The pact concluded, the frantic clerk went to find the shawl, and mounted Madame Euphrasia's staircase; and as (literally) the devil was in him, he did not come down for twelve days, drowning the thought of hell and of his privileges in twelve days of love and riot and forgetfulness, for which he had bartered away all his hopes of a paradise to come.
And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered and acquired by the Irishman, the offspring of Maturin's brain, was lost to mankind; and the various Orientalists, Mystics, and Archaeologists who take an interest in these matters were unable to hand down to posterity the proper method of invoking the Devil, for the following sufficient reasons:
On the thirteenth day after these frenzied nuptials the wretched clerk lay on a pallet bed in a garret in his master's house in the Rue Saint-Honore.Shame, the stupid goddess who dares not behold herself, had taken possession of the young man.He had fallen ill; he would nurse himself; misjudged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skill of a practitioner well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed to the effects of an overdose of mercury.His corpse was as black as a mole's back.A devil had left unmistakable traces of its passage there; could it have been Ashtaroth?
"The estimable youth to whom you refer has been carried away to the planet Mercury," said the head clerk to a German demonologist who came to investigate the matter at first hand.
"I am quite prepared to believe it," answered the Teuton.
"Oh!"
"Yes, sir," returned the other."The opinion you advance coincides with the very words of Jacob Boehme.In the forty-eighth proposition of the Threefold Life of Man he says that 'if God hath brought all things to pass with a LET THERE BE, the FIAT is the secret matrix which comprehends and apprehends the nature which is formed by the spirit born of Mercury and of God.' ""What do you say, sir?"
The German delivered his quotation afresh.
"We do not know it," said the clerks.
"Fiat?..." said a clerk."Fiat lux!"
"You can verify the citation for yourselves," said the German."You will find the passage in the Treatise of the Threefold Life of Man, page 75; the edition was published by M.Migneret in 1809.It was translated into French by a philosopher who had a great admiration for the famous shoemaker.""Oh! he was a shoemaker, was he?" said the head clerk.
"In Prussia," said the German.
"Did he work for the King of Prussia?" inquired a Boeotian of a second clerk.
"He must have vamped up his prose," said a third.
"That man is colossal!" cried the fourth, pointing to the Teuton.
That gentleman, though a demonologist of the first rank, did not know the amount of devilry to be found in a notary's clerk.He went away without the least idea that they were making game of him, and fully under the impression that the young fellows regarded Boehme as a colossal genius.
"Education is making strides in France," said he to himself.
PARIS, May 6, 1835.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Aquilina The Magic Skin Claparon, Charles A Bachelor's Establishment Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen A Man of Business The Middle Classes Euphrasia The Magic Skin Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de Father Goriot The Thirteen Eugenie Grandet Cesar Birotteau Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Commission in Lunacy Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Modeste Mignon The Firm of Nucingen Another Study of Woman A Daughter of Eve The Member for Arcis Tillet, Ferdinand du Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen The Middle Classes A Bachelor's Establishment Pierrette A Distinguished Provencial at Paris The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve The Member for Arcis Cousin Betty The Unconscious Humorists End
