|
Start
Next
His parents left
the
boy’s upbringing to his grandfather. With the
erudite Jean, he was in good hands. The former court
physician and astrologer taught his grandson not
only mathematics, but also ancient Greek, Latin and
Hebrew as well as the preliminaries of astrology.
Jean often took him outside the village at night, so
they could lie in the field together and look up at
the stars. There, he told him that you can see the
northern sky better in the winter and the southern
sky in the summer and that the winter constellations,
such as the Canis Major and Canis Minoris, can be
easily found, using the star Orion as a guide.
“When I grow up, I want to be a star too,” said his
grandson.
“Funny you should say that. I was just thinking
about the story where someone gets punished by being
put in the sky as a star. It’s about Orion, who was
chasing his seven sisters, the Pleiades. The sisters
felt threatened by the chase and prayed for help,
which caused the goddess of the hunt to come to
their rescue and she killed their brother with one
of her arrows. Then Orion was placed in the sky as a
star. But I don’t know if that’s possible for people
made out of flesh and blood too, Michel. Although, I
just remembered, there is some mention of it in the
old scriptures. So, who knows? By the way, the
Pleiades are visible with the naked eye. Look,
they’re right there,” and Jean stretched his arm
toward the black sky.
“Those stars look like they’re touching each other,”
the boy remarked.
“Yes, it does look that way, but in reality they are
very far away from each other.”
When spring came around, Grandpa showed Michel the
stars Arcturus, Regulus and the sparkling Spica, the
brightest stars in the spring sky, which together
formed the Spring Triangle. That summer, the stars
were not very clearly visible and it wasn’t until
autumn that grandfather showed the winged horse,
Pegasus, which is often difficult to find, because
it is up-side-down. Through these little excursions,
Michel got to know the constellations and his
parents kept grumbling that he and his grandfather
came home so late at night.
One clear evening, when Jean had once again taken
his grandson out, the weather suddenly changed and
turned gloomy. No celestial bodies were visible and
Michel cursed the dark clouds that were gathering.
That night, the little rascal was tossing and
turning in his bed, which was separated from other
sleeping places with long curtains, and couldn’t
sleep. He was still angry and disappointed, when
suddenly, the window shutters blew open and a
furious tornado pulled him out of his bed. He just
managed to grab hold of the window sill, with his
body dangling outside. Reyničre was woken up at that
very moment by maternal instinct, shook her husband
awake and together they ran to the child who was in
mortal peril. Together, the two of them pulled the
child back into the room and shut the window tightly.
Not really realizing what had happened, they went
back to sleep, and a short time later, the window
was pulled open once more. Again, the whirlwind
directed its energy toward the gifted child, with a
seething fury, but his parents were there in a
heartbeat and defeated the catastrophe before he was
sucked out of the room. The shutters were nailed
shut permanently. This was a lesson their son would
never forget. No more cursing anyone or anything, he
resolved.
Next
|
|
