VIII
From that time forward and for many days the boy did not venture again out of the little room behind the shop. And at night he could not bear to be out of his father’s company, so that he never went to bed without him, but sat reading in the ancient authors, or staring into vacancy with his chin propped on his hands. On some evenings after the shutters of the shop had been put up at eight o’clock, and each had partaken of his frugal supper, his father would take down from the shelf on the wall the old and massive volume in which he read so diligently.
The boy had never sought to read in this volume, because although he had always viewed it with the greatest curiosity, and had even seen when it lay open for his father’s perusal, that its pages of vellum were covered in close and faded, and almost undecipherable writing in red ink, he had felt instinctively from his father’s manner in regard to it that the contents were only for his father’s eyes.
One night, however, long after the hour of midnight had chimed out from the clocks of the neighbouring churches, and his father had been reading in the old volume with a fidelity that seemed even greater than his wont, the boy could stifle his curiosity no more. This was owing to a strange incident that befell. Towards the dawn of the summer morning, his father, who had not allowed his eyes to stray from the book for many hours, rose from the table suddenly. There was an expression upon his face that the boy had never seen before.
His father went to the cupboard which was let into the wall, into which, owing to some occult reason that had never even shaped itself in his mind, the boy had never sought to peer. Therefrom he took a knife which was contained in a case that was very old and chased curiously, a chalice for the reception of ink, and a stylus.
Setting out these articles upon the table, his father took off his threadbare coat, and laid his right arm naked to the elbow. He then took the knife from the case and plunged it into the flesh. As the red blood spurted forth and dripped into the chalice, the boy gave an exclamation of horror and dismay.
“If you have not yet the power, Achilles, to withstand this spectacle,” said his father in that voice which never failed to calm his most instant fears, “pray turn your eyes away.”
Although the boy was on the verge of swooning, for such a sight bereft him of his strength, he continued to look at his father in sore distress.
After his father had allowed a quantity of blood to pass into the chalice, he swathed the wound in his arm in a linen band, opened a blank page in the book, and sat down before it, stylus in hand.
He dipped the pen in the red fluid; he poised it over the page. For a long time he maintained this attitude, yet not a mark of any kind did the fingers trace on the vellum. At last with a gesture of profound anguish, which filled the youthful witness with terror, he rose, and a kind of moan came from his lips.