“I will make you a longer one,” replied the magician.
Ramon Alonzo saw that words would not do it, and that whatever he said would be verbally parried with skill.
“Then give me a love-potion,” he said.
“I do not dispense these things,” said the magician haughtily.
“Then teach me how they are made, and not the making of gold.”
The magician pondered a moment. It was all one to him. He had his fee safe in the shadow-box. He despised equally gold and love, and cared not which he taught. Some etiquette he had learned from some older magician seemed to prompt him to give something for his fee.
“Gladly,” he answered briefly.
Then Ramon Alonzo sat down without a word, thinking of Mirandola.
He had never enquired the reason of anything that she asked for. It was Mirandola, with eyes like a stormy evening. Thoughts passed behind those eyes such as never visited him. Mirandola knew. It is hard to say how the flash of those eyes swayed him. He never sought to know, and never questioned Mirandola’s demands.
“By the admixture of crocodile’s tears with the slime of snails,” came the voice of the Master, “the basis of all love-potions is constructed. Unto this is to be added a powder, obtained by pounding the burned plumage of nightingales. Flavour with attar of roses. Add a pinch of the dust of a man that has been a king, and of a woman that has been fair two pinches, and mix with common dew. Do this by light only of glowworms and saying suitable spells.”
Ramon Alonzo, following the gestures that the Master made as he spoke, saw on the shelves the ingredients that he mentioned. He saw a jar holding attar of roses beside one named “Dust of Helen.” He saw two jars side by side called “Dust of Pharaoh” and “Dust of Ozymandias,” one of them probably Rameses. He saw a vial labelled “Crocodile’s Tears.” All that he needed seemed there; outside in the wood the glowworms burned, and there were plenty of snails.
The lesson went on drearily, the magician intoning various spells that the young man learned by heart or believed he learned, and naming alternative ingredients that had of old been used in more torrid lands. Of the ingredients Ramon Alonzo was so sure that no mistake was possible; if ever he erred at all it was with the spells.
XIII
Ramon Alonzo Compounds the Potion
Next morning Ramon Alonzo rose full early, all impatience to do Mirandola’s errand, all eagerness to exercise his new skill. That day the magician was to teach him more spells and alternative ingredients, doubtless with quips at the expense of Matter, scoffs at the vanity of the ambitions of Man, quotations from ancient philosophers, and lore of his own seeking. An opportunity not given to every young man; for this master had gathered and stored with his own hands the fruits of many ages, besides the lore he was heir to from former philosophers.
When Ramon Alonzo entered the room that was sacred to magic he saw with a sudden joy that this opportunity was not yet to be his. For he had come down the spiral stair of timber and stone by the palest earliest light, and the magician was not yet about. But with his new learning glowing bright and fresh in his mind he ran a sure eye over the Master’s shelves and saw the ingredients he needed. Then he took from a jar some dust of Ozymandias and mixed it in right proportions with some of the dust of Helen. His shrewd young mind guessed well the aphorisms that the Master would have uttered over these pinches of dust; for, secure with his doses of elixir vitae, he neglected few chances to mock the illusions of Man. Attar of roses and crocodile’s tears were close by in their vials, and the dried skin of a nightingale hung on a nail near. He procured a flame and burned some of the feathers and pounded them into a powder, and mixed it up with the rest. Then he hastened towards the wood, anxious to gain the door before the magician came, and to do the work unaided; for he knew that the aged had often ideas of their own, setting undue store by ritual and unprofitable quotations, and hindering eager work that the young would do in a hurry. He came to the door to the wood and listened a moment acutely. Not a sound came from the corridors; the magician was not yet afoot. The dew was yet in the wood, and of this he got a small cupful, gathering it drop by drop from the bent blades of grass; and here he found large snails and, after a while, a glowworm. And these he carried into a hollow oak where the darkness was deep enough to be lit by the glowworm; and in the light of that he put all his mixture together, saying the while a spell that had great repute in Persia. The viscid substance he poured into a vial, out of the common mortar in which he compounded it, and carefully corked the vial and turned back towards the house in the wood. And, attracted by the croon of the curious Persian spell, or else by the scent of the love-potion, small things of the wood were lured to follow him. He heard the pattering of their feet behind him; but if he turned they were away on the other side of the oak-boles, and if he went back to a tree behind which one hid and walked round to the other side, he heard small fingernails scratching, always on the far side from him, and knew the small creature had gone up the tree and slipped round it whenever he moved, so as to keep the trunk between it and anything human. They were only imps, light creatures composed of
