The Elixir of Life | Page 8

more risks of losing the mysterious
liquid.
Even at that solemn moment he heard the murmur of a crowd in the
gallery, a confused sound of voices, of stifled laughter and light
footfalls, and the rustling of silks--the sounds of a band of revelers
struggling for gravity. The door opened, and in came the Prince and
Don Juan's friends, the seven courtesans, and the singers, disheveled
and wild like dancers surprised by the dawn, when the tapers that have
burned through the night struggle with the sunlight.

They had come to offer the customary condolence to the young heir.
"Oho! is poor Don Juan really taking this seriously?" said the Prince in
Brambilla's ear.
"Well, his father was very good," she returned.
But Don Juan's night-thoughts had left such unmistakable traces on his
features, that the crew was awed into silence. The men stood
motionless. The women, with wine-parched lips and cheeks marbled
with kisses, knelt down and began a prayer. Don Juan could scarce help
trembling when he saw splendor and mirth and laughter and song and
youth and beauty and power bowed in reverence before Death. But in
those times, in that adorable Italy of the sixteenth century, religion and
revelry went hand in hand; and religious excess became a sort of
debauch, and a debauch a religious rite!
The Prince grasped Don Juan's hand affectionately, then when all faces
had simultaneously put on the same grimace--half-gloomy,
half-indifferent--the whole masque disappeared, and left the chamber of
death empty. It was like an allegory of life.
As they went down the staircase, the Prince spoke to Rivabarella: "Now,
who would have taken Don Juan's impiety for a boast? He loves his
father."
"Did you see that black dog?" asked La Brambilla.
"He is enormously rich now," sighed Bianca Cavatolino.
"What is that to me?" cried the proud Veronese (she who had crushed
the comfit-box).
"What does it matter to you, forsooth?" cried the Duke. "With his
money he is as much a prince as I am."
At first Don Juan was swayed hither and thither by countless thoughts,
and wavered between two decisions. He took counsel with the gold
heaped up by his father, and returned in the evening to the chamber of
death, his whole soul brimming over with hideous selfishness. He
found all his household busy there. "His lordship" was to lie in state
to-morrow; all Ferrara would flock to behold the wonderful spectacle;
and the servants were busy decking the room and the couch on which
the dead man lay. At a sign from Don Juan all his people stopped,
dumfounded and trembling.
"Leave me alone here," he said, and his voice was changed, "and do not
return until I leave the room."

When the footsteps of the old servitor, who was the last to go, echoed
but faintly along the paved gallery, Don Juan hastily locked the door,
and sure that he was quite alone, "Let us try," he said to himself.
Bartolommeo's body was stretched on a long table. The embalmers had
laid a sheet over it, to hide from all eyes the dreadful spectacle of a
corpse so wasted and shrunken that it seemed like a skeleton, and only
the face was uncovered. This mummy-like figure lay in the middle of
the room. The limp clinging linen lent itself to the outlines it
shrouded--so sharp, bony, and thin. Large violet patches had already
begun to spread over the face; the embalmers' work had not been
finished too soon.
Don Juan, strong as he was in his scepticism, felt a tremor as he opened
the magic crystal flask. When he stood over that face, he was trembling
so violently, that he was actually obliged to wait for a moment. But
Don Juan had acquired an early familiarity with evil; his morals had
been corrupted by a licentious court, a reflection worthy of the Duke of
Urbino crossed his mind, and it was a keen sense of curiosity that
goaded him into boldness. The devil himself might have whispered the
words that were echoing through his brain, Moisten one of the eyes
with the liquid! He took up a linen cloth, moistened it sparingly with
the precious fluid, and passed it lightly over the right eyelid of the
corpse. The eye unclosed. . . .
"Aha!" said Don Juan. He gripped the flask tightly, as we clutch in
dreams the branch from which we hang suspended over a precipice.
For the eye was full of life. It was a young child's eye set in a death's
head; the light quivered in the depths of its youthful liquid brightness.
Shaded by the long dark lashes, it sparkled like the strange lights that
travelers see in lonely places in winter nights. The eye seemed as if it
would fain