Part 4 (2/2)
M. Jerome Coignard added that I had profited in a certain way by his lessons, and my father asked the stranger if his lords.h.i.+p would not be disposed to eat a morsel.
”I am not in want of anything,” said the stranger, ”and it's easy for me to go without any food for a year or longer because of a certain elixir the composition of which is known only to the philosophical. This faculty is not confined to myself alone, it is the common property of all wise men, and it is known that the ill.u.s.trious Cardan went without food during several years without being incommoded by it. On the contrary his mind became singularly vivacious. But still I'll eat what it pleases you to offer me, simply to please you.”
And he took a seat at our little table without any ceremony. At once Friar Ange also noiselessly pushed his stool between mine and that of my teacher and sat on it to receive his portion of the partridge pie my mother was dis.h.i.+ng up.
The philosopher having thrown his cape over the back of his seat, we could see that he wore diamond b.u.t.tons on his coat. He remained thoughtful. The shadow of his nose fell on his mouth and his hollow cheeks went deep into his jaws. His gloomy humour took possession of the whole company. No other noise was audible but the one made by the little friar munching his pie.
Suddenly the philosopher said:
”The more I think it over, the more I am convinced that yonder Salamander came for this lad.” And he pointed his knife at me.
”Sir,” I replied, ”if the Salamanders are really as you say, this one honours me very much, and I am truly obliged to her. But, to say the truth, I have rather guessed than seen her, and this first encounter has only awakened my curiosity without giving me full satisfaction.”
Unable to speak at his ease, my good teacher was suffocating. Suddenly, breaking out very loud, he said to the philosopher:
”Sir, I am fifty-one years old, a master of arts and a doctor of divinity. I have read all the Greek and Latin authors, who have not been annihilated either by time's injury or by man's malice, and I have never seen a Salamander, wherefrom I conclude that no such thing exists.”
”Excuse me,” said Friar Ange, half suffocated by partridge pie and half by dismay; ”excuse me! Unhappily some Salamanders do exist and a learned Jesuit father, whose name I have forgotten, has discoursed on their apparition. I myself have seen, at a place called St Claude, at a cottager's, a Salamander in a fireplace close to a kettle. She had a cat's head, a toad's body and the tail of a fish. I threw a handful of holy water on the beast, and it at once disappeared in the air, with a frightful noise like sudden frying and I was enveloped in acrid fumes, which very nearly burnt my eyes out. And what I say is so true that for at least a whole week my beard smelt of burning, which proves better than anything else the maliciousness of the beast.”
”You want to make game of us, little friar,” said the abbe. ”Your toad with a cat's head is no more real than the Nymph of that gentleman, and it is quite a disgusting invention.”
The philosopher began to laugh, and said Friar Ange had not seen the wise man's Salamander. When the Nymphs of the fire meet with a Capuchin they turn their back on him.
”Oh! Oh!” said my father, bursting out laughing, ”the back of a Nymph is still too good for a Capuchin.”
And being in a good humour, he sent a mighty slice of the pie to the little friar.
My mother placed the roast in the middle of the table, and took advantage of it to ask if the Salamanders are good Christians, of which she had her doubts, as she had never heard that the inhabitants of fire praised the Lord.
”Madam,” replied my teacher, ”several theologians of the Society of Jesus have recognised the existence of a people of incubus and succubus who are not properly demons, because they do not let themselves be routed by an aspersion of holy water and who do not belong to the Church Triumphant; glorified spirits would never have attempted, as has been the case at Perouse, to seduce the wife of a baker. But if you wish for my opinion, they are rather the dirty imaginations of a sneak than the views of a doctor.
”You must hate and bewail that sons of the Church, born in light, could conceive of the world and of G.o.d a less sublime idea than that formed by a Plato or a Cicero in the night of ignorance and of paganism. G.o.d is less absent, I dare say, from the Dream of Scipio than from those black tractates of demonology the authors of which call themselves Christians and Catholics.”
”Sir,” replied the priest, ”I found a very old MS. of Cicero spoke with effluence and facility, but he was but a commonplace intellect, and not very learned in holy sciences. Have you ever heard of Hermes Trismegistus and of the Emerald Table?”
”Sir,” replied the priest, ”I found a very old MS. of the Emerald Table in the library of the Bishop of Seez, and I should have marvelled over it one day or another, but for the chamber-maid of the bailiff's lady who went to Paris to make her fortune and who made me ride in the coach with her. There was no witchcraft used, Sir Philospher, and I only succ.u.mbed to natural charms:
'Non facit hoc verbis; facie tenerisque lacertis Devovet et flavis nostra puella comis.'”
”That's a new proof,” said the philosopher, ”women are great enemies of science, and the wise man ought to keep himself aloof from them.”
”In legitimate marriage also?” inquired my father.
”Especially in legitimate marriage,” replied the philosopher.
”Alas!” my father continued to question, ”what remains to your poor wise men when they feel disposed for a little fun?”
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