The Fiery Angel

by Valery Bruisov

  Again Mephistophilis took it upon himself to provide the answer, saying:

  “We, kind sir, have not verified the facts of which you speak, but why should the ass of Balaam not be immortal, since amongst mankind asses have not ceased to exist during thousands of years?”

  This joke had no mean success with the company, but ever new and new questions were addressed from all ends of the table to Doctor Faustus, while the more flushed became the banquet, so that all grew more tipsy, the more these questions grew impertinent, at whiles closely bordering on insults. At the same time, from my post of observation, I could observe how the drunken cavaliers began to conduct themselves more loosely than was becoming, how some secretly pressed the hands and bosoms of their neighbours, while others, burdened with wine, unfastened unnoticed the buttons that oppressed them. Then the Count, who had borne himself the whole evening with great adroitness, interrupted the orgy that was beginning with the following speech:

  “It seems to me, friends, that it is time to allow our guests to repose. We have given honour to Bacchus, and to Comus, and to Minerva; it is time to make an offering to Morpheus. Let us thank our guests for all their sage explanations, and let us commend them to the good counsels of the god Phantas.”

  The clear and composed voice of the seigneur impelled all those present to master themselves, and, rising from the tables, they all began to take leave of us, once more displaying the utmost courtesy. We all three bowed to the Count and Countess, thanking them for the feast, and pages conducted us to our rooms, where already every comfort was prepared for us: soft beds, night gowns, slippers, night caps, and even chamber pots. The bounty of the courteous Count was only incomplete in that he failed to offer to his guests a woman of light conduct each, as once the inhabitants of the City of Ulm provided to the Emperor Sigismund and his suite.

  For my part, as I fell asleep in this room where perhaps had rested some companion of Godfrey de Bouillon, I gave myself the promise that I should leave the castle the next morning, even if without my companions. I decided this, however, without the Lord’s consent, as the saying goes, and everything turned out differently, for Fate, which had led me to Count Adalbert, had objects far more remote than merely to have shown me—this banquet of noble malaperts.

  As is my custom, I woke the next day very early, and, not wishing to disturb anyone, quietly went down and walked out upon the terrace, a kind of Italian loggia not infrequently to be seen in our old knightly castles. There, leaning against a column, inhaling the freshness of the March morning and resting my eyes upon the beautiful, far away fields, I involuntarily began to think of my sorrows, and all my sad thoughts, breaking through the dam of my consciousness, came flooding into my soul. In imagination I saw Renata, somewhere, in a town unknown to me, passing hours of joy with another, and not with me, or perhaps pining after me, repenting of her flight, but deprived of the possibility of finding me, torn from me for ever; or, yet again, stricken with illness, in her customary despair, surrounded by strangers, coarse persons who jeered at her sufferings and at her strange speech—and none to approach her, none like myself, to lighten her misery with the kindness of a word or the tenderness of a touch. … And another access of the old sorrow gained mastery over me with such violence that I could not restrain myself, and, dropping my face on the stone of the parapet, gave freedom to my tears, helpless and uncontrolled.

  While I was thus weeping, thinking myself in solitude, on the terrace of the Castle of von Wellen; a hand touched my shoulder, and, raising my head, I saw that it was the Count himself who had approached me. Though he was younger than I, none the less, with an almost paternal solicitude, he embraced my waist and led me along the gallery, gently and in friendship asking me the reason for my sorrow, whether I had been offended by any of his retainers, whether I had met with a reverse in my private life. Confused and ashamed, I overpowered my emotion and answered the Count that I had brought my sorrows with me in my baggage, and that I had experienced nothing whatever to complain of in the castle. The Count, however, would not leave me, and we continued in conversation walking up and down the terrace.

  It soon came out that I did not belong to the suite of Doctor Faustus, but had made his acquaintance only three days before, and this very much disposed the Count in my favour. At the same time, the speech of the Count, in which the good education he had received bubbled with an effervescent, almost mercurial liveliness, persuaded me to forget the part he had played yesterday in the jokes at our expense, and enabled me to regard him with confidence. And when, word by word, it came to light that we had common favourites in the world of books and authors, and he offered straightway to show me his library, I saw neither reasons nor causes to refuse.

  In the study of the Count, I once more convinced myself that my first impressions had been just, and that the Count belonged to the best men of his estate, for his collection would have done honour to any learned man. He led me past whole rows of shelves with books, showed me precious bindings of parchment, wood, leather, red, green, black and various rare editions from the finest presses, also the landmarks of our time, that he had lovingly assembled, such as the “Epistolæ obscurorum virorum,” the “Laus Stultitiæ” the “Œstrus,” which I greeted as good friends whom for long I had not seen. Then the Count showed me various scientific appliances, of which he had a multitude: globes, astral and terrestrial, astrolabes, armillaries, torquets and yet others unknown to me, and there and then he related to me the daring and remarkable theory of Nicolaus Koppernigk of Frauenburg about the construction of the heavens, which then I heard for the first time, for the compositions of that astronomer are as yet unpublished. Lastly the Count opened me his desks, and took out some manuscript codices of Latin authors obtained by him from the neighbouring monasteries, a collection of beautiful antique intaglios he had brought back from his travels in Italy, and finally, in a special casket, a bundle of letters from the famous Ulrich Zasius, with whom he was in personal correspondence.

  It was easy to perceive that the Count was displaying his collection not without a childish ostentation, but nevertheless his love for science and the arts quite reconciled me to him, and, wishing to be pleasant, I told him that his riches might be envied by the Vatican itself. Quite carried away by my flattery, the Count sat me down opposite him and spoke to me thus:

  “I can no longer consider you a stranger, for, like myself, you belong to the ranks of the modernists, and—I swear it by Hyperion!—I should be ashamed to deceive you. Therefore I must ask you first of all to tell me frankly what you think of Doctor Faustus.”

  I replied that I considered Faustus a man of the old school, but extraordinarily learned and clever, and I could not prevent myself from adding that Faustus was worthy of greater respect than that accorded to him in the castle.

  Then the Count said to me as follows:

  “And do you know what rumours are current of Faustus and his crony? It is said that this Mephistophilis is none other than the Devil, bound to serve the doctor for four-and-twenty years, that he may then obtain his soul into his power. I, it is of course understood, attach no credence to such a rigmarole, for in general I do not believe in pacts with the Devil, and I consider that the Devil would make a bad bargain if he were to receive only a mere soul in payment for tangible services. To me the matter appears far simpler, and that is, that your companions, and my guests—are nothing more than impostors who employ not the powers of Hell but the methods of cunning charlatans. They travel from castle to castle, from town to town, everywhere posing as magi and performing tricks, and collecting in exchange money that enables them to live without poverty.”

  These words confused me greatly, for until then I had thought Doctor Faustus an entirely noble character, and I began to defend him with all the fervour in my power, so that there finally ensued between us an even quite obstinate dispute. In the end the Count confessed frankly to me that he had invited the passing Doctor Faustus with the sole object of unmasking his d
oings and bringing him into the light of day, and on the spot he proposed to me that I should take part in the common plot and help him in this matter. Thus it suddenly happened to me to be confronted with a difficult choice, like Hercules at the cross-roads, only with this difference, that to me it was not so clear on which side lay Virtue and on which Sin, for the image of the Count had emerged from Qur conversation as a very attractive one, while of Doctor Faustus I had formed the most flattering opinion. For some time the scales of my soul swung rather undecidedly, but then I found the point of equilibrium, and said to the Count:

  “In no event shall I agree to take part in a plot against a man who has never done me any evil and whom I consider to be very erudite. But out of respect for you, Count, I shall undertake nothing against your plan, and I promise you not to say a word to my companions about our conversation.”

  When the Count accepted my decision, I felt it would have been unseemly to speak at once of my departure, and I decided to spend one more day at the castle, but I confess that I met Mephistophilis and Faustus not without embarrassment, like one guilty. And feeling myself neither landed on one shore or the other, as if in the field between two warring camps, I was yet less able than on the eve to show myself a gay companion, and from that very time was reputed in the castle as a gloomy and misanthropical man. However, I have noticed that in any given company we ever bear that selfsame mask that by chance we wore on our first time there, and thus it comes that each and every one of us bears a multitude of various masks, each in a different company.

  The whole of the second day that we passed at the castle was spent in a hunt, given by the Count in honour of his guests, but which I shall not describe lest I wander too far into the by-ways in the course of my narrative. I will only say that, despite the early time of the year, the hunt might be considered an unqualified success, as it provided no little gaiety to its participants, and as a boar, an animal rare in those parts, was run to bay. Faustus, as yesterday, was the butt of various attacks, to which, again, reply was for the most part made by Mephistophilis, sometimes well-aimed, sometimes rather coarse, and in doing so he exhibited himself as what the Spaniards call chocarrero, and gained the undoubted favour of the ladies.

  It was already late when we returned to the castle, with that brisk and fiery tiredness conferred by exercise in the open air, and again a generous supper awaited us, prepared in the same hall as yesterday. However, the Count did not wish to postpone his scheme, and hardly was hunger appeased when himself he turned to the doctor with the following speech:

  “It is known unto us, respected doctor, that you have achieved such brilliant successes in the sphere of magic, that it would be misplaced to rank you only equal to any contemporary magician, even to the Spaniard Torralba (may it be light for his soul in the kingdom of Pluto), or the young Nostradamus, of whom so much noise is made nowadays. It is also known unto us that you have not denied the requests of others to show your skill, and that, for example, you enabled the Prince of Anhalt to see with his own eyes Alexander the Great of Macedonia and his consort, returned by your invocations from the shadows of Orcus to the light of Helios. Those assembled now add their prayers to mine, beseeching you to show us if only a particle of your wonder-working art.”

  With strained attention I waited to hear what Doctor Faustus would reply, for in the request of the Count I saw clearly the springs and discs of the trap, and I longed that the doctor might check with sharp words this hypocritical speech. But, to my surprise, Doctor Faustus, who had behaved hitherto with extraordinary restraint, now replied thus, with some haughtiness:

  “Gracious Count, in gratitude for your hospitality I may be agreeable to show you that little that my modest knowledge will permit me, and I trust that thereafter the Prince of Anhalt will have nothing to boast of before you.”

  As I now interpret it, Faustus, offended by the attitude towards him of the Count and his courtiers, desired to prove to all of them that he did, in reality, possess powers unknown to them, and for the sake of this not altogether unworthy vanity, he resolved to lower magic to the level of a public experiment. But at that hour, under the influence of the Count’s suspicions, it seemed to me that the doctor had exposed himself as a hired charlatan in agreeing to the Count’s request, for only such are capable of invoking ghosts at any hour and in any place—so that I was ready to set him on a level with common quacks travelling the villages for the sale of various amulets, healing plasters, magic pills, thalers that always return, and the like. In the meantime Mephistophilis, rising, approached Faustus and began to speak persuasively in his ear, but the latter angrily shrugged his shoulders, as if saying “I will have it so,” and Mephistophilis walked away, annoyed.

  As all had by now left the table, and were surrounding the doctor, expressing to him their gratitude for his decision, I made use of the general movement to leave the room, and went for a stroll in the deserted gallery, angry with myself for not having put into execution my resolution of yesterday, and, in general, with my soul feeling like an untuned viola. Curiosity, however, or, more exactly, a thirst for investigation of which I am not in the least ashamed, did not allow me to spend the evening away from the company, so that within half an hour I had returned to the hall, and was thus none the less a witness of the experiment in magic performed by Doctor Faustus, and which I shall describe here with impartiality, as I have hitherto described everything else, endeavouring not to add a single line to that which has imprinted itself in my memory.

  In the hall the table and the chairs had been pushed aside into a corner, and all the company was seated on benches placed across the room, and, whispering and laughing, awaiting the beginning of the experiment as if it had been the representation of some gay pastoral. For the Count and Countess two chairs had been moved forward, and Mephistophilis, standing by them, was giving some kind of explanation, while Doctor Faustus, very pale, some distance away, was giving final directions to the servants. I placed myself at the very edge of the bench in the second row, whence it was convenient to observe all that took place.

  When those present had quietened down in a measure, Doctor Faustus said:

  “Gracious Count and Countess, kind ladies and famed knights! I shall now cause to appear before your very eyes the Queen Helena, consort of King MeneJaus, daughter of Tyndareus Leda, sister of Castor and Pollux—she who in Greece was named ‘the Fair.’ The Queen will appear before you in that same image and appearance she bore in life, and will walk your ranks, allowing you to look at her, and will remain in your company about five minutes, after which time she will have once more to disappear.”

  Doctor Faustus spoke these words firmly, but I seemed to detect and hear in his voice a tension, and the look in his eyes was sharp set, so that one might have thought that he himself did not believe overmuch in the success of the enterprise he had undertaken. But, as soon as he had finished speaking, Mephistophilis added, sternly and commandingly:

  “I must sincerely warn you, kind sirs, that so long as the Apparition be in our midst you must not pronounce a word, and still more, you must not address your speech to it, must not touch it, and, in general, not leave your seats—and to this you must give me your promise.”

  The Count answered for everyone that they were agreeable to these terms, and then Mephistophilis gave an order to extinguish all the torches and candles that were in the room, except one far away candle, so that almost complete darkness fell. Gradually in the eeriness of this darkness and in the excitement of waiting began to die down all the whispers that still sounded and the rustlings of the dresses, until the whole company sank into darkness as into a black depth. Then, suddenly, in various corners of the room, were heard those same crackings and knockings that I had had occasion to hear with Renata, and my heart met these with mournful throbbing. Next swam slowly through the whole room shining stars, disappearing suddenly, and despite the fact that I was by then already no novice in magic manifestations, an involuntary trembling took posses
sion of me.

  At last, from the far away corner, a whitish cloud separated itself from the floor, and, rolling and swaying, began to rise, grow and expand, taking the shape of a human figure. A few moments thence there showed itself through the cloud a human face, the wisps of the mist folded themselves into the folds of a robe, and it was as if a live woman were floating towards us, indistinctly visible in the deep twilight of the room. At first the apparition approached the Count, and stood for some time before him, swaying, not advancing, then, still as slowly, as if of air, moved to the left and began to approach me. And, however much I was shaken by the sight, I did not forget to collect all my attention that I might study the apparition in all its details.

  Helena, as far as I can remember, was not tall in stature, and was dressed in a mantle of royal purple, of the kind beloved by the painter, Andrea Mantegna; her hair, of golden colour, was loose, and so long that it fell to her very knees; she had eyes as black as coals, very vivid lips of a very tiny mouth, and a white neck, slender as a swan’s, and her whole appearance was not in any sense queenly, but seductive in the extreme. She glided past me extraordinarily rapidly and, continuing her path through the spectators, she approached Doctor Faustus, who, as far as could be seen in the half-darkness, rushed forward in extreme excitement and stretched out his arms towards the apparition. This movement surprised me very much, for it inclined me to suppose that the apparition was unexpected to Faustus himself.

  But I had no time to think out the implications of this consideration, for there suddenly happened something of such a nature that it immediately interrupted our experiment, so tantalisingly begun. This was, when Helena, drawing away from the doctor, approached the cousin of the Count, who sat at the left end of the second row, the latter suddenly jumped up, courageously took the apparition in his arms, and in a loud voice shouted: “Lights!” Faustus at once rushed at him with an exclamation of sorrow and indignation, everyone else rose impetuously from their seats, and the servants, beforehand prepared for this, seized torches that they had until now held hidden somewhere, and all the hall was lit with their yellow light.