The door flew suddenly open, and Robin, gazing around, found himself standing in a small room, circular in form, with an arched ceiling, and floor of stone. The walls were lined with shelves, piled with massive books, clasped by fastenings of silver and of gold, thrown among scrolls of parchment, richly illuminated, and emblazoned with strange figures, relieving pictures of dark and hidden meaning.
The apartment having no casement, light was supplied by a small lamp of curious workmanship, depending from the arched ceiling, and diffusing its intense and radiant beams all around the place, making the lonely room as bright as though the noonday sun shone over its shelves and walls.
Around the chamber were scattered strange instruments pertaining to the science of astrology or mysteries of alchemy; here richly emblazoned parchments, inscribed with curious characters, glittered in the light; and yonder, the ghastly skull, with its hideous grin of mockery, was strown along the floor, mingled with the bones of the human skeleton, the last fragments of the tenement of the living soul.
While Robin’s eyes distended in wonder, as he hastily glanced around the room, he stumbled and fell against an object reared in the centre of the floor.
“The foul fiend take thee, slave!” shouted Aldarin, as, with his extended arms, he stayed the soldier in his fall. “Wouldst thou destroy the labor of thrice seven long years? Wouldst thou destroy a Mighty Thought? Stand aside from the altar, and come not near it again, or by the body of * * *, I will brain thee with this dagger! Thou slave!” he shrieked, in tones of wild indignation, as his blazing eye was fixed upon the face of the yeoman, who stood confused and silent, “for what dost thou suppose I have watched yon beechen flame, by day and night, for twenty-one long years? For what have I wasted the youth and the vigor of my days before yon altar? Was it to have my labor, the mighty thought, for which I have dared what mortal never dared before, destroyed by thy clumsy carcass? Dost think so, slave?”
Rough Robin murmured an excuse for his awkwardness, and, while the Signior’s features subsided into their usual deep and solemn expression, he again gazed around the room.
From the centre of the oaken floor arose a small altar, built of snow-white marble, with a light blue flame arising from a vessel of gold on its surface: the fire sweeping along the sides of an alembic, suspended over the altar by four chains, attached to as many rods of gold placed at each corner of the structure.
There was something so strange and solemn in the entire aspect of the place—the light blue flame arising in tongues of fire from the vessel of gold on the snow-white altar, burning for ever beneath the hanging alembic, the chains and rods of gold, the pure and undimmed white of the marble, varied by no sculpturing or ornament, combined with the utter stillness and solitude of the room—that Robin felt awed, he scarce knew why; and dark forebodings crept like shadows over his brain.
The scholar seated himself upon a small stool placed near the other, and pointing to another, in a mild voice, desired Robin to follow his example. The yeoman hesitated.
“It is not meet for a poor yeoman o’ th’ Guard to rest himself in the presence of so great a scholar.”