Part 33 (1/2)
”I wish I could draw,” he said; ”but I can do nothing useful.”
”Rich men like you,” said Strahan, peevishly, ”can engage others, and are better employed in rewarding good artists than in making bad drawings themselves.”
”Yes, I can employ others; and--Fenwick, when you have finished with Strahan I will ask permission to employ you, though without reward; the task I would impose will not take you a minute.”
He then threw himself back in his chair, and seemed to fall into a doze.
The dressing-bell rang; Strahan put away the plans,--indeed, they were now pretty well finished and decided on. Margrave woke up as our host left the room to dress, and drawing me towards another table in the room, placed before me one of his favourite mystic books, and, pointing to an old woodcut, said,
”I will ask you to copy this for me; it pretends to be a facsimile of Solomon's famous seal. I have a whimsical desire to have a copy of it.
You observe two triangles interlaced and inserted in a circle?--the pentacle, in short. Yes, just so. You need not add the astrological characters: they are the senseless superfluous accessories of the dreamer who wrote the book. But the pentacle itself has an intelligible meaning; it belongs to the only universal language, the language of symbol, in which all races that think--around, and above, and below us--can establish communion of thought. If in the external universe any one constructive principle can be detected, it is the geometrical; and in every part of the world in which magic pretends to a written character, I find that its hieroglyphics are geometrical figures. Is it not laughable that the most positive of all the sciences should thus lend its angles and circles to the use of--what shall I call it?--the ignorance?--ay, that is the word--the ignorance of dealers in magic?”
He took up the paper, on which I had hastily described the triangles and the circle, and left the room, chanting the serpent-charmer's song.
(1) The following description of a stone at Corfu, celebrated as an antidote to the venom of the serpent's bite, was given to me by an eminent scholar and legal functionary in that island:--
DESCRIPTION of THE BLUESTONE.--This stone is of an oval shape 1 2/10 in.
long, 7/10 broad, 3/10 thick, and, having been broken formerly, is now set in gold.
When a person is bitten by a poisonous snake, the bite must be opened by a cut of a lancet or razor longways, and the stone applied within twenty-four hours. The stone then attaches itself firmly on the wound, and when it has done its office falls off; the cure is then complete.
The stone must then be thrown into milk, whereupon it vomits the poison it has absorbed, which remains green on the top of the milk, and the stone is then again fit for use.
This stone has been from time immemorial in the family of Ventura, of Corfu, a house of Italian origin, and is notorious, so that peasants immediately apply for its aid. Its virtue has not been impaired by the fracture. Its nature or composition is unknown.
In a case where two were stung at the same time by serpents, the stone was applied to one, who recovered; but the other, for whom it could not be used, died.
It never failed but once, and then it was applied after the twenty-four hours.
Its colour is so dark as not to be distinguished from black.
P. M. COLQUHOUN.
Corfu, 7th Nov., 1860.
Sir Emerson Tennent, in his popular and excellent work on Ceylon, gives an account of ”snake stones” apparently similar to the one at Corfu, except that they are ”intensely black and highly polished,” and which are applied, in much the same manner, to the wounds inflicted by the cobra-capella.
QUERY.-Might it not be worth while to ascertain the chemical properties of these stones, and, if they be efficacious in the extraction of venom conveyed by a bite, might they not be as successful if applied to the bite of a mad dog as to that of a cobra-capella?
CHAPTER LI.
When we separated for the night, which we did at eleven o'clock, Margrave said,--
”Good-night and good-by. I must leave you to-morrow, Strahan, and before your usual hour for rising. I took the liberty of requesting one of your men to order me a chaise from L----. Pardon my seeming abruptness, but I always avoid long leave-takings, and I had fixed the date of my departure almost as soon as I accepted your invitation.”
”I have no right to complain. The place must be dull indeed to a gay young fellow like you. It is dull even to me. I am meditating flight already. Are you going back to L----?”
”Not even for such things as I left at my lodgings. When I settle somewhere and can give an address, I shall direct them to be sent to me.