The Fiery Angel

by Valery Bruisov

  “Renata! Why are you here?”

  Renata, as if recognising me, flung herself away in fright, disappearing in the darkness, but I flew after her amidst the black bushes, stretching out my hands, furious and ripe to kill if I caught her. But she, appearing only for moments, disappeared again, the trunks of trees barred my way, branches whipped my face, while behind me sounded screams, whistlings and cries of the chase as though I were being pursued, and everything whirled in my head, and at last I could see nothing around me and fell to the ground, as if into a deep well, head foremost.

  Later, when I came to, and, with a great effort, opened my eyes and looked around, I saw that I was lying alone on the floor of that small room in which I had smeared myself with the magic composition. In the air still hovered the strangling odour of the ointment, all my body ached as though I had been jarred by falling from a height, and the pain in my head was such that I could scarcely think. However, summoning all my strength, I managed to sit up, and at once tried to take stock of the meaning of all that which filled my memory. And for quite a long time I sat motionless, thinking and drawing conclusions.

  Chapter the Fifth

  How we studied Magic

  MY conclusions assailed me from two sides, like the warriors of two enemy hosts, and it was not easy for me to weight the scales of my understanding on to one side, for in both cups could I place new and ever new considerations.

  On the one hand there was much to sustain the view that my dread aerial journey to the Sabbath had been merely an apparition of sleep, called forth by the poisonous vapours of the ointment I had rubbed into my body. The cape on which I had recovered my senses was crumpled and rucked into folds exactly as it would have been after a human body had lain on it for a prolonged period. Nowhere on my body were there any signs of my journey of the night, particularly, I noted, there were no scratches or sores on my legs from the barefoot dance upon the meadow or the hunt through the woods. And lastly—and this was the most important—on my breast could be perceived no trace of the prick of his horn, with which Master Leonard had seemed to brand upon me the eternal mark of the Devil, sigillam diabolicum.

  On the other hand the connectedness and consequence of my memories far exceeded that usually associated with dreams. My memory informed me of details of the devilish games heretofore entirely unknown to me, and which I had not the slightest cause to invent. Moreover, I had quite clearly been conscious of taking part in the witches’ roundelay in body and not in spirit, if one admit, that is to say, the possibility of the separation of spirit from body during life, which the divine Plato is ready to recognise but which is much doubted by the majority of philosophers.

  Finally it occurred to me that there was to hand a trusty method of resolving my doubts. If all that I had seen had been real, then Renata, giving me the slip, must have followed me in my flight through the air, and now must either yet tarry away from home or else lie in her bed as tired as I. With a new access of rage and jealousy, I hastily began to dress and put myself in order, which was not easy for me to accomplish for my hands yet shook and darkness kept coming into my eyes. In a few minutes I was already in the corridor, where the fresh morning air pouring into my chest somewhat reinvigorated me, and, with heart beating, I opened the door of Renata’s room. Renata was sleeping quietly in her high bed, and there were no signs of her having spent the night as I had spent it, for there was no trace of the smell of the ointment, which would have shown that she had resorted to the magic rubbing.

  At that time, this seemed to me an invincible argument in favour of my not having quitted the realm of dreams, and yet I was seized not by a feeling of joy, in that the deeds and words of the night, by which I had destroyed the eternal salvation of my soul, were but dreams—but by a staggering sense of shame. It appeared to me extremely ignoble that I had been unable to perform that which I had promised Renata, or to penetrate to the throne of the Devil, though this is easily achieved, it seems, even by quite insignificant persons. I fancied at the same time, that my dream had maybe been sent by the Devil himself, desiring once more to laugh and mock at my helplessness, and the thought struck me like a humiliating slap in the face. And in this moment, while I gazed on the sleeping Renata, there was born in me, and immediately hardened, that resolve that governed my subsequent actions during the many weeks that followed: the resolve to try my strength in open contest with the spirits of darkness whom I had encountered in my path through life, and who so far had tossed me about like a ball.

  Meanwhile, Renata, roused by the creaking of the door, slightly opened her eyes. Another feeling—remorse that I could have suspected Renata of deceit—forced me to rush impetuously towards her, to sink to my knees with a kiss upon her hand, and to utter words she could not have understood.

  “Renata! Beloved! I thank thee! And thou wilt forgive me!”

  Renata, still sleeping, was at first unable to understand what it was all about, but then she remembered everything and asked quickly:

  “Rupprecht, have you been there? Did you see Him? Did you ask Him? What did He answer?”

  These cruel questions, which showed me that Renata quite overlooked the fact that I was exhausted to the point of fainting and thought only of her Heinrich, somewhat sobered me. I replied to her that the ointment had proved ineffective, and that, instead of carrying me to the place where the witches hold their revels, it had only sent me to sleep and given me visions of the Sabbath. But at the same time, as if in delirium, I began to declare that I now took it upon myself to accomplish her purpose for her, that not much was to be obtained by approaching the Devil as a pauper a moneylender, for he hearkens only to those who command him as a master a servant, and that, in fine, one must penetrate into the world of demons by means of the power of knowledge, not by the doubtful spells of sorcery.

  In the excited state in which I then was, I wanted at once to lay before Renata my whole plan of studying secret sciences, and it was only at her oft-repeated request, almost against my will, that I consented to relate to her all that which seemed to me only an evil dream. However, in this narration I concealed two circumstances from her: one, that I had not withstood the temptation of Sarraska, and two, that the image of Renata herself had appeared to me amidst the other apparitions of the night. Renata treated my recollections as entire reality, by no means agreeing with me that they were only an hallucination, and she considered the words of Him who presided over the feast of the night a confirmation of the prophecy of the witch of Geerdt. But I laughed without restraint at myself, at Renata and at my aerial journey, saying that if it were a reality, it was an absurd one; if a dream, then a lying one; if a prophecy, an inconclusive one.

  I was eager at once to take up without delay the new task that confronted me, but my incontrollable weariness and the recent exhaustion prevented me. And soon the ache in all my limbs, and a cruel headache, even forced me to take to my bed, and the remainder of that day I spent in a state of semi-coma, through which the images of the Sabbath whirled before me like an incessant wheel: naked witches, handless demons, round dances, the feast, the caresses, Master Leonard. I remember as if in a dream that Renata came from time to time to my bed and laid her cool hands on my burning forehead, and it seemed to me then as though the involuntary tenderness of those fingers immediately cured all my pain.

  On the morning of the following day, I woke as usual once more brisk and strong, but finding, still, that my decision of the previous day had taken root in my soul and spread wide its branches, like the tree that was grown in a few hours by the Hindu gymnosophist. I soon confirmed to Renata, quite coolly and quite definitely, that I intended to undertake the study of magic, since I saw no other means of rendering her the service she expected of me. Renata listened to me with close attention and, however unexpected it may have been on the part of her who was the first to attract me to demonomancy, then declared to me that she definitely opposed my scheme, and she did not tarry to put before me, with no little effect, all t
he difficulty, the danger, perhaps even the hopelessness of the task that I had planned.

  Thus Renata told me that the study of magic requires many long years and much preparatory labour, that the most profound secrets are never entrusted to books but only passed from lip to lip, from master to pupil among the initiated, and that, lastly, she would not accept such a sacrifice from me and absolved me from my oaths. But I had replies to all these arguments: I said that as a knight I could not abandon a lady without first attempting every imaginable means to her salvation, that for the attentive eye and mind the hints preserved in books on magic are in themselves sufficient; that I wanted not to penetrate into all the arcana of the forbidden sciences, but only to obtain a sufficiency of information for certain purely practical purposes—and so forth.

  But when it became thus apparent from the conversation that I did not wish to yield my purpose, Renata sought to frighten me, and, betraying her close acquaintance with magic commerce, she spoke to me, broadly as follows:

  “You do not know, Rupprecht, the sphere into which you desire to enter. There is in it nothing but horror, and the magi—they are the most unhappy of men. The magician lives under the continual threat of painful death, only by unsleeping activity and extreme concentration of the will can he restrain the furious spirits that are ready every moment to tear him in pieces with their ravening fangs. A whole host of inimical monsters attends every step of the magician, watching only lest he may forget, or omit, some tiny safeguard so that they may hurl themselves ferociously upon him. Imagine to yourself a beast-tamer spending his days and nights in a cage of mad dogs or poisonous snakes, the fury of which he can barely harness with whip and hot iron, that is the life of a magician. And in recompense for this unceasing torment, he obtains only the forced service of lesser demons, ignorant and far from all-powerful, always treacherous, always ready for betrayal and every baseness.”

  These remarks of Renata were sweet to me, like the light of the sun through rain, for here, for the first time, did I see in her concern for my fate, but, notwithstanding, I replied without hesitation:

  “I am prepared to agree that all may be as you say, but fear has never yet had power to restrain me. Evil spirits are a creation of the Lord, though deprived of His grace, and, like everything in nature, except the Personal and Almighty Will of the Creator, cannot but be subject to natural laws. It thus remains only to learn these laws, and we shall have power to govern the demons, as now one uses the powers of the wind for the progression of ships. No doubt the wind is immeasurably more powerful than man, and at times storms shatter shipping to splinters, but usually the captain contrives to bring his cargo to the quay. I know that I expose our ship, and you upon it, to great danger, increasing sail under storm, but we have no other course.”

  After these words of mine our discussion came to an end.

  Later, events occurred to convince me that Renata, in opposing me, spoke much against her own conviction, and that magic and secret sciences had for her a yet greater force of attraction than for me. However, playing her part, for quite a long time she made belief to despise my occupations, and showed no desire to render me the slightest help in my work, and I had to surmount the first, and as always the most difficult, bends of the new road quite alone and without counsel.

  In the years of my scholastic life I had known a book dealer who lived on the Red Mountain, an old eccentric by the name of Jacob Glock, with whom, when penniless, I had used to pawn or to whom I had used to sell my textbooks. Into his shop, then, did I plan to cast my fisherman’s line, for I remembered that he had been interested in books on astrology, on alchymy and magic, and perhaps himself had been immersed in the search for the philosopher’s stone.

  The shop of Glock had not altered at all in the ten years that had passed, and I felt myself a student again when, crossing the threshold, I found myself in a darkish, cramped room, with only one door leading to the street and no windows, choked full with bundles of various books, old and in manuscript, new and printed, second-hand or fresh from the press, in gay covers or in leather bindings with clasps. In the midst of many-storied shelves, tidy columns of quartos and unruly heaps of polemical pamphlets, sat Jacob Glock himself on a broken bench, as if monarch of all these manuscripts, opusculi and folios, locked up in his shop like the winds in the cave of Aeolus. Seeing me, Glock lowered his glasses to his nose, replaced upon his lap the etching he had been studying, turned towards me his unshaven chin, and sat waiting to hear what I had to say, without recognising me as an old acquaintance.

  Remembering the character of Glock, I began by roundabout, introducing myself as a travelling scholar and saying that, having heard much of his rich collection and having in view the composition of an opus on certain questions of theology, connected with magic, I had come especially to the City of Köln to acquire the necessary books. After listening to my oration, Glock looked at me for a long while, shuffling his lips as old men do, then lifted his glasses back to his eyes, took up the etching and said:

  “I trade only in books approved by the Church. Go to the fair at Frankfurt; there you will obtain all that you need.”

  I understood that the old man was afraid lest I might be a spy of the Inquisition, and I tried to assure him to the contrary by all means, adding, moreover, that in bygone years his business had been famed all over Germany for containing, like the treasury of Cræsus the Lydian, matter to satisfy all tastes.

  Yielding to flattery, Glock grumbled in reply:

  “Bygone days! A great deal was true in bygone days! Is our Köln what it was in bygone days? Then we reckoned the number of students here as equal to the number in all the other German Universities combined, and now there are fewer here than in any other. For what purpose should the Kölnians now need books, when our rectors are like the drunkard Bommelchen or when priests like Reiss, who does not even know his Latin letters, are appointed to the Church of the Holy Apostles!

  Thus our conversation was engaged; I agreed with the old man, recalling to him the happy days of Köln, brought the conversation round to books and printing presses, and humbly, for a whole hour, listened to him singing the praises of the good printers from Ulrich Zell to Iohann Soter, hymns to the incomparable editions of Aldo Manutius and Henri Estienne, and embarking on discussions respecting the advantages of the various scripts and various types, such as Gothic, Roman, Antiqua, Bastard, Cursive. In recompense, the old man, in taking leave of me, said more good-naturedly:

  “And, dear sir, call again; we shall rummage through these piles together—perhaps we may find something suitable for you: there’s quite a lot that gets blown into this shop of mine by the strong wind—te-he-he!”

  Of course I did not fail to call on Glock again on the following day, and he greeted me like an old friend. After once more torturing me with his discourses for no little time, he then handed me a tiny opusculum, printed in Köln: “Das Geheimniss der heiligen Gertrudis zur Erlangung zeitlicher Schätze u. Güter,” one of the most incomprehensible compositions that I have ever read, and quite useless to me, and for which, moreover, he charged me the incongruous price of five guldens. But, in return for that, Glock allowed me one day later to rummage in his treasures, and I picked out several manuscripts filled with incantations and magic drawings, and with the tempting titles: “Buch Mosis und dreifacher Hollenzwang,” “Mächtige Beschwörungen der hollischen Geister,” “Hauptzwang der Geister zu Menschlichen Dienster” and so forth, for which I had again to pay lavishly. Then, continuing to dive like a pearl diver day after day into these waves of books, I extracted with Glock’s benevolent help almost a whole library, and he also persuaded me not to despise even books directed against magic, such as, for example, the absurd old book with bad drawings of Ulrich Molitor “De laniis et phitonicis mulieribus,” the empty opusculum of Martin Plantsch “De sagis maleficiis,” the famous compilation of Institor and Jakob Sprenger “Malleus maleficarum,” which has the direct purpose of rendering easier for judges the rec
ognition, denunciation and punishment of witches, and even the treatise of the ill-famed Dominican, enemy of the humanists, Jakob Hochstraten: “Quam graviter peccant quaerentes auxilium a maleficis.”

  And when Glock found that he had palmed off upon me all his stale goods, rotting in his shop, he opened me a book-case in which he kept the strictly scientific dissertations on the subject, and there opened up for me as it were a New World, yet more remarkable than the fields and valleys of New Spain. Here at last reached my hands the works of Albertus Magnus, Arnald de Villanova, Rogerius Bacon, Robert of England, Anselm of Parma, Picatrix of Spain, the compositions of Abbot Trithemius, and amongst them his striking “Philosophia naturalis” and “Antipalus maleficorum,” the opus of Peter of Apponia “Elementa magica,” in which fullness of breadth is joined to clarity of expression, and, after all these, the book that brought into system all the knowledge thus accumulated and illumined it by the light of a truly philosophic attitude to phenomena: “Henrici Cornelii Agrippae ab Nettesheym, de Occulta Philosophia libri tres,” with the fourth part in manuscript. This last work Glock also sold me dearly, saying that the edition was a secret one, and pointing in confirmation to the fact that neither the place of printing nor the year was indicated on the title-page; but later I found that it had been printed at Köln only a few months before, and under privilege of His Majesty the Emperor at that—and only the supplementary fourth part was, in a degree, a rarity, since the author, fearing persecution, had not given it to the printing press.