But now Brother Gregory was laughing and laughing. Neither of his companions could see the joke.
"That rogue Cesky Brezen!" he was able to splutter at last. "I knew he was up to something the moment I saw him."
Klacel, remembering an earlier conversation began to make the connection.
"You mean he was the Human Salamander you told us about?" he asked. Mendel, still laughing, nodded. "The one that used to come to Heinzendorf with his family to do the fire trick?"
"That's the one," Mendel agreed, "but I never saw him do anything like tonight's act. That was something completely different. In the old days he and his family were indeed called the Human Salamanders, and they traveled around Moravia giving entertaining performances using fire. Their most famous stunt involved holding a steak of meat while standing in a bonfire. The steak cooked and they didn't. It brought much applause."
"But how did they do it?" Brother Joseph wanted to know.
"The skill is an ancient one," Brother Gregory said, wiping his eyes. "The best explanation of the phenomenon was written in 1727 by Franz Bruckmann, a German mineralogist. He describes a substance variously known as 'mountain leather, incombustible linen or rock floss' , but which most people think is the hair of a salamander. Medieval alchemists thought that the salamander was totally resistant to fire and that their hair, if collected, could be woven into fire resistant garments."
"But salamanders have no hair," Brother Joseph said.
"True, the story is a fable. This fire resistant material is not from salamanders, but is a form of mineral which has been mined for centuries. It has the amazing property of not conducting heat, so a human hand can be placed on one side of a sheet of 'salamander hair' and not feel the heat of a fire on the other side." He began laughing again.
"That devious rogue, Brezen the gypsy, has a glove made out of this material. He must had slipped it on his hand before plunging it into the flame. The mineral in the glove protected him and the bone from the flames. Some miracle!"
Brother Joseph was feeling definitely deceived. "Huh!" he snorted, "That's all very well. I could see him doing an act like that in Heinzendorf, but why come to Brno and ruin the blessing of the Easter fire in that way?"
Mendel considered his answer. "I don't know," he admitted at last. "It makes no sense, unless he hoped to gather money from the crowd, or impress someone into letting him perform later."
"Or someone paid him a fee," said Klacel, darkly.
"But why would they do that?" Brother Joseph asked. "And look at all the disruption it caused. To say nothing of the dangerous situation that was created. Some people almost got burned to death in the crush."
"That's true," said Mendel soberly, "it did create a very dangerous situation. If it had not been for Herr Druer's wine exploding the way it did, there could have been a serious accident."
"I wonder why the barrels erupted like that?" Brother Matthew said, thoughtfully. "It could not have been the death of the rods and bacteria. Such a purification of the wine would not cause it to explode. What force could throw wine that far?"
"Wine bottles and beer kegs sometimes break under the pressure of the dissolved gases," Brother Joseph said. "As the yeast convert the grape juice to alcohol one of the bi-products is a gas. This normally bubbles away and only a small amount dissolves in the wine. But when it is stopped from escaping, it is held in solution until the pressure is released."
"Like in champagne?"
"Exactly."
"So," said Mendel, rethinking what they had done to rescue Herr Druer's wine from souring, "when we added the extra sugar it gave the yeasts more 'food', and they converted it to more alcohol and more gas. The pressure built up and up in the barrels, and, fortunately for us, exploded at just the right moment to save a lot of lives."
"I wonder why Herr Teplicka did not warn us about such a possibility?" asked Brother Matthew, and was surprised when both his friends started laughing again.