Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
invariably attributed to magic invocations and demoniac maledictions;
to invisible shafts from the elves and fairies who peopled every
rock, hill, and tree, the only antidotes to which were the
prescriptions and the counter-charms of impostors and self-deluded
dabblers in the occult sciences. Dreams, in those days, the result
doubtless of ponderous suppers and morbid constitutions, were
received as visions of the future, as solemn forewarnings and divine
inspirations from God--fraught sometimes with happiness, but more
frequently with death and terror, war and woe.
Thus the poor young queen, whose orient eyes while they sank never
lost their lustre, and whose cheek while it grew hollow still
retained its rosy and transparently beautiful hue, continued to waste
and grow thinner; and the king with agony saw daily how her snowy
arms and infantile hands were wearing less and less, until the bones
became fearfully visible at last.
He sighed, he prayed, and he wept; but still the blasting, the
wasting, the terrible attenuation went on. Her skin was white as
marble, but ever hot and feverish; and though a gentle smile played
ever on her lips, there was a wild, sad earnestness in her large blue
eyes, in the quiet depths of which two orient stars--the stars of
death--were ever shining. Everything that love could prompt and
quackery advise, had been done; she was bathed repeatedly in the
waters of streams that ran towards the sun; and in those of blessed
and sanctified wells, which the saints had consecrated of old--but
unavailingly.
Barefooted, with bowed head, and candle in hand, the king had visited
many a holy shrine; but still Magdalene became worse; and it was
evident to all that the hand of death would soon be upon her--unless,
as many added, the _spell_ was broken.
Suddenly the arras (which was of green damask flowered with gold) was
shaken. The king started. It was raised, and there entered a man,
whom a few words will describe.
"Well, most worthy deacon and doctor," said James, springing eagerly
towards him; "what thinkest thou of the queen?"
The new comer mournfully shook his head and stroked his beard.
The young king clasped his hands, and, pushing a chair towards the
physician, sank into his own.
John of the Silvermills was an old man with keen grey eyes that
twinkled under bushy brows; a long hooked nose; a vast white beard
that flowed over his sad-coloured cassock-coat. He wore a black
velvet skull-cap, on the front of which were embroidered a cross and
a triangle within a circle--being the emblems of Religion, the
Trinity, and Eternity. His form was bent by age; his back was almost
deformed, and one of his tremulous but active hands clutched a long
silver-headed cane; the other, a small sand-glass, which supplied the
place of a watch with the physicians of that age.
Patronized by King James IV., who had been an eminent dabbler in
alchemy, he was the first deacon of the Barber Chirurgeons of
Scotland, whom that monarch had incorporated by royal charter in the
year 1505; when every guild brother was obliged to pay five pounds to
the altar of St. Mungo of Glasgow, and prove his knowledge of
"anatomie, the nature and complexioun of everie member of the human
bodie; and in lykwayis, all the vaynis of the samyn, that he may mak
flewbothamea in dew tyme; and alsua that he may know in quhilk member
the Signe has domination for the tyme;" for then astronomy,
astrology, and alchemy formed the principal part of a medical
education; and King James IV. spent vast sums on the wild experiments
of the learned John, at his laboratory, from which a district of our
capital then obtained and still retains the name of _Silvermills_.
"Ah, my God! and thou,--thou hast no good tidings for me, my
venerable friend?" said the young king, imploringly, as he seated
himself.
"The queen's grace is assuredly in great dolour and sore pain,"
replied the physician, resting his chin on the top of his cane, and
fixing his keen eyes on the anxious and beautiful face of the young
monarch; "she complains of an aching head, of a burning heart, and of
a constant weariness and lassitude which overwhelm her. There is
something in all this which perplexes me, and it seemeth----"
"Beyond thy skill, in short? But oh, say not that!"
"Nay, nay," continued the mediciner, who spoke slowly, while his keen
visage shook on the staff where he had perched it; "but I must give
it long and deep thought. I am assured--at least I hope--there is in
my pharmacopœia some simple that will restore her. That learned
apothegar and worshipful clerk (though I agree with him in few
things), Galen, the physician of Pergamus, possessed a manuscript
which enumerated fifty thousand families of the vegetable world, with
all their restorative or destructive qualities. Oh, for one glimpse
of that glorious volume! In all things following strictly the rules
laid down by the learned Artesius (who lived a thousand years by that
very elixir, the secret of which is, at this time, enabling
Paracelsus to work so many miraculous cures), in the year 1509, I
compounded my _nepenthe_, a drug which driveth away all manner of
pain, and my _opobalsamum_, which was powerful, even as the blessed
Balm of Gilead; to the queen's grace I have administered them both
for the past week, and yet, miraculous to relate, she daily groweth
worse."
"My wife! my heart!" said the king, again wringing his hands; "must I
see my poor dear little Magdalene perish thus? I love her too much,
and perhaps God is about to take her from me. Oh! canst thou do
nothing for her?"
"I was at the University of Basil in 1525, storing my mind with fresh
knowledge, when Paracelsus, by the recommendation of Œcolampadius,
was called to fill the chair of physic and surgery, and was present
on that day when he so presumptuously burned the works of Avicenna
and Galen, assuring us that the latchets of his shoes knew more of
physic than both these learned doctors; and that all the universities
and all the writers of the earth, past and present, knew less than
the smallest hair of his beard; for he had in his brain the mighty
secret which would prolong life for ever--yea, even unto the verge of
eternity--the secret of Artesius."
"This was the very madness of learning and vanity," said the king.
"Well?"
"Erasmus believed in him, and was cured of a grievous illness by one
drop of the principal ingredient."
"What, Desiderius Erasmus, of Rotterdam, the tutor of my brother
Alexander, who fell at Flodden? Well, well--and this----"
"Ingredient was a simple used of old by a king of Egypt, and it is
now written in hieroglyphics on the southern side of the great
pyramid."
"And those hieroglyphics?"
"None can read save sorcerers; for Paracelsus on that day, at Basil,
destroyed, with the works of Avicenna, the sole existing key thereto,
and which was written on a blank leaf thereof."
"May the devil confound thee, Paracelsus, and the great pyramid to
boot! I fear me much, thy musty magic will never cure the queen."
"I pardon your majesty's anger, for it hath its source in grief,"
replied John of the Silvermills, calmly; "nature is full of
mysteries. Our cradle and our coffin may be formed from the same
tree, and yet we be ignorant thereof. Paracelsus----"
"I say again, Mahound take Paracelsus! but what doth this trite
remark mean?"
"That, like the mass of the unlettered world, your majesty scoffs at
what appears incomprehensible, and----"
The apothegar paused, for the arras was raised by a hand covered by a
glove of fine scarlet leather, and Cardinal Beaton, who at all hours
had the _entrée_ of the king's apartments, stood before them, and
both king and subject knelt to kiss his ring.
"The peace of the Lord be with thee and with thy spirit!" said the
cardinal, seating himself, and looking kindly at the king, whose
grief and distress were marked in every feature of his fine face.
"In the ante-chamber I have heard how poorly her majesty is, and
Mademoiselle Brissac has just been imploring my prayers, poor child!
But proceed, my learned doctor," he added, with a slight smile; while
the deacon of the surgeons again perched his chin on the top of his
cane, which was half hidden by his long white beard, and thus
continued--
"Your majesty rails at the learned Paracelsus; I can afford to pardon
that, when I remember me that to him we are indebted for introducing
to the pharmacopœia, the mercurial, the antimonial, and
ferruginous preparations which act so beneficially upon the organs of
our system."
"But is not this Paracelsus, of whom thou boastest, an impure
pantheist," asked the cardinal, "who, while believing in the
existence of pure spirits which are without souls, receives aliment
from minerals and fluids, and whose physiological theories are a wild
mass of the most incoherent ideas, founded almost solely upon an
application of the damnable mysteries of the cabala to the natural
functions of the frame which God has given us?"
"I do not quite understand your eminence," replied John of the
Silvermills, turning, with as much asperity as he dared, to the
cardinal, whose towering figure and magnificent dress were imposing
enough, without the memory of that important position held by him;
"but I understand, and, with Paracelsus, believe (what certain
malevolent commentators have denied) that the sun hath an influence
upon the heart, as the moon hath upon the brain; that Jupiter acts
upon the liver, as Saturn doth upon the spleen, Mercury on the lungs,
Mars on the bile, and Venus on the kidneys and certain other organs.
Hence the true apothegar should know the planets of the microcosm,
their meridian, and their zodiac, before he attempteth to cure a
disease. By due attention to them, he attains the discovery of the
most hidden secrets of nature; for our human bodies are but a
conglomeration of sulphur, of mercury, and of immaterial salt, which
rendereth them peculiarly liable to planetary influences; and as each
of these three elements may admit of another, we may, without knowing
it, possess within us water that is _dry_, and fire that is _cold_."
"A subtle sophist," said the cardinal, with a smile.
The king listened in silence, and, full of Paracelsus, the doctor
continued--
"Thus, please your eminence, by identifying himself with the
celestial intelligences, hath this wondrous physician so nearly
attained a knowledge of the philosopher's stone, and, by curing all
diseases, raised to his fame a monument based on the four quarters of
the earth. And doubtless if he prolongeth his own life, as he doth
that of others, in time to come he will attain the secret of that
_other_ powerful ELIXIR, by which Adam and the patriarchs prolonged
their lives before the Deluge--yea, even unto nine centuries."
"Gramercy me!" said the cardinal; "and beware thee, John! this man
whom thou upholdest glories in the fame of his sorcery, and openly
boasts of receiving from Galen letters that are dated _from Hell_,
and also of his recent disputes held with Avicenna at the gate of
that dread abode--disputes on the transmutation of metals, the elixir
of the patriarchs, and the quintessence of the Mithridate; for I
heard of all these things when I was studying the canon law at Paris.
He blasphemously takes as his primary supports the writings of the
holy fathers; and while asserting that the blessed Gospels lead to
all manner of truth, dares to add, that magical medicine can be
learned by the study of the Apocalypse alone."
"Enough of this, lord cardinal," said the king, impatiently observing
that the doctor was angrily adjusting his velvet cap preparatory to
returning to the charge; "enough of this jargon, amid which my poor
Magdalene will probably die."