The Elixir of Life | Page 5

Despite the taper light, the clamor of the senses, the gleam of gold and
silver, the fumes of wine, and the exquisite beauty of the women, there
may perhaps have been in the depths of the revelers' hearts some
struggling glimmer of reverence for things divine and human, until it
was drowned in glowing floods of wine! Yet even then the flowers had
been crushed, eyes were growing dull, and drunkenness, in Rabelais'
phrase, had "taken possession of them down to their sandals."
During that brief pause a door opened; and as once the Divine presence
was revealed at Belshazzar's feast, so now it seemed to be manifest in
the apparition of an old white-haired servant, who tottered in, and
looked sadly from under knitted brows at the revelers. He gave a
withering glance at the garlands, the golden cups, the pyramids of fruit,
the dazzling lights of the banquet, the flushed scared faces, the hues of
the cushions pressed by the white arms of the women.
"My lord, your father is dying!" he said; and at those solemn words,
uttered in hollow tones, a veil of crape [sic] seemed to be drawn over
the wild mirth.
Don Juan rose to his feet with a gesture to his guests that might be
rendered by, "Excuse me; this kind of thing does not happen every
day."
Does it so seldom happen that a father's death surprises youth in the
full-blown splendor of life, in the midst of the mad riot of an orgy?
Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but
death is truer--Death has never forsaken any man.
Don Juan closed the door of the banqueting-hall; and as he went down
the long gallery, through the cold and darkness, he strove to assume an
expression in keeping with the part he had to play; he had thrown off
his mirthful mood, as he had thrown down his table napkin, at the first
thought of this role. The night was dark. The mute servitor, his guide to

the chamber where the dying man lay, lighted the way so dimly that
Death, aided by cold, silence, and darkness, and it may be by a reaction
of drunkenness, could send some sober thoughts through the
spendthrift's soul. He examined his life, and became thoughtful, like a
man involved in a lawsuit on his way to the Court.
Bartolommeo Belvidero, Don Juan's father, was an old man of ninety,
who had devoted the greatest part of his life to business pursuits. He
had acquired vast wealth in many a journey to magical Eastern lands,
and knowledge, so it was said, more valuable than the gold and
diamonds, which had almost ceased to have any value for him.
"I would give more to have a tooth in my head than for a ruby," he
would say at times with a smile. The indulgent father loved to hear Don
Juan's story of this and that wild freak of youth. "So long as these
follies amuse you, dear boy----" he would say laughingly, as he
lavished money on his son. Age never took such pleasure in the sight of
youth; the fond father did not remember his own decaying powers
while he looked on that brilliant young life.
Bartolommeo Belvidero, at the age of sixty, had fallen in love with an
angel of peace and beauty. Don Juan had been the sole fruit of this late
and short-lived love. For fifteen years the widower had mourned the
loss of his beloved Juana; and to this sorrow of age, his son and his
numerous household had attributed the strange habits that he had
contracted. He had shut himself up in the least comfortable wing of his
palace, and very seldom left his apartments; even Don Juan himself
must first ask permission before seeing his father. If this hermit,
unbound by vows, came or went in his palace or in the streets of
Ferrara, he walked as if he were in a dream, wholly engrossed, like a
man at strife with a memory, or a wrestler with some thought.
The young Don Juan might give princely banquets, the palace might
echo with clamorous mirth, horses pawed the ground in the courtyards,
pages quarreled and flung dice upon the stairs, but Bartolommeo ate his
seven ounces of bread daily and drank water. A fowl was occasionally
dressed for him, simply that the black poodle, his faithful companion,
might have the bones. Bartolommeo never complained of the noise. If
the huntsmen's horns and baying dogs disturbed his sleep during his
illness, he only said, "Ah! Don Juan has come back again." Never on
earth has there been a father so little exacting and so indulgent; and, in

consequence, young Belvidero, accustomed to treat his father
unceremoniously, had