The guest shook his head. “I came to hear you talk about Mr. Melanchthon Mudge,” he said.
There was indeed a file on Melanchthon Mudge and Engelbert Kristoffr read it and then they began to talk again. Said Max: “You well recall a Cabinet decision to hold the laws against witchcraft in abeyance. It simply would not do, in this day and age, for our country to start a prosecution for witchcraft. And as we prefer to believe that the matter is confined to harmless old women living in remote villages, there is really no mechanism to handle a latter-day sorcerer.”
An ash was flicked off a segar with impatience. “I don’t want the man burned or hanged or shackled, for heaven’s sake. We have experts in the sophistry of the law. Can’t they simply get an excuse to get the man out of our country?”
Max very very slightly poured from the decanter to the mug. “Not so easily. Not when he has a lot of powerful friends. One of whom, are you not aware, is the aunt of your cousin Kristoffr Engelbert, of the Eszterhazy-Eszterhazy line; you are not aware? Ah, you were not, but are now. Having read the file.” The file reminded him of the Sovereign Princess Olga Helena of Damrosch-Pensk; she was of course not sovereign at all, she was the widow of Lavon Demetrius, whose status as one of the once-sovereign princes of the Hegemony had been mediatized while he himself was yet a minor: the family retained titles, lands, money, and had nothing any longer to do with governation at all; was this a good thing? If they were under the spell of Mr. Mudge, probably.
“Nor is she the only one. Not every name is in the file; listen.” Max repeated some of the names not in the file. Engelbert Kristoffr winced. “Is it that they are so immensely impressed because he makes the spirits blow trumpets, move tables, ring bells? In my opinion: no. They are so immensely impressed because they are weak in character and he is strong in character and he is very, very bad in character and his performances are merely as it were items chosen off a menu. Melanchthon Mudge, as he calls himself, has a very long menu, and if he did not impress the credulous by doing such things, well, he would impress them by doing other things. Was it only because Louis Napoleon and Amadeus of Spain and Alexander of Russia believed the spirits of the dead were at this fellow’s command, lifting tables and sounding trumpets and ringing bells, that they gave him jewels? I don’t think so. And I might ask you to look at what happened afterwards: Louis Napoleon deposed, dying in exile; Amadeus deposed and in exile; Alexander of Russia fatally blown up by political disaffecteds.” Max banged his mug sharply on the scarred tabletop. “And another thing. If he has such powers, why does he employ them lifting tables and tinkling bells? Why does he content himself with gifts of jewels from kings and emperors?”
Engelbert Kristoffr Eszterhazy thought of another question: Why is he—via the thought of him?—tormenting me? But he said, suddenly, aloud, “Because the mind of a demon is not the same as the mind of a man.”
Said Max, “Well, there you are. There’s your answer.”
But, wondered Eszterhazy, to which question? Having left the old, small castle to Max, its present master, Dr. Eszterhazy long wandered and long pondered. Was it indeed his fortune to have become involved with a Count Cagliostro, a century after the original? Was Melanchthon Mudge really “Melanchthon Mudge”? Could anyone be? And if not, who then was he? The learned doctor did not very much amuse himself by conjecturing that perhaps Giuseppe Balsamo had not really died in a Roman dungeon ninety years ago, but—
Of the so-called Pasqualine Dynasty [a learned correspondent wrote Dr. Engelbert] few literary remains exist, and almost without exception they are very dull remains indeed. Only one reference do I find of the least interest, and that is to a so-called Pasqualine Ring. Do your old friends know about it? Legends for a while clustered thick, stories that “it had been worn upon the very thumb of Albertus Magnus,” is one of them; I cannot even say if thumb-rings were known in the day of good Bishop and Universal Doctor—you may also have heard it assigned to the thumbs of two anomalous Englishmen named Kelly (or Kelley) and Dee—and one of the innumerable editions of the Faustusbuch—but enough! Do think of me when you see your old and noble tutor, and ask him . . . whatever [and here the learned correspondent passed on to another subject entirely]. Why had not Engelbert Eszterhazy, Ph.D., M.D., long since removed his old and (perhaps, who knows) royal tutor and wife to a comfortable chamber in the house at 33 Turkling Street? He had offered, and the offer had with an exquisite politeness been declined. Why had he not bestowed a pension? To this question: the same reply. He had, then, to relieve the burden of want, done nothing? No, not nothing. One day he had encountered the owner of the tottering tenement in which lodged the King and Queen of the Single Sicily in Exile, herself (the owner) a widow incessantly bending beneath the burden of many debts, herself; part in sorrow, part in shame, she said that she would shortly have to double their rent: Dr. Eszterhazy easily persuaded her to mention no such thing to them, but to apply instead to him quarterly for the difference: done. So. There he was one day, visiting, and presently he asked, “And the ring of Duke Pasquale?”
“We have it, we have it,” said ‘the Queen.’ In her haggard, ancient way, she was still beautiful. “We have it. So,” she said. “It is all that we have. But we have it. So.”
Eszterhazy sat silent. “I will have them bring you a cup of chocolate. Clarinda?” she raised her voice. “Leona? Ofelia?” As, not surprisingly, none of these imaginary attendants answered the summons, the Queen, murmuring an apology, rose to “see what they are all doing,” and withdrew into a curtained niche behind which (Eszterhazy well knew) reposed the tiny charcoal brazier and the other scant equipment of their scant kitchen. Politely, he looked instead at the King.
The general outlines of the face and form of him who, with infinite sincerity, called himself ‘King of the Single Sicily,’ would have been familiar to, at least, readers of the British periodical press; for they were the form and features of Mr. Punch (himself originally a native of The Italies, under the name of Signor Punchinello); though the expression of their faces was entirely different. His lady wife did not in any way resemble Judy. The King now said, “I shall have the Lord Great Chamberlain bring it.” As Cosimo Damiano’s former pupil was wondering what piece of gimcrack or brummagem the, alas, cracked imaginations of the pair would work on, the King said, with a gesture, “The view of the hills is remarkably clear today, my son. We are high here. Very high. See for yourself.” Eszterhazy politely rose to his feet, went to the window. The window was now graced with a single curtain; there had at one time been two; and some might have seen a resemblance to the other in the garment which the Queen now wore wrapped around her ruined silken dress rather in the manner of a sari.
Clear or not, the view was so restricted by the crumbling walls of the adjacent tenements as to consist of an irregular blur a few feet tall and a few inches wide. Behind him he heard a soft scuffling, shuffling sound. He heard the King say, “Thank you. That is all. You may go.” After a moment Eszterhazy felt it safe to say that the view was indeed remarkable. In reply, he was informed that his chocolate was ready. He withdrew slowly from the view, homeopathically of the hills of the Scythian Highlands, and otherwise and very largely of goats, pigs, washing, dogs, children, chickens, nibbishtips, and other features of the always informal great South Ward; and took his seat. And his chocolate.