The Fiery Angel
Page 37
I asked whether I might visit Agrippa, and Aurelius replied:
“Certainly you may, and further, it is also time for me to return, for I fear to leave the teacher for so long a while.”
Aurelius led me in the direction of the Isère, on the way continuing to complain of the injustice and ingratitude of man, and also bitterly reproaching my friend Iohann Weier, who had left the teacher before the departure of Agrippa for the Dauphiné, and now lived comfortably in Paris. On a corner formed by the quay and a street at right angles to it, stood an ancient house of middle height, decorated, however, with some coat-of-arms hewn in stone—and this was the house in which now lived, by charity, Agrippa of Nettesheim. Hardly had we entered the hall, when Augustin came to meet us, all in tears, which became his broad, round face but ill, and forgetting even to greet me, he informed us that the master was indeed very low.
On tip-toe we entered the room where, in a broad double bed covered by a canopy, in an uncomfortable position, his arms stretched out motionless by his sides, lay the great magus, already like a corpse, for the features of his face had grown sharper, his beard had for long not been shaven and looked as though it had grown after death. Round the bed, in the silence of sorrow, stood the pupils, servants and sons of Agrippa, as well as two, or perhaps three persons unknown to me, so that in all, I believe, including myself, there were about ten or eleven people. At the very side of the bed, there sat on its haunches, its head sorrowfully laid upon the coverlet, the large black dog with fuzzy hair, the same that Agrippa had called Monseigneur. The whole contents of the room gave the impression of a temporary camp, for amongst its furniture left, apparently, by the owner of the house, everywhere were to be seen oddments belonging to Agrippa, and also, everywhere were strewn his books.
Those who had gathered, exchanged several remarks between themselves in a whisper, but I could not fathom what the persons whom I did not know were saying for they spoke in the French language. I only heard Emmanuel, who was also there, say to Aurelius that during the absence of the latter a priest had been called, that Agrippa was then conscious, had confessed and taken the Holy Sacrament, and that he had conducted himself at this shriving, judging by the words of the confessor, “like a saint”—and this circumstance struck me much. For my part I asked Emmanuel whether Agrippa had been visited by a medical man, and he replied that he had, often, and that all the measures prescribed by medical science had been duly taken, but that no hope of recovery could be entertained, and that death had already leaned its scythe against the head of the bed.
I should think that we spent more than half an hour in weary expectation, while Agrippa did not alter his position nor move a limb, and only his raucous breathing testified that he was still alive, and I was already intending to return to my comrades, at least for a short time, to inform them of my whereabouts, when there was enacted before me a scene horrible and beyond my understanding. The dying man suddenly opened his eyes, and sweeping around us his dull, as if unseeing glance, that froze us all numb, paused it upon the dog that sat by the bedside. Then the bony, quite yellowed, and, at the tips of the fingers, already blackened hand separated itself from the coverlet, swayed for some time impotently in the air, as if already incompletely obedient to the will of man, and slowly descended upon the scruff of the dog. Numb with unfathomable horror, we saw how Agrippa sought to unfasten the collar inscribed with cabalistical characters, and how at last he succeeded, and the rattle of the collar falling upon the floor shook us like the most terrible threat. At the same moment the lips of Agrippa, that were as if pasted together, similar in everything to the lips of a corpse, parted, and, through the heavy raucous breathing of the dying, we clearly heard uttered the following words:
“Begone, Accursed One! From you are all my misfortunes!”
Having uttered this, Agrippa again froze into immobility, locking his lips and closing his eyes, and his hand, with which he had unfastened the collar, hung from the bed like one of wax, but we had not had time to comprehend the meaning of the words we had heard when another striking circumstance claimed all our attention. The black dog, from which the master had just removed the magic collar, jumped to its feet, bent its head low, dropped its tail between its legs and ran from the room. For a few moments we knew not what to do, and then several, and I in their number, obeying an irresistible curiosity, rushed to the window that gave upon the quay. We saw that Monseigneur, running out of the door of the house, continued to run, preserving its humiliated demeanour, along the street, reached the bank of the river, and threw itself, still running, into the flood, to appear no more upon its surface.
And I, and all the other witnesses of this unique act of self-destruction, could not, of course, fail to recollect the mysterious stories which had been circulated about Agrippa’s dogs, and about this one in particular, in fact, that it was a familiar whose services Agrippa had employed, ceding in exchange to the Devil the salvation of his soul. I was especially struck by the dying words of Agrippa, and his whole attitude, in view of the stern condemnation of magic he had once delivered to me, mocking the pseudo magi who engage in goety, and calling them conjurers and charlatans. For one short instant, as by a white flash of lightning, I saw Agrippa, though but upon his death bed, as that mysterious sorcerer who led a life different from that of the rest of mankind, as the popular rumour depicted him. But at the time I had no occasion to think over such matters, for the mournful exclamation of those who had remained near the bed of the dying man informed us that his sufferings were over.
At once there began all about the usual tumult and confusion that death ever causes in our lives, falling ever as a heavy stone into stagnant water—and some of the pupils, weeping, kissed the hands of the dead teacher, other persons took care to close his eyes, yet others hastened to call in some women to wash and dress the body of the dead man. Soon the room began to fill with a multitude of people, come to look upon the deceased magus, and profiting by the general commotion, I departed unseen from the house, where my presence was now unnecessary. To my fellows, who knew me as their good comrade, Bernhard, I of course breathed no word of what I had seen, and in the evening of the same day we rode from the town of Grenoble.
On my return to Strassburg, I received as my share a sum of money sufficient to enable me to undertake the journey to Spain at my own cost, and I made it, without any special event, traversing, in the depths of winter, the whole of France. On Spanish soil I felt myself as if in my second motherland, and, at Bilbao, I found without much difficulty persons to whom my real name was not quite unknown, and who agreed to add me, as a man of experience and acumen, to an expedition that they planned into the New World, to wit, to the north of the country of Florida, up the stream of the river of Espiritu Santo, where fortunate prospectors had succeeded in discovering whole fields of gold. Thus my modest plans have come to fruition, and in the spring, with the first sailing caravels, our vessel will set sail beyond the Ocean.
These months of forced idleness, while our ship has been lading, while the crew to man it is being gathered, and while the winter winds yet make dangerous the sailing of the open seas, I have consecrated to the compilation of these notes—a task of painful memory, to which I am now just setting the last binding clamp. It is not for me to judge, gentle reader, with what art I have succeeded in relating to you all these cruel torments and these heavy trials, into which I was drawn by my ungoverned passion for a woman, and it is not for me to decide whether these notes may prove a useful warning for weak souls, who, like myself, may be tempted to glean power in the black and dubious pits of magic and demonomancy. In any case I have written down my story with all frankness, showing persons such as they appeared to me, nor being merciful to myself when it came to depicting my weaknesses and defects, and neither have I concealed anything of that knowledge of the mysterious sciences that I obtained from the books that I read, from my unsuccessful experiment, and from the words of the scientists with whom fate brought me in contact.
Not desiring to lie in the last lines of my story, I will confess that, were my life set back by a year and a half, and did there await me once more upon the Düsseldorf road my meeting with that strange woman, maybe I should commit once more all these same follies, even renouncing once more before the throne of the Devil my eternal salvation, for even now, when Renata is no more, there yet rages in my soul, like a scorching coal, an invincible love of her, and the memory of the weeks of our happiness in Köln yet fills me with a weariness and a yearning, and an unquenched and unquenchable thirst for her caresses and her intimacy. But with solemn assurance, do I hereby swear an oath before my conscience that never again shall I yield up so blasphemously my immortal soul, given unto me by my Creator—into the power of one of His creatures, in whatever seductive form she may be clothed, and that never, however weary may be the circumstances of my life, shall I turn to the aid of divinations condemned by Holy Church, or to the forbidden sciences, nor shall I attempt to cross that sacred edge that divides our world from the dark sphere in which float spirits and demons. O Lord our God, who seest all, even into the depths of the heart, thou knowest the purity of my oath. Amen.