“THE CLERK AND THE IMAGE.”
In the city of Rome stood an image: its posture was erect, with the right hand extended; on the middle finger of the outstretched hand was written: “Strike here.” Years and years had the image stood there, and no one knew the secret of the inscription. Many wise men from every land came and looked at the statue, and many were the solutions of the mystery attempted by them; each man was satisfied with his own conclusion, but no one else agreed with him.
Among the many that attempted to unravel the mystery of the figure was a certain priest. As he looked at the image, he noticed that when the sun shone on the figure, the shadow of the outstretched finger was discernible on the ground at some distance from the statue. He marked the spot, and waited until the night was come; at midnight, he began to dig where the shadow ceased; for three feet he found nothing but earth and stones; he renewed his labor, and felt his spade strike against something hard; he continued his work with greater zeal, and found a trap-door, which he soon cleared, and proceeded to raise.
Below the door, a flight of marble steps descended into the earth, and a bright light streamed upward from below. Casting down his spade, the priest descended; at the foot of the stairs he entered a vast hall; a number of men, habited in costly apparel, and sitting in solemn silence, occupied the centre; around, and on every side, were riches innumerable: piles of gold and enamelled vases; rich and glittering robes, and heaps of jewels of the brightest hue.
The hall was lighted by one jewel alone; a carbuncle so bright, so dazzling, that the priest could hardly bear to gaze upon it, where it stood in a corner of the hall. At the opposite end of the hall stood an armed archer; his bow was strung, and the arrow fitted to the string, and he seemed to take aim at the carbuncle; his brow blazed with reflected light, and on it was written: “I am, that I am; my shaft is inevitable: yon glittering jewel cannot escape its stroke.”
Beyond the great hall appeared another chamber, into which the priest, amazed at what he saw, entered. It was fitted as a bedchamber, couches of every kind ornamented it, and many beautiful women, arrayed in robes as costly as those worn in the great hall, occupied the chamber. Here too all was mute; the beautiful damsels sat in silence.
Still the priest went onward. There were rooms after rooms, stables filled with horses and asses, and granaries stored with abundant forage. He placed his hand on the horses, they were cold, lifeless stone. Servants stood round about, their lips were closed—all was silent as the grave; and yet what was there wanting—what but life?
“I have seen to-day what no man wall believe,” said the priest, as he re-entered the great hall; “let me take something whereby to prove the credit of my story.”
As he thus spake to himself, he saw some vases and jewel-handed knives on a marble table beside him; he raised his hand, he clasped them, he placed them in the bosom of his garment—all was dark.
The archer had shot with his arrow; the carbuncle was broken into a thousand pieces—a thick darkness covered the place; hour after hour he wandered about the halls and passages—all was dark—all was cold—all was desolate; the stairs seemed to have fled, he found no opening, and he laid him down and died a miserable death, amid those piles of gold and jewels, his only companions the lifeless images of stone. His secret died with him.
“Spenser in his Fairy Queen seems to have had some such tale as this in his mind, in his scene in the House of Riches,” remarked Herbert.
“You allude to the fiend watching Sir Gouyon, and hoping that he will be tempted to snatch some of the treasures of the subterraneous palace, so freely displayed to his view.”
“Sir Gouyon fares better than your priest,” replied Herbert; he resists the temptation, and escapes the threatened doom; as the poet says:
“‘Thereat the fiend his gnashing teeth did grate,
And grieved so long to lack his greedy prey;
For well he weened, that so glorious bait
Would tempt his guest to take thereof assay;
Had he so done, he had him snatched away,
More light than Culver in the falcon’s fist.’”
“Pope Sylvester, I presume,” said Thompson, “was a clever mechanician, and a good astronomer, as far as knowledge extended in his day.”
“Precisely so, and hence all the wondrous tales of his magic,” rejoined Lathom. “Born in France, and naturally of an acquisitive mind, he proceeded to Spain, to gain in the Saracenic university of Seville some little of the Eastern sciences. Arithmetic and astronomy, or, as Malmesbury calls the last, astrology, were then flourishing in Spain, and when introduced by him into his native country, soon gained for him the reputation of a magician.”
“Friar Bacon experienced in this country,” remarked Herbert, “that a knowledge of mechanics sufficient to create automatons, of acoustics to regulate the transmission of sounds through long, concealed pipes, and of astronomy to attempt some predictions of the weather from planetary movements, was quite enough to ensure him the name of magician among our rude ancestors.”
“One of the magic arts attributed to Gerbert,” remarked Lathom, “clearly indicates, that a knowledge of mechanism was the source of this reputation in his case. Malmesbury tells us that Gerbert framed a bridge, beyond which were golden horses of gigantic size, with riders of gold, richly glittering with jewels and embroidery. A party attempted to pass the bridge, in order to steal the treasures on the further side. As the first stept on the bridge, it rose gradually in the air, and stood perpendicularly on one end. A brazen man rose from beneath, and as he struck the water with a mace of brass, the sky was overshadowed, and all was thick darkness.”
“Setting aside the darkness,” said Thompson, “the result of accident, or an addition of the chroniclers, a little clever mechanism will account for the movable bridge of Gerbert.”
“The same explanation applies to the ever-burning lamp of the Rosicrucians, held in the hand of a figure armed with a mace, with which he dashes the lamp to atoms, on the entrance of any person into the secret vault.”
“Most undoubtedly, Herbert,” said Thompson; “for in this instance, the legend describes the figure as raising his hand at the first step of the intruder, preparing to strike as he draws nearer and nearer, and at last, when almost within reach, the secret springs on which he is walking dash down the armed hand of the figure, and the lamp and the secret perish in darkness.”
“The tales of natural magic,” said Herbert, “remind me of the legends of one of the Jameses of Scotland, in the subterraneous cavern of Halidon Hill.”
“I hardly know to what legend you allude,” replied Lathom.
“The one in which the king enters a long hall, where a hundred knights stand on either side, each with his armor on, and his horse ready caparisoned by his side. At the end of the hall stand a bugle and a sword. All is silence; the knights stand as statues, and their warhorses do not seem to breathe. The whole charm depends upon which is performed first, the bugle blown, or the sword drawn from its scabbard. The king seizes the bugle; the effect is that the whole melts into darkness, and the charm is gone.”
“As you have led the way to traditions of the northern part of our island,” said Lathom, “one form, if not the original one of the legend, which Scott has worked up in his Marmion, will not be out of place. I allude to the encounter of Marmion with De Wilton, under the guise of the spectral champion of the Pictish camp.”
“Your old monk’s book would have been a treasure to Sir Walter Scott,” said Herbert.
“That he would duly have appreciated its contents, no one can doubt,” replied Lathom, “but he was so well read in the later forms of the legends, which he would have found in its pages, that though apparently unknown to him, he required but little of its aid. Our writer would wish his readers to see in this legend an allegory of the discomfiture of the Devil armed with pride, by the Christian armed with faith. I will call it by the name of