A mortal’s fate is the same as a mole’s—
Penglog y Baban yr Gawr!
The same as the fishes that leap in shoals,
Penglog y Baban yr Gawr!
Where leaf do fall — there let leaf rest—
Where no Grail be there be no quest—
Be’ee good, be’ee bad, be’ee damned, be’ee blest—
Be’ee North, be’ee South, be’ee East, be’ee West
The whole of Existence is naught but a jest—
Penglog y Baban yr Gawr!”
The effect upon that small company, together with Raymond their leader and Albertus Magnus their visitor, of this weird ditty, a ditty followed by dead silence, save for the sound of the wind in the trees about them and the far-off cry of a buzzard high in the air above them, would have been for anyone concerned with the results of unexpected shocks upon human nerves, of no small interest.
It had an effect however that no chronicler, however sagacious, could possibly have foreseen. Every single one of those six armed men, as well as their leader and his visitor, behaved exactly in the same way. They all were so startled and shocked that they simply dared not comment on what they had heard. Every single one of them pretended — whether to himself as well as to the others who could tell? — that he had heard nothing!
The shock of what they had heard, for all this pretence, followed them, all the same, through the burning heat of this mid-day in June, as they pressed on, leaving the stone circle to their left, and that lonely stone seat where Lil-Umbra, on an early February morning, had asked Peleg such searching questions, on their right, till they approached, not the small postern this time, for they were too large a party, and it was too cogent an occasion, to use that entrance, but the main gate of the Fortress.
As soon as Raymond told him they were approaching their journey’s end, Albertus brought their march to a halt and put to his young guide the direct question, which the voice of that cave-devil had for the time postponed.
“And what,” he asked him, “is your own private attitude to these disputes?”
The Cone Castle men, who were already alert, now crowded quite close to them, and it became clear to Raymond that they felt unusually concerned. And indeed there was unquestionably something about Albertus Magnus that attracted the attention of intelligent persons wherever he went. He had already held for a couple of years an important bishopric in Germany, but this he had recently resigned together with all the influence and wealth that a bishopric gives in order to devote himself solely and entirely to the metaphysical and botanical and entomological studies that were the main interest of his days upon earth.
This absorption in the mysterious life of all the creatures of Nature and in the whole problem of mind and matter, since it was combined with a lively interest in men and women for themselves, threw a very singular aura round him, an aura which, though it rendered him separate and aloof, endowed his presence with the peculiar attraction which certain rare and evasive animals and birds and insects possess.
And not only was Albertus Magnus an unusual, indeed we might say a unique person in himself, but the particular line of philosophical investigation into which he threw his whole nature linked itself with metaphysical thoroughness to his wide natural sympathy. He himself described it as finding the Universal “before” all, “in” all, and “after” all. He was not only a student of plants, trees, flowers, and insects, but of human beings also; and he sought to find this Universal of his in all its three stages of “before”, “in”, and “after”, in every living thing he studied.
In appearance Albert of Cologne was curiously impressive. He was of medium height but very powerfully built. He always wore, day and night — for it was a weakness of his to be physically sensitive to catching cold, and it was a conviction of his that where he was especially menaced by this affliction was through his head — a curiously shaped white cap that had a remote affinity to an academic cap, and also to the metallic cap of a knight in armour, but was first suggested to him by the singular night-turban worn by an Arabian student of Aristotle with whom he had shared a lodging in early days in Swabia.
But the chief advantage of this ubiquitous protection against colds was that it was made of such soft stuff that any kind of ceremonial head-gear, from a pontifical mitre to a more secular token of authority, could be squeezed over it.
The head of Albert of Cologne was if anything not larger, but smaller, than most human heads. He had a long straight nose with wide sensitive nostrils. He had small ears close to his skull, extremely full and very attractively curved lips, a large mouth that was often open and even had a tendency to dribble, an unaggressive and retreating chin and a pair of small hazel eyes under bushy grey eyebrows, eyes that searched affectionately and longingly into every person and thing he looked at, as if seeking to trace “within” this person or thing the Universal in which he believed, the Universal that had been “before” it and would be “after” it. The truth was he was always aware of the contrast between the touchingly pathetic brittleness, feebleness, silliness and conceitedness of the particular small creature he was regarding and the enormous life-force which brought it to birth.
“What I would like to be able to tell you, Doctor,” replied Raymond hesitatingly, fully aware that his Cone Castle friends were glancing quickly from one to another as they followed his words, “would be that I have steadily tried hard, ever since I realized the bewildering complexity of all these ultimate problems, to keep my mind entirely open and my personal conclusions undecided and hanging in the balance. But such is the weakness and such is the pride of human nature, or at any rate, great Doctor, of my nature, that I cannot resist bringing into the workings of my will and of my faith in myself all manner of obstinate prejudices and too-quickly reached conclusions.”
Albert of Cologne made a quick little inclination of his head, upon which for this journey through the forest of Wessex, he wore above his white skull-cap, a traveller’s variant of a Dominican cowl.
“Please give me, my dear young guide, and let me tell you I shall certainly congratulate your future parents-in-law on having secured for their daughter such a thoughtful and resourceful bridegroom, some general notion of these fixed ideas of yours before we have to separate.”
“Well, master; to confess the truth,” and Raymond de Laon looked nervously round him at a receding glade of sun-illumined bluebells in one direction, and at several sumptuous bunches of horse-chestnut blossoms in another direction, and finally at the illimitable gulf, of that early June’s noon-deep, noon-blue infinity above them, and then, with a quiver of unquestioned sincerity in his voice: “What I feel myself, great master,” he said, “is that it’s wrong for the church to forbid Friar Bacon to work at his self-chosen inventions. And I also feel that it’s wrong, and worse than wrong, in fact I think it is devilishly wicked in this Bonaventura, who by some pious people among us is regarded as a saint, and who at one time was the Pope’s Legate, to start the rumour”—here the young man’s voice became broken by a sound in his throat that was clearly a choked-down sob—“that my pure-minded young betrothed and her serious-minded elder-brother Tilton have committed the shocking sin of incest.”
His voice rose stronger at this point. “This man Bonaventura knows absolutely nothing of us people in the west of England. He knows nothing of the childlike and innocent character of the young man and young girl he is attacking in this gross manner. And further, great master, you must understand that he actually went so far as to urge on a band of notorious outlaws from a castle in this neighbourhood called Lost Towers whose lord is known far and wide as an enemy of God and man, but whom this Bonaventura, for his own secret ends, pretends to have converted, to attack Friar Bacon. It was this rabble who under his direction smashed a shrine which my betrothed’s brother was building, and were on the point of destroying Friar Bacon’s Brazen Head, if it hadn’t been for—”