“Why, that makes you a hundred and seventy years old,” feebly remonstrated Makepeace. “Are you then the Wandering Jew?”
“Doctor, I am shocked,” said Commagenus. “Are such fables the stuff of which the Speculum is made? I tell you there is nothing in this world that is not natural. That was my master’s constant teaching: also that to know and to will makes man master of nature. That much I learnt from him while he taught at Constantinople, and it was in my noviciate that I gathered from him the art to work such simple cures as you saw this afternoon. To prolong mere existence by keeping disease at bay—that he esteemed a vulgar art. To live long and die old, feeble and foolish—what gain is that to the man or his fellow-men? To live always, always to be young, always eager, always to be growing in wisdom and power—that was the secret for which he spent a lifetime’s search, and with his dying breath he told me that he had sought it in vain. Death, the last disease, is incurable: there is a stronger will than man’s. But he told me of a door of escape. In his last moments he was possessed with a dread that his discovery would perish in the general eclipse of learning which he foresaw as the result of the disappearance of the Byzantine schools, and, with solemn admonition as to its use, he imparted it to me. Death, the mere accident of the flesh, is transferable with the flesh. With will and knowledge, the spirit—all that you call character, intelligence, consciousness, memory—may pass from form to form, unchanged in the transition and always capable of growth and ripening. Alas, that I have not made better use of my master’s prescriptions! But it has been my evil fate. Another might do better.”
“These are heathen imaginings—snares and delusions of Satan,” cried Makepeace. “What talk is this of tampering with the divine in us? Man, are you a Christian?”
“I am what I am,” replied Commagenus: “but that this is waking fact and no delusion my history shall show you. After my beloved master’s death I set up in medical practice in a certain city of Dalmatia. The fame of my unusual healing powers spread in all the neighbourhood. Unfortunately it reached the ears of the bishop of the diocese. He was a sincere, well-meaning man, kind in all his relations with the laity of his diocese, but a trifle superstitious. He concluded that I was a necromancer and condemned me to be burnt alive. Until the moment when I found myself in a dungeon and on the eve of execution I had never thought to avail myself of the secret communicated to me by my master, and had even questioned its efficacy. The prospect of burning was so extremely repugnant to my feelings that I resolved to make practical trial of it. Shall I show you how it is done? No, you need not shrink from me. I have no wish to pass into simple old Matthew Makepeace. I can do better. Be assured that the will goes not with the act.”
Commagenus rose and fastened his gaze on Matthew. As he did so it seemed to the doctor that he grew and grew to a bulk and stature ineffable and dim. But that, he reasoned with himself, was an illusion of the sense, and for the moments when the fascinating glare was fixed on him he retained his consciousness. Slowly, deliberately, that Matthew might follow every movement in succession, he moved his hands and arms in gyrations and waves more intricate than any that Matthew had witnessed when the Greek stood on the mountebank’s platform that afternoon. Then he stooped over the table, and with extraordinary distinctness of articulation whispered in his ear one word. What that word was I do not know. Matthew Makepeace remembered it once, and forgot it for all the years that he lived afterwards.
The Greek took up his tale again. “My excellent master had informed me that, whether the subject were waking or asleep, the will and the word had equal effect. My gaoler slept in the condemned cell with me and the occasion seemed to me a particularly happy one for testing the accuracy of my master’s conclusions. Though I did not doubt the intensity of my will, in prospect of such an undesirable event as being burnt alive, I confess that I was surprised and more than gratified by the issue of the experiment. I had the satisfaction of leading my gaoler to the stake on the following morning.”
“What,” cried Makepeace: “do you tell me that the man was burnt? True,” he added, as a mitigating consideration suggested itself to his bewildered brain, “he was a papist. But, after all, what were you?”
Commagenus answered with the resignation of a parent satisfying an inquisitive child. “Yes, Matthew Makepeace, when your raiment is past your own use you make a gift of it to some humble dependent. When he has worn it threadbare, what happens? It is burnt. You do not burn it: I did not burn him. Besides, this common man in ages to come will be held in reverence—in another name, I admit—as a martyr to medical science. Nevertheless I was little pleased, as you may think, with the integument which my brutal gaoler had left me. In my new and humble sphere of life I had few opportunities of self-improvement, and, taking the first that offered, I installed myself in the person of a Dominican friar. I am disposed to doubt whether I really bettered myself by my change of profession. I found that it required much ingenuity to sustain the part of crass ignorance which was associated with my new character, and the man’s companions were deplorable people. An accident, which had nearly proved fatal, relieved me of the disagreeable situation. In the course of my professional duties I was directed to take ship for Spain, where the Dominican order had an especial interest in the Office of the Holy Inquisition. On the voyage we fell in with a vessel belonging to a respectable merchant of Marseilles. The merchant, who was likewise the ship’s captain, was in the habit, when occasion offered, of diversifying the routine of commerce by piratical enterprise. With his crew he boarded and took possession of our vessel, informing us that we were his prisoners. As he had a reputation for probity to sustain at Marseilles, he judged it prudent to throw the whole of the crew and passengers of our vessel into the waves. However, learning that there was a clergyman on board, he seized the opportunity of making confession first and receiving plenary absolution from him of an outstanding balance of prior delinquencies. It was natural to avail myself of the opportunity for transferring myself into his person. It was pleasant to see him flounder in the sea with the rest, and I returned—if that is the right word—to Marseilles, in circumstances sufficiently ample to warrant retirement from a profession the ambiguous character of which offended my moral sense. But my experiences in the three careers of life which my destiny had recently forced upon me gave me an indelible prejudice against the Western Church. On the whole I am a Protestant.
“I need not detain you with my subsequent transmigrations. The merchant was elderly and so oppressively respectable that I was glad to exchange into the superior rank of a French marquisate. Since then, from Trebizond to Tarifa, I have studied men and manners in many capacities. Perhaps the time which was pleasantest to me, as a man of science, was spent in Peru with Pizarro, whom I attended as a captain of cavalry. But a fatal wound, inflicted by a poisoned arrow, compelled my return to Spain in the office of a ship’s boatswain. After all my wanderings my conscience reproached me with my culpable neglect of the art in whose elements I had been grounded by the ever-revered Gazophylacius. I resumed the medical studies which I was convinced were best suited to my bent and upbringing, by adopting the features and the status of a freshman in the University of Padua. As the freshman, under no possible circumstances, could have passed his examinations you will see that I conferred on him no small obligation by the assistance which I rendered. In my first year I obtained advancement to the person and professorial chair of Galiani. I am grieved to tell you that I left him seriously unwell at Salerno, ten years ago; and his decease, which followed almost immediately after, proved to me how wise had been my course in transferring myself into the healthy frame of the brother professor who attended him in the earlier phases of his malady. Come, doctor, you have let me chatter on with these tiresome details till I see you are three parts asleep.”
“Asleep!” roared Makepeace, who had been filled with rage, disgust and hatred by the shameless recital. “Asleep! Wretch, thief, assassin, defiler of the sanctuary of man! Begone, skirr, fly! Would that I could crush your basilisk head on the floor as I stand! But stay. I will fetch the University bedel. He shall clap you in the lowest hold of the Castle gaol.”