The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 123

There lived at Cordova, many years ago, an old Jew who had three pa.s.sions: he loved science, he loved gold, he loved his only child, who bore the sweet name of Rachel. He loved science, not for its own sake, not because it was the means of the acquisition of truth, but for himself, that is to say, through pride.

He loved gold, a little perhaps because it was gold, very much because it gave him the means of providing luxuries for his darling child, greatly also because without it he could not have made the costly experiments necessary in the pursuit of science.

He loved his daughter alone, with the pure and disinterested, but pa.s.sionate tenderness of paternal love. In a word he was a savant, a father, a Jew.

His name was Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah, and he practised medicine. He wrought such wonderful cures that very soon his fame spread throughout Spain, and from all parts of the kingdom the people came in crowds to consult him. He received his patients in the afternoon. In the morning he slept, it was said; but how his nights were pa.s.sed none knew, and many were the speculations concerning it. This only was known, that they were pa.s.sed in a secret chamber, of which he alone possessed the key, and it had been observed that this mysterious apartment was sometimes illuminated with many-colored flames, blue, or red, or green, while a dense smoke issued from the chimney.

The police of the kingdom at length resolved to penetrate the mystery, which seemed to them very suspicions. _Everything_ is suspicious to the police of _all_ countries.

One evening, Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah saw two dark, grave men watching his house. He listened and heard these words of sinister import:

"To-morrow, at dawn, we will know whether this wretch is a money-coiner or a magician."

The conscience of the poor old Jew did not reproach him, for his life was pure and innocent; but he had had great experience of the world, and held as on axiom that innocence is worth absolutely nothing in a court of justice. He went still further, he considered it an aggravating circ.u.mstance. He often quoted the old Arabian proverb: "If I were accused of having stolen and pocketed the grand mosque at Mecca, I would immediately run off as fast as I could." He said that justice was a game of cards--and he was no player.

What misanthropic ideas! How different would his conclusions have been had he lived nowadays! However, as he had not the happiness of living in that Eden of justice, France of 1866, he put the philosophy of the proverb into practice, and left Cordova that very night, taking with him all his treasures. The next morning at dawn the two dark, grave men, found an uninhabited, dismantled dwelling; which made them still more dark and grave.

II.

Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah, disguised as a merchant and mounted on a strong mule, pa.s.sed rapidly through Spain. On either side of his saddle, and securely fastened to it was a long wicker {694} basket, in the shape of a cradle. Ben-Ha-Zelah looked from time to time at these baskets with satisfaction, mingled with sadness, and then urged on his mule, casting many a backward glance, to be quite sure he was not pursued.

In one of the baskets were his treasures and his books; in the other slept peacefully the young daughter of the fugitive. Having reached a small seaport town, the old Jew took pa.s.sage in a vessel which was about to sail for Egypt.

Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah had often heard of the caliph Achmet Reschid, who was celebrated throughout the East for his love of science, and the high consideration in which he held scientific men. As for impostors, charlatans and empirics, he held them in sovereign contempt and took real pleasure in impaling them.

This good prince reigned in Cairo. Thither Ben-Ha-Zelah bent his steps; for he believed himself, and with reason, to be a true savant.

The profound and extensive acquirements of the old Jew, together with his astonis.h.i.+ng skill in everything appertaining to the healing art, soon made him as famous in Cairo as he had been in Cordova, and he was at once made court physician.

The caliph Achmet Reschid was never weary of admiring the almost universal knowledge of the old man, and often invited him to the palace to converse with him for hours upon the secrets and marvels of nature. Suddenly a terrible plague broke out in the city, and threatened to decimate the population. Ben-Ha-Zelah compounded a wonderful lotion, which cured six times in seven. He contended that in nothing could evil be conquered in a greater proportion than this; that a seventh was a minimum of disorder, of sorrow, of vice, in the imperfect organization of this world, and that when the proportion of evil in the human body, in the soul, in society, in nature, had been reduced to a seventh, all the progress possible in this world had been made.

However that may be, he was summoned one night in great haste to the palace; the wife and son of the caliph were stricken down by the pestilence. Ben-Ha-Zelah applied the miraculous lotion and the son was restored to health--but the wife died.

The caliph Achmet Reschid was overcome with grat.i.tude for so signal a service and throwing himself into the arms of the old physician, exclaimed: "Venerable old man I to thee I owe the life of my son and my happiness! As a proof of my grat.i.tude, I appoint thee Grand Vizier!"

The old Jew prostrated himself on the ground before his generous benefactor.

"Yes," continued the caliph, who had a truly n.o.ble heart; "yes, I need a friend in whom I can confide, as I have, one after another, beheaded all those whom I had in a moment of impulse honored with that t.i.tle."

"Thanks, mighty caliph!" humbly replied Ben-Ha-Zelah. "How shall I find fitting words to thank my gracious prince for such unmerited condescension! Surely never did kindness like this rejoice the earth!"

"Thou sayest well and truly, child of Jacob," answered the puissant caliph.

Time, far from diminis.h.i.+ng the love of the caliph for Ben-Ha-Zelah, only increased it. The jealousy of the courtiers had always succeeded in poisoning the mind of the caliph against any one on whom he had conferred the dignity of Grand Vizier; but the prudence of the old Jew baffled all their schemes, and Achmet Reschid had learned how to guard against calumniators. At the first word breathed against the new favorite that benevolent prince and faithful friend ordered the rash slanderer to be beheaded, and very soon the courtiers vied with each other in their praises of the Grand Vizier. The good caliph, seeing the harmony of feeling among his people with regard to the new favorite, congratulated himself on his firmness.

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"I knew very well," said he, "that the whole court would at last do him justice. I talk of him with every one and no man says aught against him."

III.

As for Ben-Ha-Zelah, he seemed to be perfectly indifferent to the immense power which his favor with the caliph gave him in the state.

In vain did the courtiers try to entangle him in the intrigues of the court. In vain did the n.o.blemen of the kingdom, in hopes of gaining his protection, lay costly gifts at his feet. He gently refused them all. Devoid of ambition, and prudent to excess, the old Jew withdrew as much as possible from public affairs. He even begged the caliph to excuse his attendance at the palace, except at certain hours of the day, that he might devote himself more uninterruptedly to scientific pursuits. The love of the caliph grow day by day, and the courtiers as well as the common people, seeing the humility and disinterestedness of the Grand Vizier, acknowledged him to be indeed a sage.

At court, as everywhere else, he was clad in a coa.r.s.e brown robe, and was in no way distinguishable from the crowd, had not the intellectual expression of his face, and the strange brilliancy of his eyes, revealed at a glance a superior mind. He might often be seen in the streets of Cairo, carrying in his own hands the metals, stones or medicinal plants, which he bought in the bazaars, or gathered in his solitary rambles. Wherever he went he heard his own praise; but never did he in any way betray that it was agreeable to him.

"No one is so poor and humble," said the common people to each other, "as the Grand Vizier of our high and mighty caliph."

The truth was, however, that with the exception of Achmet Reschid, no one in Cairo possessed such vast riches as the "poor" Vizier; but after the manner of the Jews he carefully concealed them, and lived in a very modest mansion situated outside the walls of the city. This humble dwelling was completely hidden by the palm and cedar trees which surrounded it, and for still greater security was enclosed by a high wall.

In this quiet and mysterious retreat, where he admitted no guests, he had centered all that made his life; there dwelt his child, the young Rachel, just budding into womanhood.

When, after pa.s.sing weary hours in the unmeaning ceremonial of the court, he reached his garden gate, and stealthily opened it, his usually impa.s.sive face was suddenly illumined as with a sunbeam. It was as if he had pa.s.sed from death unto life.

His daughter, clad like a queen of the east, ran to meet him, and embraced him so tenderly that it seemed as if a portion of her young life was breathed into the worn and exhausted frame of the aged father. Ben-Ha-Zelah forgot his sorrows and his cares, and seemed to revive as with the breath of spring. "I gave thee life, my daughter; thou dost restore it to me!" murmured the old man.

Rachel was just entering her sixteenth year. Her hair was of the beautiful golden color which people love. Her eyes, her voice, her smile, her bearing, carried with them an irresistible charm. She looked, it was a ray of light; she spoke, it was a strain of music; she smiled, it was the opening of a gate of Paradise. Her heart was pure and innocent as was that of the Rachel of old, whom Jacob loved.

Can we wonder that the heart of her father was bound up in her? Who indeed, could help loving a being so pure and bright?

IV.

Ben-Ha-Zelah was old, but his was a vigorous old age--and the young daughter and aged father, as they walked under the grand old trees of the garden, made a beautiful picture. The long white head, piercing eyes, {696} eagle nose, and broad brow of the old man, formed a striking contrast to his humble dress, and when no longer under constraint, it revealed a mysterious and profound satisfaction in his own personality and intelligence. There was so much _pride_ that there was no place for _vanity_ in his soul.

What cared he for the admiration or contempt of others, the vain clamors of the mult.i.tude, whom he considered infinitely his inferiors?

When he said to himself, "I am Ben-Ha-Zelah," the rest of the world no longer existed for him.

His pride was like that of Lucifer: it was not relative but absolute; he contemplated himself with a terrible satisfaction. Thence his disdain for all the miserable trifles which gratify the self-love of inferior men. The pride of _seeming_ comes when the pride of _being_ is not absolute.

Whence then came the gigantic pride of the old Jew?

Rabbi Ben-Ha-Zelah was the most learned man of his time.

He had carried his investigations far beyond those of the most scientific men of the age; he was well versed in physics, mechanics, dynamics, arithmetic, music, astronomy, medicine, surgery, and botany; but the science he most loved, was that which, at first known under the name of alchemy, was destined to become the greatest science of modern times--chemistry.

He pa.s.sed night after night shut up in his laboratory, as he had formerly done at Cordova, seeking to penetrate one after the other all the mysteries of nature. There, bending over his glowing furnaces, surrounded with retorts and crucibles of strange shapes, filled with metals in a state of fusion, by all sorts of instruments and alembics, old Ben-Ha-Zelah interrogated matter and demanded the mystery of its essence; he pursued it from form to form, he tore it with red-hot pincers; he melted it in the glowing fires of his furnaces; he made it solid only to reduce it again to a liquid state, decomposing it a hundred times in a hundred different ways. He tortured it, as does the lawyer the prisoner at the bar, that he may wring from him his most hidden secrets.

Matter, thus pursued by the indefatigable alchemist, had revealed more than one of its mysterious laws, which he had made useful in the practice of his profession, so that he was considered in Cairo little less than a demi-G.o.d. However, in his labors he sought not the good of his fellow-men, but the barren satisfaction of the pa.s.sion which was consuming him, _the pride of knowledge_; he sought to penetrate the secrets of the most high G.o.d. The promise of the tempter to our first parents; _Eritis sicut dei, scientes_, "You shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil," had penetrated his soul; and he desired to plant in his garden that fatal tree to which the first-born of our race stretched out their guilty hands. Like his ancestor Jacob, he wrestled with Jehovah.

One can readily understand that the old man, absorbed in this gigantic struggle, was dead to all vanity, so far as men were concerned. He had reached such dizzy heights that he had almost lost sight of them. To him they were like the brute beasts which crossed his path; he believed them to be of an inferior nature to him, who had been gifted with such vast genius--such indefatigable industry. His high thoughts were not for such miserable pigmies.

Sometimes seating himself in dreamy mood in his garden, at the foot of a grand old cedar, his favorite seat, and taking in his hand a pebble, a blade of gra.s.s or a flower he was plunged in profound meditation.