CHAPTER XXV.
NINE DAYS’ WONDER!
“Monstrous!”
“Go and tell such tales to your grandmother!”
“Preposterous! Rubbish! Lies! Papperlapapp!”
Such were a few of that variety of comment uttered by the Strassburgers when the news spread abroad, as soon it did like wildfire, that Professor Dasipodius, the maker of their new Horologe, was blind.
Everybody made it the subject of conversation. Tradesmen and apprentices canvassed it open-mouthed at their booths; fine ladies paying calls discussed it, and said in the same breath: “Ah—dear, the pity of it,” and they did not believe it one bit. Such heavenly eyes—oh! absurd! No! House-mothers shook their heads, and sighed “Poor dear young man!” and for the first time in their lives, were thankful to think he was no son of theirs. Others maintained that the tale was not to be credited for an instant, and had only been got up to suit some party purposes or other. Heaven knew there were enough of them flying about the city; but many conceded the possibility; for it was well known that the devil never stood at anything when he had the faintest notion of being able to entrap a soul; and no one could gainsay that the mathematician, with his deep knowledge of the curious sciences, must be singularly available. Truly, said the Catholics, Dasipodius was a child of Holy Church, and went regularly to mass, and to allow each his due, was more liberal in alms-giving and divers secret good work beside, than many who fasted on barley bread and water twice a week without fail, and were otherwise more strictly orthodox. Still, when was Dasipodius ever heard disputing to edification with the Anabaptists, or insisting on the spotless purity and integrity of the Vatican proceedings, as it behoved every one in these perilous times, who owned a clever brain and an eloquent tongue? It was whispered, moreover, that the Professor Dasipodius was heretically tainted. He had been known to quote Erasmus more than once, and openly from his professorial chair, to have expressed admiration for some of that reasonable person’s writings.
On the other hand, flames of eloquence had been employed to bring Dasipodius over to Calvin’s conception of a beneficent Providence, and to impress him with a sense of the power of that irresistible grace which doomed Servetus to the flames; but he was not to be charmed. Then Zwinglius had made a snatch at this brand from popery’s burning Gehenna; and the orthodox Lutherans had plied his order-loving nature with much fair argument, but each had failed to influence Dasipodius; and if they agreed on no other point, all shared in the opinion that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for mathematicians to be made into children of grace; and were full of dudgeon against this man, who having lent their arguments silent courteous attention, asked them when they had done, why they made confusion worse confounded by their speculations, instead of enlisting themselves into the ranks of those who still walked in the old paths, but were striving as they went to clear from them the garbage and dust which indolence and neglect had allowed to accumulate there. Surely that was better than striking out into countless intricate and dreary by-ways, which ended, some of them, strangely far away from the Beautiful Gate. And so, with the exception of certain kindred spirits at the university, who did not possess, and were at little pains to lay claim to much voice in the existing ruling of matters social and political in the city, the Professor Dasipodius owned no party friends against his hour of difficulty. It was not possible, in days when the multitude thought of little else than of theological disputation, and had small opinion of a man who did not mix himself up with all their speculations as to whether one must pay down alarming sums in hard cash for one poor hope of eternal happiness, or whether he might not gratuitously commit every abominable crime it suited him in this world, and then be made much of in the next.
It is true that Dasipodius possessed the general good-will and respect of Strassburg, as a clever useful man against whom no gross moral accusation could be brought; but such negative virtues would stand for little in face of this startling charge which had risen up against him. The stakes were as yet smouldering from the fires which had burned men and women for witchcraft and magic; and the protestant religionist made no more scruple of doing away with human life, than his catholic brother had done, so that judged by the one or the other, or both, as was most likely would be the case, Dasipodius stood in no small peril.
Within the last year or two, the violence of the contending sects had brought about their own downfall from the higher places. Peace-loving folks, unable longer to endure the strife of tongues, had sought refuge in the old ruling; and while Anabaptists ran naked and howling about the woods to propitiate the High God, the Host stood once again upon the Cathedral altar; and once more the Bishop ruled from his palace. To possess the esteem and friendship of Bishop John of Manderscheid, as Dasipodius did, could not but be regarded as a high privilege. One and all were constrained to acknowledge that he was just and gentle-hearted; and of his mental qualifications, it sufficed to remember when and where he ruled, to set them at something of their true value; but the most bigoted of both sides had their grudges against this man who set his face against extreme measures, and refused to anathematise any party. To this large majority a via media was hateful; the moderationist of the new University was looked askance upon for want of zeal in matters spiritual, while it was known that the Bishop had the place’s interests deeply at heart; and of all who taught or learned within its walls, he cared for none so well as he did for Conrad Dasipodius.
This very regard, however, was likely more to damage than to shield Dasipodius in the impending crisis. The zealots and the municipality contained not a few loving to say that the learned prelate would take the foul fiend, horns and hoofs and all to his bosom, if only he came in scholar’s cap and gown; but it chanced that just at that identical time, Bishop John was fifty miles away from Strassburg, engaged in a pastoral visitation among the villages of his diocese; and there being in those days no other posts than special messengers, he was likely to remain till his return, in ignorance of what had occurred.
The really great question was, what would the Town Council say about it? Individually the Town Council was stricken dumb with astonishment; but thinking that collectively breath and eloquence might be regainable, they called a meeting, at which chief Burgomaster Niklaus von Steinbach was required officially to preside. For once he took his place reluctantly and in silence; allowing the stormy Babel to say all it desired, which was not a little. On one point nearly all were agreed—that if indeed, as there seemed now hardly any doubt, this man were blind, he deserved to be broken on the wheel, for having so long led them all by the nose. There was hardly one of that conclave who did not esteem himself worth a dozen mathematicians, and held it monstrous to have been hoodwinked. There was a feeling about it which set those worthy drapers and fishmongers and tanners in a fume of fuss and indignation, but Niklaus von Steinbach took no part in the discussion. He only sat silent at the head of the long council table, with his hand half-shading his face, which bore a strangely troubled and perplexed expression. But at last, in the very height of the turmoil, he brought his clenched fist down on the table with a heavy thud, and roaring as loud as Demosthenes, when he outvoiced the sea waves, said: “Gentlemen, what we want is fact, not hearsay. Let Master Dasipodius speak for himself.”
This resolution was put to the vote by a show of hands; and though there were some dissentients, the ayes carried the day; and the recorder having spread out a broad sheet of parchment, a citation was drawn upon it summoning “the Professor Conrad Dasipodius to appear four days hence at the Chancellery, to answer in person anent certain rumours——”
“Charges,” amended Master Tobias Hackernagel the syndic. “Charges, Burgomaster.”
“No,” said the Burgomaster; “no such thing.”
“Libels, perhaps?” suggested Counsellor Frischlein.
“No, Master Frischlein, I think not. It isn’t exactly a libel you see, to say a man’s blind—hey, Master Recorder?”
“Not without being attended by aggravating circumstances, Burgomaster,” replied the man of law, patiently holding his pen poised an inch or two above his parchment.
“Ah, proceed then, Master Recorder—Certain rumours which have reached the ears of the Town Council——”
“Will they be long, Burgomaster?” meekly asked Counsellor Klausewitz, who had a punctual wife, and heard dinner-time strike.
“Not if I can help it,” said Niklaus. “Go on, Master Recorder—to the effect that he has lost the use of his sight——”
“Otherwise blind,” suggested the lawyer.
“Hang it, yes—if you choose,” testily said Niklaus. “A spade’s a spade, and Dasipodius isn’t the man to say it isn’t.”
“And of a consequence,” loftily continued Syndic Hackernagel. “Write ‘of a consequence,’ Master Recorder.”
“Consequences make an after consideration,” said Niklaus, taking the quill from the Recorder’s hand and setting his signature to the document. “Be pleased to sign your names, gentlemen, and then we can go home. This place is as stifling as an oven.”
“But I tell you, Burgomaster——” objected Hackernagel.
“By your leave, Master Hackernagel, the clock has struck,” interrupted the impatient Job.
“And the moral welfare of the city is to be sacrificed to your carnal appetites!” muttered the Anabaptist, as he scowlingly watched the Burgomaster place away the citation duly signed and sealed with the old free city’s insignia, under lock and key, and then with a curt good-morrow, stride out after his colleagues. “Dumb dogs that ye are! How long shall the unrighteous prevail—and the saints be made a mock unto themselves?”
Until recently Tobias Hackernagel had followed the vocation of fishmonger in Strassburg; but his natural gift for driving exceedingly lucrative, not to say hard bargains, had enabled him to retire from trade when not very far advanced beyond middle life. Having made good provision for himself, the quondam fishmonger turned his attention to his country, and contrived so entirely to impress people generally with his own firm conviction that he was no ordinary man, that one fine day he found himself elevated to nearly the highest point of his ambition,—syndic, that is to say, of his native city. This desired consummation he had brought about mainly by a judicious use of his ready tongue. Whenever he found his chance, Tobias Hackernagel would talk. What he said signified comparatively little. His custom of using the long word when there was a long and a short one to choose from, had won him hosts of admirers; and they would say it was a beautiful thing indeed to hear Syndic Hackernagel talk. If his education had been a very third-rate one, his sharp mother-wit atoned to him for much; and the superficial knowledge he had picked up, he tried to economise in such a manner, that it went twice as far with the multitude as the solid acquirements of many a better man.
Physically, even by his most enthusiastic disciples, Syndic Hackernagel was not esteemed prepossessing. Insignificant in stature, and with little to speak of as far as eye and brow and chin were concerned, his nose was of massive aquiline proportions, and vastly proud of this important feature the syndic was. Not without reason, for it was most useful to him on state occasions, when his magnificent manner of applying his handkerchief to it called attention to himself, as the trumpet call of a herald rivets the senses of all within earshot. The little fishmonger was in his idiosyncrasies the very antipodes of Conrad Dasipodius, and Tobias Hackernagel did not love the mathematician.
That Dasipodius did not reciprocate the negative sentiment, was owing possibly to the fact that he had never dreamed of spending two thoughts on him. Tobias had so rarely been thrown in his way. He did not so much as remember, what the syndic never tired of recalling, a certain time some years since, when the chief’s of the antinomian sect of which Tobias was an ardent if circumspect member, had made a fierce effort to win Dasipodius to their ranks; and the mathematician had frankly told them it was a form of belief with which not merely he had no sympathy, but which appeared to him to threaten the bringing Christianity itself into utmost disrepute.
When the election for the Horologe had taken place, Tobias Hackernagel had voted for Otto von Steinbach. Otto, as he knew, had good expectations, and could boast a fine ancestry; while the syndic, who was not so much as quite sure of his maternal grandfather’s name, had four daughters—none of them passing fair;—although certainly in the third of the quartette, Gretchen, some womanly graces, possibly inherited of her long dead mother, did exist.
As far as the world knew, and had there been anything to tell, it would probably have been apprised in all decent haste, these ladies had hitherto received no matrimonial overtures. A father’s leanings therefore towards an eligible young bachelor like Otto von Steinbach, against the proud bigoted misogynist of a Dasipodius, is at all events conceivable. The syndic however, patriot, disinterested protector of justice, guardian of civic rights, Syndic Tobias the incorruptible, acknowledged no secondary motives, in upholding, whenever opportunity presented, the cause of the hare-brained Otto.
Nothing could have better pleased him, take it for all in all, than this charge which had now got abroad against the mathematician. It delighted him immeasurably to see how people of all parties, Catholic and Protestant, differ as they would wherever they could possibly do so, were unanimous in their denunciations of the suspicion of magical arts in which they now conceived Dasipodius to be an adept. When you came, as they said, to consider how mathematics and its kindred subjects were a pagan invention, things, there was no denying it, did look suspicious; and many came forward and publicly disburdened their bosoms of the suspicions they had long nursed, that Dasipodius was a secret member, and a very powerful one too, of that mysterious brotherhood of the Caballists. Why, can’t you see, that if making a clock, and such a clock—without eyes, seeing in the dark—Du Lieber Himmel! think of it!—was not magic, what was? What a mercy to think his infirmity had been laid bare at last, before destruction had come upon the city, for having harboured such iniquity! A Horologe was a nice useful clever thing undoubtedly, but a thing which at best had about it a strange weirdness and witchery. It was so marvellous when you came to think, that a mere combination, you know, of brass and wood should be able to move, ay, and to speak—in its way, at the bidding of a man, and of a blind man! Then one great shudder convulsed the city, and the question flew from mouth to mouth: “What would the Bishop say to this? My lord, who had always shown Dasipodius such favour!”