The Fiery Angel (17 page)

I listened to these foolish tales with pleasure, not because I believed them, but because I thought it flattering to be going to the house of so remarkable a man. And when, by my calculations, the hour propitious for the visit had arrived, once more arranging my clothes, I left the hostelry with a proud air, and as I walked along the street, I wished secretly that the passers-by might notice whither I was bound. Remembering now these vain dreams of mine, I cannot but smile, bitterly and sadly, for Fate, that toys with a man as a cat with a mouse, contrived to laugh at me with fine cruelty. Instead of the rôle of
triumphator
, assigned to me by my amour-propre, it condemned me to play rôles far less honourable: those of a street brawler, a senseless wine-bibber, and a schoolboy whom his teacher reprimands.

By the indications given me, I quite easily found the house of Agrippa—at the edge of the town, near the wall itself, rather large, though only three-storied, with many outbuildings, ancient, forbidding, and entirely detached from any other houses. I knocked at the door, then, not obtaining an answer, repeated my knocking, and at last, pushing open the door, which proved to be unlocked, I entered a vast and empty hall and, guided by the sound of voices, penetrated further, into a second room. There, by a broad table, round a tureen containing some steaming viand, sat chattering and laughing gaily four young men whom I took for house servants. Hearing the squeak of the opening door, they stopped talking and turned to me, and from under the table there rose and came forth, growling and baring their teeth, two or three thoroughbred dogs.

I asked politely:

“May I see Doctor Agrippa of Nettesheim, who, I am informed, resides in this house?”

One of those at his midday meal, a tall, strapping lad with the features and accent of an Italian, rudely shouted at me in reply:

“How dare you enter a strange house without knocking? This is neither a beer shop nor the Town Hall! Begone, before we show you the way to the door!”

This shout was so much contrary to my expectations that it acted upon me like a slap on the face—at once I lost control over myself and, in an outburst of irresponsible anger, shouted in reply words equally sharp and unwise, which ran something as follows:

“You are mistaken, friend, in saying that I entered without knocking! But in this house, it seems, the lackeys tipple instead of attending to their duties! Go, enquire of your master how you should receive his guests, for here is an introductory letter to him from one of his friends.”

My words had a most violent effect. One of those sitting jumped up with furious curses and flew at me with clenched fists, overturning the bench, another rushed to his support, a third on the other hand tried to restrain his comrades, while the dogs began to attack me with barking and growling. I, seeing myself unexpectedly involved in an inglorious brawl, drew my tried sword from its sheath, and retreated towards the wall, brandishing it and declaring that I should spit through anyone who approached to within the nearness of a thrust. For a few minutes it all reminded me of the halls of King Ulysses before the beginning of the slaughter of the suitors, and it might easily have happened that, owing to the inequality of forces, I might have paid with my life for my arrogance, and no one, of course, would have paid any concern to the murder of an unknown passer-by.

Fortunately, however, the quarrel had a more peaceful issue, for the voices of the more reasonable prevailed, convincing us that we had no cause for a bloody encounter. One of the young men, called, as I soon learned, Aurelius, caused us to separate, by delivering to us the following speech:

“Master traveller and my comrades! Do not permit the god of strife—Mars—to triumph in this house, dedicated to the goddess of wisdom—Minerva! Master traveller is at fault for treating us like servant-folk, but we too are guilty, in that we greeted a noble gentleman thus contemptuously and impolitely—let us therefore offer each other mutual apologies, and discover what be the reason for the misunderstanding, soberly, as befits thinking people.”

To tell the truth I was glad of this turn to the affair, which saved me from a purposeless, yet dangerous fight, and, having grasped that I saw before me not the servants of Agrippa, but his pupils, I politely explained to them once more the object of my visit, named myself, showed the introductory letter, and explained that I had come from another town especially to hold converse with Agrippa.

Aurelius answered me:

“I do not know whether you will succeed in seeing the teacher. He has a custom of working in his study without leaving it for several days and nights on end, and no one in the house dares to worry him during that time, so that even his meals and drink are left for him in an adjoining room. There are put for him also all the letters that are sent to him, so, if you will hand us yours, we shall include it in that number.”

After a declaration in such terms, there was nothing better left for me to do than to hand over to Aurelius the letter from Hetorpius and make my bow, satisfied that thus happily had solved itself my first adventure in the house of Agrippa, an adventure in which I had not played an entirely dignified part. It must be, however, that that day belonged to the number of unlucky days,
dies nefasti
, for Aurelius and I both took it into our heads to smooth over the traces of the stupid quarrel, forgetting the proverb that he who tries to win back loses doubly. First Aurelius persuaded all his comrades to shake hands with me, and one by one he introduced them:

“This one,” he said, pointing to the one with whom my exchange of words began, “is the eldest of us, hailing from Italy, and we call him Emmanuel; as one who was born in the South he is irascible and unrestrained; this—is little Hans, the youngest among us, and not only by name is he Iohann, but also by the love the teacher bears him; and this one is a capable fellow, a brain and a fist of which there are few, by name Augustin; and, lastly, you see before you myself—Aurelius, a meek man, as you yourself have seen, and therefore hoping to inherit the earth.”

Not only did I shake hands with them all, but offered, to our misfortune, as a sign that no misunderstanding remained between us, to drink a quart of wine in one of the taverns. Having consulted among themselves in low tones, the pupils agreed to my invitation and, without delay, the five of us set forth from the house of Agrippa to the hospitable roof of the best hostelry in the town, under the sign of “The Fat Cockerels.”

When we had taken our seats in the large and, at this yet early hour, quite deserted room of the hostelry, with our glasses in which sparkled the joyful Scharlach-berger, and with each a round of good southern cheese, we soon forgot our recent angry looks at one another. Wine, in the phrase of Horatius Flaccus,
explicuit contractæ seria frontis
, smoothed the wrinkles of our brows, and our voices grew loud, brisk and cheerful, so that an outside observer might have taken us for ordinary bottle companions, with no secrets dividing us. But in vain did I try to bring the conversation round to mysterious sciences and magic, thinking that the pupils of the great magus would, at their glass, boast of their frequent intercourse with demons—their thoughts were furthest from such matters. Healthy and jolly, they chattered of everything on earth: of the successes of Lutheranism, of their love adventures, of the approaching festivals of Saint Catherine and Saint Andrew with their quaint and amusing ritual—and I felt myself once more a student amidst my long-vanished Kölnian bottle companions. Only young Hans held himself aloof, drank little, and was like a maiden who, out of prudery, says “marching companions” instead of “breeches.”

When, at last, I began to ask directly of Agrippa and his present life, there rained from all lips complaints I had by no means expected. Augustin confessed that they were now living through a very lean time, and that the teacher was being hard pressed by his creditors, while he had practically no other income besides that from the sale of his works. Aurelius added that, because of this constraint in money matters, Agrippa had been forced to accept service with our Archbishop, and that the latter entrusted him with such unworthy occupations as the organisation of festivals and their supervision. Lastly, Emmanuel with curses attacked the third wife of Agrippa, from whom the latter had just been divorced, saying that all these misfortunes had been brought upon them by that woman, and by all means praising his late wife, Jeanne-Louise, towards whom he, Emmanuel, had seemingly been not impartial. Emmanuel began also to relate of the good times they had all known in Antwerpen, where Agrippa had flourished under the protection of the now deceased princess Margaret of Austria; when their house had been animated, gay, ever brimming with laughter and jest; when the teacher, his wife, his children and his pupils had composed one friendly family. … Unfortunately the god Bacchus was skipper of our conversation, and the end of the story, not having made port, sank somewhere beneath a storm of unexpected jokes and mockeries from Augustin. One thing only was I able to conclude with certainty: that Agrippa, even if he knew how to make gold for others and how to provide success for others, made no use of his craftsmanship for himself.

A little while later, however, we headed once more for interesting shores, for my tipsy companions began to press me to tell them on what business I had come to visit Agrippa. I felt unable to say a word about Renata to these care-free fellows, and so I only mentioned shortly that I desired to ask for some advice on questions of operative magic. To my just surprise, this reply was greeted with a unanimous outburst of laughter.

“Well, friend,” said Aurelius, “you certainly have not hit the mark! You will have to go back laden with the same baggage as that with which you came!”

“Does, then,” I asked, “Agrippa to such an extent protect his knowledge of the secret sciences and share it so unwillingly?”

Here Hans intervened in the conversation after having remained silent almost the whole time:

“How insulting it is,” he exclaimed “that the teacher is always looked upon as a sorcerer! Will Agrippa of Nettesheim, one of the brightest intellects of his century, be ever paying for the infatuation of his youth, and be known only as the author of that weak and unsuccessful book ‘On the Philosophy of the Occult’?”

Astonished, I pointed out that the book of Agrippa on magic could not be considered in any sense unsuccessful, and that, moreover, it had only just appeared in print, indicating, surely, that the author himself, even now, must acknowledge it as of a certain importance.

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: