Chapter IX: Part 9

Alfonso cast a look of enthusiasm upon his friend; and Antonio could not refrain from acknowledging to himself that here in the garb of lowly simplicity he found more than had ever delighted him from Apone's mouth, even at the time of his greatest admiration for that ostentatious philosopher. Indeed he was already become fully convinced that the knowledge which people call supernatural may be easily united with piety and a thorough resignation to the Lord.

"Do you know now what my fate has been?" askt the youth with emotion: "can you tell me anything about the events that are hereafter to befall me?"

"If I learn the year, the day, and the hour of your birth," answered Castalio, "compare the horoscope I shall then draw with the lines of your face and the marks on your hands, and afterward give free range to my mind in contemplating the results, I hardly doubt my being able to tell you something about your destinies."

Antonio gave him a pocket-book, in which his father had himself noted down the hour of his birth. Castalio placed some wine before the young men, himself partaking a little of it, turned over a few books, and then sat down to calculate, without however entirely breaking off his conversation with his guests. It only seemed as if the cheerful young man had some common business in hand, which was far from requiring the whole of his attention. Thus amid laughing and lively talk an hour may have past away, when Castalio stood up and beckoned to Antonio to go with him to the window.

"I know not, he began, how far you trust your friend there, or what you may wish to keep secret from him."

Hereupon he examined Antonio's face and hands very minutely, and then in regular connexion told him the story of his parents and their misfortunes, the early violent death of his mother, and his father's sinful passion, together with his murder by the hand of his wicked complice. Afterward he came to Antonio's own affairs, how he had sought for the murderer and pursued him, and had been detained at Padua by love.

"So you," he concluded, "as not without astonishment I have learnt, are the very young man who a short time since detected the wickedness of the abominable Apone in such a wonderful way, and who delivered the shameless villain over to his punishment, although you yourself only became still unhappier than before, from having to lose your beloved a second time in so horrible a manner."

Antonio confirmed all that the friendly man said, and had gained such confidence in him, that he felt just as if he was talking to himself. He then went on to tell him about the adventures of that night, about the second Crescentia, and the odious witch, who, he could not help fancying, had appeared to him a second time on that day.

"Can you inform me now," he askt eagerly, "whether this is all true, who that Crescentia is, and whether I shall ever see her again and carry her back to her parents?"

Castalio became more thoughtful than before. "Unless that strange creature Beresynth," he answered, "the imp that used to be at the magician's side, has been disguising himself as a woman, to escape from his pursuers, I feel assured that I shall find the hag out. Only have patience till tomorrow, and I will then give you your answer. Meanwhile you may be satisfied that the occurrences of that night were no phantoms of your mind, but realities; thus far you may set yourself and your elderly friend at rest."

The young people were lost in thought as they left the wonderful man, and Antonio thankt the Spaniard heartily for having procured him this acquaintance.

* * * * *

Antonio had not been mistaken. It was in fact the old woman that he had caught sight of in the crowd. She was living in a little hut, behind some ruinous houses, not far from the Lateran. Persecuted, destitute, deserted and hated and dreaded by all the world, she was here, in the abode of wretchedness, reduced to the brink of despair. She seldom ventured to shew herself abroad, and on this day too had only gone out from necessity, to bring her Crescentia, who had run away from her, back again.

As everybody shrank out of her path, as it was hard work for her even to obtain here and there an alms, and as her former arts found few lovers, she was no little astonisht that evening to hear a knock at her door, while cries and shouts were tossing without. She took her lamp, and, opening the door, saw a swarm of street-boys and of the lowest rabble at the heels of a little crooked figure fantastically clad in red velvet and gold.

"Does not the worthy Pancrazia live here?" screamed the deformed dwarf.

"Ay, to be sure!" said the old woman, as she forcibly banged the door to, and tried to drive away the people on the outside by abuse. "Who are you, worthy Sir? what do you seek from an old forlorn lady?"

"Set yourself down," said the little stranger, "and kindle some more light, that we may spy and look at one another; and whereas you call yourself poor, take these gold pieces, and we will sip a glass of wine together to our better acquaintance."

The old woman smirkt, lighted some wax-candles which she kept lockt up in a drawer, and said: "I have still a flask of good Florence, worshipful sir, that shall warm our insides." She opened a little cupboard and placed the red comforter upon the table, pouring out the first glass for her unknown guest.

"Why do you call me worshipful?" askt he.

"Don't the pieces of gold declare it?" answered she: "and your doublet, and the lace upon it, and the feather in your hat? Are you not a prince, not a magnate?"

"No!" howled the little one: "what, odds bodikins! cousin, don't you know me in the least? and yet in my younger days people wanted to flatter me by assuring me that we in some degree resembled each other: and faith! when I come to look thus closely at your figure, your physiognomy, your expression, your sweet smile, and those twinkling stars in your eyes there, and when I weigh all this with scrupulous impartiality, why, cousin Pancrazia of the house of Posaterrena in Florence, and little Beresynth of the family of Fuocoterrestro in Milan, are for such degrees of kin, as cousinhood, like each other enough."

"O gemini!" screamed the old woman in delight: "so you are the Beresynth of Milan about whom I heard so much talk in my childhood. Hey! Hey! so am I at this late hour in the day, in the depth of old age, to become acquainted with such a lovely cousin face to face!"

"Ay!" said the dwarf: "just nose to nose; for that great bastion thrown up there is certainly the biggest piece of bonework in our faces. For curiosity's sake, dear coz, let us make an experiment for once, whether we can manage to give each other a cousinly kiss.... No, purely impossible! the far outjutting promontories immediately begin rattling against each other, and forclose our lowly lips from everything like a soft meeting. We must force our noble Roman noses aside with our two fists. So! Don't let it fly, my lady cousin! I might come by a box on the ears that would make my last teeth tumble out."

With a hearty laugh the hag cried: "Hey! I have not been so merry this long time. But what did they want with you before the door there, cousin?"

"What!" screamed the little one: "to look at me, to delight their eyes with me, nothing more. Is not man, my highly esteemed cousin gossip, a thoroughly silly animal? Here in Rome now have hundreds of thousands been assembled whole months, for their Redeemer's honour, as they give out, and to do penance for their sins and get rid of them; and the moment I peep out of the window (I only arrived here the day before yesterday) be it merely in my nightcap, and still more when I come forth at full length and in my Sunday suit into the marketplace, one can't help swearing that the whole gang of them have started out of every hole and corner in Europe merely for my sake: they so leer, and ogle me, and whisper, and ask questions, and laugh, and are in ecstacies. I might grow rich, meseems, were I to let myself be stared at for money while I stay here; and if I chance to give them all this pleasure gratis, forthwith a pack of blockheads begin barking and hallooing at my tail. To see a long-tailed monkey, apes or seals, the dogs must put themselves to some expense; yet instead of enjoying my magnanimity quietly and like sensible people, they rave and revile me all round, and hunt for every expression of loathing they can root out of the animal creation, to display their gross ignorance."

"Very true! very true!" sighed the old woman: "it fares no better with me. Are the beasts such sheer fools then? Only let a body have a regular, average, commonplace nose, eyes, and chin, and all goes on quietly."

"Look at the fish," continued Beresynth, "who are dunces in many things. What philosophical tolerance! and yet among them many a fellow is all snout, and confronts the learned physiognomists of the ocean with a countenance, grave, cold, calm in the consciousness of its originality: nay, the whole deep brims and swims with one can't count how many eccentric faces, and gills, and teeth, and eyes astart from their sockets, and every other kind of striking contour: but every monster there floats his own way quietly and peaceably, without having his sleeve twitcht or any other annoyance. Man alone is so absurd as to laugh and sneer at his fellow creatures."

"And on what," said the beldam, "after all does this mighty difference turn? I am sure I never yet saw a nose that was but a single yard long: an inch, at most two, hardly ever three, make the vast distinction between what they call monsters, and what they are pleased in their modesty to style beauty. And now to come to a hump. If it were not in one's way sometimes in bed, as you know, coz, it is in itself far more agreeable to the eye than those dull flats by way of backs, where in many a lank lathy booby the tiresome straight line stretches up as far as one can see without a single twist, or curl, or flourish."

"You are in the right, my dame cousin!" cried Beresynth already drunk to his drunken hostess. "What can Nature be about when she turns off the things they christen beauties from her pottery-wheel? Why, they are hardly worth the trouble of setting to work at them. But such cabinet pieces as you and I! there the creative power, or the principle of nature, or the soul of the world, or the mundane animal, or whatever title one chooses to give the thing, can look at its product with a certain degree of complacency and satisfaction. For it has your curved lines: it starts off into noticeable angles; it is jagged like corals; it darts forward like crystals; it agglomerates like basalt; nay, there is no conceivable line that does not hop, skip, and jump about our bodies. We, coz, are the spoilt, the cockered children of the formation: and this is why the common rabble of nature are so malicious and envious toward us. Their slim wretched fashion is next door to the slimy eel: there is nothing edifying in such an edifice. From that piece of monotony to the prawn is already a good step; and how far above that is the seal! how do we surpass them both, as well as the seastar, the crab, and the lobster, my trustiest cousin, in our excursive irregularities, which defy all the mathematicians in the world to find an expression for their law. But coz, pray where did you get those two gorgeous teeth? the incomparable couple cut a grand and gloomy figure there across the chasm ... of your unfathomable mouth, and form a capital bridge over the gulf that gapes between the dark cliffs of your gums."

"O you rogue! O you flatterer!" laught the old woman: "but your darling chin that comes forward so complaisantly, and is so ready to wait upon you and spread itself out like a table. Don't you think you could put a good-sized platter upon it comfortably, where your mouth might then quietly nibble away, while your hands were seeking work elsewhere. This I call an economical arrangement."

"We won't spoil ourselves by too much praise;" said the dwarf: "we are already, it seems, vain enough of our advantages; and after all we did not give them to ourselves."

"You are right," said she. "But what profession are you of, cousin? where do you live?"

"Oddly enough;" answered Beresynth: "sometimes here, sometimes there, like a vagabond: however I now mean to settle quietly; and as I heard there was still a near kinswoman of mine living, I resolved to seek her out and beg her to come and live with me. This is what brought me hither. In my youth I was an apothecary in Calabria; there they drove me away, because they fancied I manufactured love-powders. O dear, as if there was any need of 'em nowadays. Then once upon a time I was a tailor; the outcry was, I thieved too much: a pastrycook; all accused me of thinning the cat and dog population. I wanted to put on a monk's cowl; but no convent would let me in. Then came my doctoring days, and I was to be burnt; for they muttered about, what think you? witchcraft. I became a scholar, wrote essays, systems of philosophy, poems: those who could not read were sure I was blaspheming God and Christianity, and that was too bad. After many long years I betook myself to the man who was making such a pother in the world, Pietro Apone, and became his familiar, next a hermit, and what not? The best is that in every state of life I have made money and hoarded it up; so that I can now lay down my grey head free from want and care. And now, coz, for your history."

"Just like yours;" answered she: "the innocent are always persecuted. I have had a few times to stand in the pillory; have been banisht out of half a dozen countries; among other things they even wanted to burn me; they would have it I conjured, I stole children, I bewitcht people, I fabricated poisons."

"And coz," said Beresynth in the openness of his heart, "there was some truth in all this, was not there? innocent as you are. I at least must confess it as to myself, and perhaps it may lie in the family, that I have given in to more than one of the aforesaid practices. My amiable gossip, he who has once swallowed a titbit of dear witchcraft, can never keep his fingers from it afterward as long as he lives. The thing is just like dram-drinking: once get the taste for it, and tongue, and throat, and gums, and marry! even lungs and liver, will never let it go."

"You know human nature, I see, my dear cousin;" said the hag, with a grin that tried to be a simper. "Such trifles as a little murder and witchcraft, poisoning and stealing, run in the blood even of the innocentest. Bawding was a thing in which I could never hit the mark. And what shall one say when one has to endure thanklessness and woe from one's own children? My daughter, though she has seen how I suffer hunger and trouble, and how I have stinted and starved my old mouth, merely to put her into fine clothes, the graceless wench would never let me coax her into earning but a single half-crown. Some time since she might have made a good match of it! there was Ildefonso and Andrea, and many other brave fellows besides, who supported our whole house, herself among the rest; but she set up the paltry pretense that the gentry were robbers and murderers, and that she could not let them into her heart. The gallants were such generous spirits, they meant to have the baggage actually tied to them in church; but silly youth has neither sense nor truth. Now they are lying in their graves, those worthy men, and have been turned out of life's doors in a most scandalous way. But this does not move her a whit more than my sorrow and distress; so that I can't make her consent to live with a rich young noble cavalier, the nephew of a cardinal, who could floor this whole room with gold. The silly jade has run away, and they absolutely won't give her up to me again. Such is the respect shewn to a mother in these days."

"Let her go, the worthless trumpery!" cried Beresynth: "we shall live happily together without her, I warrant; our ways of thinking and feeling are so well paired."

"But why should she run away," continued the old woman, "like a faithless cat after a flogging? We might have parted as if we loved each other, and like two rational beings. Surely some occasion would have turned up before long of selling the greensick minx advantageously to an old lover or a young one; and this might have succeeded too, why should not it? if she had not lockt up a silly young fellow in her heart, whom she loves, as she tells me."

"O have done, gammer!" screamed Beresynth, reeling and already half asleep. "If you begin to talk about love, coz, I shall tumble into such a laughing convulsion that I shall not recover from it for this next three days. Love! that stupid word broke the neck of my famous master, Pietro. But for this tarantula-dance the great hawk-nose would still be sitting as professor at his lecturing desk, and tickling the young goslings with philosophy and wisdom as they perkt up their yellow beaks to catch the crumbs he dropt into them. Marry! old beldam, this monkey-trick of love, this Platonic drunkenness of the soul, was the only thing wanting to us, to me as well as you, and then the miracle of our heroic existence would have been quite perfect.... Well, goodbye, old dame; tomorrow night about this time I'll come to fetch you, and then we never part more."

"Cousin," said Pancrazia, "goodbye, till we meet again. Since you came through my door, I have grown quite a different creature. We will make a royal housekeeping of it hereafter."

"So we too have had our jubilee now!" stammered Beresynth, who was already standing in the street, and who reeled through the dark night to his lodging.

* * * * *

Antonio meanwhile had already been to prepare old Ambrosio and his wife, telling them he was now sure of finding out the hideous old woman again, and no doubt her daughter Crescentia also. The mother readily believed him; but the father persisted in his doubts.

Even before the sun had set, the youth was again with his friend at the door of the wise Castalio. The latter met them smiling, and said: "Here, Antonio, take this paper: you will find noted down on it, in what street, in what house, you may meet with the old crone. When you have discovered her, you will no longer entertain any doubts about my science."

"I am already convinced;" replied Antonio: "I was so even yesterday: you are the wisest of mortals, and by the help of your art will make me the happiest. I will go to seek for the old woman: and if Crescentia is not dead or lost, I shall carry her to the arms of her parents."

Powerfully excited and full of expectation he was about to depart in haste; his hand was already on the door-knob; when a low timid knock was heard on the outside, accompanied by a hoarse coughing and a scraping of feet.

"Who's there?" cried Castalio; and, when the friends opened the door, in came Beresynth, who immediately stationed himself in the middle of the room, and with sundry antick bows and writhings of his features, offered his services to the wise man.

"Who are you?" exclaimed Castalio, who had changed colour, and pale and trembling had shrunk back a few steps.

"A villain he is, the fiend!" cried Antonio: "a magician, whom we must put into the inquisition's hands. It is the accursed Beresynth himself, whose name, my honoured friend, you have already heard, and of whom I have told you."

"Think you so, young jackanapes?" said Beresynth with a sneer of the deepest contempt. "With you, children, I have no business. Do you not know me?" cried he turning to Castalio: "perhaps you have nothing for me to do."

"How should I?" said Castalio with a faltering voice: "I never saw you before. Leave me; I must decline your services. In this little house of mine I have no room for any stranger."

Beresynth paced with his biggest strides up and down. "So, you don't know me? It may be; folks alter a good deal sometimes; for no man is always in his bloom. But, it strikes me, people ought not to forget me, or to mistake me for any one else, quite so soon as they might many of your smooth nicely painted ninnies.... And you too," as he turned round to the youths, "you perchance don't know that wisdommonger there."

"O yes!" said Antonio: "he is our best friend, the excellent Castalio."

Here the dwarf raised such an enormous shout of laughter, that the walls and windows of the room clattered and echoed it back. "Castalio! Castalio!" screamed he as if possest: "why not Aganippe too, or Hippocrene? So, you have got spectacles before your eyes, and your souls stare stupidly with a calf's look out of your round pumpkins of heads! Rub your noses, and see, and recognize, I pray you, your honoured Pietro of Abano, the great jack-of-all-trades from Padua!"

He who called himself Castalio had sunk as if fainting into a chair: his trembling was so violent that all his limbs fluttered; the muscles of his face quivered with such force that no feature in it could be distinguisht; and after the young men had gazed on it for some time amazedly, they thought with horrour they perceived that from this distortion of all the lineaments came forth the well-known countenance of the aged Apone.

With a loud scream the magician started from his seat, clencht his fists, and foamed at the mouth; he seemed in his fury of a gigantic size. "Well, yes!" he roared in a tone of thunder: "it is I, I, Pietro! and thou slave, thou art spoiling my game, as I was destroying those young brats after a new fashion. What wouldst thou, worm, of me, who am thy master, and who have cast thee off? Tremblest thou not through all thy bones at the thought of my vengeance and punishment?"

Beresynth again raised the same pealing horrid laugh. "Vengeance! Punishment!" he repeated grinning. "Fool! matchless fool! art thou now for the first time to find out that such language toward me does not beseem thee? that thou juggler, must crawl in the dust before me? that a glance of my eye, a grasp of my iron arm, will dash thee to pieces, thou earth-born mummery with thy wretched tricks, which only prospered through my countenance."

A spectre stood in the hall. His eyes shot forth sparks of fire; his arms spread themselves out like an eagle's wings; his head toucht the ceiling: Pietro lay whining and howling at his feet. "It was I," so the demon spake on, "who furthered thy paltry tricks; who deluded the people; who made thee sin and thrive in thy sins. Thou troddest me under foot; I was thy scorn; thy high-minded wisdom triumpht over my silliness. Now I am thy master. Now thou shalt follow me as my bondslave into my kingdom.... Depart hence, ye poor wretches!" he cried to the youths: "what more we have still to settle, it befits not you to behold!" and a tremendous clap of thunder shook the house to the bottom.

Dazzled, horrour-struck, Antonio and Alfonso rusht out; their knees tottered; their teeth chattered. Without knowing how, they found themselves again in the street; they fled into a neighbouring church; for a howling whirlwind now arose, with thunder and lightning, and the house, when they lookt behind them, was burning and had fallen in ruins.

Two dark shadows hovered over the flame, fighting, as it seemed, and twining round each other, and wrestling and dashing each other to and fro: yells of despair and peals of scornful laughter resounded alternately between the pauses of the loudly raving storm.

* * * * *

It was a long time before Antonio could collect calmness enough to go and seek for the house of the old woman according to the directions he had received. He found her drest out; and she cried to him merrily: "What! Florentine! are you too come to see me again at last?"

"Where is your daughter?" askt Antonio, trembling with anxiety.

"If you wish to have her now," replied the old woman, "I won't keep her from you. But you must pay honestly for her, you or the Podesta of Padua, if he still lives; for she is his child, whom I stole from him long since, because the Marconis vouchsafed me a round sum of money for doing so."

"If you can prove it," said the youth, "you shall have whatever you ask."

"Proofs, as many as you please," cried the beldam: "trinkets with arms on them, clothes she had on at the time, a mole on her right shoulder, which of course her mother must know best. But you shall also have letters from the Marconis, writings which I carried off with her from Padua in my hurry, everything ... only money must be forthcoming."

Antonio paid her all that he had about him, and then gave her the jewels from his hat and clothes, some pearls, and a gold chain. She swept it all in laughing, while she said: "Don't be surprised that I am in such haste, and so easily satisfied. The wench has run away from me, because she was determined not to have any lover, and has stuck herself into the nunnery beside Trajan's column: the abbess would not give her up to me; but only send in your name, and the young chit will jump into your arms; for she dreams and thinks of nothing but you; you have so bewitcht her silly heart, that ever since that night, which you will probably remember, she has not spoken a single word of sense, and can't bear to hear the mention of a lover or a husband. I am glad to be quit of her in this way; I am going with my noble cousin, Signor Beresynth, who came of his own accord to invite me, this very night to his villa. Fare thee well young man! good luck attend you with your Crescentia!"

Antonio took all the letters, the baby clothes, and every proof of Crescentia's birth. At the door he was met by the terrible being that called itself Beresynth. He hastened on, and was so light of heart, so winged on his way, that he did not notice the storm behind him, which threatened to lay the country waste, and to heave the houses from their foundations.

During the night the overhappy parents examined the letters; and these, as well as the clothes, convinced them that this second Crescentia was their child, the twin sister of her that died, whom at her christening they had named Cecilia. In the morning the father fetcht the lovely pale girl from the convent; and she felt as though in heaven at belonging to such noble parents, and at having again found a youth who adored her, and to whom on that perilous night she could not help giving up her whole heart for ever.

Rome talkt for some time of the two unfortunate persons whom the storm had slain: and Ambrosio lived thenceforward with his wife, his recovered daughter, and his son-in-law, Antonio, in the neighbourhood of Naples. The youth amid the bliss of love ceast to mourn over the sorrows of his younger days; and the parents were comforted by their children and grandchildren for the loss of their beautiful and most dearly loved Crescentia.

* * * * *

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Contemporary spellings were retained, especially past tense endings on t rather than ed.

The translation was checked against the 1853 German edition of Tieck's collected works. The following sentence was missing from the original translation:

Er war überzeugt, der Jüngling habe ihn und sich selbst mit den
Fieber-Phantasien jener Nacht getäuscht.

It has been added as:

He was convinced the young man had misled him and himself been
deceived by the fevered dreams of that night.

The following sentence is not present in the 1853 German edition and has been omitted:

(...like two rational beings.) I might have discharged a mother's
duty, and settled her where she should be in no danger of
starving. (Surely some occasion...)

In addition, the following corrections and amendments have been made:

Almost everybody has a mask; and this is mime. changed to Almost everybody has a mask; and this is mine.

when you have them at their full size. changed to when they are present and pronounced.

they who loved me never would say it lookt. changed to they who loved me would say it lookt.

chewing bread and bullock's flesh. changed to chewing bread and roast beef.

Antonio had found the outlet; changed to Antonio had found the way out;

cried a broad massy figure, changed to cried a broad bearded figure,

Antonio preserved it like something holy. changed to the adoring Antonio preserved it like something holy.

to strip him of everything like hope. changed to to strip him of all optimism.

behind the old chest changed to behind the old oak chest

they now revolted from the impostor. changed to they now revolted from the phantom.

his youth and his sinlessness will not avail him. changed to his virtue and his sinlessness will not avail him.

some fifty miles and upward from the hermitage, changed to some twelve miles and upward from the hermitage,

no smokework changed to no incense

Welcome to me. changed to Be welcome.

Unless that mischievous Beresynth changed to Unless that strange creature Beresynth

Iuocoterrestro changed to Fuocoterrestro

To see a porpoise, a baboon, or an otter. changed to To see a long-tailed monkey, apes or seals.

hunt for every filthy name changed to hunt for every expression of loathing

forcing the sun to look on their gross ignorance. changed to forcing the sun to display their gross ignorance.

lying in their graves, poor perishable mortals, changed to lying in their graves, those worthy men,

This I call economical bodykeeping. changed to This I call an economical arrangement.

already on the lock of the door. changed to already on the door-knob.

or the Podesta of Padua; for she is his child, changed to or the Podesta of Padua, if he still lives; for she is his child,