Abby Sage Richardson

“ Ever and anon the friar took up the little time-keeper, and shook it gently, as if to hasten the passage of the slow hours, and often, amid his watching and study, his head sank lower and lower towards the table, as if tired nature would assert her rights, and steep him in the swee oblivion of sleep, against his own powerful will. ”

“ Which means, so I take it, good friar, that you are not glad at my coming. But, believe me, I come with no evil intent, nor for anything except friendship. I know how they have treated thee at Oxford, and in good earnest I have been always sorry for it. Learning is not so plenty, that it should be put down; and from what I know of thy wonderful inventions, they are not those that the devil teaches his followers, but always of good service to the cause of Truth and the true Church. ”

“ Thou hast a huge head, they tell me, of which thou makest a familiar, that tells thee strange secrets, and foretells events that can affect the fate of nations. Tell me of this. On the faith of a priest and a gentleman, I ask but for love of science. And” (here the priest’s voice sank lower) “thou hast heard that Pope Urban grows feeble. It is in all men’s mouths in Rome, that the cardinal-legate of England will be the next high pontiff of the Church. ”

“ At which I, fearing he might be the Evil One himself, took to my heels to tell thee about him.”
“Let him come in,” answered the friar, roused by the servant’s long speech from his deep abstraction. ‘It is Clement, the cardinal, the Pope’s legate to England. Stay, Miles, throw a cloth over the pile of manuscripts yonder. Pull out that curtain straight. Now give me the book of the Gospels. It is enough. Show the cardinal hither.”’
A moment later, and the Cardinal Clement, himself the next successor to the papal throne, entered the apartment. ”

“ No longer an inmate of the college from whose walls his suspected magic had caused him to be driven forth, he dwelt solitary among the surrounding rustics who feared and shunned him, and in secret wrought those mysterious works which made him dreaded among men. ”

“ At the farther end of the room a vast chimney, with smoky furnaces and crucibles, containing crude and half smelted ores, and all the various properties of the alchemist, occupied one side of the apartment. In one corner, a huge iron mortar, shielded by screens of metal from contact with any spark which might fly from the furnaces, was filled with an inodorous mixture of brimstone and saltpetre, and a black dust which locked like powdered charcoal. ”