In a Dark Wood Wandering Read Online Free PDF

one of the towers of the ducal wing was a small room to which few had access. Louis d’Orléans had turned this room over to his astrologers: two of them, Maitre Darien and Ettore Salvia, could carry on their experiments here in privacy, working with the powders and liquids which they were attempting to transmute into gold. Other, stranger things undoubtedly took place in this murky chamber into which, on the brightest day, little light seemed to filter through the small greenish windowpanes.
    The usual appurtenances of the magic art lay spread upon a table shoved up against the window: parchments, shells, glass vials filled with liquids, rings, balls and mathematical symbols forged from metal. A pungent odor of burnt herbs hung in the air. In this room two men awaited the Duke. One was Ettore Salvia, an astrologer from Padua whom Galeazzo Visconti had sent to his son-in-law with warm recommendations. He sat hunched forward on a bench beside the table. His companion, a filthy fellow clad in rags, stood behind him, staring at the door with the tense look of a trapped animal. When he heard footsteps, Ettore Salvia sprang up. Louis entered the room.
    â€œHave you been successful?” he asked the astrologer who fell to his knees before him. “Stand up, stand up,” he added impatiently, “and tell me what you’ve found.”
    Ettore Salvia rose to his feet. He was taller than Louis; he stood between the hearthfire and the wall, his shadow extending over thebeamed ceiling. He stepped aside and pointed to the other man who too had fallen to his knees at Louis’ entrance—his eyes, sunken under a bulging, scarred forehead, glistened with terror.
    â€œWho is he?” Louis asked, seating himself. “Stand up, man, and answer.”
    â€œHe cannot do that, my lord,” Ettore Salvia replied swiftly and softly. “They cut out his tongue a long time ago—for treason.”
    Louis laughed shortly. “You haven’t been squeamish about choosing an accomplice.”
    Salvia shrugged. “There are not many to be found for the sort of mission you wished carried out,” he replied evenly, with downcast eyes.
    A flush crept over Louis’ face; he was on the point of responding sharply, but he checked himself. “The important thing is that you bring me what I asked for,” he said coldly.
    Salvia spoke some low words to the ragged man, who groped in the folds of his garment and drew out a small leather sack, wound around with cord. Perspiration stood on his forehead. “He is afraid of the consequences,” remarked the astrologer, handing the sack to Louis. “He hid for two days and two nights under the gallows and he thinks he may have been detected.”
    Without a word Louis took a purse from his sleeve and tossed it onto the table. The mute snatched it up and concealed it among his rags. Salvia smiled contemptuously; he turned and stood watching the Duke of Orléans. Louis had opened the leather sack and removed a smooth iron ring; it lay now in the palm of his hand. He feigned a calm interest, but the astrologer knew better. To him the young man was as transparent as the figures of veined blown glass with which Venetian artisans ornamented their goblets—thus he anticipated the questions on Louis’ lips.
    â€œThere is no possible doubt,” he said mildly, without emphasis, as though he were giving the most trivial information. “This ring lay twice twenty-four hours under the tongue of a hanged man. This fellow here swears to it. He did not take his eyes off the gallows—no one apart from him touched the corpse after the execution.”
    Louis raised his hand, signalling that enough had been said. Salvia fell silent. A trace of a smile gleamed under his half-closed eyelids. A ring which had undergone that treatment became a powerful amulet: it made its bearer irresistible to women. Apart from preparing a single potion, which had