one morning you will turn me adrift like so many others. But, by Heaven, you had better beware, for you will not live eight days after you have done so!' S.]

“Ha! sayest thou?” said Louis, his countenance again altering. “Hold—hold—go not—wait one moment.—Saidst thou, my death should follow thine so closely?”

“Within the space of twenty-four hours,” repeated Galeotti firmly, “if there be one sparkle of true divination in those bright and mysterious intelligences, which speak, each on their courses, though without a tongue. I wish your Majesty good rest.”

“Hold—hold—go not,” said the King, taking him by the arm, and leading him from the door. “Martius Galeotti, I have been a kind master to thee—enriched thee—made thee my friend—my companion—the instructor of my studies.—Be open with me, I entreat you.—Is there aught in this art of yours in very deed?—Shall this Scot's mission be, in fact, propitious to me?—And is the measure of our lives so very—very nearly matched? Confess, my good Martius, you speak after the trick of your trade.—Confess, I pray you, and you shall have no displeasure at my hand. I am in years—a prisoner—likely to be deprived of a kingdom—to one in my condition truth is worth kingdoms, and it is from thee, dearest Martius, that I must look for this inestimable jewel.”

“And I have laid it before your Majesty,” said Galeotti, “at the risk that, in brutal passion, you might turn upon me and rend me.”

“Who, I, Galeotti?” replied Louis mildly. “Alas! thou mistakest me!—Am I not captive—and should not I be patient, especially since my anger can only show my impotence?—Tell me then in sincerity.—Have you fooled me?—Or is your science true, and do you truly report it?”

“Your Majesty will forgive me if I reply to you,” said Martius Galeotti, “that time only—time and the event, will convince incredulity. It suits ill the place of confidence which I have held at the council table of the renowned conqueror, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary—nay, in the cabinet of the Emperor himself—to reiterate assurances of that which I have advanced as true. If you will not believe me, I can but refer to the course of events. A day or two days' patience will prove or disprove what I have averred concerning the young Scot, and I will be contented to die on the wheel, and have my limbs broken joint by joint, if your Majesty have not advantage, and that in a most important degree, from the dauntless conduct of that Quentin Durward. But if I were to die under such tortures, it would be well your Majesty should seek a ghostly father, for, from the moment my last groan is drawn, only twenty-four hours will remain to you for confession and penitence.”

Louis continued to keep hold of Galeotti's robe as he led him towards the door, and pronounced, as he opened it, in a loud voice, “Tomorrow we 'll talk more of this. Go in peace, my learned father.—Go in peace.—Go in peace!”

He repeated these words three times; and, still afraid that the Provost Marshal might mistake his purpose, he led the Astrologer into the hall, holding fast his robe, as if afraid that he should be torn from him, and put to death before his eyes. He did not unloose his grasp until he had not only repeated again and again the gracious phrase, “Go in peace,” but even made a private signal to the Provost Marshal to enjoin a suspension of all proceedings against the person of the Astrologer.

Thus did the possession of some secret information, joined to audacious courage and readiness of wit, save Galeotti from the most imminent danger; and thus was Louis, the most sagacious, as well as the most vindictive, amongst the monarchs of the period, cheated of his revenge by the influence of superstition upon a selfish temper and a mind to which, from the consciousness of many crimes, the fear of death was peculiarly terrible.

He felt, however, considerable mortification at being obliged to relinquish his purposed vengeance, and the disappointment seemed to be shared by his satellites, to whom the execution was to have been committed. Le Balafre alone, perfectly indifferent on the subject, so soon as the countermanding signal was given, left the door at which he had posted himself, and in a few minutes was fast asleep. The Provost Marshal, as the group reclined themselves to repose in the hall after the King retired to his bedchamber, continued to eye the goodly form of the Astrologer with the look of a mastiff watching a joint of meat which the cook had retrieved from his jaws, while his attendants communicated to each other in brief sentences, their characteristic sentiments.

“The poor blinded necromancer,” whispered Trois Eschelles, with an air of spiritual unction and commiseration, to his comrade, Petit Andre, “hath lost the fairest chance of expiating some of his vile sorceries, by dying through means of the cord of the blessed Saint Francis, and I had purpose, indeed, to leave the comfortable noose around his neck, to scare the foul fiend from his unhappy carcass.”

“And I,” said Petit Andre, “have missed the rarest opportunity of knowing how far a weight of seventeen stone will stretch a three plied cord!—It would have been a glorious experiment