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When the confusion was over, the Court Astrologer was found to have turned into an eight-day clock, with a sun, moon, and stars arrangement, a planetary indicator, and a calendar calculated for two thousand years. The banquet ended rather gloomily, although the gifts of the other fairies, such as health, wealth, and beauty, managed to make everyone a little more cheerful.
Every one was delighted, with the exception of the Astrologer, and a few old women and wise men, who drew long faces, and said that children born in such a night had undoubtedly come into the world under inauspicious signs.
Or was the great law of the Discords of the World, as potent as that other principle of Universal Harmony and planetary motion which an illustrious contemporary that Wurtemberg astronomer, once a soldier of the fierce Alva, now the half-starved astrologer of the brain-sick Rudolph was at that moment discovering, after "God had waited six thousand years for him to do it," to prevail for the misery of the Republic and shame of Europe?
Here came Giotto, pale-browed and thoughtful, discoursing with his friend, old Pietro di Abano, wizard, astrologer and learned physician, of the designs he was to give him for the frescoing of the new Palace of Reason that the city was erecting.
No prediction less favourable could have been expected from an astrologer, who had his bread to get, and who was at the same time a courtier. A medal was afterwards struck in commemoration of the event; upon one side of which was figured the nativity of the Prince, representing him as driving the chariot of Apollo, with the inscription "Ortus solis Gallici," the rising of the Gallic sun.
Besides, if, as I suspect, the estate in view be connected with the old haunted castle in which you played the astrologer in your northern tour some twenty years since, I have heard you too often describe the scene with comic unction to hope you will be deterred from making the purchase.
One would not have succeeded better in discrediting the astrologer by saying: Of two children who were born in the same minute, one has been king, the other has been only churchwarden of his parish; for the astrologer could very well have defended himself by pointing out that the peasant made his fortune when he became churchwarden, as the prince when he became king.
The astrologer was, at the same time, thrown into prison, as being concerned in the treason of his friend. He attempted to escape, and had succeeded in letting himself down from his dungeon window into a moat, when he was discovered by the sentinels. This being reported to Malatesta, he gave orders for his execution on the following morning.
Kummir al Zummaun, instructed by Marzavan what he was to do, came next morning to the gate of the king's palace, and cried aloud, "I am an astrologer, and am come to cure the illustrious princess Badoura, daughter of the most high and mighty monarch Gaiour king of China, on the conditions proposed by his majesty, to marry her if I succeed, or else to lose my life for my fruitless and presumptuous attempt."
"I am furthermore obliged to admit," said Des Hermies, "that in spite of the blood shed on Golgotha, I personally feel as if my ransom had not been quite effected." "There are three kingdoms," the astrologer resumed, pressing down the ashes of his pipe with his finger. "Of the Old Testament, that of the Father, the kingdom of fear. Of the New Testament, that of the Son, the kingdom of expiation.
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