OLD Antwerp, the Antwerp of the Sixteenth Century, was throbbing, through all the veins and arteries of its busy streets, with eager vivid life—life social, commercial, political, religious. Night had fallen, and men were wont then to go to rest early after their strenuous days—as indeed they mostly did after the brief tumultuous days of their ‘life’s fitful foyer’ —yet there were many footsteps in the streets, and many lights still burning in the casements of the high, narrow, irregular houses. The breath of coming changes, like the cold breeze that foreruns the dawn, had stolen over the minds of men, and made them restless. Party strife ran high, strong passions were awakened, new and old opinions strove together for the mastery. But over all there brooded still the dread shadow of a baneful tyranny. Philip of Spain, from his distant gloomy lair, ruled over men’s bodies: while in horrible unison, the two tyrannies being in truth but one, the Inquisition—or what was the Inquisition in all but the name—claimed to rule over their souls.
But in the Sixteenth Century, as in every other, people for the most part lived out their own lives, with little thought of the larger life surging around them, unless such thought was forced upon them by some personal wrong or oppression. So it must be with the many, if the world is to go on at all. No matter how we are ruled, or by whom,
‘We sow the glebe, we reap the corn,
We build the house where we may rest’
—less are we like to go foodless and shelterless.
Still, it is very rare for an educated, thoughtful man, with a keen intellectual life, to feel no sympathetic throb of the pulse in harmony with the life around him. A man of this type would walk alone amongst his fellows, as far away from them as if he were a spirit from the distant past, or a thing of the staff of which prophetic dreams of the future are made.
Such a man sat in Antwerp, in his private room, on this night of the year of grace 1565. The room was high up, in a high house overlooking the Place aux Gants, and so near the great cathedral that the ‘melodious clangor’ of its many bells, so sweet yet so loud, might well have proved distracting to a solitary student. But no sense is dulled so easily by habit as that of hearing; and it would have taken more than the bells of Antwerp to disturb Adrian Perrenot when once he was seated at his books.
Nature had dealt kindly with him. His face was refined and thoughtful, noble rather than handsome, with a great forehead, large gray eyes, and sensitive mouth half hidden by a beard, brown, like the rumpled hair which his careless hand tossed aside. His tall spare figure, when erect, was not ungraceful, though he did not show it to advantage, leaning, on his elbows and stooping over the table, his shoulders covered with a frayed and faded cloak.
A lamp burned before him, illumining the pages of a great open book. This was the immortal work of Vesalius, the father of modern anatomy. Adrian Perrenot, Doctor of Medicine, had sat at the feet of this great teacher at the University of Padua, where he took his degree and his license. He could, and did, practice the healing art, but his heart was not in it. The devouring, all—consuming passion that urged Him on—making him forego not only the lighter amusements but the deeper joys of life—was not the desire to do, but the longing to know. Had he prayed (but he did not pray), all his prayer would have been, ‘Let me know something more.’
His passion was utterly impersonal. There was not a trace in it of vanity, scarcely a trace of ambition. He wanted to know, he did not want men to know that he knew. He longed for the discovery of new truths, he did not care particularly to be their discoverer. He yearned for the crown of knowledge, not for the crown of fame.
He pushed the book of Vesalius aside, and bent low over an unfinished drawing. It represented a human hand, with bones and sinews, veins and muscles, displayed with the utmost attainable accuracy. He dared to think that in this work of his own he was adding something of importance to the delineations of Vesalius; that this hand—his hand—showed points of anatomy never before observed or depicted. That he had found them was of no particular importance, that every one henceforward should be able to find them was of no particular importance. He began eagerly to compare his own drawing with that in the book; and was far too intently, and too happily, engrossed with his work to notice the passing of many footsteps outside his door to the attic chambers above. These footsteps indeed were stealthy, and carefully hushed, still, in stairs and passages boards will sometimes creak.
But presently he paused for a moment, as a sound from the room overhead fell upon his ear. Not the sound of voices, but the sound of one voice, rising and falling in solemn cadence, as though a man were speaking to God for men, or to men for God. Beguiled for a moment into a passing thought of the trivial affairs of his fellow-creatures, Adrian said to himself, ‘So that heretic is preaching again to-night—he will be caught some day, and there will be a pile in the Grande Place!’ and then, with something between a shrug and a shudder, ‘What fools men are, to be sure!—Holy Saints! The lamp!’
For the wick of the lamp sank suddenly in its socket, and the room was in darkness. ‘Henry!’ the physician called aloud, ‘Henry!’
No answer. Again and again he repeated the call. Always without result.
Muttering a malediction on his pupil, he rose to go in search of him. The next room opened into his; and he assumed, from the light under the door, that it was not untenanted. Nor was it. The pupil, a mere boy, seemed to be already as keen a student as his master. He stood before a shelf at the far end of the room, absorbed in the pages of a ponderous book, beside which he had, rather insecurely, placed his lamp.
Adrian came behind him, and looked. When he saw the book he was devouring, his broad brow contracted, and his face flushed with anger, the sudden anger of a gentle-tempered scholar.
‘How is this?’ he said, seizing the boy by the collar of his doublet. ‘Have I not told thee never even to touch that book—never to look within it?’
Henry started, flushed, thrust something hastily into his sleeve, then turned quickly and faced his master. His was a fair face, smooth and boyish, English in its expression, lighted with deep blue eyes and crowned with golden hair. ‘Pardon me, master,’ he said in tones trembling between wrath and fear, ‘but I found it unlocked—so I thought you did not care.’
Adrian stood self-convicted. With his usual thoughtlessness he had forgotten to lock the heavy iron clasp of the forbidden book. This did not make him more playable. ‘What matters that, sirrah?’ he answered sharply. ‘I forbade thee to touch it. ‘Tis not for such as thou to meddle with these things.’
‘With what things, an’ it please you, master?—I have found no harm in the book.’
‘With spells of magic and sorcery.’
Henry looked in his master’s face with far more keenness of comprehension than his master liked. ‘I crave your pardon, sir,’ he said. But you have so often taught me to despise the prejudices of the vulgar, and told me that what they call magic and sorcery is—is— belike only some secret, precious and valuable, like the way of compounding aqua—’
‘Hush, boy—hush!’ Adrian exclaimed, with growing irritation and alarm. For his pupil evidently knew quite too much. The secrets that book contained were nothing less than recipes for the subtlest and most powerful poisons, which he had obtained in Padua at great price from an Italian skilled in the deadly art. In his own hands they were harmless; but what harm might they not do in the hands of an ignorant, reckless boy? ‘Swear to me never to touch that book again, never to reveal to living man aught thou hast read in it!’ he cried.
‘Why should I swear such a thing?’ asked the pupil with a stare, ‘where is the reason in it?’
‘What is that to thee? Swear!’ reiterated Adrian with increasing passion, tightening his hold upon him.
The boy made an effort to shake off his hand. ‘I should like to know why,’ he grumbled. ‘And, master, if you had but locked the book, there would have been none of this trouble. I would not have meddled with it. — ‘However, I give you my word as a gentleman.’
‘Gentleman, forsooth!’ interrupted Adrian. ‘Insolent boy! Swear this instant, or—’ he shook him in his rage.
‘Take thy hand off!’ cried the pupil, with flushed face and gleaming eyes. ‘Know that I am more a gentleman than thou, or thy great kinsman the Cardinal Thine own benefactor! Ungrateful varlet!’ cried Adrian, as with a smart and sudden box on the ear he flung him from him.
The flush on the boy’s face deepened to crimson, then changed to the white of intense anger. He drew up his slight figure, and said in a cold slow voice, Master Adrian Perrenot, you have dared to strike me, and that is an insult I take from no man. I have served you faithfully, as pupil serves master. But I hold you, in birth and breeding, scarce fit to touch the stirrup of my father’s horse. And I have done with you now—for ever. Farewell: He strode out of the room, flinging the door to behind him.
Adrian stood amazed, listening to his hasty steps as he descended the creaking staircase. If the skeleton kept hidden in his secret closet had lifted up its voice and spoken, his astonishment could scarcely have been greater. What he had done was at the time so common and usual, that it was only strange he had never done it before; but then his docile and obedient pupil had never before given him any serious provocation. Still, he did not dream that he would really execute his threat and return to him no more. How could he, when he had not taken with him any of his small possessions, not even his cloak and cap?
‘He will come back—he will come back,’ Adrian said to himself. ‘Heaven send he may; for if any ill should come to him—what would the Cardinal say?’
After standing for some time as one bewildered, he stirred himself so far as to put by the dangerous book, which he first carefully locked, like the proverbial stable door. Then he took up the lamp and passed with it into his private room, resolved upon resuming his occupation.
But not all his intense love of his work, not all his sedulously cultivated powers of concentration, could keep him from ever and anon looking up and listening, and when there proved to be nothing to see or to hear, ejaculating with a disappointed shake of the head, ‘What will the Cardinal say?’
Once hope rose high within him; there were certainly footsteps on the stairs. He raised his head, cleared his brow, and meditated kindly words of forgiveness and reconciliation. But the footsteps all passed by his door, and went downwards. It was only the breaking up of the Conventicle ‘in the Upper Room.’ ‘Vestigia, nulla retrorsum,’ Adrian murmured sadly to himself.
At last he gave up even the pretense of study, closed his book, put aside his drawing, and began to pace the room with restless feet. As he walked up and down, he recalled to his memory all the circumstances of his connection with his pupil, and a good deal more belonging to his past life. Scenes and events came back to him unbidden, filling his mind like a vaporous cloud, which a few words may suffice to condense into rain-drops of palpable fact.
Adrian Perrenot was the son of a poor Burgundian advocate, with a small practice and a large family; but, on the other hand, with the honor of being related, though very distantly, to the celebrated Antoine Perrenot, Bishop of Arras, and afterward Archbishop of Mechlin, though better known, both to his contemporaries and to us, as Cardinal Granvlle. Want of liberality to his own kindred was not one of the many vices of this great man. When he heard that his clever young kinsman desired above all things to study medicine at the University of Padua, he readily undertook to defray his expenses. Even without his help, Adrian would have gene there. Strong in the passion that consumed him, he would have faced with a light heart the hardships of the poor scholar of those days, and begged his scanty bread from door to door, even though Nature had denied him the sweet gift of song, which—as in one most illustrious instance—sometimes softened that dreary lot.
Thanks, however, to the great Cardinal, he was able to sit at the feet of Vesalius, and give all his faculties to the study of the ‘human frame divine,’ undisturbed by pressing wants and sordid cares.
He profited exceedingly, and in due time passed through the prescribed academical tests with great applause. Although, as he desired to devote himself to anatomical investigation, he would have greatly preferred to remain in Padua with Vesalius, still, in order to satisfy his patron and his family, he took out not only his degree, but his license to practice as a physician. Thus equipped, he yielded yet farther to the wishes of his father, and journeyed to the Netherlands to wait upon his illustrious kinsman, to thank him for his past benefactions, and request his patronage for the future.
The great Cardinal received the humble young physician with tolerable kindness, at his splendid country residence of La Fontaine, near Brussels. He even found a moment, occupied though he was in affairs of state, to advise him to stay in the Netherlands and practice his calling, promising, if he did so, ‘to keep an eye upon him.’ What was better, he gave him (through a secretary) a sort of general safe-conduct or letter of recommendation, which would secure him from troublesome interference, civil or ecclesiastical; an important matter, since his studies and researches were of a kind which the China regarded with scant favor.
But the shy, reserved scholar was ill at ease in the cold magnificence of La Fontaine. He signified his wish to go to Antwerp, where there were Italian merchants, to whom already he was favorably known, and who would be sure to advance his interests. He did not think it necessary to tell his patron that his strongest attraction to the northern Queen of Commerce was the great printing establishment of the enlightened Christopher Plantin, where he hoped to get the anatomical work he was dreaming of properly printed and engraved. Still leas could he tell him that everywhere, beyond the stately gateway of La Fontaine, the name and connection of which hitherto he had been so proud would prove his greatest hindrance. Cardinal Granvelle was at that time the best hated man in the Netherlands. Adrian could not appear in the streets of Brussels without being insulted, because he was known to be staying at the ‘Smithy,’ as the Cardinal’s residence was called in derision. On one occasion his hat was pulled off, adorned with a fox’s tail, and thrust upon his head again, while the street urchins shouted round him, ‘Down with the old fox and all his friends!’ ‘Down with the Inquisition and the Placards!’
No wonder he was ready to go. When he was on the point of departure, the Cardinal condescended to ask a favor of him, and the request, of course, was equivalent to a command. Would he take as pupil one Henry Schmidt, or Smith, a young English Catholic of good family? His father, the Cardinal explained, had signally obliged him, and he wished in return to educate the boy, who had been sent first to the Jesuit College at Treves, but showed a remarkable taste for the medical profession, for which the Jesuits could not prepare him. Let Adrian take him for a year or two, and see what he was fit for; then, if he persevered, and his family consented, the Cardinal would send him to a university. Adrian could not refuse, little as he liked the task. He had no love of teaching, and a positive hatred of boys, having been himself, as a studious boy, alone amongst his kind, not admitted to their freemasonry, and often the subject of their thoughtless or ill-natured sport. Though he had little sympathy with Henry, he tried to do his duty by him conscientiously, and was rewarded by finding him less troublesome and more useful than he expected.
When he first came to Antwerp, he took lodgings in the Grande Place. But one day, soon after his arrival, as he sat at his books, having steadily disregarded all the noise of a vast concourse of people assembling in the square—a strange red light cast its reflection upon the page before him. He rose, and went to see what this glare in full daylight might mean. It was a common sight enough—a heretic was being brumal to death at the stake. He turned away with a shudder. ‘I cannot stand this,’ he said to himself. A living man, with flesh and blood, and nerves and veins and arteries—burned up like touchwood It had not occurred to him, and no one had happened to tell him, that the execution of criminals of all aorta usually took place there Without reflecting further on the matter he carne to the conclusion that such scenes (not to mention other noisy exhibitions) would be a fatal interference with his work. How could he read or study with that red light falling on his book? That was all he thought about it: it seemed to him a hindrance, rather than a horror. He was not inhuman, he was only absorbed; and he accepted without question the ordinary course of the world around him. He removed to the far quieter Place aux Gants, where there were no executions, by fire or otherwise. Henry gave him willing help and attendance; and, as time passed on, he grew to like, almost to love the boy.
The greater was his distress and perplexity, when the day that followed Henry’s departure, and many days after, went by without bringing tidings of the fugitive. Then indeed did Doctor Adrian Perrenot begin to feel himself in rather a serious difficulty. Then indeed did he repeat, with rueful countenance and anxious heart, ‘What will the Cardinal say?’
The Cardinal, it is true, was by this time no longer in the Netherlands. The popular indignation had at last forced him from his post. Whether he had abandoned it himself, or been dismissed by his sovereign, was not then known to the country he had trampled and tortured, and driven well-nigh to desperation, and which rejoiced at his downfall with exceeding joy. But to Adrian he was as much a power in Burgundy as in Brussels; nor could he at once shake off the habit of looking to him as a sort of ultimate authority, whose fiat was to decide the outward course of his actions, although with his inner or real life it had absolutely nothing to do.