The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales - Richard Garnett
The world, notwithstanding, revolved scatheless through the dreaded
twelvemonth, and early in the first year of the eleventh century Gerbert
was sitting peacefully in his study, perusing a book of magic. Volumes of
algebra, astrology, alchemy, Aristotelian philosophy, and other such light
reading filled his bookcase; and on a table stood an improved clock of his
invention, next to his introduction of the Arabic numerals his chief legacy
to posterity. Suddenly a sound of wings was heard, and Lucifer stood by his
side.
"It is a long time," said the fiend, "since I have had the pleasure of
seeing you. I have now called to remind you of our little contract,
concluded this day forty years."
"You remember," said Silvester, "that you are not to ask anything exceeding
my power to perform."
"I have no such intention," said Lucifer. "On the contrary, I am about to
solicit a favour which can be bestowed by you alone. You are Pope, I desire
that you would make me a Cardinal.
"In the expectation, I presume," returned Gerbert, "of becoming Pope on the
next vacancy."
"An expectation," replied Lucifer, "which I may most reasonably entertain,
considering my enormous wealth, my proficiency in intrigue, and the present
condition of the Sacred College."
"You would doubtless," said Gerbert, "endeavour to subvert the foundations
of the Faith, and, by a course of profligacy and licentiousness, render the
Holy See odious and contemptible."
"On the contrary," said the fiend, "I would extirpate heresy, and all
learning and knowledge as inevitably tending thereunto. I would suffer no
man to read but the priest, and confine his reading to his breviary. I
would burn your books together with your bones on the first convenient
opportunity. I would observe an austere propriety of conduct, and be
especially careful not to loosen one rivet in the tremendous yoke I was
forging for the minds and consciences of mankind."
"If it be so," said Gerbert, "let's be off!"
"What!" exclaimed Lucifer, "you are willing to accompany me to the infernal
regions!"
"Assuredly, rather than be accessory to the burning of Plato and Aristotle,
and give place to the darkness against which I have been contending all my
life."
"Gerbert," replied the demon, "this is arrant trifling. Know you not that
no good man can enter my dominions? that, were such a thing possible, my
empire would become intolerable to me, and I should be compelled to
abdicate?"
"I do know it," said Gerbert, "and hence I have been able to receive your
visit with composure."
"Gerbert," said the devil, with tears in his eyes, "I put it to you--is
this fair, is this honest? I undertake to promote your interests in the
world; I fulfil my promise abundantly. You obtain through my
instrumentality a position to which you could never otherwise have aspired.
Often have I had a hand in the election of a Pope, but never before have I
contributed to confer the tiara on one eminent for virtue and learning. You
profit by my assistance to the full, and now take advantage of an
adventitious circumstance to deprive me of my reasonable guerdon. It is my
constant experience that the good people are much more slippery than the
sinners, and drive much harder bargains."
"Lucifer," answered Gerbert, "I have always sought to treat you as a
gentleman, hoping that you would approve yourself such in return. I will
not inquire whether it was entirely in harmony with this character to seek
to intimidate me into compliance with your demand by threatening me with a
penalty which you well knew could not be enforced. I will overlook this
little irregularity, and concede even more than you have requested. You
have asked to be a Cardinal. I will make you Pope--"
"Ha!" exclaimed Lucifer, and an internal glow suffused his sooty hide, as
the light of a fading ember is revived by breathing upon it.
"For twelve hours," continued Gerbert. "At the expiration of that time we
will consider the matter further; and if, as I anticipate, you are more
anxious to divest yourself of the Papal dignity than you were to assume it,
I promise to bestow upon you any boon you may ask within my power to grant,
and not plainly inconsistent with religion or morals."
"Done!" cried the demon. Gerbert uttered some cabalistic words, and in a
moment the apartment held two Pope Silvesters, entirely indistinguishable
save by their attire, and the fact that one limped slightly with the left
foot.
"You will find the Pontifical apparel in this cupboard," said Gerbert, and,
taking his book of magic with him, he retreated through a masked door to a
secret chamber. As the door closed behind him he chuckled, and muttered to
himself, "Poor old Lucifer! Sold again!"
If Lucifer was sold he did not seem to know it. He approached a large slab
of silver which did duty as a mirror, and contemplated his personal
appearance with some dissatisfaction.
"I certainly don't look half so well without my horns," he soliloquised,
"and I am sure I shall miss my tail most grievously."
A tiara and a train, however, made fair amends for the deficient
appendages, and Lucifer now looked every inch a Pope. He was about to call
the master of the ceremonies, and summon a consistory, when the door was
burst open, and seven cardinals, brandishing poniards, rushed into the
room.
"Down with the sorcerer!" they cried, as they seized and gagged him.
"Death to the Saracen!"
"Practises algebra, and other devilish arts!"
"Knows Greek!"
"Talks Arabic!"
"Reads Hebrew!"
"Burn him!"
"Smother him!"
"Let him be deposed by a general council," said a young and inexperienced
Cardinal.
"Heaven forbid!" said an old and wary one, _sotto voce_.
Lucifer struggled frantically, but the feeble frame he was doomed to
inhabit for the next eleven hours was speedily exhausted. Bound and
helpless, he swooned away.
"Brethren," said one of the senior cardinals, "it hath been delivered by
the exorcists that a sorcerer or other individual in league with the demon
doth usually bear upon his person some visible token of his infernal
compact. I propose that we forthwith institute a search for this stigma,
the discovery of which may contribute to justify our proceedings in the
eyes of the world."
"I heartily approve of our brother Anno's proposition," said another, "the
rather as we cannot possibly fail to discover such a mark, if, indeed, we
desire to find it."
The search was accordingly instituted, and had not proceeded far ere a
simultaneous yell from all the seven cardinals indicated that their
investigation had brought more to light than they had ventured to expect.
The Holy Father had a cloven foot!
For the next five minutes the Cardinals remained utterly stunned, silent,
and stupefied with amazement. As they gradually recovered their faculties
it would have become manifest to a nice observer that the Pope had risen
very considerably in their good opinion.
"This is an affair requiring very mature deliberation," said one.
"I always feared that we might be proceeding too precipitately," said
another.
"It is written, 'the devils believe,'" said a third: "the Holy Father,
therefore, is not a heretic at any rate."
"Brethren," said Anno, "this affair, as our brother Benno well remarks,
doth indeed call for mature deliberation. I therefore propose that, instead
of smothering his Holiness with cushions, as originally contemplated, we
immure him for the present in the dungeon adjoining hereunto, and, after
spending the night in meditation and prayer, resume the consideration of
the business tomorrow morning."
"Informing the officials of the palace," said Benno, "that his Holiness has
retired for his devotions, and desires on no account to be disturbed."
"A pious fraud," said Anno, "which not one of the Fathers would for a
moment have scrupled to commit."
The Cardinals accordingly lifted the still insensible Lucifer, and bore him
carefully, almost tenderly, to the apartment appointed for his detention.
Each would fain have lingered in hopes of his recovery, but each felt that
the eyes of his six brethren were upon him: and all, therefore, retired
simultaneously, each taking a key of the cell.
Lucifer regained consciousness almost immediately afterwards. He had the
most confused idea of the circumstances which had involved him in his
present scrape, and could only say to himself that if they were the usual
concomitants of the Papal dignity, these were by no means to his taste, and
he wished he had been made acquainted with them sooner. The dungeon was not
only perfectly dark, but horribly cold, and the poor devil in his present
form had no latent store of infernal heat to draw upon. His teeth
chattered, he shivered in every limb, and felt devoured with hunger and
thirst. There is much probability in the assertion of some of his
biographers that it was on this occasion that he invented ardent spirits;
but, even if he did, the mere conception of a glass of brandy could only
increase his sufferings. So the long January night wore wearily on, and
Lucifer seemed likely to expire from inanition, when a key turned in the
lock, and Cardinal Anno cautiously glided in, bearing a lamp, a loaf, half
a cold roast kid, and a bottle of wine.
"I trust," he said, bowing courteously, "that I may be excused any slight
breach of etiquette of which I may render myself culpable from the
difficulty under which I labour of determining whether, under present
circumstances, 'Your Holiness,' or 'Your Infernal Majesty' be the form of
address most befitting me to employ."
"Bub-ub-bub-boo," went Lucifer, who still had the gag in his mouth.
"Heavens!" exclaimed the Cardinal, "I crave your Infernal Holiness's
forgiveness. What a lamentable oversight!"
And, relieving Lucifer from his gag and bonds, he set out the refection,
upon which the demon fell voraciously.
"Why the devil, if I may so express myself," pursued Anno, "did not your
Holiness inform us that you _were_ the devil? Not a hand would then have
been raised against you. I have myself been seeking all my life for the
audience now happily vouchsafed me. Whence this mistrust of your faithful
Anno, who has served you so loyally and zealously these many years?"
Lucifer pointed significantly to the gag and fetters.
"I shall never forgive myself," protested the Cardinal, "for the part I
have borne in this unfortunate transaction. Next to ministering to your
Majesty's bodily necessities, there is nothing I have so much at heart as
to express my penitence. But I entreat your Majesty to remember that I
believed myself to be acting in your Majesty's interest by overthrowing a
magician who was accustomed to send your Majesty upon errands, and who
might at any time enclose you in a box, and cast you into the sea. It is
deplorable that your Majesty's most devoted servants should have been thus
misled."
"Reasons of State," suggested Lucifer.
"I trust that they no longer operate," said the Cardinal. "However, the
Sacred College is now fully possessed of the whole matter: it is therefore
unnecessary to pursue this department of the subject further. I would now
humbly crave leave to confer with your Majesty, or rather, perhaps, your
Holiness, since I am about to speak of spiritual things, on the important
and delicate point of your Holiness's successor. I am ignorant how long
your Holiness proposes to occupy the Apostolic chair; but of course you are
aware that public opinion will not suffer you to hold it for a term
exceeding that of the pontificate of Peter. A vacancy, therefore, must one
day occur; and I am humbly to represent that the office could not be filled
by one more congenial than myself to the present incumbent, or on whom he
could more fully rely to carry out in every respect his views and
intentions."
And the Cardinal proceeded to detail various circumstances of his past
life, which certainly seemed to corroborate his assertion. He had not,
however, proceeded far ere he was disturbed by the grating of another key
in the lock, and had just time to whisper impressively, "Beware of Benno,"
ere he dived under a table.
Benno was also provided with a lamp, wine, and cold viands. Warned by the
other lamp and the remains of Lucifer's repast that some colleague had been
beforehand with him, and not knowing how many more might be in the field,
he came briefly to the point as regarded the Papacy, and preferred his
claim in much the same manner as Anno. While he was earnestly cautioning
Lucifer against this Cardinal as one who could and would cheat the very
Devil himself, another key turned in the lock, and Benno escaped under the
table, where Anno immediately inserted his finger into his right eye. The
little squeal consequent upon this occurrence Lucifer successfully
smothered by a fit of coughing.
Cardinal No. 3, a Frenchman, bore a Bayonne ham, and exhibited the same
disgust as Benno on seeing himself forestalled. So far as his requests
transpired they were moderate, but no one knows where he would have stopped
if he had not been scared by the advent of Cardinal No. 4. Up to this time
he had only asked for an inexhaustible purse, power to call up the Devil
_ad libitum_, and a ring of invisibility to allow him free access to his
mistress, who was unfortunately a married woman.
Cardinal No. 4 chiefly wanted to be put into the way of poisoning Cardinal
No. 5; and Cardinal No. 5 preferred the same petition as respected Cardinal
No. 4.
Cardinal No. 6, an Englishman, demanded the reversion of the Archbishoprics
of Canterbury and York, with the faculty of holding them together, and of
unlimited non-residence. In the course of his harangue he made use of the
phrase _non obstantibus_, of which Lucifer immediately took a note.
What the seventh Cardinal would have solicited is not known, for he had
hardly opened his mouth when the twelfth hour expired, and Lucifer,
regaining his vigour with his shape, sent the Prince of the Church spinning
to the other end of the room, and split the marble table with a single
stroke of his tail. The six crouched and huddling Cardinals cowered
revealed to one another, and at the same time enjoyed the spectacle of his
Holiness darting through the stone ceiling, which yielded like a film to
his passage, and closed up afterwards as if nothing had happened. After the
first shock of dismay they unanimously rushed to the door, but found it
bolted on the outside. There was no other exit, and no means of giving an
alarm. In this emergency the demeanour of the Italian Cardinals set a
bright example to their ultramontane colleagues. "_Bisogna pazienzia_,"
they said, as they shrugged their shoulders. Nothing could exceed the
mutual politeness of Cardinals Anno and Benno, unless that of the two who
had sought to poison each other. The Frenchman was held to have gravely
derogated from good manners by alluding to this circumstance, which had
reached his ears while he was under the table: and the Englishman swore so
outrageously at the plight in which he found himself that the Italians then
and there silently registered a vow that none of his nation should ever be
Pope, a maxim which, with one exception, has been observed to this day.
Lucifer, meanwhile, had repaired to Silvester, whom he found arrayed in all
the insignia of his dignity; of which, as he remarked, he thought his
visitor had probably had enough.
"I should think so indeed," replied Lucifer. "But at the same time I feel
myself fully repaid for all I have undergone by the assurance of the
loyalty of my friends and admirers, and the conviction that it is needless
for me to devote any considerable amount of personal attention to
ecclesiastical affairs. I now claim the promised boon, which it will be in
no way inconsistent with thy functions to grant, seeing that it is a work
of mercy. I demand that the Cardinals be released, and that their
conspiracy against thee, by which I alone suffered, be buried in oblivion."
"I hoped you would carry them all off," said Gerbert, with an expression of
disappointment.
"Thank you," said the Devil. "It is more to my interest to leave them where
they are."
So the dungeon-door was unbolted, and the Cardinals came forth, sheepish
and crestfallen. If, after all, they did less mischief than Lucifer had
expected from them, the cause was their entire bewilderment by what had
passed, and their utter inability to penetrate the policy of Gerbert, who
henceforth devoted himself even with ostentation to good works. They could
never quite satisfy themselves whether they were speaking to the Pope or to
the Devil, and when under the latter impression habitually emitted
propositions which Gerbert justly stigmatised as rash, temerarious, and
scandalous. They plagued him with allusions to certain matters mentioned in
their interviews with Lucifer, with which they naturally but erroneously
supposed him to be conversant, and worried him by continual nods and
titterings as they glanced at his nether extremities. To abolish this
nuisance, and at the same time silence sundry unpleasant rumours which had
somehow got abroad, Gerbert devised the ceremony of kissing the Pope's
feet, which, in a grievously mutilated form, endures to this day. The
stupefaction of the Cardinals on discovering that the Holy Father had lost
his hoof surpasses all description, and they went to their graves without
having obtained the least insight into the mystery.
THE CUPBEARER
The minister Photinius had fallen, to the joy of Constantinople. He had
taken sanctuary in the immense monastery adjoining the Golden Gate in the
twelfth region of the city, founded for a thousand monks by the patrician
Studius, in the year 463. There he occupied himself with the concoction of
poisons, the resource of fallen statesmen. When a defeated minister of our
own day is indisposed to accept his discomfiture, he applies himself to
poison the public mind, inciting the lower orders against the higher, and
blowing up every smouldering ember of sedition he can discover, trusting
that the conflagration thus kindled, though it consume the edifice of the
State, will not fail to roast his own egg. Photinius's conceptions of
mischief were less refined; he perfected his toxicological knowledge in the
medical laboratory of the monastery, and sought eagerly for an opportunity
of employing it; whether in an experiment upon the Emperor, or on his own
successor, or on some other personage, circumstances must determine.
The sanctity of Studius's convent, and the strength of its monastic
garrison, rendered it a safe refuge for disgraced courtiers, and in this
thirtieth year of the Emperor Basil the Second (reckoning from his nominal
accession) it harboured a legion of ex-prime ministers, patriarchs,
archbishops, chief secretaries, hypati, anthypati, silentiarii,
protospatharii, and even spatharo-candidati. And this small army was
nothing to the host that, maimed or blinded or tonsured or all three,
dragged out their lives in monasteries or in dungeons or on rocky islets;
and these again were few in comparison with the spirits of the traitors or
the betrayed who wailed nightly amid the planes and cypresses of the
Aretae, or stalked through the palatial apartments of verdantique and
porphyry. But of those comparatively at liberty, but whose liberty was
circumscribed by the hallowed precincts of Studius, every soul was
plotting. And never, perhaps, in the corrupt Byzantine Court, where true
friendship had been unknown since Theodora quarrelled with Antonia, had so
near an approach to it existed as in this asylum of villains. A sort of
freemasonry came to prevail in the sanctuary: every one longed to know how
his neighbour's plot throve, and grudged not to buy the knowledge by
disclosing a little corner of his own. Thus rendered communicative, their
colloquies would travel back into the past, and as the veterans of intrigue
fought their battles over again, the most experienced would learn things
that made them open their eyes with amazement. "Ah!" they would hear, "that
is just where you were mistaken. You had bought Eromenus, but so had I, and
old Nicephorus had outbid us both." "You deemed the dancer Anthusa a sure
card, and knew not of her secret infirmity, of which I had been apprised by
her waiting woman." "Did you really know nothing of that sliding panel? And
were you ignorant that whatever one says in the blue chamber is heard in
the green?" "Yes, I thought so too, and I spent a mint of money before
finding out that the dog whose slaver that brazen impostor Panurgiades
pretended to sell me was no more mad than he was." After such rehearsals of
future dialogues by the banks of Styx, the fallen statesmen were observed
to appear exceedingly dejected, but the stimulus had become necessary to
their existence. None gossiped so freely or disclosed so much as Photinius
and his predecessor Eustathius, whom he had himself displaced--probably
because Eustathius, believing in nothing in heaven or earth but gold, and
labouring under an absolute privation of that metal, was regarded even by
himself as an extinct volcano.
"Well," observed he one day, when discoursing with Photinius is an
unusually confidential mood, "I am free to say that for my own part I don't
think over much of poison. It has its advantages, to be sure, but to my
mind the disadvantages are even more conspicuous."
"For example?" inquired Photinius, who had the best reason for confiding in
the efficacy of a drag administered with dexterity and discretion.
"Two people must be in the secret at least, if not three," replied
Eustathius, "and cooks, as a rule, are a class of persons entirely unfit to
be employed in affairs of State."
"The Court physician," suggested Photinius.
"Is only available," answered Eustathius, "in case his Majesty should send
for him, which is most improbable. If he ever did, poison, praised be the
Lord! would be totally unnecessary and entirely superfluous."
"My dear friend," said Photinius, venturing at this favourable moment on a
question he had been dying to ask ever since he had been an inmate of the
convent, "would you mind telling me in confidence, did you ever administer
any potion of a deleterious nature to his Sacred Majesty?"
"Never!" protested Eustathius, with fervour. "I tried once, to be sure, but
it was no use."
"What was the impediment?"
"The perverse opposition of the cupbearer. It is idle attempting anything
of the kind as long as she is about the Emperor."
"_She_!" exclaimed Photinius.
"Don't you know _that_?" responded Eustathius, with an air and manner that
plainly said, "You don't know much."
Humbled and ashamed, Photinius nevertheless wisely stooped to avow his
nescience, and flattering his rival on his superior penetration, led him to
divulge the State secret that the handsome cupbearer Helladius was but the
disguise of the lovely Helladia, the object of Basil's tenderest affection,
and whose romantic attachment to his person had already frustrated more
conspiracies than the aged plotter could reckon up.
This intelligence made Photinius for a season exceedingly thoughtful. He
had not deemed Basil of an amorous complexion. At length he sent for his
daughter, the beautiful and virtuous Euprepia, who from time to time
visited him in the monastery.
"Daughter," he said, "it appears to me that the time has now arrived when
thou mayest with propriety present a petition to the Emperor on behalf of
thy unfortunate father. Here is the document. It is, I flatter myself,
composed with no ordinary address; nevertheless I will not conceal from
thee that I place my hopes rather on thy beauty of person than on my beauty
of style. Shake down thy hair and dishevel it, so!--that is excellent.
Remember to tear thy robe some little in the poignancy of thy woe, and to
lose a sandal. Tears and sobs of course thou hast always at command, but
let not the frenzy of thy grief render thee wholly inarticulate. Here is a
slight memorandum of what is most fitting for thee to say: thy old nurse's
instructions will do the rest. Light a candle for St. Sergius, and watch
for a favourable opportunity."
Euprepia was upright, candid, and loyal; but the best of women has
something of the actress in her nature; and her histrionic talent was
stimulated by her filial affection. Basil was for a moment fairly carried
away by the consummate fact of her performance and the genuine feeling to
her appeal; but he was himself again by the time he had finished perusing
his late minister's long-winded and mendacious memorial.
"What manner of woman was thy mother?" he inquired kindly
Euprepia was eloquent in praise of her deceased parent's perfections of
mind and person.
"Then I can believe thee Photinius's daughter, which I might otherwise have
doubted," returned Basil. "As concerns him, I can only say, if he feels
himself innocent, let him come out of sanctuary, and stand his trial. But I
will give thee a place at Court."
This was about all that Photinius hoped to obtain, and he joyfully
consented to his daughter's entering the Imperial court, exulting at
having got in the thin end of the wedge. She was attached to the person of
the Emperor's sister-in-law, the "Slayer of the Bulgarians" himself being a
most determined bachelor.