Marie Grubbe, a Lady of the Seventeenth Century

by J. P. Jacobsen

The room into which he conducted Ulrik Frederik was large and spacious, with a vaulted ceiling and narrow Gothic windows set high in the walls. Chairs were ranged around a large centre table, their wooden seats covered with soft cushions of red silk, from which hung long, heavy tassels. The top of the table was inlaid with a silver plate on which the twelve signs of the zodiac, the planets, and some of the more important constellations were done in niello. Above it, a string of ostrich eggs hung from the ceiling. The floor had been painted in a chequered design of red and gray, and near the door a triangle was formed by old horseshoes that had been fitted into the boards. A large coral tree stood under one window, and a cupboard of dark carved wood with brass mountings was placed under the other. A life-size doll representing a Moor was set in one corner, and along the walls lay blocks of tin and copper ore. The blackamoor held a dried palm leaf in his hand.

When they were seated and the first interchange of amenities was over, Ulrik Frederik—they were speaking in French—asked whether Burrhi would not with his learning and experience come to the aid of the searchers after wisdom in the land of Denmark.

Burrhi shook his head.

“’Tis known to me,” he replied, “that the secret art has many great and powerful votaries in Denmark, but I have imparted instruction to so many royal gentlemen and church dignitaries, and while I will not say that ingratitude or meagre appreciation have always been my appointed portion, yet have I encountered so much captiousness and lack of understanding, that I am unwilling to assume again the duties of a master to such distinguished scholars. I do not know what rule or method the King of Denmark employs in his investigations, and my remarks can therefore contain no disparagement of him, but I can assure you in confidence that I have known gentlemen of the highest nobility in the land, nay, anointed rulers and hereditary kings, who have been so ignorant of their historia naturalis and materia magica that the most lowborn quacksalver could not entertain such vulgar superstitions as they do. They even put their faith in that widely disseminated though shameful delusion that making gold is like concocting a sleeping-potion or a healing-pillula, that if one has the correct ingredients, ’tis but to mix them together, set them over the fire, and lo! the gold is there. Such lies are circulated by catch-pennies and ignoramuses—whom may the devil take! Cannot the fools understand that if ’twere so simple a process, the world would be swimming in gold? For although learned authors have held, and surely with reason, that only a certain part of matter can be clarified in the form of gold, yet even so we should be flooded. Nay, the art of the gold-maker is costly and exacting. It requires a fortunate hand, and there must be certain constellations and conjunctions in the ascendant, if the gold is to flow properly. ’Tis not every year that matter is equally gold-yielding. You have but to remember that it is no mere distillation nor sublimation, but a very re-creating of nature that is to take place. Nay, I will dare to say that a tremor passes over the abodes of the spirits of nature whenever a portion of the pure, bright metal is freed from the thousand-year-old embrace of materia vilis.”

“Forgive my question,” said Ulrik Frederik, “but do not these occult arts imperil the soul of him who practises them?”

“Indeed no,” said Burrhi; “how can you harbor such a thought? What magician was greater than Solomon, whose seal, the great as well as the small, has been wondrously preserved to us unto this day? And who imparted to Moses the power of conjuring? Was it not Sabaoth, the spirit of the storm, the terrible one?” He pressed the stone in one of his rings to his lips. “’Tis true,” he continued, “that we know great names of darkness and awful words, yea, fearful mystic signs, which if they be used for evil, as many witches and warlocks and vulgar soothsayers use them, instantly bind the soul of him who names them in the fetters of Gehenna, but we call upon them only to free the sacred primordial element from its admixture of and pollution by dust and earthly ashes; for that is the true nature of gold, it is the original matter that was in the beginning and gave light, before the sun and the moon had been set in their appointed places in the vault of heaven.”

They talked thus at length about alchemy and other occult arts, until Ulrik Frederik asked whether Burrhi had been able to cast his horoscope by the aid of the paper he had sent him through Ole Borch a few days earlier.

“In its larger aspects,” replied Burrhi, “I might prognosticate your fate, but when the nativity is not cast in the very hour a child is born, we fail to get all the more subtle phenomena, and the result is but little to be depended upon. Yet some things I know. Had you been of citizen birth and in the position of a humble physician, then I should have had but joyful tidings for you. As it is, your path through the world is not so clear. Indeed, the custom is in many ways to be deplored by which the son of an artisan becomes an artisan, the merchant’s son a merchant, the farmer’s son a farmer, and so on throughout all classes. The misfortune of many men is due to nothing else but their following another career than that which the stars in the ascendant at the time of their birth would indicate. Thus if a man born under the sign of the ram in the first section becomes a soldier, success will never attend him, but wounds, slow advancement, and early death will be his assured portion, whereas, if he had chosen a handicraft, such as working in stone or wrought metals, his course would have run smooth. One who is born under the sign of the fishes, if in the first section, should till the soil, or if he be a man of fortune, should acquire a landed estate, while he who is born in the latter part should follow the sea, whether it be as the skipper of a smack or as an admiral. The sign of the bull in the first part is for warriors, in the second part for lawyers. The twins, which were in the ascendant at the time of your birth, are, as I have said before, for physicians in the first part and for merchants in the second. But now let me see your palm.”

Ulrik Frederik held out his hand, and Burrhi went to the triangle of horseshoes, touching them with his shoes as a tight-rope dancer rubs his soles over the waxed board before venturing out on the line. Then he looked at the palm.

“Ay,” said he, “the honor-line is long and unbroken; it goes as far as it may go without reaching a crown. The luck-line is somewhat blurred for a time, but farther on it grows more distinct. There is the life-line; it seems but poor, I grieve to say. Take great care until you have passed the age of seven and twenty, for at that time your life is threatened in some sinister and secret fashion, but after that the line becomes clear and strong and reaches to a good old age. There is but one offshoot—ah, no, there is a smaller one hard by. You will have issue of two beds, but few in each.”