The Fiery Angel

by Valery Bruisov

  Hans replied to me indignantly:

  “Have you then not read the foreword to the book, in which this is explained by the teacher? His book was spread all over Europe in incorrect transcriptions, with foolish additions, like the incongruous ‘part four,’ and the teacher preferred to publish his original text so that he should be responsible only for his own words. But, in the book itself, there is nothing beyond the exposition of the various theories studied by the teacher as a philosopher. He has assured us himself that never, not once in his life, has he engaged in such foolishnesses or absurdities as the invocation of demons!”

  Hardly had Hans uttered these vehement words when his companions began to tease him, reminding him that not so long ago he himself had believed in invocations. Confused and blushing, almost with tears in his eyes, Hans asked them to be silent, saying that he was then but young and stupid. But, as a stranger, I asked that it be explained to me what they were talking about, and Augustin, roaring with laughter, told me that Hans, soon after he had entered the house of Agrippa, had taken secretly from the latter’s study a book of invocations and grimoirs, and desired, after tracing the circle, at all costs to invoke a spirit.

  “The most comical thing of all,” added Hans, who had now recovered his composure, “is that the people are now telling the following story about the incident. They declare that the pupil who stole the book did really invoke a demon but did not know how to get rid of him. So the demon killed the pupil. Just at that moment, Agrippa returned home. So that he should not be regarded as having caused this death, he commanded the demon to enter the body of the pupil and betake himself to the crowded square. There, it appears, the demon left the dead body he had reanimated, so that there should be many witnesses of the pupil’s sudden and natural death. And I am convinced that this preposterous fable will presently be incorporated in the teacher’s biography, and given far more credit than the true stories of his works and misfortunes!”

  After that, all four of them discussed demons and invocations for a few more minutes, but all the time in a tone of contemptuous jest, and they questioned me not without slyness as to where, and in what remote corner of the earth, I had picked up in the field my faith in magic, now discarded by all because of its uselessness. And I, listening to these hare-brained speeches, truly felt myself like Luther, who, arriving in Rome from his remote and tiny township and expecting to find a centre of piety, found only debauch and godlessness.

  In the meantime, the host of “The Fat Cockerels” diligently replaced the emptying quarts with others filled to the brim, while my companions drank heartily with the insatiable thirst of youth, and I drank to stifle in me a feeling of humiliation and uneasiness—and thus our cheerful conversation gradually became a riotous gaiety. Our tongues began to pronounce words indistinctly, and in our heads spun roseate whirlwinds that made all seem pleasant, attractive and easy. Abandoning the theme of magi and invocations, we passed to subjects of conversation more suited to the state of our thinking abilities.

  Thus, at first discussion arose about the relative merits of the various kinds of wine: the Italian Rheinfal and the Spanish Canary, the Speier Hens-füsser and the Würtemburg Eilfinger, and also many others, the while the pupils of Agrippa showed themselves connoisseurs no less expert than monks. The discussion threatened to develop into a fight, for Emmanuel shouted that the best was from Istria and offered to smash the skull of anyone who thought differently, but all five of us were pacified by Aurelius, who suggested a song:

  Klingenberg am Main,

  Würzburg am Stein,

  Bacharach am Rhein,

  Wachsen die besten Wein!

  Poetry, probably as the voice of a Muse, quietened all, but a moment later there arose another argument about where women are best. Emmanuel again praised his Italy and especially the houses of pleasure in Venice, but Augustin maintained that there was no better place than Nürnburg, where recently a nunnery had been closed down and the nuns had all gone over to the brothels. The discussion, however, was conducted without any observation of the rules governing disputes, and as soon as I happened to mention that I had been in Rome, Emmanuel flew into a frenzy of ecstasy, clutched me in his embrace and kissed me, shouting: “He has been to Italy! You hear!—he has been to Italy !” In order to allay the passions aroused also in this case, Aurelius suggested that we should agree to decide the best women were in Bonn, and that it should be proved at once. With shouts of joy the comrades agreed to the reasoning of Aurelius and declared that they had never heard a smarter quod-libetarius.

  Striking up some jolly song, but not firmly erect upon our feet, we adjourned under the leadership of Aurelius to somewhere the other side of the town, frightening the peaceful passers-by. The freshness of the winter air, however, soon sobered me and when, at a corner, little Hans gave me a wink, I at once understood and hastened to follow the signal. The military diversion thus planned by us happily succeeded, and soon we were left alone in a deserted alley.

  “It appeared to me,” said Hans, “that you were not particularly anxious to continue the debauch, and I consider such pastimes both pernicious and useless. Would you, therefore, like me to see you home?”

  I replied:

  “You are perfectly right. I thank you and very heartily beg of you to render me this true service, for the wine in this town seems twice as strong as anywhere else in the world, and without you the only way I could find is the one leading into the nearest ditch.”

  Little Hans laughed good-naturedly and took the closest interest in me. Not only did he see me to my hostelry, but he put me to bed, where I was immediately engulfed in turbid sleep. And when, several hours later, I awoke, not quite refreshed, of course, and still with a strong headache, but with my consciousness aired—I saw that Hans had not abandoned me and had prepared me a potion and some supper.

  “I am a medical man,” Hans explained to me, “and I did not think it right to leave a patient in such a state as yours, though I remembered the saying of Hippocrates: Si quis ebrius repente, obmutescat…”

  By chance this happened to be one of the aphorisms still firmly fixed in my memory from childhood, and consequently I was able to continue:

  “… quo tempore crapulæ solvi soient vocem edat.”

  We both laughed at so schoolboyish a truth, and this laugh did more to bring us closer together than all our preceding conversations.

  Hans was about twenty years old, or perhaps less. He was not tall of stature nor handsome of face, to which latter his roundish eyes slightly protruding under the steeply-carved brows gave an almost comic expression, but his young features disclosed intelligence and were agreeable. In the conversation that immediately ensued between us, this beardless youth showed penetration, great learning in scientific matters, and even a knowledge of the world. And so, under the urge of a momentary impulse such as governs our actions more often than the hand of cold reasoning, and perhaps not altogether unaffected by the influence of the tipsiness that had not yet entirely passed off, I related to little Hans that which I had hidden from his elder comrades: why I had come to Agrippa, and, in general, what I had had to go through during the past few months, keeping, of course, silence about the name of Renata and the place of our residence. It is well, however, to remember in my justification that for a long time I had had no opportunity of speaking openly with any human being, and that all these painful matters I had experienced had remained in my soul like a heavy weight, oppressing it, and for long seeking egress.

  Hans listened to my lengthy and impassioned confession with the attention with which a doctor receives the recital of his patient’s symptoms, and, after a short meditation, he answered me thus, speaking like a tutor to his pupil:

  “I do not doubt the accuracy of any of your words. But, apparently, you have studied medicine very little and in any case are unaware of the new and very remarkable discoveries made in this sphere. Whereas I am lucky to have had as my guide in this science, a sage like our teacher,
who, though he has ceased to practise, still remains one of the greatest physicians of his century. We know now that there exists a special disease, that cannot be termed madness, but is yet kin to it, and may be called by an old name—melancholy. This disease afflicts women more often than men, for their sex is the weaker of the two, as is denoted by the word itself, mulier, which is derived by Varro from mollis, tender. In a state of melancholy all the sensations become altered under pressure of an especial fluid that spreads over the whole body, and thus persons affected by the disease commit deeds to which it is impossible to ascribe any reasonable purpose, and are constantly subjected to inexplicable and rapid changes of mood. Now they are gay, now sad, then straightway deprived of all volition to an extreme degree—and all this without any visible cause. In the same way, they lie without any reason: pose as persons they are really not, or else accuse themselves or others of invented crimes, and especially do they like to play the part of victims and martyrs. Women of this type, sincerely believe their own stories and genuinely suffer their imaginary misfortunes; believing themselves possessed by the Devil, they do actually experience agony and throw themselves about in convulsions, in which they force their bodies to twist in such a way as is impossible for them to achieve consciously, and, generally, by means of their imagination, they can contrive to drive themselves to death. From the number of these unfortunates are filled the ranks of the so-called witches, who should be treated with soothing potions, but against whom the Popes issue bulls and the inquisitors erect bonfires. I suggest, therefore, that it is one of these women that you have met. What she related to you of her life was of course a fable, and there never was a Count Heinrich; later she strove by all means in her power to remain in your eyes a remarkable and deeply-unhappy woman, and for this, of course, she is not to blame, for she has been compelled to it by her malady.”

  Having listened to this lecture, I reminded Hans of what I had told him regarding my flight to the Sabbath and our invocation of the demon Anaël, but Hans retorted to me thus:

  “It is high time to cease believing in such old wives’ tales as the Sabbath: a darkening of the senses, fancy—that is what Sabbaths are. You were of course in the power of a strong sleeping drug given to you by your acquaintance, and here and now I will tell you the composition of that drug: there entered into it—oil, parsley, banewort, wolfe’s bane, beccabunga, perhaps also the sap of other plants, but the chief elements were—the herb called belladonna by the Italians, henbane, and a little Theban opium. The ointment thus composed, when rubbed into the body, produces a state of profound lethargy, in which appear with great vividness the visions of such matters as were being thought of at the moment of falling asleep. Some medical men have already carried out experiments, and made women who thought themselves witches rub in the magic ointment under their supervision. And what was the result! It was proved that these unfortunates had lain prostrate in sleep upon the selfsame spot, though they had wakened fully convinced of various incredibilities about their flights and dances. It is equally absurd to believe that various words, Chaldean or Latin, no better than our German ones, and some lines called characters, can have power over the forces of nature and over the Devil. I am satisfied that, during your experiment of invocation, what you took for the shapes of demons was naught else than the smoke of the incense, and what broke your first lamp was not one of the evil spirits, but that very assistant of yours, who, of course, was in a fit of frenzy at the time.”

  I could find then no replies to these reasonings, for my head was tired that day, and also because I had lost the habit of learned disputation, and so I stood before little Hans like an opponent who has dropped his sword, or like a pupil shamed, whom his tutor chastises with a ruler. This position of mine, however, did not prevent me from giving its due to the skilfulness of Hans’ reasoning, and, even then, I told him that, if he could manage to find a basis for his opinions, and to support them with a sufficient number of examples, he would write an exceedingly remarkable, and perhaps useful composition. And I still firmly hope to come across such a book, that will make the name of my young friend—Iohann Weier—widely known.

  Taking leave of me, Hans particularly advised me to call at their house the next day, for it was to be a Sunday, and it might be expected that Agrippa would leave his study. I agreed with him that it would not be proper if, having left the letter of introduction, I were not to appear in person at the house, but, after all I had heard from Agrippa’s pupils, I did not expect of course anything of importance to me to result even from a meeting with him. This second night at Bonn I spent with none of the spring dreams of my first, and all the sterile flowers of my hopes drooped their heads to the very ground, as if in a drought.

  Nevertheless, the next day, in the hour after midday mass, I again knocked at the door of Agrippa, and this time Emmanuel, Augustin and Aurelius greeted me as a good friend, only scolding me good-naturedly for having left them “in the lurch” in so unfriendly fashion the night before. Yesterday in the house of Agrippa had awaited me staves and the fangs of dogs, while to-day I was slapped on the shoulder and jestingly named amicissime, so that I might well convince myself that there is no better match-maker than Bacchus. Yet more, because Aurelius and his companions really felt well disposed towards me, or because they wanted to atone for their reception of yesterday, or, lastly, because simply they were glad of a newcomer, being bored in their solitude—anyway that whole day they devoted to me, and, each vying with the other, tried to procure for me various distractions.

  Aurelius undertook to show me over the whole house, and we walked through twelve or fifteen rooms, of which some were uninhabited and not fitted with any furniture at all. In the others the furnishing was of the oldest, beginning with once sumptuous, though now altogether worn-out, pieces, and ending with objects quite cheap, purchased as required, and placed helter skelter, with no elegance whatever. In the rooms recently occupied by the third wife of Agrippa, all was left in extremest disorder, as if the habitation had just been ransacked by German landsknechts; but even the tidiest of the rooms reminded one more of a carpenter’s shop than of the house of a philosopher.

  Aurelius acquainted me further with all the inhabitants of the house, and, first of all, with two of Agrippa’s sons, Heinrich and Iohann, boys of about ten years, who did not make on me the impression of being either intelligent or educated; the other two sons of Agrippa were away at that time. With the children lived an old servant, Maria, a kind-hearted simpleton, who had not quitted Agrippa for the last fifteen years, but who appeared unable to join three words together coherently. The other maid-servant, Margarita, was only by a little younger, but also by as little brighter, and the man-servant, a tall lad, who answered to the name of Antheus, gave the impression of being a complete imbecile. Thus it was easy to guess that life in that house was not of the gayest, and I had to acknowledge that, next to the pupils, the brightest of its inhabitants were the six or seven dogs, big, well-bred, and with high-sounding names: Tara, Zickonius, Balassa, Musa, which wandered proudly-through all the rooms as if they were their hereditary possessions.

  Aurelius, who never let slip a chance of assuring me that Agrippa did not practise sorcery, told me of these dogs as follows:

  “The teacher so loves dogs that with some of them he never parts, even at night, and sleeps with them in one bed. On the death of one of his favourite dogs, Filiolus, his friends even composed several epitaphs in Latin verse. But among the populace stupid rumours are in circulation, pretending that Agrippa keeps familiars in the guise of dogs.”

  In the same way, when showing me the room adjoining the study of Agrippa, in which his food was placed and newly arrived letters were deposited, Aurelius said to me:

  “The imperial post obtains a goodly income from the teacher, for several letters reach him daily. He is in correspondence with Erasmus, and with many crowned heads and with archbishops, and even with the Pope himself, not to mention ordinary scientists and his numberle
ss admirers. It is from them that he learns news of all the corners of Europe, while the superstitious imagine he obtains it by magic means.”

  After the inspection of the house and a satisfying though very modest dinner, my new friends took me for a walk round the city, from street to street, and soon we had traversed the whole of it, for Bonn is not big, and even been beyond the gates, from whence there is a handsome view of the Siebenbergen. Also, I feasted my eyes on the churches of Bonn, especially the five-towered cathedral—indeed one of the most handsome creations of our ancient architecture. The streets that day were full of people, on holiday, and it was pleasant to wander in the midst of the crowd, dressed up in vivid, many-hued garments, to exchange winks with unknown maidens, and to study the young gallants in winter capes and feathered hats. Augustin knew the inhabitants of the whole city by name, and of nearly every passer-by, man or woman, he managed to whisper into our ears a merry anecdote in the manner of the Facetiæ of Poggio, which made us laugh gaily.

  About five of the clock we returned home and Aurelius, having found out that Agrippa had not yet opened the doors of his study, suggested a game of chess. I left the board to Aurelius and Emmanuel, and for my own part offered to bet with Augustin on the success of either one of them, according to his choice. The boys came from their nursery to watch the game, and with them Maria, who considered herself a member of the family. We all crowded round the table at which the players sat and two of the dogs, taking place near by, watched the movings of the pawns and knights with no less attention than ourselves. And no one who had chanced to see the two chess-players, engrossed in their moves, the two stake-holders who watched them, the two boys sucking their fingers, and the good old nurse, would have thought that this idyllic family scene, worthy of the pen of Sannazzaro, was being enacted in the house of the great magus Agrippa, who, as the stories have it, drags the moon down out of the sky and raises the bodies of the dead from their graves.