There were two fires in the laboratory. One of timber, that roared and crackled its life away and sank into an ever increasing heap of fair white ash. In the vault-like room this fire burned year in year out on a hearth hewn many feet into the deep wall; and from many points of view Belphegor found it vastly more satisfactory than the other fire, which generally engrossed the best of his master’s attention. That was a stealthy red glow, nurtured on a wide stove built into another wall recess, sheltered behind a glass screen under a tall hood:—a fire productive of the strangest smells, at times evil, but as often sweet and aromatic: a fire also productive on occasions of coloured vapours and dancing flamelets of suspicious nature. There, as the cat knew, happened now and again unexpected ebullitions, disastrous alike to the nerves and to the fur. In his kitten days, Belphegor, led ostensibly by overpowering affection but really by the constitutional curiosity of his genus, had been wont to accompany his chosen master behind the screen. He knew better now. And there was a bald spot near the end of his tail, where no amount of licking on his part, no cunning unguent of Master Simon’s himself could to this day induce a hair to grow again.
The old man had closed the door of the stove; rearranged, crown-like, a set of glass vessels of engaging shapes: alembics and matrasses, filled with decoctions of green and amber, gorgeous colours shot with the red reflection of the fire; tucked a baby-small porcelain crucible in its fireclay cradle and banked the glowing cinders around it. The touch of the wrinkled hands was neat, almost caressing. After a last look around, he emerged, blowing a breath of content:
“Everything in good trim, so far, for to-night’s work, my cat.”
And Belphegor blinked both eyes.
Faint vapours, herb-scented, voluptuous, rose and circled to the groined roof. The log fire on the hearth had fallen to red stillness. In the silence, delicate sounds of bubbling and simmering, little songs in different keys, gurgles as of fairy laughter, became audible.
“Hark to it!” said the simpler, and bent his ear with a smile of satisfaction. He spoke in a monotonous undertone, not unlike the muttering of the sleep-walker—“Hark to it! There is a concert for you—new tunes to-night, Belphegor. Strange, delightful! There is not a little plant but has its own voice, its own soul-song. Hark, how they yield them up! Good little souls! Bad little souls, some of them, he, he! Enough in that retort yonder to make helpless idiots, or dead flesh of a hundred lusty men. Dead flesh of eleven such fine cats as yourself and one kitten, he, he! Yet—for properly directed, friend Belphegor, vice may become virtue—enough here to keep the fever from the homestead for three generations....”
The old man moved noiselessly in his slippers across the stone floor, flung a couple of fresh logs on the sinking hearth, then stretched out his frail hands to the blaze and laughed gently. The flame light played fantastically on his shrunken figure:—a being, it would seem, so ætherealised that it scarcely looked as if blood could still be circulating beneath that skin, like yellow ivory, tensely stretched over the vast, denuded forehead and the bold, high-featured face. Mind alone, one would have thought, must animate that emaciated body; mind alone light up those steel-blue eyes with such keenness that, by contrast with the age-stricken countenance, they shone with almost unearthly vitality.
The cat stretched himself, yawned; then advanced, humping his back and bristling, to rub himself against his master’s legs. The fire roared again in the chimney, a score of greedy tongues licking up the last drops of sap that oozed forth, hissing, from the beech logs.
“Aha,” said Master Simon, bending down somewhat painfully to give a scratch to the animal’s neck, “that’s the fire-song you prefer. I fear, I fear, Belphegor, you will never rise beyond the grossest everyday materialism!”
Purring Belphegor endorsed the opinion by curling up luxuriously on his head and stretching out his hind paws to the flame. The little scene was an allegory of peace and comfort. The old man, straightening himself, remained awhile musing: