The snow disappeared. The trees grew heavy with green leaves. Birds perched upon the bushes. A breeze charged with perfume floated about our faces.
The guests rose, applauded vehemently, and shouted: “Long live Bernard Trevisan! Long live Bernard Trevisan!”
Gilles de Retz embraced the magician. “Bernard Trevisan, you are indeed the Supreme Master of the greatest Art!”
The voice of the Maréchal was mellow and gentle, tinged a little with sorrow.
Nicholas Flamel congratulated the host. “But, master, I notice that not one bird either chirps or sings. In the summer, the birds are pleasantly noisy.”
Bernard was nonplussed. He pulled at his short beard, and waved nervously his staff. The guests became impatient. A few coughed significantly.
I moved away from the rest, clapped my hands several times and commanded—“Birds, sing! Birds, sing!”
The birds began to chirp and sing. The guests stared at me in astonishment. Gilles de Retz grasped my hands and looked intently into my eyes, as if seeking something within them that he had lost or forgotten.
Bernard bowed before me. “Prince, you are the master of us all.” Turning to the rest, be extolled the esoteric wisdom of India, compared to which all Occidental knowledge was child’s play. He drank to my health. The banquet became a celebration in my honor.
The next day, at the side of Gilles de Retz I rode triumphantly through the city of Paris.
To prevent Kotikokura from inadvertently betraying his ignorance of India, I introduced him as a Buddhist high priest under an oath of silence for a twelvemonth. He walked amid the priests as an honored guest.
“Prince,” Gilles addressed me, “your ability to make the birds sing proves the superiority of your magic.”
“My lord exaggerates. Bernard Trevisan is world-famous. One of his former disciples at Marseilles recounted to me marvels performed by the master that I cannot hope to equal.”
“Fame increases in proportion to distance, Prince. Bernard’s most striking accomplishment is the change of seasons, which we witnessed last night, and you added the final, the supreme magic ingredient from the treasure trove of the East.”
“And Nicholas Flamel, Monsieur le Maréchal? I hear he has discovered the Philosopher’s Stone…”
Gilles de Retz laughed. “He is an old scoundrel, and his Philosopher’s Stone is a charming fiction.”
“Fiction?”
“He acquired immense wealth by exorbitant usury, and to account for it, that the courts might not prosecute him, he spread the rumor that he possessed the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“That was ingenious. And what they say about his great age—is it also fiction, monsieur?”
“That I do not know.” Gilles looked at me, his eyes darting the strange light.
“And what of Francis Prelati?”
The Maréchal’s eyes darkened and blazed, but he made no answer.
We rode in silence.
“Prince, have your wise men discovered the Philosopher’s Stone?”
“Our wise men are not interested in wealth. Poverty, they say, is the crown of truth.”
“I don’t agree with them. Poverty is colorless and breeds monotony. I love luxury and joy and constant change. I must hear the clatter of horses’ hoofs preceding me. I must see the glitter of jewels and gold. I must hear delectable music. My fingers must be thrilled with the smoothness of silk and velvet. I seek not only truth but pleasure—unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged…”
“Monsieur le Maréchal,” I said, “beauty and truth are one…”
His face lit up with joy.
“There must be,” he said a little later, “somewhere a magic formula that renews our youth. The Philosopher’s Stone, which at a touch turns base metals to gold, is but a means, not an end. I need vast fortunes to procure—Eternal Youth…”
His face clouded again and the two long premature wrinkles deepened.
“Is it possible to discover the formula, Prince?”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps,” he repeated sadly, “it is always perhaps. And meanwhile, life slips by and youth withers. I am already thirty-four years old, Prince.”
“I am thirty.”
“We must hurry, Prince, and discover the secret.”
We passed out of the last gate of the city and entered into the Bois de Boulogne. The naked branches of the trees formed a wide canopy over which the reflection of the sun made embroideries in red gold.
“I am glad you are not a Christian, Prince. I love the Church, for it has beauty and legend, but I hate her for her fear of the Ultimate Truth.”
I made a gesture that I did not comprehend.
“The Church,” he whispered into my ear, “fears the power of Satan.”
“Satan?”
He scrutinized my face. Suddenly he drew from his coat an ivory cross, with the image of a crucified rose. “Prince, from the first moment I saw you, I recognized in you a Rosicrucian. You are not merely a Hindu Prince. You are a seeker as I am,—a seeker of Beauty which is Truth…”
I made a sign of assent.
“I am a Rosicrucian, Count,” I remarked, “but I belong to the Eastern rite. Our Grandmaster dwells in the Himalayas inaccessible behind his veil of mystery and of snow.”
He bowed ceremoniously.
“The seeker after the ultimate truth,” he continued, “fears neither King nor Pope, neither God nor Devil.” He lifted his fist, delicate and thin, almost a woman’s, and dropped it vigorously at his side.
“Prince,” he asked, “is there anything in heaven or on earth that you fear?”
“Yes, ugliness and stupidity.”
“You are my brother, Prince,” Gilles exclaimed.
He approached me until the heads of our horses touched. “Are we brothers, Cartaphilus?”
I pressed his arm.
Our approach to the Castle of Champtoce was greeted by trumpets and chimes. At the gate, a hundred children, boys and girls dressed in white, showered us with roses and sang “bergerettes.”
Two servants helped us descend from our steeds. The Maréchal patted the heads and cheeks of the children. “You shall be rewarded according to your deserts, my little ones,” he said tenderly, his voice somewhat husky.
I was installed in the right wing of the castle which overlooked the garden. Kotikokura, the Hindu High Priest, under vows of silence, shared my suite.
The next morning the Maréchal invited me to hunt with him.
His retainers wore sumptuous attire. The horses were bedecked with gorgeous trappings. Two dozen hounds pulled impatiently at their leashes. Gilles de Retz, resplendent in his uniform, greeted me cordially and bade me ride at his side.
He waved his hand. The trumpets blew. Our black steeds galloped away.
As we reached the middle of the forest, the Maréchal and I dashed away from the rest. We leaped from our horses. The Maréchal took my arm and we walked slowly.
“It is not the actual hunting that pleases me,” he said, “but the beauty of the horses and the men, the impatience of the dogs, the flourishes of the trumpets—and the captured animals, still alive, breathing their last, scarlet with their own blood.” My eyes tried to delve into his soul.
He pressed my arm. “Do you love the sight of blood, Cartaphilus?”
“The mystery of life is the mystery of the blood.”
“Cartaphilus, my brother, to you I may with impunity reveal the unrevealable.”
“Speak!”
“I do not worship God. I find His work mediocre. The pleasures He offers are like bones, left over at the end of a feast. He is like an archbishop, always admonishing, always warning. Besides, He prefers innocence to experience, stupidity to intelligence, dullness to wit.”
He looked at me, smiling ironically, intent upon seeing the effect of his words.
“My lord, what you say is too evident to require demonstration. Alas, there is no other God but God…”
He stamped his sword and exclaimed. “To the illuminati, we may drop all pretenses. You know there is another God—surpassing the God of Heaven…the god who honors the rebel…”