The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (62 page)

Rebecca seemed a bit disconcerted by this and I realized that those who wanted to weaken our religious principles and turn us into Muslims would find it no easier with the geometer than they had with me.

‘Here are two signed and sealed parchments. One of these parchments will secure for my dear son the possession of the finest house in Jerusalem. The other is a deed worth thirty thousand darics together with many years' interest.'

He next told me the whole story of my grandfather, Hiskias, and my forebear, Sedekias. Then he added, ‘This rapacious and unjust man is still alive, which goes to prove that remorse does not kill. My children, as soon as I die, you will go to Jerusalem. But do not make yourself known until you have found protectors. Perhaps it may be best to wait for Sedekias to die, which, given his great age, must happen very soon. Meanwhile you can live on your five hundred darics. You will find them sewn into this pillow, which never leaves me.

‘I have only one piece of advice to give you. Live a life free from reproach and you will be rewarded by the serenity which a clear
conscience will give to the evening of your lives. As for me, I shall die as I have lived, that is, singing. This will be my swan-song, as they say. Homer who, like me, was blind, wrote a hymn to Apollo, who is the very sun whom he could not see and whom I also can no longer see. I once set this hymn to music. I shall intone it but I doubt whether I shall be able to reach the end.'

So Dellius sang the hymn that begins, ‘Greetings, happy Latona.' But when he reached ‘Delos, if you wish my son to live on your shores,' Dellius's voice faded away. He leant on my shoulder and breathed his last.

We long mourned for our old friend. At last we left for Palestine, and reached Jerusalem on the twelfth day after our departure from Alexandria. For safety's sake we changed our names. I took the name Antipas and Germanus was known as Glaphyras. We first stayed at an inn outside the city gates. When we asked where Sedekias lived, we were told at once, for it was the finest house in Jerusalem, a veritable palace worthy of a prince. We rented a poor room in the house of a cobbler who lived opposite Sedekias. I did not go out much; Germanus roamed all over the city and set about finding things out.

Several days later, he came to me and said, ‘My friend, I have just made an excellent discovery. The brook Cedron broadens into a magnificent sheet of water behind Sedekias's house. The old man spends all his evenings there in a bower of jasmine. He is there now. I'll show you your persecutor.'

I followed Germanus and we reached the bank of the stream opposite a beautiful garden in which I could see an old man asleep. I sat opposite him and looked at him. How different was his sleep from that of Dellius! Troublesome dreams seemed to disturb it and make him shudder from time to time. ‘Dellius,' I cried, ‘how right you were to praise the life of innocence!'

Germanus made the same observation as I did.

As we were still looking, an object met our eyes which soon made us forget our observations and moral reflections. It was a young girl between sixteen and seventeen years old, of marvellous beauty which was enhanced by her rich attire. On her neck and calves she wore pearls and gem-studded chains. Otherwise she was dressed only in a gold-hemmed linen tunic. Germanus cried out, ‘It's Venus herself!' I
instinctively prostrated myself before her. The beautiful young girl caught sight of us and seemed somewhat disturbed. But then she regained her composure, picked up a peacock-feather fan and wafted it to and fro above the old man's head to refresh him and prolong his rest.

Germanus opened a book which he had specially brought with him, and pretended to read. I pretended to listen. But all our attention was fixed on what was happening in the garden.

The old man woke up. The questions he put to the young girl indicated to us that his sight was very dim and he couldn't see us where we were, which pleased us greatly, for we proposed to come there often. Sedekias went away, leaning on the beautiful girl, and we returned to our room. Having nothing else to do, we got our landlord the cobbler to gossip to us. From him we learnt that Sedekias didn't have a son still alive but his fortune was to pass to the daughter of one of his sons: she was called Sara and her grandfather was very fond of her.

After we had retired to our room, Germanus said to me, ‘Dear friend, I have thought up a way of bringing matters to a head with your great-uncle: it will be to marry his granddaughter. A great deal of prudence will be needed to succeed.'

I was very taken by this idea. We discussed it for a long time and I dreamed about it that night.

The next day I returned to the stream, and went back again on the following days. I rarely failed to see my young cousin, sometimes alone, sometimes with her grandfather, and without my having to speak the beautiful young girl guessed in the end that I was there only because of her.

Rebecca was careful not to set the duke off again on the subject of religion. But as she wanted to hear about what he called his system, she seized the first opportunity to speak to him about it and even pressed him with questions.

‘Now everything that our eyes can see, all that vast horizon which stretches out at the foot of the mountains, in short, all of nature which can be perceived by our senses, can be divided into dead matter and organic matter. The latter differs from the former by its organs but belongs to it absolutely by its elements. Thus, Señora, the elements which go to make you up can also be found in the rocks on which we are sitting or the grass which covers them. Indeed, you have chalk in your bones, siliceous earth in your flesh, alkali in your bile, iron in your blood, salt in your tears. Your fatty parts are a combination of combustible material with an element of the atmosphere. So that if you were put in a reverberatory furnace you could be reduced to a glass bottle and if some metallic chalk were added you could be turned into a nice telescopic lens.'

The duke thought that he had, without being aware of it, paid a compliment to the fair Jewess. He graciously raised his hat, put it back on his head and continued as follows:

Like magnetic fluid, life is only ever seen by its effects. Its first effect in organized bodies is to stop an interior fermentation known as putrefaction, which begins in bodies having organs as soon as life has
left them. For this reason an ancient philosopher dared to affirm that life was a salt.

Life can be preserved for a long time in a fluid, as in an egg, or in a solid, as in seeds, and it develops once conditions are favourable.

Life extends to all parts of the body, even fluids, and even blood, which putrefies once it leaves our veins. Life is in the walls of the stomach, protecting them from the effect of gastric juices, which dissolve dead things that are admitted to the stomach.

Life is preserved for varying amounts of time in members cut off from the body.

Finally, life possesses the property of self-propagation. That is what is called the mystery of generation, which is a mystery like everything else in nature.

Organized beings are divided into two great classes: one which through combustion gives a fixed alkali, the other which abounds in volatile alkali. Plants form the first class, animals the second.

There are animals which, in respect of their degree of organization, seem much inferior to plants, such as living mucilages, which can be seen floating on the sea, or hydatids, which live in sheep's brains. There are animals with a higher form of organization in which, none the less, what we call a will cannot be easily detected. Thus when coral extends its capsule to swallow up the small animals which it eats, it is possible to suppose that this act is an effect of the way it is organized, just as we see flowers which close up at night and turn to the light during the day.

The sort of will which a polyp manifests when it stretches out its tentacles and opens up its capsule can be compared with some justice to the will of a child who has just been born and who doesn't yet think, but who wills; for in children will, being the immediate result of need and pain, precedes thought.

Similarly a limb with cramp wants to stretch out and inspires that will in us. The stomach often refuses the diet imposed upon it. The salivary glands swell in the presence of the desired dish, and the palate also has a will. Often reason has great difficulty in gaining the upper hand.

If one pictures a man who has long not eaten or drunk, has shrunken limbs and has lived a celibate existence, one may see that
several parts of his body will make him simultaneously will different things.

These appetites which derive directly from need are found in the adult polyp and new-born child. They are the first elements of the higher will, which develops later in virtue of the organization being perfected.

The will of a new-born child precedes thought but not by much. And thought too has its elements, which I shall describe.