第96章

"'Maestro Paolo,' said he, 'I am a philosopher, and don't care for luxuries.I want a quiet retreat for some scientific experiments.The castle will suit me very well, provided you will accept me as a neighbour, and place me and my friends under your special protection.I am rich; but I shall take nothing to the castle worth robbing.I will pay one rent to the count, and another to you.'

"With that we soon came to terms; and as the strange signor doubled the sum I myself proposed, he is in high favour with all his neighbours.We would guard the whole castle against an army.

And now, signor, that I have been thus frank, be frank with me.

Who is this singular cavalier?"

"Who?--he himself told you, a philosopher.""Hem! searching for the Philosopher's Stone,--eh, a bit of a magician; afraid of the priests?""Precisely; you have hit it."

"I thought so; and you are his pupil?"

"I am."

"I wish you well through it," said the robber, seriously, and crossing himself with much devotion; "I am not much better than other people, but one's soul is one's soul.I do not mind a little honest robbery, or knocking a man on the head if need be, --but to make a bargain with the devil! Ah, take care, young gentleman, take care!""You need not fear," said Glyndon, smiling; "my preceptor is too wise and too good for such a compact.But here we are, Isuppose.A noble ruin,--a glorious prospect!"Glyndon paused delightedly, and surveyed the scene before and below with the eye of a painter.Insensibly, while listening to the bandit, he had wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon a broad ledge of rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs.

Between this eminence and another of equal height, upon which the castle was built, there was a deep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, so that the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged surface of the abyss; but the profoundness might be well conjectured by the hoarse, low, monotonous roar of waters unseen that rolled below, and the subsequent course of which was visible at a distance in a perturbed and rapid stream that intersected the waste and desolate valleys.

To the left, the prospect seemed almost boundless,--the extreme clearness of the purple air serving to render distinct the features of a range of country that a conqueror of old might have deemed in itself a kingdom.Lonely and desolate as the road which Glyndon had passed that day had appeared, the landscape now seemed studded with castles, spires, and villages.Afar off, Naples gleamed whitely in the last rays of the sun, and the rose-tints of the horizon melted into the azure of her glorious bay.Yet more remote, and in another part of the prospect, might be caught, dim and shadowy, and backed by the darkest foliage, the ruined pillars of the ancient Posidonia.There, in the midst of his blackened and sterile realms, rose the dismal Mount of Fire; while on the other hand, winding through variegated plains, to which distance lent all its magic, glittered many and many a stream by which Etruscan and Sybarite, Roman and Saracen and Norman had, at intervals of ages, pitched the invading tent.All the visions of the past--the stormy and dazzling histories of Southern Italy--rushed over the artist's mind as he gazed below.

And then, slowly turning to look behind, he saw the grey and mouldering walls of the castle in which he sought the secrets that were to give to hope in the future a mightier empire than memory owns in the past.It was one of those baronial fortresses with which Italy was studded in the earlier middle ages, having but little of the Gothic grace or grandeur which belongs to the ecclesiastical architecture of the same time, but rude, vast, and menacing, even in decay.A wooden bridge was thrown over the chasm, wide enough to admit two horsemen abreast; and the planks trembled and gave back a hollow sound as Glyndon urged his jaded steed across.

A road which had once been broad and paved with rough flags, but which now was half-obliterated by long grass and rank weeds, conducted to the outer court of the castle hard by; the gates were open, and half the building in this part was dismantled; the ruins partially hid by ivy that was the growth of centuries.But on entering the inner court, Glyndon was not sorry to notice that there was less appearance of neglect and decay; some wild roses gave a smile to the grey walls, and in the centre there was a fountain in which the waters still trickled coolly, and with a pleasing murmur, from the jaws of a gigantic Triton.Here he was met by Mejnour with a smile.

"Welcome, my friend and pupil," said he: "he who seeks for Truth can find in these solitudes an immortal Academe."