“That is the Philosopher’s Stone,” said he.
“And have you the Elixir Vitæ, which generally accompanies it?” inquired I.
“Even so—this urn is filled with it,” he replied. “A draught would refresh you. Here is Hebe’s cup,—will you quaff a health from it?”
My heart thrilled within me at the idea of such a reviving draught; for methought I had great need of it, after travelling so far on the dusty road of life. But I know not whether it were a peculiar glance in the Virtuoso’s eye, or the circumstance that this most precious liquid was contained in an antique sepulchral urn, that made me pause. Then came many a thought, with which, in the calmer and better hours of life, I had strengthened myself to feel that Death is the very friend whom, in his due season, even the happiest mortal should be willing to embrace.
“No, I desire not an earthly immortality,” said I. “Were man to live longer on the earth, the spiritual would die out of him. The spark of ethereal fire would be choked by the material, the sensual. There is a celestial something within us that requires, after a certain time, the atmosphere of Heaven to preserve it from decay and ruin. I will have none of this liquid. You do well to keep it in a sepulchral urn; for it would produce death, while bestowing the shadow of life.”
“All this is unintelligible to me,” responded my guide, with indifference. “Life,—earthly life,—is the only good. But you refuse the draught? Well, it is not likely to be offered twice within one man’s experience. Probably you have griefs which you seek to forget in death. I can enable you to forget them in life. Will you take a draught of Lethe?”
As he spoke the Virtuoso took from the shelf a crystal vase containing a sable liquor, which caught no reflected image from the objects around.
“Not for the world!” exclaimed I, shrinking back. “I can spare none of my recollections,—not even those of error or sorrow. They are all alike the food of my spirit. As well never to have lived, as to lose them now.”
Without further parley we passed to the next alcove, the shelves of which were burthened with ancient volumes, and with those rolls of papyrus, in which was treasured up the eldest wisdom of the earth. Perhaps the most valuable work in the collection, to a bibliomaniac, was the Book of Hermes. For my part, however, I would have given a higher price for those six of the Sibyl’s books which Tarquin refused to purchase, and which the Virtuoso informed me he had himself found in the cave of Trophonius. Doubtless these old volumes contain prophecies of the fate of Rome, both as respects the decline and fall of her temporal empire, and the rise of her spiritual one. Not without value, likewise, was the work of Anaxagoras on Nature, hitherto supposed to be irrecoverably lost; and the missing treatises of Longinus, by which modern criticism might profit; and those books of Livy, for which the classic student has so long sorrowed without hope. Among these precious tomes I observed the original manuscript of the Koran, and also that of the Mormon Bible, in Joe Smith’s authentic autograph. Alexander’s copy of the Iliad was also there, enclosed in the jewelled casket of Darius, still fragrant of the perfumes which the Persian kept in it.
Opening an iron-clasped volume, bound in black leather, I discovered it to be Cornelius Agrippa’s book of magic; and it was rendered still more interesting by the fact that many flowers, ancient and modern, were pressed between its leaves. Here was a rose from Eve’s bridal bower, and all those red and white roses which were plucked in the garden of the Temple, by the partizans of York and Lancaster. Here was Halleck’s Wild Rose of Alloway. Cowper had contributed a Sensitive Plant, and Wordsworth an Eglantine, and Burns a Mountain Daisy, and Kirke White a Star of Bethlehem, and Longfellow a Sprig of Fennel, with its yellow flowers. James Russell Lowell had given a Pressed Flower, but fragrant still, which had been shadowed in the Rhine. There was also a sprig from Southey’s Holly-Tree. One of the most beautiful specimens was a Fringed Gentian, which had been plucked and preserved for immortality by Bryant. From Jones Very,—a poet whose voice is scarcely heard among us, by reason of its depth,—there was a Wind Flower and a Columbine.
As I closed Cornelius Agrippa’s magic volume, an old, mildewed letter fell upon the floor; it proved to be an autograph from the Flying Dutchman to his wife. I could linger no longer among books, for the afternoon was waning, and there was yet much to see. The bare mention of a few more curiosities must suffice. The immense skull of Polyphemus was recognizable by the cavernous hollow in the centre of the forehead, where once had blazed the giant’s single eye. The tub of Diogenes, Medea’s cauldron, and Psyché’s vase of beauty, were placed one within another. Pandora’s box, without the lid, stood next, containing nothing but the girdle of Venus, which had been carelessly flung into it. A bundle of birch rods, which had been used by Shenstone’s schoolmistress, were tied up with the Countess of Salisbury’s garter. I knew not which to value most, a Roc’s egg, as big as an ordinary hogshead, or the shell of the egg which Columbus set upon its end. Perhaps the most delicate article in the whole Museum was Queen Mab’s chariot, which, to guard it from the touch of meddlesome fingers, was placed under a glass tumbler.
Several of the shelves were occupied by specimens of entomology. Feeling but little interest in the science, I noticed only Anacreon’s Grasshopper, and an Humble-Bee, which had been presented to the Virtuoso by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In the part of the hall which we had now reached, I observed a curtain that descended from the ceiling to the floor in voluminous folds, of a depth, richness, and magnificence which I had never seen equalled. It was not to be doubted that this splendid, though dark and solemn veil, concealed a portion of the Museum even richer in wonders than that through which I had already passed. But, on my attempting to grasp the edge of the curtain and draw it aside, it proved to be an illusive picture.
“You need not blush,” remarked the Virtuoso, “for that same curtain deceived Zeuxis. It is the celebrated painting of Parrhasius.”
In a range with the curtain, there were a number of other choice pictures, by artists of ancient days. Here was the famous Cluster of Grapes by Zeuxis, so admirably depicted that it seemed as if the ripe juice were bursting forth. As to the picture of the Old Woman, by the same illustrious painter, and which was so ludicrous that he himself died with laughing at it, I cannot say that it particularly moved my risibility. Ancient humor seems to have little power over modern muscles. Here, also, was the Horse, painted by Apelles, which living horses neighed at; his first portrait of Alexander the Great, and his last unfinished picture of Venus Asleep. Each of these works of art, together with others by Parrhasius, Timanthes, Polygnotus, Apollodorus, Pausias, and Pamphilus, required more time and study than I could bestow, for the adequate perception of their merits. I shall therefore leave them undescribed and uncriticised, nor attempt to settle the question of superiority between ancient and modern art.
For the same reason I shall pass lightly over the specimens of antique sculpture, which this indefatigable and fortunate Virtuoso had dug out of the dust of fallen empires. Here was Ætion’s cedar statue of Æsculapius, much decayed, and Alcon’s iron statue of Hercules, lamentably rusted. Here was the statue of Victory, six feet high, which the Jupiter Olympus of Phidias had held in his hand. Here was a fore-finger of the Colossus of Rhodes, seven feet in length. Here was the Venus Urania of Phidias, and other images of male and female beauty or grandeur, wrought by sculptors who appear never to have debased their souls by the sight of any meaner forms than those of gods, or godlike mortals. But the deep simplicity of these great works was not to be comprehended by a mind excited and disturbed, as mine was, by the various objects that had recently been presented to it. I therefore turned away, with merely a passing glance, resolving, on some future occasion, to brood over each individual statue and picture, until my inmost spirit should feel their excellence. In this department, again, I noticed the tendency to whimsical combinations and ludicrous analogies, which seemed to influence many of the arrangements of the Museum. The wooden statue, so well known
as the Palladium of Troy, was placed in close apposition with the wooden head of General Jackson, which was stolen a few years since from the bows of the Constitution.
We had now completed the circuit of the spacious hall, and found ourselves again near the door. Feeling somewhat wearied with the survey of so many novelties and antiquities, I sat down upon Cowper’s sofa, while the Virtuoso threw himself carelessly into Rabelais’s easy-chair. Casting my eyes upon the opposite wall, I was surprised to perceive the shadow of a man, flickering unsteadily across the wainscot, and looking as if it were stirred by some breath of air that found its way through the door or windows. No substantial figure was visible, from which this shadow might be thrown; nor, had there been such, was there any sunshine that would have caused it to darken upon the wall.
“It is Peter Schlemihl’s shadow,” observed the Virtuoso, “and one of the most valuable articles in my collection.”
“Methinks a shadow would have made a fitting door-keeper to such a Museum,” said I, “although, indeed, yonder figure has something strange and fantastic about him, which suits well enough with many of the impressions which I have received here. Pray, who is he?”
While speaking, I gazed more scrutinizingly than before at the antiquated presence of the person who had admitted me, and who still sat on his bench, with the same restless aspect, and dim, confused, questioning anxiety, that I had noticed on my first entrance. At this moment he looked eagerly towards us, and half-starting from his seat, addressed me.
“I beseech you, kind sir,” said he, in a cracked, melancholy tone, “have pity on the most unfortunate man in the world! For heaven’s sake answer me a single question! Is this the town of Boston?”
“You have recognized him now,” said the Virtuoso. “It is Peter Rugg, the Missing Man. I chanced to meet him, the other day, still in search of Boston, and conducted him hither; and, as he could not succeed in finding his friends, I have taken him into my service as door-keeper. He is somewhat too apt to ramble, but otherwise a man of trust and integrity.”
“And—might I venture to ask,” continued I, “to whom am I indebted for this afternoon’s gratification?”
The Virtuoso, before replying, laid his hand upon an antique dart of juvelin, the rusty steel head of which seemed to have been blunted, as if it had encountered the resistance of a tempered shield or breast-plate.
“My name has not been without its distinction in the world, for a longer period than that of any other man alive,” answered he. “Yet many doubt of my existence,—perhaps you will do so, tomorrow. This dart, which I had in my hand, was once grim Death’s own weapon. It served him well for the space of four thousand years. But it fell blunted, as you see, when he directed it against my breast.”
These words were spoken with the calm and cold courtesy of manner that had characterized this singular personage throughout our interview. I fancied, it is true, that there was a bitterness indefinably mingled with his tone, as of one cut off from natural sympathies, and blasted with a doom that had been inflicted on no other human being, and by the results of which he had ceased to be human. Yet, withal, it seemed one of the most terrible consequences of that doom, that the victim no longer regarded it as a calamity, but had finally accepted it as the greatest good that could have befallen him.
“You are the Wandering Jew!” exclaimed I.
The Virtuoso bowed, without emotion of any kind; for, by centuries of custom, he had almost lost the sense of strangeness in his fate, and was but imperfectly conscious of the astonishment and awe with which it affected such as are capable of death.
“Your doom is indeed a fearful one” said I. with irrepressible feeling, and a frankness that afterwards startled me; “yet perhaps the ethereal spirit is not entirely extinct, under all this corrupted or frozen mass of earthly life. Perhaps the immortal spark may yet be rekindled by a breath of heaven. Perhaps you may yet be permitted to die, before it is too late to live eternally. You have my prayers for such a consummation. Farewell.”
“Your prayers will be in vain,” replied he, with a smile of cold triumph. “My destiny is linked with the realities of earth. You are welcome to your visions and shadows of a future state; but give me what I can see, and touch, and understand, and I ask no more.”
“It is indeed too late,” thought I. “The soul is dead within him!”
Struggling between pity and horror, I extended my hand, to which the Virtuoso gave his own, still with the habitual courtesy of a man of the world, but without a single heart-throb of human brotherhood. The touch seemed like ice, yet I know not whether morally or physically. As I departed, he bade me observe that the inner door of the hall was constructed with the ivory leaves of the gateway through which Æneas and the Sibyl had been dismissed from Hades.
THE END.
Mosses from an Old Manse, Volume 2 Page 21
