“True. Snow-flakes melt six-sided. I have used them for diaper-work often.”
“Melting snow-flakes as seen through a glass? By art optical?” the Friar asked.
“Art optical? I have never heard!” Roger of Salerno cried.
“John,” said the Abbot of St. Illod’s commandingly, “was it—is it so?”
“In some sort,” John replied, “Thomas has the right of it. Those shapes in the bordure were my workshop-patterns for the devils above. In my craft, Salerno, we dare not drug. It kills hand and eye. My shapes are to be seen honestly, in nature.”
The Abbot drew a bowl of rose-water towards him. “When I was prisoner with—with the Saracens after Mansura,” he began, turning up the fold of his long sleeve, “there were certain magicians—physicians—who could show—” he dipped his third finger delicately in the water—“all the firmament of Hell, as it were, in—” he shook off one drop from his polished nail on to the polished table—“even such a supernaculum as this.”
“But it must be foul water—not clean,” said John.
“Show us then—all—all,” said Stephen. “I would make sure—once more.” The Abbot’s voice was official.
John drew from his bosom a stamped leather box, some six or eight inches long, wherein, bedded on faded velvet, lay what looked like silver-bound compasses of old box-wood, with a screw at the head which opened or closed the legs to minute fractions. The legs terminated, not in points, but spoon-shapedly, one spatula pierced with a metal-lined hole less than a quarter of an inch across, the other with a half-inch hole. Into this latter John, after carefully wiping with a silk rag, slipped a metal cylinder that carried glass or crystal, it seemed, at each end.
“Ah! Art optic!” said the Friar. “But what is that beneath it?”