The physician came very early in the morning.
He looked at his patient and seemed delighted to find him better. But when M. Dandolo told him what had been done during the night, his face changed.
"You removed the ointment?"
"We did."
"You might have killed him. Who had the audacity to destroy the effect of my prescription?"
For the first time since his attack, M. de Bragadin spoke.
"Doctor," he said, "the person who has delivered me from your mercury, which was killing me, is a more skillful physician than you."
He raised his hand and pointed to me.
It would be difficult to say who was more astonished: the doctor, who saw an unknown young man declared superior to him at the bedside of his own patient, or I, who found myself made a physician by one sentence.
I kept silent, looking very modest, but hardly able to control my mirth, whilst the doctor was staring at me with a mixture of astonishment and of spite, evidently thinking me some bold quack who had tried to supplant him.
At last he turned coldly to M. de Bragadin.
"Then I leave you in his hands."
He meant it as a threat, but he was taken at his word. He went away, and behold! I had become the physician of one of the most illustrious members of the Venetian Senate!
I must confess that I was very glad of it, and I told my patient that a proper diet was all he needed, and that nature, assisted by the approaching fine season, would do the rest.
The dismissed physician spread the affair through the city.
Meanwhile, M. de Bragadin improved so quickly that the story grew with his recovery. One of his relations came to see him and could not resist saying what everyone was saying.
"Everyone is astonished that you have chosen a theatre fiddler for your physician."
Bragadin put a stop to his remarks at once.
"A fiddler may know more than all the doctors in Venice. I owe my life to him."
The worthy nobleman considered me as his oracle, and his two friends listened to me with the deepest attention.
Their infatuation encouraging me, I spoke like a learned physician, I dogmatized, I quoted authors whom I had never read.
de Bragadin, who had the weakness to believe in the occult sciences, told me one day "For a young man of your age, your learning is too extensive. I cannot believe it is ordinary. You possess some supernatural gift. I entreat you to tell me the truth."
What extraordinary things will sometimes occur from mere chance, or from the force of circumstances!
Unwilling to wound his vanity by telling him that he was mistaken, I took a wild resolution.
In the presence of his two friends, I told him that I possessed a numerical calculus which could answer, also by numbers, any question I chose to put to it.
de Bragadin's eyes brightened.
"That is Solomon's key," he said. "What the vulgar call cabalistic science. From whom did you learn it?"
"From an old hermit who lives on Mount Carpegna, and whose acquaintance I made quite by chance when I was a prisoner in the Spanish army."
The senator nodded gravely.
"The hermit," he remarked, "has without informing you of it, linked an invisible spirit to the calculus he has taught you, for simple numbers can not have the power of reason. You possess a real treasure, and you may derive great advantages from it."
"I do not know," I answered, "in what way I could make my science useful, because the answers given by the numerical figures are often so obscure that I have felt discouraged, and I very seldom tried to make any use of my calculus. Yet, it is very true that, if I had not formed my pyramid, I never should have had the happiness of knowing your excellency."
"How so?"
"On the second day, during the festivities at the Soranzo Palace, I enquired of my oracle whether I would meet at the ball anyone whom I should not care to see. The answer I obtained was this: 'Leave the ball-room precisely at four o'clock.' I obeyed implicitly, and met your excellency."
The three friends looked at one another in astonishment.
Dandolo was the first to recover.
"Would your oracle answer a question from me? I alone shall know the meaning of the question, and I alone shall interpret the answer."
I declared myself quite willing, for it was necessary to brazen it out, after having ventured as far as I had done.
Dandolo wrote his question and handed it to me.
I read it.
I understood neither the subject nor the meaning of the words.
That did not matter. I had to give an answer.
Since the question was obscure to me, it was only proper that the answer should be obscure also. I therefore wrote four lines in ordinary figures, leaving him the task of interpreting them, not caring much, at least in appearance, how they would be understood.
Dandolo read the figures once.
Then again.
His face changed.
"It is all very plain to me," he exclaimed. "Perfectly clear. Divine. Unique. A gift from Heaven. The numbers are only the vehicle. The answer emanates evidently from an immortal spirit."
I kept my face serious.
Dandolo was so delighted that the other two naturally wished to make their own experiments.
They asked questions on every kind of subject. I answered with figures which meant nothing to me and, apparently, everything to them. Each reply was studied, admired, and declared Divine by them.
I congratulated them on their success.
I congratulated myself also, in their presence, on possessing a treasure to which, until that day, I had attached no importance. I promised to cultivate it carefully, since it might allow me to be useful to their excellencies.
They all wished to learn the rules of my sublime calculus asked me how long I would require to teach them.
"That would not take long," I said, "and I will teach you as you wish, although the hermit assured me that I would die suddenly within three days if I communicated my science to anyone, but I have no faith whatever in that prediction.
de Bragadin who believed in it more than I did, told me in a serious tone that I was bound to have faith in it, and from that day they never asked me again to teach them.
No doubt they thought that, if they could attach me to themselves, the result would be almost the same as possessing the science.
Thus I became the hierophant of those three worthy men.
They were intelligent, cultivated, and full of literary knowledge. Yet they were not wise. They were infatuated with occult and fabulous sciences, and believed in the existence of phenomena impossible in the moral as well as in the physical order of things.
They believed that through me they possessed the philosopher's stone, the universal panacea, the intercourse with all the elementary, heavenly, and infernal spirits; they had no doubt whatever that, thanks to my sublime science, they could find out the secrets of every government in Europe.
After testing my cabala on questions about the past, they decided to consult it on the present and the future.
There I found my part easy enough.
I became a good guesser.
My answers always had a double meaning. One seemed to answer the question at once; the other I arranged so that it could be understood only after the event. In that manner, my cabalistic science, like the oracle of Delphi, could never be found in fault.
I saw how easy it must have been for the ancient heathen priests to impose upon ignorant, and therefore credulous mankind.
I understood how easily cheats will always find dupes, and I understood better than ever why two augurs could not look at one another without laughing; it was because they had both an equal interest in giving importance to the deceit they perpetrated, and from which they derived such immense profits.
What I could not understand then, and perhaps never shall, is why the Fathers of the Church, who were neither simple nor ignorant, did not simply deny the divinity of oracles. Instead, to escape the difficulty, they attributed them to the devil.
They would never have entertained such a strange idea if they had known cabalistic science.
My three worthy friends resembled those Fathers.
They had intelligence. They had wit. They had learning. But they were superstitious, and therefore not philosophers. They believed fully in my oracles, yet their hearts were too good to suppose them the work of the devil. It suited their natural goodness better to believe my answers inspired by some heavenly spirit.
They were not only good Christians and faithful to the Church, but even real devotees and full of scruples.
They were not married, and, after having renounced all commerce with women, they had become the enemies of the female sex; perhaps a strong proof of the weakness of their minds.
They believed chastity to be the necessary condition for commerce with spirits.
In their opinion, invisible beings demanded purity from those who wished to consult them. Women and spirits could not occupy the same chamber. The one excluded the other, and my three friends had chosen the spirits.
With all these oddities, they were intelligent men, even witty. At the beginning of our acquaintance, I could not reconcile these antagonistic points. Later I understood that a prejudiced mind cannot reason freely, and that reasoning is the first of all faculties.
I often laughed when they spoke of religion.
They mocked those poor minds, as they called them, which could not understand the mysteries of faith. To them, there was nothing difficult in any of it. The incarnation of the Word seemed a trifle for God, and therefore perfectly easy to grasp. The resurrection did not astonish them, since God cannot die, and Jesus Christ, being God, was naturally certain to rise again.
As for the Eucharist, transubstantiation, the real presence, they saw no mystery there either. It was all plain evidence to them.
And yet they were not Jesuits.
They went to confession every week, with no uneasiness about the ignorance of their confessors, which they pitied kindly. They believed themselves obliged to confess only what appeared sinful to their own judgment.
In that, at least, they reasoned well.
With those three extraordinary men, worthy of esteem for their age, birth, reputation, honesty, and moral qualities, I spent my days pleasantly enough.
Pleasantly, I say, though their thirst for knowledge often made me work like a galley slave of the invisible world. They would shut the four of us in a room for ten hours at a time, giving strict orders that no one should disturb us, neither friends nor relatives.
I completed the conquest of their friendship by relating to them the whole of my life, only with some proper reserve, so as not to lead them into any capital sins.
I confess it plainly: I deceived them.
I deceived them as Papa Deldimopulo deceived the Greeks who came to him for the oracles of the Virgin.
I certainly did not act towards them with a true sense of honesty, but if the reader who judges me knows the world, and especially the spirit of society, I entreat him to think before condeming me, and perhaps I may meet with some indulgence at his hands.
One may say that pure morality required me to do one of two things: either refuse their intimacy, or undeceive them.
I cannot deny the force of that objection.
But I was twenty.
I had intelligence, talent, appetite, vanity, and the very recent memory of being a poor fiddler.
Besides, what would I have gained by undeceiving them?
Nothing.
I would have wasted my time trying to cure a weakness older than reason itself. I would not have succeeded. They would have laughed at me, pitied my ignorance, deplored my blindness, and dismissed me.
A man who loves illusions does not thank the hand that tears them away. He calls it brutal and goes to buy finer illusions elsewhere.
Nor had I any mission to make myself an apostle of truth.
Who had appointed me reformer of their minds?
These were worthy men, honest, generous, kind to me, and harmless in their folly so long as their folly remained in my hands. To leave them the moment I discovered them to be foolish visionaries, would have been less virtue than misanthropy. I would have become their enemy and my own.
For I loved good living.
I loved the pleasures natural to youth, health, and a good constitution.
By abandoning them, I might even have failed in common politeness.
I would perhaps have caused or allowed M. de Bragadin's death, and I would have exposed those three honest men to becoming the victims of the first bold cheat who, ministering to their monomania, might have won their favour, and would have ruined them by inducing them to undertake the chemical operations of the Great Work.
There is also another consideration, dear reader, and as I love you I will tell you what it is.
Self-love.
An invincible self-love would have prevented me from declaring myself unworthy of their friendship either by my ignorance or by my pride. Nor could I abruptly cease visiting them without being guilty of gross rudeness.
I therefore chose the course which seemed to me the most natural, the most useful, and perhaps even the noblest, given the state of their minds.
It secured me the necessities of life, and who, I ask you, could judge those necessities better than your very humble servant?
Through the friendship of those three men, I was certain of gaining consideration and influence in my own country.
Besides, I confess it, the whole affair flattered my vanity.
I enjoyed becoming the subject of speculation among the empty-headed idlers of Venice. Those people, having nothing to do and not enough wit to remain silent, spent their time searching for causes behind every moral phenomenon, which their narrow intellect could not understand.
People in Venice racked their brains trying to explain my intimacy with three men of such rank and character.
They lived with their eyes turned towards heaven; I was devoted to the world. They were strict in morals; I thirsted for every pleasure. They sought spirits, numbers, mysteries, and eternal truths; I sought fortune, women, and whatever delight could be reached before tomorrow. The contrast was too sharp not to excite curiosity.
By the beginning of summer, M. de Bragadin had recovered enough to return to the senate.
The day before he went out for the first time, he called me to him.
"Whoever you may be," he said, "I am indebted to you for my life. Your first protectors wanted to make you a priest, a doctor, an advocate, a soldier, and ended by making a fiddler of you; those persons did not know you."
He took my hand.
"God had evidently instructed your guardian angel to bring you to me. I know you and appreciate you. If you will be my son, you have only to acknowledge me for your father, and, for the future, until my death, I will treat you as my own child."
I could not speak.
"Your apartment is ready," he continued, "you may send your clothes: you shall have a servant, a gondola at your orders, my own table, and ten sequins a month. It is the sum I used to receive from my father when I was your age. You need not think of the future; think only of enjoying yourself, and take me as your adviser in everything that may happen to you, in everything you may wish to undertake, and you may be certain of always finding me your friend."
I threw myself at his feet and poured out my gratitude.
"Father," I called out to him.
He lifted me, embraced me, and called me his dear son.
I promised to love and obey him.
His two friends, who lived in the same palace, embraced me affectionately and we swore eternal fraternity.
Such was the history of my metamorphosis, and of the lucky stroke which, taking me from the vile profession of a fiddler, raised me to the rank of a grandee.