BOOK IV
THE WITCHES' SABBATH—1494
'Heaven above—heaven below,
Stars above—stars below,
All which is over man—under him shows;
Glory to him who the riddle readeth!'
Tabula Smaragdina.
I
In an obscure outskirt of Milan, near the Porta Vercellina, the Customs House, and the canal called the Acqua Cantarana, stood an old house, very solitary, and remarkable for the smoke which day and night ascended in large spirals from an immense, winding, and blackened chimney. Here dwelt Monna Sidonia, the wise woman. The upper floor she hired to Messer Galeotto Sacrobosco, an alchemist; and in the lower she lived herself with Cassandra, his niece, the young daughter of Luigi Sacrobosco, a celebrated traveller, who had traversed Greece, the islands of the Archipelago, Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt, in the quest for specimens of ancient art. He possessed himself of all that came to hand: a Greek marble, or a trifle of amber, a sham inscription from the tomb of Homer, a new tragedy by Euripides, or a peroration by Demosthenes. Some thought him a great man, but others dubbed him an impostor; and not a few believed him crazy. His imagination was so enthralled by pagan recollections that though to the last a good Catholic, he prayed to the Olympian Hermes, and regarded Wednesday (Mercoledi) his day, as one singularly propitious for mercantile ventures. No toil, no privations, daunted him in his enterprises. On one occasion, having already put out ten leagues to sea, he returned to copy an inscription of which accident had informed him. Having lost his collection in a shipwreck, his hair turned white with grief. If asked why he so plagued himself and spent his days in such sore labour, he always replied:—
'I desire to raise the dead.'