An Elegant Solution(141)

What was to come next, I feared. But it was necessary. Whatever the sacrifice was to be, it must be complete. I wanted to be obedient to the laws that were ruling the night, though they were mostly invisible to me.

I went into the inn. Charon, ten feet long, and my own height as he reclined, bared his merciless teeth and swept the hall with his tail. Gustavus was beside him waiting for me.



We followed the same path, inward and down, though it was longer this time, by innumerable closed doors, past niches filled with dust and jars, beneath an ever lowering ceiling, between narrowing walls hung with ancient pictures so smoke-blackened that all their first meanings were irrecoverable, and their present meanings were drawn by the smoke itself. Every length was singly lantern lit, and each turning was dark with just a glimmer of the next flame beyond. We went always down, sometimes by one step, sometimes by two or three, gradually but only descending.

We came finally to the same rough door. He pushed it open and followed me in. There’d been a lantern before but that now was a half dozen bare flame torches bracketed on the stone wall that still gave no light at all. Everything was black except those flames. I could hear and feel the rushing water in the cave near, but I couldn’t see it. I felt for the barrel I’d sat on before. It had a different feel and I stayed standing. The roof touched my hat.

The light expanded, on its own, and by it I saw Magistrate Caiaphas. He was seated. First I saw his face. Then I saw his whole form just in outline, as if it had its own source of light behind. Gustavus glowed red like ember.

“Then what shall I do now?” Caiaphas said, speaking to himself. We seemed to have interrupted his musing. But, I was the object of this thoughts. “What shall I do with you?”

“Leave Basel,” I said.

“Not that. Not yet.” His voice was cutting as a saw but quiet. “But you will.”

“This city will never be part of France. There is nothing for you to do here.”

“You say that?” His anger broke, like water that had been rising and building behind a dam. “What are you to say anything?”

“You’ve lost the Chair.”

“One Chair is nothing! I own enough Chairs in Basel. And what I don’t own I will wipe away. I have rags enough from plague deathbeds for that. But what shall I do now with you?”

“You can’t do anything. I don’t you owe you for anything. I don’t have the Physics Chair.”

“That was your own madness.” In the dark, I could still see him perfectly by his voice. “You have accomplished nothing, and yet you will pay heavily.”

“You won’t be allowed,” I said.

“France will take Basel. I will twist this University between my fingers, and I will put an end to you.”

“You won’t be allowed. Not any of those.”

“Not allowed?” He screeched it, between hatred and fury and laughter. “Nothing disallows me.”

“There are laws,” I said. “Laws stronger than we can oppose.”

“I am every law here. Whose laws are stronger?”

I told him. “You meant to gain to Basel for France, which is your right to attempt. But you’ve sown division and hatred within the families here. You’ve torn down men who were intended to be noble. And you’ve murdered.”

“And I will more,” he answered. “Much more.”

“That, you will not be allowed. That was not your right. There are laws stronger than you can oppose.”

“There are no laws!”

“There are only laws,” I said.

“What do your laws command now? When Gustavus strangles you, what will they command?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I only know they will be obeyed. God will be obeyed.” I sighed, “That is why I’m here.”

Gustavus put out his hand toward me. Then I saw, what I’d known to be, that behind him and about him was an even stronger and greater giant, in black but plain and visible.

“Even you,” I said to him, “are under God’s law.”

He, as Gustavus, loomed above me and the torches dimmed to sparks.

“Those who are with me,” I said, “are more than those who are with you.”

He set his hand on my shoulder.

At that, the Birsig Flow burst.

The water filled the room in an instant.



I was thrown against a wall. There was no time to think, no time to respond, no time to even try to move my arms or legs. Barrels and everything else heavy were lifted and caught in the sudden havoc.

But I was pushed out of the room, and for me that turmoil was over.

I was on the floor of the hall. Yet water was pouring up from the door, flooding the hallway. I staggered up in it and looked for an escape.