The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano Part 19

"No!" howled the little one: "what, odds bodikins! cousin, don't you know me in the least? and yet in my younger days people wanted to flatter me by a.s.suring me that we in some degree resembled each other: and faith! when I come to look thus closely at your figure, your physiognomy, your expression, your sweet smile, and those twinkling stars in your eyes there, and when I weigh all this with scrupulous impartiality, why, cousin Pancrazia of the house of Posaterrena in Florence, and little Beresynth of the family of Fuocoterrestro in Milan, are for such degrees of kin, as cousinhood, like each other enough."

"O gemini!" screamed the old woman in delight: "so you are the Beresynth of Milan about whom I heard so much talk in my childhood.

Hey! Hey! so am I at this late hour in the day, in the depth of old age, to become acquainted with such a lovely cousin face to face!"

"Ay!" said the dwarf: "just nose to nose; for that great bastion thrown up there is certainly the biggest piece of bonework in our faces. For curiosity's sake, dear coz, let us make an experiment for once, whether we can manage to give each other a cousinly kiss.... No, purely impossible! the far outjutting promontories immediately begin rattling against each other, and forclose our lowly lips from everything like a soft meeting. We must force our n.o.ble Roman noses aside with our two fists. So! Don't let it fly, my lady cousin! I might come by a box on the ears that would make my last teeth tumble out."

With a hearty laugh the hag cried: "Hey! I have not been so merry this long time. But what did they want with you before the door there, cousin?"

"What!" screamed the little one: "to look at me, to delight their eyes with me, nothing more. Is not man, my highly esteemed cousin gossip, a thoroughly silly animal? Here in Rome now have hundreds of thousands been a.s.sembled whole months, for their Redeemer's honour, as they give out, and to do penance for their sins and get rid of them; and the moment I peep out of the window (I only arrived here the day before yesterday) be it merely in my nightcap, and still more when I come forth at full length and in my Sunday suit into the marketplace, one can't help swearing that the whole gang of them have started out of every hole and corner in Europe merely for my sake: they so leer, and ogle me, and whisper, and ask questions, and laugh, and are in ecstacies. I might grow rich, meseems, were I to let myself be stared at for money while I stay here; and if I chance to give them all this pleasure gratis, forthwith a pack of blockheads begin barking and hallooing at my tail. To see a long-tailed monkey, apes or seals, the dogs must put themselves to some expense; yet instead of enjoying my magnanimity quietly and like sensible people, they rave and revile me all round, and hunt for every expression of loathing they can root out of the animal creation, to display their gross ignorance."

"Very true! very true!" sighed the old woman: "it fares no better with me. Are the beasts such sheer fools then? Only let a body have a regular, average, commonplace nose, eyes, and chin, and all goes on quietly."

"Look at the fish," continued Beresynth, "who are dunces in many things. What philosophical tolerance! and yet among them many a fellow is all snout, and confronts the learned physiognomists of the ocean with a countenance, grave, cold, calm in the consciousness of its originality: nay, the whole deep brims and swims with one can't count how many eccentric faces, and gills, and teeth, and eyes astart from their sockets, and every other kind of striking contour: but every monster there floats his own way quietly and peaceably, without having his sleeve twitcht or any other annoyance. Man alone is so absurd as to laugh and sneer at his fellow creatures."

"And on what," said the beldam, "after all does this mighty difference turn? I am sure I never yet saw a nose that was but a single yard long: an inch, at most two, hardly ever three, make the vast distinction between what they call monsters, and what they are pleased in their modesty to style beauty. And now to come to a hump. If it were not in one's way sometimes in bed, as you know, coz, it is in itself far more agreeable to the eye than those dull flats by way of backs, where in many a lank lathy b.o.o.by the tiresome straight line stretches up as far as one can see without a single twist, or curl, or flourish."

"You are in the right, my dame cousin!" cried Beresynth already drunk to his drunken hostess. "What can Nature be about when she turns off the things they christen beauties from her pottery-wheel? Why, they are hardly worth the trouble of setting to work at them. But such cabinet pieces as you and I! there the creative power, or the principle of nature, or the soul of the world, or the mundane animal, or whatever t.i.tle one chooses to give the thing, can look at its product with a certain degree of complacency and satisfaction. For it has your curved lines: it starts off into noticeable angles; it is jagged like corals; it darts forward like crystals; it agglomerates like basalt; nay, there is no conceivable line that does not hop, skip, and jump about our bodies. We, coz, are the spoilt, the c.o.c.kered children of the formation: and this is why the common rabble of nature are so malicious and envious toward us. Their slim wretched fas.h.i.+on is next door to the slimy eel: there is nothing edifying in such an edifice. From that piece of monotony to the prawn is already a good step; and how far above that is the seal! how do we surpa.s.s them both, as well as the seastar, the crab, and the lobster, my trustiest cousin, in our excursive irregularities, which defy all the mathematicians in the world to find an expression for their law. But coz, pray where did you get those two gorgeous teeth? the incomparable couple cut a grand and gloomy figure there across the chasm ... of your unfathomable mouth, and form a capital bridge over the gulf that gapes between the dark cliffs of your gums."

"O you rogue! O you flatterer!" laught the old woman: "but your darling chin that comes forward so complaisantly, and is so ready to wait upon you and spread itself out like a table. Don't you think you could put a good-sized platter upon it comfortably, where your mouth might then quietly nibble away, while your hands were seeking work elsewhere. This I call an economical arrangement."

"We won't spoil ourselves by too much praise;" said the dwarf: "we are already, it seems, vain enough of our advantages; and after all we did not give them to ourselves."

"You are right," said she. "But what profession are you of, cousin?

where do you live?"

"Oddly enough;" answered Beresynth: "sometimes here, sometimes there, like a vagabond: however I now mean to settle quietly; and as I heard there was still a near kinswoman of mine living, I resolved to seek her out and beg her to come and live with me. This is what brought me hither. In my youth I was an apothecary in Calabria; there they drove me away, because they fancied I manufactured love-powders. O dear, as if there was any need of 'em nowadays. Then once upon a time I was a tailor; the outcry was, I thieved too much: a pastrycook; all accused me of thinning the cat and dog population. I wanted to put on a monk's cowl; but no convent would let me in. Then came my doctoring days, and I was to be burnt; for they muttered about, what think you?

witchcraft. I became a scholar, wrote essays, systems of philosophy, poems: those who could not read were sure I was blaspheming G.o.d and Christianity, and that was too bad. After many long years I betook myself to the man who was making such a pother in the world, Pietro Apone, and became his familiar, next a hermit, and what not? The best is that in every state of life I have made money and h.o.a.rded it up; so that I can now lay down my grey head free from want and care. And now, coz, for your history."

"Just like yours;" answered she: "the innocent are always persecuted.

I have had a few times to stand in the pillory; have been banisht out of half a dozen countries; among other things they even wanted to burn me; they would have it I conjured, I stole children, I bewitcht people, I fabricated poisons."

"And coz," said Beresynth in the openness of his heart, "there was some truth in all this, was not there? innocent as you are. I at least must confess it as to myself, and perhaps it may lie in the family, that I have given in to more than one of the aforesaid practices. My amiable gossip, he who has once swallowed a t.i.tbit of dear witchcraft, can never keep his fingers from it afterward as long as he lives. The thing is just like dram-drinking: once get the taste for it, and tongue, and throat, and gums, and marry! even lungs and liver, will never let it go."

"You know human nature, I see, my dear cousin;" said the hag, with a grin that tried to be a simper. "Such trifles as a little murder and witchcraft, poisoning and stealing, run in the blood even of the innocentest. Bawding was a thing in which I could never hit the mark.

And what shall one say when one has to endure thanklessness and woe from one's own children? My daughter, though she has seen how I suffer hunger and trouble, and how I have stinted and starved my old mouth, merely to put her into fine clothes, the graceless wench would never let me coax her into earning but a single half-crown. Some time since she might have made a good match of it! there was Ildefonso and Andrea, and many other brave fellows besides, who supported our whole house, herself among the rest; but she set up the paltry pretense that the gentry were robbers and murderers, and that she could not let them into her heart. The gallants were such generous spirits, they meant to have the baggage actually tied to them in church; but silly youth has neither sense nor truth. Now they are lying in their graves, those worthy men, and have been turned out of life's doors in a most scandalous way. But this does not move her a whit more than my sorrow and distress; so that I can't make her consent to live with a rich young n.o.ble cavalier, the nephew of a cardinal, who could floor this whole room with gold. The silly jade has run away, and they absolutely won't give her up to me again. Such is the respect shewn to a mother in these days."

"Let her go, the worthless trumpery!" cried Beresynth: "we shall live happily together without her, I warrant; our ways of thinking and feeling are so well paired."

"But why should she run away," continued the old woman, "like a faithless cat after a flogging? We might have parted as if we loved each other, and like two rational beings. Surely some occasion would have turned up before long of selling the greensick minx advantageously to an old lover or a young one; and this might have succeeded too, why should not it? if she had not lockt up a silly young fellow in her heart, whom she loves, as she tells me."

"O have done, gammer!" screamed Beresynth, reeling and already half asleep. "If you begin to talk about love, coz, I shall tumble into such a laughing convulsion that I shall not recover from it for this next three days. Love! that stupid word broke the neck of my famous master, Pietro. But for this tarantula-dance the great hawk-nose would still be sitting as professor at his lecturing desk, and tickling the young goslings with philosophy and wisdom as they perkt up their yellow beaks to catch the crumbs he dropt into them. Marry! old beldam, this monkey-trick of love, this Platonic drunkenness of the soul, was the only thing wanting to us, to me as well as you, and then the miracle of our heroic existence would have been quite perfect....

Well, goodbye, old dame; tomorrow night about this time I'll come to fetch you, and then we never part more."

"Cousin," said Pancrazia, "goodbye, till we meet again. Since you came through my door, I have grown quite a different creature. We will make a royal housekeeping of it hereafter."

"So we too have had our jubilee now!" stammered Beresynth, who was already standing in the street, and who reeled through the dark night to his lodging.

Antonio meanwhile had already been to prepare old Ambrosio and his wife, telling them he was now sure of finding out the hideous old woman again, and no doubt her daughter Crescentia also. The mother readily believed him; but the father persisted in his doubts.

Even before the sun had set, the youth was again with his friend at the door of the wise Castalio. The latter met them smiling, and said: "Here, Antonio, take this paper: you will find noted down on it, in what street, in what house, you may meet with the old crone. When you have discovered her, you will no longer entertain any doubts about my science."

"I am already convinced;" replied Antonio: "I was so even yesterday: you are the wisest of mortals, and by the help of your art will make me the happiest. I will go to seek for the old woman: and if Crescentia is not dead or lost, I shall carry her to the arms of her parents."

Powerfully excited and full of expectation he was about to depart in haste; his hand was already on the door-k.n.o.b; when a low timid knock was heard on the outside, accompanied by a hoa.r.s.e coughing and a sc.r.a.ping of feet.

"Who's there?" cried Castalio; and, when the friends opened the door, in came Beresynth, who immediately stationed himself in the middle of the room, and with sundry antick bows and writhings of his features, offered his services to the wise man.

"Who are you?" exclaimed Castalio, who had changed colour, and pale and trembling had shrunk back a few steps.

"A villain he is, the fiend!" cried Antonio: "a magician, whom we must put into the inquisition's hands. It is the accursed Beresynth himself, whose name, my honoured friend, you have already heard, and of whom I have told you."

"Think you so, young jackanapes?" said Beresynth with a sneer of the deepest contempt. "With you, children, I have no business. Do you not know me?" cried he turning to Castalio: "perhaps you have nothing for me to do."

"How should I?" said Castalio with a faltering voice: "I never saw you before. Leave me; I must decline your services. In this little house of mine I have no room for any stranger."

Beresynth paced with his biggest strides up and down. "So, you don't know me? It may be; folks alter a good deal sometimes; for no man is always in his bloom. But, it strikes me, people ought not to forget me, or to mistake me for any one else, quite so soon as they might many of your smooth nicely painted ninnies.... And you too," as he turned round to the youths, "you perchance don't know that wisdommonger there."

"O yes!" said Antonio: "he is our best friend, the excellent Castalio."

Here the dwarf raised such an enormous shout of laughter, that the walls and windows of the room clattered and echoed it back. "Castalio!

Castalio!" screamed he as if possest: "why not Aganippe too, or Hippocrene? So, you have got spectacles before your eyes, and your souls stare stupidly with a calf's look out of your round pumpkins of heads! Rub your noses, and see, and recognize, I pray you, your honoured Pietro of Abano, the great jack-of-all-trades from Padua!"

He who called himself Castalio had sunk as if fainting into a chair: his trembling was so violent that all his limbs fluttered; the muscles of his face quivered with such force that no feature in it could be distinguisht; and after the young men had gazed on it for some time amazedly, they thought with horrour they perceived that from this distortion of all the lineaments came forth the well-known countenance of the aged Apone.

With a loud scream the magician started from his seat, clencht his fists, and foamed at the mouth; he seemed in his fury of a gigantic size. "Well, yes!" he roared in a tone of thunder: "it is I, I, Pietro! and thou slave, thou art spoiling my game, as I was destroying those young brats after a new fas.h.i.+on. What wouldst thou, worm, of me, who am thy master, and who have cast thee off? Tremblest thou not through all thy bones at the thought of my vengeance and punishment?"

Beresynth again raised the same pealing horrid laugh. "Vengeance!

Punishment!" he repeated grinning. "Fool! matchless fool! art thou now for the first time to find out that such language toward me does not beseem thee? that thou juggler, must crawl in the dust before me? that a glance of my eye, a grasp of my iron arm, will dash thee to pieces, thou earth-born mummery with thy wretched tricks, which only prospered through my countenance."

A spectre stood in the hall. His eyes shot forth sparks of fire; his arms spread themselves out like an eagle's wings; his head toucht the ceiling: Pietro lay whining and howling at his feet. "It was I," so the demon spake on, "who furthered thy paltry tricks; who deluded the people; who made thee sin and thrive in thy sins. Thou troddest me under foot; I was thy scorn; thy high-minded wisdom triumpht over my silliness. Now I am thy master. Now thou shalt follow me as my bondslave into my kingdom.... Depart hence, ye poor wretches!" he cried to the youths: "what more we have still to settle, it befits not you to behold!" and a tremendous clap of thunder shook the house to the bottom.

Dazzled, horrour-struck, Antonio and Alfonso rusht out; their knees tottered; their teeth chattered. Without knowing how, they found themselves again in the street; they fled into a neighbouring church; for a howling whirlwind now arose, with thunder and lightning, and the house, when they lookt behind them, was burning and had fallen in ruins.

Two dark shadows hovered over the flame, fighting, as it seemed, and twining round each other, and wrestling and das.h.i.+ng each other to and fro: yells of despair and peals of scornful laughter resounded alternately between the pauses of the loudly raving storm.

It was a long time before Antonio could collect calmness enough to go and seek for the house of the old woman according to the directions he had received. He found her drest out; and she cried to him merrily: "What! Florentine! are you too come to see me again at last?"

"Where is your daughter?" askt Antonio, trembling with anxiety.

"If you wish to have her now," replied the old woman, "I won't keep her from you. But you must pay honestly for her, you or the Podesta of Padua, if he still lives; for she is his child, whom I stole from him long since, because the Marconis vouchsafed me a round sum of money for doing so."

"If you can prove it," said the youth, "you shall have whatever you ask."

"Proofs, as many as you please," cried the beldam: "trinkets with arms on them, clothes she had on at the time, a mole on her right shoulder, which of course her mother must know best. But you shall also have letters from the Marconis, writings which I carried off with her from Padua in my hurry, everything ... only money must be forthcoming."