“I would,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Know then,” said he, “that my fees are never material things, but are dreams, hopes, and illusions, and whatever other great forces control the fortune of nations. Later I will enumerate them. But while we study the mere transmutation of metals I will ask no more than that which of all immaterial things most nearly pertains to matter, at one point actually touching it …”
“My shadow,” cried Ramon Alonzo.
The magician was irked by his guest’s discovery of his fee, though he was indeed about to tell him, but he had a few more words to say first about the worthlessness of shadows, and the sudden disclosure of the point was not in accordance with his plans for conducting a bargain; and, as many a man will do in such a case, he denied that he was about to ask precisely that. He soon however came round to it again, saying: “And even so it were little enough to ask for my fee, which might well be larger were it not for my gratitude to your grandfather; for a shadow, of necessity, shares the doom that overtakes matter, and is commoner far than faith if all were known, and is of the least account of all immaterial things.”
“Yet I need it,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“For what purpose?” asked the Master of the Art.
“I shall need it when I go among the villages,” he answered, “or wherever I meet with men.”
“Learn,” said the magician, “that aught that has value is to be treasured on that account, and not for the opinion of the vulgar; and that which has no value is foolishly desired if its purpose be but to minister to the fickleness of the idle popular eye.”
“Is my shadow valueless?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
“Utterly,” said the Master.
“Why then does your Excellency demand it?”
“Address me rather as Your Mystery,” said the magician to gain time.
Ramon Alonzo apologized with due courtesy and conformed to the correct usage.
“I need it,” said His Mystery, “because there are those that serve me better when equipped with a shadow than when drifting vapidly in their native void. They have no other connection with Earth except these shadows I give them, and for this purpose I have many shadows which I keep here in a box. But you who were born on Earth have no need at all of a shadow, and lose none of our mundane privileges if you should give it away.”
And for all the wisdom of the magician the young man remained less moved by his well-reasoned arguments than by the grief and garrulity of the charwoman.
So he held to his shadow and would not part with it; and the more the magician proved its uselessness the more stubborn he became. And when the magician would not abate his fee the young man determined to stay and study there rather than to return home empty-handed; and to bide his time, perhaps to come one day on the secret of transmutation, perhaps to grow so learned through his studies that he might work out its formula for himself. Therefore he said: “Are there no other mysteries that I may learn for a different fee?”
The Master answered: “There are many mysteries.”
“For what fees?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
“These vary,” said the magician, “according to the mystery. Your faith, your hope, half your eyesight, some illusion of value: I have many fees, as indeed there are many illusions.”
He would not give his faith, nor yet his hope, for that would be nearly as bad; and he had ever clung somewhat tenaciously to his illusions, as indeed we all do.
“What mystery,” he asked, “do you impart for half my eyesight?”
“The mystery of reading,” answered the Master.
Now Ramon Alonzo had such eyesight that he could count the points on a stag’s head at five hundred paces, and deemed half would well suffice him. The magician moreover explained that it was not his custom to take that fee in advance, but that the length of his sight would diminish appreciably, as he mastered the intricacies of the mystery.
This well suited Ramon Alonzo, for he had ever wondered how the thoughts of men could lie sleeping for ages in folios, and suddenly brighten new minds with the mirth of men centuries dead; for the good fathers had not taught him this in their school, perhaps fearing that they would make their wisdom too common if they recklessly made the laity free of its source. And, believing as many do that wisdom is only a matter of reading, he thought soon to be on the track of the lore of those philosophers who in former ages transmuted base metals to gold, and so come by what he sought without losing his shadow.
“Master,” said Ramon Alonzo, “I pray you teach me that mystery.”
The magician shut the book. “To read Chinese,” he said, “I do not teach for this fee, for the Chinese script hides secrets too grave to be learnt at so light a cost. For this fee I teach only to read in the Spanish language. Hereafter, for other fees …”
“Master,” the young man said, “I am well content.”
And then, with sonorous voice and magnificent gestures, the magician began to expose the secrets of reading; one by one he stripped mysteries, laying them bare to his pupil; and all the while he taught in that grand manner, that he had from the elder masters whose lore had been handed
