“Mars and Venus approaching to strange and fearful conjunction indeed,” replied the King, shuddering. “What can it bode?”
“And see ye not that they are in the ascendant, whilst Jupiter is sinking fast?—Now, they are almost in contact—and now!”
“Heaven in its mercy defend us, what a dreadful peal!” cried the King, as the thunder again burst terribly over his head. “And see, the thick and inky veil begins to rend asunder into separate clouds, like some vast army breaking its general mass into its several legions. And behold now, how they divide and subdivide, careering swiftly like squadrons of horsemen over the vault of the heavens. And now, look how strangely and capriciously the broken-up clouds have here veiled, and there revealed, the different portions of the sky!”
“Aye!” said the Astrologer, solemnly, “and now the mystic dance is done. Each several fragment of vapour hath taken his place. The characters are fixed; and now ’tis man’s fault if he read not enough of Heaven’s will in so wide-spread and so plainly written a book. There we can see the Hydra, and there the Greyhounds—there the greater, and there the lesser Dog. But where is the Lion? And where the Northern Crown?”
“Alas, Messire Andrew! thou lookest as if thou wer’t dismayed by these fearful prodigies,” exclaimed the King again, with an anxiously inquiring eye. “What is it that you dread they may portend?”
“It is grievous for me to translate to your Majesty the meaning of these direfully ominous portents,” replied Andrew, gravely, after a long pause, during which he seemed gradually to call down his spirit from the heavens, where it had been soaring for sometime amid all the wonders they displayed. “Yet is it better for you to know their fearful warnings, so far as mortals may interpret them,” continued he, rising into a wild kind of inspiration. “Danger is threatened to the King!—to the King of Scotland! Beware of the princes and lords of the land! Those in whom thou takest the most pleasure may prove thy greatest bane! Commotions and wars are to be looked for and dreaded! Beware! beware! Oh, King! lest the Scottish Lion be devoured by its whelps!”
“The Scottish Lion devoured by its whelps!” re-echoed the King, in the muttered voice of dismay. “Danger from the princes and nobles of the land! Danger from those in whom we take most pleasure! What doth all this import? And in especial, what meaneth this last strange enigma?—What!—the Queen!—Speak Messire Andrew? Or would it point at those who most enjoy my favour?—Why dost thou not answer me?—Wars and commotions—the powerful influence of Mars is plain—but that of Venus!—say!—speak! Surely, surely that doth not touch the loyalty of our Queen?”
“The moment of divination has passed away for this night,” said the cunning Astrologer, in a low hollow voice, like that produced from an over-exhausted spirit. “I am now weak and blind as other men. Yet said I nothing of her most gracious Majesty Queen Margaret, whom God long preserve! The planet your Majesty speaks of hath two several and distinct influences—one, the which may operate as touching things more immediately under the dominion of woman’s passion, and the other, as denoting a mere point of time. This latter interpretation would seem to me, at this moment, to be by far the more likely, for, as Mars would predict battles, his conjunction with the Star of Evening would rather appear to me to mark that they will arise in the evening of your Majesty’s reign, which may God and St. Andrew render long and prosperous!”
“Nay, but cans’t thou not yet inquire more closely, Messire Andrew?” demanded the King, impatiently. “These doubts are worse than ignorance.”
“Another time we may find fit opportunity to solve them, good my liege,” replied the Astrologer, with a low reverence. “The spirit of divination hath passed from me, and I am now no more than a weak and blind mortal. And see! even the heavens have refused to yield up farther knowledge of future events to the sons of earth, for they have wrapped themselves up in one dark and impenetrable veil of cloud. To-night the book of fate is shut!—Saw ye that! The elements themselves forbid all farther question.”