Volume Ii Part 3 (1/2)
”Oh! I never thought of asking him about himself.”
She was merely puzzled by an unexpected question.
”But you know something of him?”
”Let me think,” she replied. ”Yes, he was the intimate of my father Uel's father, and of his father before him.”
”Is he so old then?”
”I cannot say how long he has been a family acquaintance. Of my knowledge he is very learned in everything. He speaks all the languages I ever heard of; he pa.s.ses the nights alone on the roof of his house”--
”Alone on the roof of his house!”
”Only of clear nights, you understand. A servant carries a chair and table up for him, and a roll of papers, with pen and ink, and a clock of bra.s.s and gold. The paper is a map of the heavens; and he sits there watching the stars, marking them in position on the map, the clock telling him the exact time.”
”An astronomer,” said Sergius.
”And an astrologer,” she added; ”and besides these things he is a doctor, but goes only amongst the poor, taking nothing from them. He is also a chemist; and he has tables of the plants curative and deadly, and can extract their qualities, and reduce them from fluids to solids, and proportionate them. He is also a master of figures, a science, he always terms it, the first of creative principles without which G.o.d could not be G.o.d. So, too, he is a traveller--indeed I think he has been over the known world. You cannot speak of a capital or of an island, or a tribe which he has not visited. He has servants from the farthest East. One of his attendants is an African King; and what is the strangest to me, Sergius, his domestics are all deaf and dumb.”
”Impossible!”
”Nothing appears impossible to him.”
”How does he communicate with them?”
”They catch his meaning from the motion of his lips. He says signs are too slow and uncertain for close explanations.”
”Still he must resort to some language.”
”Oh, yes, the Greek.”
”But if they have somewhat to impart to him?”
”It is theirs to obey, and pantomime seems sufficient to convey the little they have to return to him, for it is seldom more than, 'My Lord, I have done the thing you gave me to do.' If the matter be complex, he too resorts to the lip-speech, which he could not teach without first being proficient in it himself. Thus, for instance, to Nilo”--
”The black giant who defended you against the Greek?”
”Yes--a wonderful man--an ally, not a servant. On the journey to Constantinople, the Prince turned aside into an African Kingdom called Kash-Cush. I cannot tell where it is. Nilo was the King, and a mighty hunter and warrior. His trappings hang in his room now--s.h.i.+elds, spears, knives, bows and arrows, and among them a net of linen threads. When he took the field for lions, his favorite game, the net and a short sword were all he cared for. His throne room, I have heard my father the Prince say, was carpeted with skins taken by him in single combats.”
”What could he do with the net, little Princess?”
”I will give you his account; perhaps you can see it clearly--I cannot.
When the monster makes his leap, the corners of the net are tossed up in the air, and he is in some way caught and tangled... Well, as I was saying, Nilo, though deaf and dumb, of choice left his people and throne to follow the Prince, he knew not where.”
”Oh, little friend! Do you know you are talking the incredible to me?
Who ever heard of such thing before?”
Sergius' blue eyes were astare with wonder.