The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe
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The Bargain Lost (1831)
“The heathen philosopher, when he had a mind to eat a grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth, meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open.”
As You Like It.
At Venice, in the year —, in the street —, lived Pedro Garcia, a metaphysician. – With regard to date and residence, circumstances of a private and sacred nature forbid me to be more explicit. In all mental qualifications our hero was gigantic. Moreover, in bodily circumference, he had no cause of complaint; but, in right ascension, four feet five was the philosopher’s ne plus ultra.
Now Pedro was descended from a noble Florentine family; yet it was with little concern that, in certain boilings of the pot revolutionary, (during which, saith Machiavelli, the scum always comes uppermost) he beheld his large estates silently slipping through his fingers. Indeed, from his earliest youth, had Pedro Garcia been addicted to the most desperate abstrusities. He had studied at Padua, at Milan, at Gottingen. It is he – but let this go no farther – it is he to whom Kant is mainly indebted for his metaphysics. I have MSS. in my possession sufficient to establish what I say.
The doctrines of our friend were not very generally understood, although by no means difficult of comprehension. He was not, it is true, a Platonist – nor strictly an Aristotelian – nor did he, with Leibnitz, reconcile things irreconcileable. He was, emphatically, a Pedronist. He was Ionic and Italic. He reasoned a priori and a posteriori. His ideas were innate, or otherwise. He believed in George of Trebizond, he believed in Bossarion. Of his other propensities little is recorded. It is said that he preferred Catullus to Homer, and Sauterne to Medoc.
Yet even this comprehensive philosophy proved an insufficient protection against the shafts of calumny and malice. At Venice wicked men were not wanting to hint that the doctrines of certain people evinced neither the purity of the Academy nor the depth of the Lyceum.
The great bell of St. Mark’s had already sounded midnight, yet our hero was not in bed. He sat, alone, in the little chamber, his study, redeemed from the filth and bustle of the day. I hold minute attention to trifles unworthy the dignity of serious narrative; otherwise I might here, following the example of the novelist, dilate upon the subject of habiliment, and other mere matters of the outward man. I might say that the hair of our patrician was worn short, combed smoothly over his forehead, and surmounted with a violet-coloured, conical cap with tassels – that his green fustian jerkin was not after the fashion of those worn by the nobility of Venice at that day – that the sleeves were more deeply slashed than the reigning costume permitted – that the slashes were faced – not, as usual in that barbarous period, with parti-coloured silk, but with the beautiful red leather of Morocco – that his stiletto was a specimen piece of workmanship from the factory of Pan Ispan, of Damascus, attaghan-maker to the Effendi – that his slippers were of a bright purple, curiously filagreed, and might have been made in Japan, but for the exquisite pointing of the toes, and the fact that Baptista, the Spanish cobler on the Rialto, opined to the contrary – that his breeches were of the white, satin-like cloth called ‘celeste’ – that his sky-blue cloak, or wrapper, resembling, in form, the anomaly, a morning-gown, floated, like a mist, upon his shoulders, richly bestudded with crimson and yellow patches – and that his tout ensemble gave rise to the remarkable words of Benevenuta, the improvisatrice, to wit: – “That the paroquet, upon a certain cathedral, resembled nothing so much as Pedro, the metaphysician.” All this and more – had I been a novelist – might I have detailed. But, thanks to St. Urfino, whatever I am, that am I not. Therefore upon all these subjects I say ‘mum.’
The chamber in which sat our hero was of singular beauty. The floor was covered with a mat (for it was the summer season) of the most brilliant and glossy pale yellow, formed from the rare and valuable reeds of Siam. All around from the ceiling fell tapestry-hangings of the richest crimson velvet. The ceiling, itself, was of brown and highly-polished oak, vaulted, carved, and fretted, until all its innumerable angles were rounded into a dense mass of shadow, from whose gloomy depth, by a slender golden chain with very long links, swung a fantastic Arabesque lamp of solid silver. A black, heavy, and curiously-pannelled door, opening inwardly, was closed, after the fashion of that day, with a chased brazen bar; while a single, huge, bowed, and trelliced window glared out upon the waters of the Adriatic.
The minor furniture of the room consisted, principally, of a profusion of elegantly-bound and illuminated books scattered here and there in classical disorder, on the tables, on the floor, and on two or three luxurious settees, having every appearance of the ottomans of Mahomet.
It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in cataracts; and drowsy citizens started, from dreams of the deluge, to gaze upon the boisterous sea, which foamed and bellowed for admittance into the proud towers and marble palaces. Who would have thought of passions so fierce in that calm water that slumbers all day long? At a slight alabaster stand, trembling beneath the ponderous tomes which it supported, sat the hero of our story.
He heeded not the clanging of the half extinguished lamp, as it rattled overhead in the currents of air; and the roar of the waters he heard not. A voluminous MSS., intended for publication on the morrow, was receiving the last touches of its author. I am sorry that our record has extracted nothing from this valuable work, which has, undoubtedly, perished in some ecclesiastical intrigue. Its title, however, I find to be “A complete exposition of things not to be exposed;” and its motto a line from Pulci, thus happily translated by a modern satirist: —
Brethren, I come from lands afar
To show you all what fools you are.
As the storm grew stronger and more terrible, Pedro, totally absorbed in his occupation, could not perceive that, while his left palm rested upon a volume in sable binding, the blue lightning fluttered among its leaves with most portentous velocity.
“I am in no hurry, Signor Pedro,” whispered a soft voice in the apartment.
“The devil!” ejaculated our hero, starting from his seat, upsetting the alabaster stand, and looking around him in astonishment.
“Very true!” calmly replied the voice.
“Very true! – What is very true? – How came you here?” vociferated the metaphysician, as his eye fell upon a man with singularly thin features, who lay, at full length, upon an ottoman in a corner of the chamber.
“I was saying,” continued the figure, without replying to Pedro’s interrogatories, “I was saying that I am in no hurry – that the business upon which I took the liberty of calling is of minor importance – that I can wait until you have finished your Exposition.”
“My Exposition! How do you know I am writing an Exposition? Good God!”
“Hush!” replied the figure in a shrill undertone; and, arising from the settee, he made a step towards our hero, while the arabesque lamp suddenly ceased its convulsive swinging and became motionless.
The philosopher’s amazement did not prevent a narrow scrutiny of the stranger’s dress and appearance. The outlines of a figure much above the common standard were blurred and rendered indefinite by the huge folds of a black Roman toga. Above his left ear he carried, after the fashion of a modern scribe, an instrument resembling the stylus of the ancients; and, from his left arm, depended a crimson bag of a material totally unknown to our hero, being luminous. There was another article of habiliment equally a mystery to the patrician. The toga, being left open at the throat, displayed the neatly folded cravat and starched shirt-collar of 1832. All these things excited little of Pedro’s attention; for his antiquarian eye had fallen upon the sandals of the intruder, and he recognised therein the exact pattern of those worn before the flood, as given, with minute accuracy, in the Ptolemaiad of the Rabbi Vathek.
I find, upon looking over certain archives in Venice, that “Garcia, the metaphysician, was an exceedingly little, yet pugnacious man.” Accordingly, when his visitor drew a chair close by the huge bowed window that looked out upon the sea, our hero silently followed his example.
“A clever book that of yours, Pedro,” said the stranger, tapping our friend, knowingly, upon the shoulder.
Pedro stared.
“It is a work after