“No, no, only fools are squeamish—I have no prejudices. It is my due and I shall take it. Don’t you have any scruples, either. The only matter to debate is your training. You have the solid education of the middle class with the more showy one of your own; you paint just such landscapes asthe Dauphiness doats upon. As for your beauty, the King will not fail to notice it. As for conversation, which Count Artois and Count Provence like—you will charm them. So you will not only be welcome but adored. That is the word,” concluded the cynic, rubbing his hands and laughing so unnaturally that Philip stared to see if it were a human being.
But, taking Andrea’s hand as she lowered her eyes, the young gentleman said:
“Father is right; you are all he says, and nobody has more right to go to Versailles Palace.”
“But I would be parted from you,” remonstrated Andrea.
“Not at all,” interrupted the baron; “Versailles is large enough to hold all the Taverneys.”
“True, but the Trianon is small,” retorted Andrea, who could be proud and willful.
“Trianon is large enough to find a room for Baron Taverney,” returned the old nobleman, “a man like me always finds a place”—meaning “can find a place. Any way, it is the Dauphiness’s order.”
“I will go,” said Andrea.
“That is good. Have you any money, Philip?” asked the old noble.
“Yes, if you want some; but if you want to offer me it, I should say that I have enough as it is.”
“Of course, I forgot you were a philosopher,” sneered the baron. “Are you a philosopher, too, my girl, or do you need something?”
“I should not like to distress you, father.”
“Oh, luck has changed since we left Taverney. The King has given me five hundred louis—on account, his Majesty said. Think of your wardrobe, child.”
“Oh, thank you, papa,” said Andrea, joyously.
“Oho, going to the other extreme now! A while ago, you wanted for nothing—now you would ruin the Emperor of China. Never mind, for fine dresses become you, darling.”
With a tender kiss, he opened the door leading into his own room, and disappeared, saying:
“Confound that Nicole for not being in to show me a light!”
“Shall I ring for her, father?”
“No, I shall knock against Labrie, dozing on a chair. Good night, my dears.”
“Good night, brother,” said Andrea as Philip also stood up: “I am overcome with fatigue. This is the first time, I have been up since my accident.”
The gentleman kissed her hand with respect mixed with his affection always entertained for his sister and he went through the corridor, almost brushing against Gilbert.
“Never mind Nicole—I shall retire alone. Good bye, Philip.”
ASHIVERran through the watcher as the girl rose from her chair. With her alabaster hands she pulled out her hairpins one by one while the wrapper, slipping down upon her shoulders, disclosed her pure and graceful neck, and her arms, carelessly arched over her head, threw out the lower curve of the body to the advantage of the exquisite throat, quivering under the linen.
Gilbert felt a touch of madness and was on the verge of rushing forward, yelling:
“You are lovely, but you must not be too proud of your beauty since you owe it to me—it was I saved your life!”
Suddenly a knot in the corset string irritated Andrea who stamped her foot and rang the bell.
This knell recalled the lover to reason. Nicole had left the door open so as to run back. She would come.
He wanted to dart out of the house, but the baron had closed the other doors as he came along. He was forced to take refuge in Nicole’s room.
From there he saw her hurry in to her mistress, assist her to bed and retire, after a short chat, in which she displayed all the fawning of a maid who wishes to win her forgiveness for delinquency.
Singing to make her peace of mind be believed, she wasgoing through on the way to the garden when Gilbert showed himself in a moonbeam.
She was going to scream but taking him for another, she said, conquering her fright:
“Oh, it is you—what rashness!”
“Yes, it is I—but do not scream any louder for me than the other,” said Gilbert.
“Why, whatever are you doing here?” she challenged, knowing her fellow-dependent at Taverney. “But I guess—you are still after my mistress. But though you love her, she does not care for you.”
“Really?”
“Mind that I do not expose you and have you thrown out,” she said in a threatening tone.
“One may be thrown out, but it will be Nicole to whom stones are tossed over the wall.”
“That is nothing to the piece of our mistress’s dress found in your hand on Louis XV Square, as Master Philip told his father. He does not see far into the matter yet, but I may help him.”
“Take care, Nicole, or they may learn that the stones thrown over the wall are wrapped in love-letters.”
“It is not true!” Then recovering her coolness, she added: “It is no crime to receive a love-letter—not like sneaking in to peep at poor young mistress in her private room.”
“But it is a crime for a waiting-maid to slip keys under garden doors and keep tryst with soldiers in the greenhouse!”
“Gilbert, Gilbert!”
“Such is the Nicole Virtue! Now, assert that I am in love with Mdlle. Andrea and I will say I am in love with my playfellow Nicole and they will believe that the sooner. Then you will be packed off. Instead of going to the Trianon Palace with your mistress, and coqueting with the fine fops around the Dauphiness, you will have to hang around the barracks to see your lover the corporal of the Guards. A low fall, and Nicole’s ambition ought to have carried her higher. Nicole, a dangler on a guardsman!”
And he began to hum a popular song:
“In the French Guards my sweetheart marches!”
“For pity’s sake, Gilbert, do not eye me thus—it alarms me.”
“Open the door and get that swashbuckler out of the way in ten minutes when I may take my leave.”
Subjugated by his imperious air, Nicole obeyed. When she returned after dismissing the corporal, her first lover was gone.
Alone in his attic, Gilbert cherished of his recollections solely the picture of Andrea letting down her fine tresses.
INDIFFERENTto everything since he had learnt of Andrea’s going soon to the court, Gilbert had forgotten the excursion of Rousseau and his brother botanist on Sunday. He would have preferred to pass the day at his garret window, watching his idol.
Rousseau had not only taken special pains over his attire, but arrayed Gilbert in the best, though Therese had thought overalls and a smockfrock quite good enough to wander in the woods, picking up weeds.
He was not wrong for Dr. Jussieu came in his carriage, powdered, pommaded and freshened up like springtime: Indian satin coat, lilac taffety vest, extremely fine white silk stockings and polished gold buckled shoes composed his botanist’s outfit.
“How gay you are!” exclaimed Rousseau.
“Not at all, I have dressed lightly to get over the ground better.”
“Your silk hose will never stand the wet.”
“We will pick our steps. Can one be too fine to court Mother Nature?”
The Genevan Philosopher said no more—an invocation to Nature usually shutting him up. Gilbert looked at Jussieu with envy. If he were arrayed like him, perhaps Andrea would look at him.
An hour after the start, the party reached Bougival, where they alighted and took the Chestnut Walk. On coming in sight of the summerhouse of Luciennes, where Gilbert had been conducted by Mdlle. Chon when he was picked up by her, a poor boy on the highway, he trembled. For he had repaid her succor by fleeing when she had wished to make a buffoon of him as a peer to Countess Dubarry’s black boy, Zamore.
“It is nine o’clock,” observed Dr. Jussieu, “suppose we have breakfast?”
“Where? did you bring eatables in your carriage?”
“No, but I see a kiosk over there where a modest meal may be had. We can herborize as we walk there.”
“Very well, Gilbert may be hungry. What is the name of your inn?”
“The Trap.”
“How queer!”
“The country folks have droll ideas. But it is not an inn; only a shooting-box where the gamekeepers offer hospitality to gentlemen.”
“Of course you know the owner’s name?” said Rousseau, suspicious.
“Not at all: Lady Mirepoix or Lady Egmont—or—it does not matter if the butter and the bread are fresh.”
The good-humored way in which he spoke disarmed the philosopher who besides had his appetite whetted by the early stroll. Jussieu led the march, Rousseau followed, gleaning, and Gilbert guarded the rear, thinking of Andrea and how to see her at Trianon Palace.
At the top of the hill, rather painfully climbed by the three botanists, rose one of those imitation rustic cottages invented by the gardeners of England and giving a stamp of originality to the scene. The walls were of brick and the shelly stone found naturally in mosaic patterns on the riverside.
The single room was large enough to hold a table and half-a-dozen chairs. The windows were glazed in different colors so that you could by selection view the landscape in the red of sunset, the blue of a cloudy day or the still colder slate hue of a December day.
This diverted Gilbert but a more attractive sight was thespread on the board. It drew an outcry of admiration from Rousseau, a simple lover of good cheer, though a philosopher, from his appetite being as hearty as his taste was modest.
“My dear master,” said Jussieu, “if you blame me for this feast you are wrong, for it is quite a mild set-out—— ”
“Do not depreciate your table, you gormand!”
“Do not call it mine!”
“Not yours? then whose—the brownies, the fairies?” demanded Rousseau, with a smile testifying to his constraint and good nature at the same time.
“You have hit it,” answered the doctor, glancing wistfully to the door.
Gilbert hesitated.
“Bless the fays for their hospitality,” said Rousseau, “fall on! they will be offended at your holding back and think you rate their bounty incomplete.”
“Or unworthy you gentlemen,” interrupted a silvery voice at the summerhouse door, where two pretty women presented themselves arm in arm.
With smiles on their lips, they waved their plump hands for Jussieu to moderate his salutations.
“Allow me to present the Author Rousseau to your ladyship, countess,” said the latter. “Do you not know the lady?”
Gilbert did, if his teacher did not, for he stared and, pale as death, looked for an exit.
“It is the first time we meet,” faltered the Citizen of Geneva.
“Countess Dubarry!” explained the other botanist.
His colleague started as though on a redhot plate of iron.
Jeanne Dubarry, favorite of King Louis X. was a lovely woman, just of the right plumpness to be a material Venus; fair, with light hair but dark eyes she was witching and delightful to all men who prefer truth to fancy in feminine beauty.
“I am very happy,” she said “to see and welcome under my roof one of the most illustrious thinkers of the era.”
“Lady Dubarry,” stammered Rousseau, without seeing that his astonishment was an offense. “So it is she who gives the breakfast?”
“You guess right, my dear philosopher,” replied Jussieu,“she and her sister, Mdlle. Chon, who at least is no stranger to Friend Gilbert.”
“Her sister knows Gilbert?”
“Intimately,” rejoined the impudent girl with the audacity which respected neither royal ill-humor nor philosopher’s quips. “We are old boon companions—are you already forgetful of the candy and cakes of Luciennes and Versailles?”
This shot went home; Rousseau dropped his arms. Habituated in his conceit to think the aristocratic party were always trying to seduce him from the popular side, he saw traitors and spies in everybody.
“Is this so, unhappy boy?” he asked of Gilbert, confounded. “Begone, for I do not like those who blow hot and cold with the same breath.”
“But I ran away from Luciennes where I was locked up, and I must have preferred your house, my guide, my friend, my philosopher!”
“Hypocrisy!”
“But, M. Rousseau, if I wanted the society of these ladies, I should go with them now?”
“Go where you like! I may be deceived once but not twice. Go to this lady, good and amiable—and with this gentleman,” he added pointing to Jussieu, amazed at the philosopher’s rebuke to the royal pet, “he is a lover of nature and your accomplice—he has promised you fortune and assistance and he has power at court.”
He bowed to the women in a tragic manner, unable to contain himself, and left the pavillion statelily, without glancing again at Gilbert.
“What an ugly creature a philosopher is,” tranquilly said Chon, watching the Genevan stumble down the hill.
“You can have anything you like,” prompted Jussieu to Gilbert who kept his face buried in his hands.
“Yes, anything, Gilly,” added the countess, smiling on the returned prodigal.
Raising his pale face, and tossing back the hair matted on his forehead, he said in a steady voice:
“I should be glad to be a gardener at Trianon Palace.”
Chon and the countess glanced at each other, and the former touched her sister’s foot while she winked broadly. Jeanne nodded.
“If feasible, do it,” she said to Jussieu.
Gilbert bowed with his hand on his heart, overflowing with joy after having been drowned with grief.
WHENLouis XIV. built Versailles and perceived the discomfort of grandeur, he granted it was the sojourneying-place for a demi-god but no home for a man. So he had the Trianon constructed to be able to draw a free breath at leisure moments.
But the sword of Achilles, if it tired him, was bound to be of insupportable weight to a myrmidon. Trianon was so much too pompous for the Fifteenth Louis that he had theLittleTrianon built.
It was a house looking with its large eyes of windows over a park and woods, with the wing of the servant’s lodgings and stables on the left, where the windows were barred and the kitchens hidden by trellises of vines and creepers.
A path over a wooden bridge led to the Grand Trianon through a kitchen garden.
The King brought Prime Minister Choiseul into this garden to show him the improvements introduced to make the place fit for his grandson the Dauphin, and the Dauphiness.
Duke Choiseul admired everything and passed his comments with a courtier’s sagacity. He let the monarch say the place would become more pleasant daily and he added that it would be a family retreat for the sovereign.
“The Dauphiness is still a little uncouth, like all young German girls,” said Louis; “She speaks French nicely, but with an Austrian accent jarring on our ears. Here she will speak among friends and it will not matter.”
“She will perfect herself,” said the duke. “I have remarked that the lady is highly accomplished and accomplishes anything she undertakes.”
On the lawn they found the Dauphin taking the sun with a sextant. Louis Aguste, duke of Berry, was a meek-eyed, rosy complexioned man of seventeen, with a clumsy walk. He had a more prominent Bourbon nose than any before him, without its being a caricature. In his nimble fingers and able arms alone he showed the spirit of his race, so to express it.
“Louis,” said the King, loudly to be overheard by his grandson, “is a learned man, and he is wrong to rack his brain with science, for his wife will lose by it.”
“Oh, no,” corrected a feminine voice as the Dauphiness stepped out from the shrubbery, where she was chatting with a man loaded with plans, compass, pencil and notebook.
“Sire, this is my architect, Mique,” she said.
“Have you caught the family complaint of building?”
“I am going to turn this sprawling garden into a natural one!”
“Really? why, I thought that trees and grass and running water are natural enough.”
“Sire, you have to walk along straight paths between shaped boxwood trees, hewn at an angle of forty-five, to quote the Dauphin, and ponds agreeing with the paths, and star centres, and terraces! I am going to have arbors, rockeries, grottoes, cottages, hills, gorges, meadows—— ”
“For Dutch dolls to stand up in?” queried the King.
“Alas, Sire, for kings and princes like ourselves,” she replied, not seeing him color up, and that she had spoken a cutting truth.
“I hope you will not lodge your servants in your woods and on your rivers like Red Indians, in the natural life which Rousseau praises. If you do, only the Encyclopædists will eulogise you.”
“Sire, they would be too cold in huts, so I shall keep the out-buildings for them as they are.” She pointed to the windows of a corridor, over which were the servant’ sleeping rooms and under which were the kitchens.
“What do I see there?” asked the King, shielding his eyes with his hand, for he had short-sight.
“A woman, your Majesty,” said Choiseul.
“A young lady who is my reading-woman,” said the princess.
“It is Mdlle. de Taverney,” went on Choiseul.
“What, are you attaching the Taverneys to your house?”
“Only the girl.”
“Very good,” said the King, without taking his eyes off the barred window out of which innocently gazed Andrea, with no idea she was watched.
“How pale she is!” remarked the Prime Minister.
“She was nearly killed in the dreadful accident of the 30th of May, my lord.”
“For which we would have punished somebody severely,” said Louis, “but Chancellor Seguier proved it was the work of Fate. Only that fellow Bignon, Provost of the Merchants, was dismissed—and—poor girl! he deserved it.”
“Has she recovered?” asked Choiseul quickly.
“Yes, thank heaven!”
“She goes away,” said the King.
“She recognized your Majesty, and fled. She is timid.”
“A cheerless dwelling for a girl!”
“Oh, no, not so bad.”
“Let us have a look round inside, Choiseul?”
“Your Majesty, Council of Parliament at Versailles at half-past two.”
“Well, go and give those lawyers a shaking!”
And the sovereign, delighted to look at buildings, followed the Dauphiness who was delighted, also, to show her house. They passed Mdlle. de Taverney under the eaves of the little kitchen yard.
“This is my reader’s room,” remarked the Dauphiness. “I will show you it as a sample of how my ladies will fare.”
It was a suite of anteroom and two parlors. The furniture was placed; books, a harpsichord, and particularly a bunch of flowers in a Japanese Vase, attracted the King’s attention.
“What nice flowers! how can you talk of changing your garden? who the mischief supplies your ladies with such beauties? do they save any for the mistress?”
“It is very choice.”
“Who is the gardener here so sweet upon Mdlle. de Taverney?”
“I do not know—Dr. Jussieu found me somebody.”
The King looked round with a curious eye, and elsewhere, before departing. The Dauphin was still taking the sun.
ALONGrank of carriages filled the Forest at Marly where the King was carrying on what was called an afternoon hunt. The Master of the Buckhounds had deer so selected that he could let the one out which would run before the hounds just as long as suited the sovereign.
On this occasion, his Majesty had stated that he would hunt till four P. M.
Countess Dubarry, who had her own game in view, promised herself that she would hunt the King as steadfastly as he would the deer.
But huntsmen propose and chance disposes. Chance upset the favorite’s project, and was almost as fickle as she was herself.
While talking politics with the Duke of Richelieu, who wanted by her help or otherwise to be First Minister instead of Choiseul, the countess—while chasing the King, who was chasing the roebuck—perceived all of a sudden, fifty paces off the road, in a shady grove, a broken down carriage. With its shattered wheels pointing to the sky, its horses were browsing on the moss and beech bark.
Countess Dubarry’s magnificent team, a royal gift, had out-stripped all the others and were first to reach the scene of the breakdown.
“Dear me, an accident,” said the lady, tranquilly.
“Just so, and pretty bad smash-up,” replied Richelieu, with the same coolness, for sensitiveness is unknown at court.
“Is that somebody killed on the grass?” she went on.
“It makes a bow, so I guessitlives.”
And at a venture Richelieu raised his own three-cocked hat.
“Hold! it strikes me it is the Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan. What the deuce is he doing there?”
“Better go and see. Champagne, drive up to the upset carriage.”
The countess’s coachman quitted the road and drove to the grove. The cardinal was a handsome gentleman of thirty years of age, of gracious manners and elegant. He was waiting for help to come, with the utmost unconcern.
“A thousand respects to your ladyship,” he said. “My brute of a coachman whom I hired from England, for my punishment, has spilled me in taking a short cut through the woods to join the hunt, and smashed my best carriage.”
“Think yourself lucky—a French Jehu would have smashed the passenger! be comforted.”
“Oh, I am philosophic, countess; but it is death to have to wait.”
“Who ever heard of a Rohan waiting?”
“The present representative of the family is compelled to do it; but Prince Soubise will happen along soon to give me a lift.”
“Suppose he goes another way?
“You must step into my carriage; if you were to refuse, I should give it up to you, and with a footman to carry my train, walk in the woods like a tree nymph.”
The cardinal smiled, and seeing that longer resistance might be badly interpreted by the lady, he took the place at the back which the old duke gave up to him. The prince wanted to dispute for the lesser place but the marshal was inflexible.
The countess’s team soon regained the lost time.
“May I ask your Eminence if you are fond of the chase again,” began the lady, “for this is the first time I have seen you out with the hounds.”
“I have been out before; but this time I come to Versailles to see the King on pressing business; and I went after him as he was in the woods, but thanks to my confounded driver, I shall lose the royal audience as well as an apartment in Paris.”
“The cardinal is pretty blunt—he means a love appointment,” remarked Richelieu.
“Oh, no, it is with a man—but he is not an ordinary man—he is a magician and works miracles.”
“The very one we are seeking, the duke and I,” said Jeanne Dubarry. “I am glad we have a churchman here to ask him if he believes in miracles?”
“Madam, I have seen things done by this wizard which may not be miraculous though they are almost incredible.”
“The prince has the reputation of dealing with spirits.”
“What has your Eminence seen?”
“I have pledged myself to secresy.”
“This is growing dark. At least you can name the wizard?”
“Yes, the Count of Fenix—— ”
“That won’t do—all good magicians have names ending in the round O.”
“The cap fits—his other name is Joseph Balsamo.”
The countess clasped her hands while looking at Richelieu, who wore a puzzled look.
“And was the devil very black? did he come up in green fire and stir a saucepan with a horrid stench?”
“Why, no! my magician has excellent manners; he is quite a gentleman and entertains one capitally.”
“Would you not like him to tell your fortune, countess?” inquired the duke, well knowing that Lady Dubarry had asserted that when she was a poor girl on the Paris streets, a man had prophesied she would be a queen. This man she maintained was Balsamo. “Where does he dwell?”
“Saint Claude Street, I remember, in the Swamp.”
The countess repeated the clew so emphatically that the marshal, always afraid his secrets would leak out, especially when he was conspiring to obtain the government, interrupted the lady by these words:
“Hist, there is the King!”
“In the walnut copse, yes. Let us stay here while the prince goes to him. You will have him all to yourself.”
“Your kindness overwhelms me,” said the prelate who gallantly kissed the lady’s hand.
“But the King will be worried at not seeing you.”
“I want to tease him!”
The duke alighted with the countess, as light as a schoolgirl, and the carriage rolled swiftly away to set down the cardinal on the knoll where the King was looking all about him to see his darling.
But she, drawing the duke into the covert, said:
“Heaven sent the cardinal to put us on the track of that magician who told my fortune so true.”
“I met one—at Vienna, where I was run through the body by a jealous husband. I was all but dead when my magician came up and cured my wound with three drops of an elixir, and brought me to life with three more imbibed.”
“Mine was a young man—— ”
“Mine old as Mathusaleh, and adorned with a sounding Greek name, Althotas.”
The carriage was coming back.
“I should like to go, if only to vex the King who will not dismiss Choiseul in your favor; but I shall be laughed at.”
“In good company, then, for I will go with you.”
At full speed the horses drew the carriage to Paris, containing the young and the old plotter.
ITwas six P. M.
Saint Claude Street was in the outskirts on the main road to the Bastile Prison. The house of the Count Felix, alias Baron Balsamo, was a strong building, like a castle; and besides a room used for a chemical laboratory, another study, where the sage Althotas, to whom the duke alluded, concocted his elixir of long life, and the reception rooms, an inner house, to which secret passages led, was secluded from ordinary visitors.
In a richly furnished parlor of this secret annex, the mysterious man who, with masonic signs and words, had collected his followers on Louis XV. Place, and saved Andrea upon Gilbert’s appeal—he was seated by a lovely Italian woman who seemed rebellious to his entreaties. She had no voice but to reproach and her hand was raised to repulse though it was plain that he adored her and perhaps for that reason.
Lorenza Feliciani was his wife, but she railed at him for keeping her a prisoner, and a slave, and envied the fate of wild birds.
It was clear that this frail and irritable creature took a large place in his bosom if not in his life.
“Lorenza,” he softly pleaded, “why do you, my darling, show this hostility and resistance? Why will you not live with one who loves you beyond expression as a sweet and devoted wife? Then would you have nothing farther to long for, free to bloom in the sunshine like the flowers and spread your wings like the birds you envy. We might go about in company where the fictitious sun, artificial light, glows on the assemblies of society. You would be happy according to your tastes and make me happy in my own way. Why will you not partake of this pleasure, Lorenza, when you have beauty to make all women jealous?”
“Because you horrify me—you are not religious, and you work your will by the black art!” replied the woman haughtily.
“Then live as you condemn yourself,” he replied with a look of anger and pity; “and do not complain at what your pride earns you.”
“I should not complain if you would only leave me alone and not force me to speak to you. Let me die in my cage, for I will not sing to you.”
“You are mad,” said Balsamo with an effort and trying to smile; “for you know that you shall not die while I am at hand to guard and heal you.”
“You will not heal me on the day when you find me hanging at my window bars,” she screamed.
He shuddered.
“Or stabbed to the heart by this dagger.”
Pale and perspiring icily, Balsamo looked at the exasperated female, and replied in a threatening voice:
“You are right; I should not cure you, but I would revive you!”
The Italian woman uttered a shriek of terror for knowing there was no bounds to the magician’s powers—she believed this—and he was saved.
A bell rang three times and at equal intervals.
“My man Fritz,” said Balsamo, “notifying me that a messenger is here—in haste—— ”
“Good, at last you are going to leave me,” said Lorenza spitefully.
“Once again,” he responded, taking her cold hand, “but for the last time. Let us dwell in pleasant union; for as fate has joined us, let us make fate our friend, not an executioner.”
She answered not a word; her dead and fixed eyes seemed to seek in vacancy some thought which constantly escaped her because she had too long sought it, as the sun blinds those who wish to see the very origin of the light. He kissed her hand without her giving any token of life. As then he walked over to the fireplace, she awoke from her torper and let her gaze fall greedily upon him.
“Ha, ha,” he said, “you want to know how I leave these issueless rooms so that you may escape some day and do me harm, and my brothers of the Masonic Order by revelations. That is why you are so wide awake.”
But extending his hands, with painful constraint on himself, he made a pass while darting the magnetic fluid from palm and eye upon her eyes and breast, saying imperatively:
“Sleep!”
Scarcely was the word pronounced before Lorenza bent like a lily on its stalk; her swinging head inclined and leaned on the sofa cushions; her dead white hands slid down by her sides, rustling her silky dress.
Seeing how beautiful she was, Balsamo went up to her and placed a kiss on her brow.
Thereupon her whole countenance brightened up, as if the breath from Love’s own lips had dispelled the cloud; her mouth tremulously parted, her eyes swam in voluptuous tears, and she sighed like those angels may have sighed for the sons of man, when the world was young.
For an instant the mesmerist contemplated her as one unable to break off his ecstasy but as the bell rang again, he sprang to the fireplace, touched a spring to make the black plate swing aside like a door and so entered the house in Saint Claude Street.
In a parlor was a German servant confronting a man in courier’s attire and in horseman’s boots armed with large spurs. The vulgar visage announced one lowly born and yet his eyes were kindled with a spark of the holy fire which one superior’s mind may light.
His left hand leaned on a clubhandled whip while with his right he made signs which Balsamo understood, for he tapped his forehead with his forefinger to imply the same. The postilion’s hand then flew to his breast where he made a new sign which the uninitiated would have taken for undoing a button. To this the count responded by showing a ring on his finger.
“The Grand Master,” muttered the envoy, bending the knee to this redoubtable token.
“Whence come you?” asked Balsamo.
“From Rouen last. I am courier to the Duchess of Grammont, in whose service the Great Copt placed me with the order to have no secrets from the Master.”
“Whither go you?”
“To Versailles with a letter for the First Minister.”
“Hand it to me.”
The messenger gave Balsamo a letter from a leather bag strapped to his back.
“Wait, Fritz!” The German who had withdrawn, came to take “Sebastian” to the servant’ hall, and he went away, amazed that the Chief knew his name.
“He knows all,” remarked the servant.
Remaining alone Balsamo looked at the clear impression of the seal on the wax which the courier’s glance had seemed to beg him to respect. Slowly and thoughtfully, he went upstairs to the room where he had left Lorenza in the mesmeric slumber. She had not stirred, but she was fatigued and unnerved by the inaction. She grasped his hand convulsively when offered. He took her by the hand which squeezed his convulsively and on her heart laid the letter.
“Do you see—what do I hold in my hand—can you read this letter?”
With her eyes closed, her bosom heaving, Lorenza recited the following words which the mesmerist wrote down by this wonderful dictation.
“DEARBROTHER: As I foresaw, my exile has brought me some good. I saw the President of the Parliament at Rouen who is on our side but timid. I pressed him in your name and, deciding, he will send the remonstrances of his friends before the week is out, to Versailles. I am off at once to Rennes, to stir up Karadeuc and Lachalotais who have gone to sleep. Our Caudebec agent was at Rouen, and I saw him. England will not pause on the road, but is preparing a smart advice for the Versailles Cabinet. X asked me if it should go and I authorized it. You will receive the very latest lampoons against Dubarry’s squibs, but they will raise a town. An evil rumor has reached me that you were in disgrace but I laugh at it since you have not written me to that effect. Still do not leave me in doubt, but write me by return of courier. Your next will find me at Caen, where I have some of our adherents to warm up. Farewell, with kisses, Your loving“DUCHESSDE GRAMMONT.”
“DEARBROTHER: As I foresaw, my exile has brought me some good. I saw the President of the Parliament at Rouen who is on our side but timid. I pressed him in your name and, deciding, he will send the remonstrances of his friends before the week is out, to Versailles. I am off at once to Rennes, to stir up Karadeuc and Lachalotais who have gone to sleep. Our Caudebec agent was at Rouen, and I saw him. England will not pause on the road, but is preparing a smart advice for the Versailles Cabinet. X asked me if it should go and I authorized it. You will receive the very latest lampoons against Dubarry’s squibs, but they will raise a town. An evil rumor has reached me that you were in disgrace but I laugh at it since you have not written me to that effect. Still do not leave me in doubt, but write me by return of courier. Your next will find me at Caen, where I have some of our adherents to warm up. Farewell, with kisses, Your loving
“DUCHESSDE GRAMMONT.”
Balsamo’s forehead had cleared as the clairvoyante proceeded. “A curious document,” he commented, “which would be paid for dearly. How can they write such damning things? It is always women who ruin superior men. This Choiseul could not be overthrown by an army of enemies or a multitude of intrigues, and lo! the breath of a woman crushes him while caressing. If we have a heart, and a sensitive cord in that heart, we are lost.”
So saying he looked tenderly towards Lorenza who palpitated under his regard.
“Is what I think true?” he asked her.
“No,” she answered, ardently; “You see that I love you too well to destroy you as a senseless and heartless woman would do.”
Alas! in her mesmeric trance she spoke and felt just the contrary to what swayed her in her waking mood.
He let the arms of his enchantress interlace him till the warning bell of Fritz sounded twice.
“Two visits,” he interpreted.
A violent peal finished the telegraphed phrase.
Disengaging himself from Lorenza’s clasp, Balsamo left the room, the woman being still in the magnetic sleep. On the way he met the courier.
“Here is the letter. Bear it to the address. That is all.”
The adept of the Order looked at the envelope and the seal, and seeing that both were intact, he manifested his joy, and disappeared in the shadows.
“What a pity I could not keep such an autograph,” sighed the magician “and what a pity it cannot be placed by sure hands before the King.”
“Who is there?” he asked of Fritz who appeared.
“A young and pretty lady with an old gentleman whom I do not know as they have never called before.”
“Where are they?”
“In the parlor.”
Balsamo walked into the room where the countess had concealed her face completely in her cloak hood; she looked like a woman of the lower middle class. The marshal, more shrinking than she, was garbed in grey like an upper servant in a good house.
“My lord count,” began Dubarry, “do you know me?”
“Perfectly, my lady the countess. Will you please take a seat, and also your companion.”
“My steward,” said the lady.
“You are in error,” said the host bowing; “this is the Duke of Richelieu, whom I readily recognize and who would be very ungrateful if he did not recall one who saved his life—I might say drew him back from among the dead.”
“Oh, do you hear that, duke?” exclaimed the lady laughing.
“You, saved my life, count?” questioned Richelieu, in consternation.
“Yes, in Vienna, in 1725, when your grace was Ambassador there.”
“You were not born at that date!”
“I must have been, my lord,” replied Balsamo smiling, “for I met you dying, say dead, on a handbarrow with a fine swordthrust right through your midriff. By the same token, I dropped a little of my elixir on the gash—there, at the very place where you wear lace rather too rich for a steward!”
“But you are scarce over thirty, count,” expostulated the duke.
“But you must see that you are facing a wizard,” said the countess bursting into laughter.
“I am stupefied. In that case you would be—— ”
“Oh, we wizards change our names for every generation, my lord. In 1725, the fashion for us was to end inus,osoras, and there is no ground for astonishment that I should have worn a name either in Greek or Latin. But, Althotas or Balsamo, or Fenix, I am at your orders, countess—and at yours, duke.”
“Count, the marshal and I have come to consult you.”
“It is doing me much honor, but it is natural that you should apply to me.”
“Most naturally, for your prediction that I should become a queen is always trotting in my brain: still I doubt its coming true.”
“Never doubt what science says, lady.”
“But the kingdom is in a sore way—it would want more than three drops of the elixir which sets a duellist on his legs.”
“Ay, but three words may knock a minister off his!” retorted the magician. “There, have I hit it? Speak!”
“Perfectly,” replied the fair visitress trembling. “Truly, my lord duke, what do you say to all this?”
“Oh, do not be wonderstricken for so little,” observed Balsamo, who could divine what troubled so the favorite and the court conspirator without any witchcraft.
“The fact is I shall think highly of you if you suggest the remedy we want,” went on the marshal.
“You wish to be cured of the attacks of Choiseul?”
“Yes, great soothsayer, yes.”
“Do not leave us in the plight, my lord; your honor is at stake,” added the lovely woman.
“I am ready to serve you to my utmost; but I should like to hear if the duke had not some settled plan in calling.”
“I grant it, my lord count—Faith! it is nice to have a man of title for wizard, it does not take us out of our class.”
“Come, be frank,” said the host smiling. “You want to consult me?”
“But I can only whisper it in the strictest privacy to the count because you would beat me if you overheard, countess.”
“The duke is not accustomed to being beaten,” remarked Balsamo, which delighted the old warrior.
“The long and the short of it is that the King is dying of tedium.”
“He is no longeramusable, as Lady Maintenon used to say.”
“Nothing in that hurts my feelings, duke,” said Lady Dubarry.
“So much the better, which puts me at my ease. Well, we want an elixir to make the King merry.”
“Pooh, any quack at the corner will provide such a philter.”
“But we want the virtue to be attributed to this lady,” resumed the duke.
“My lord, you are making the lady blush,” said Balsamo. “But as we were saying just now, no philter will deliver you of Choiseul. Were the King to love this lady ten times more than at present—which is impossible—the minister would still preserve over his mind the hold which the lady has over his heart?”
“That is true,” said the duke. “But it was our sole resource.”
“I could easily find another.”
“Easily? do you hear that, countess? These magicians doubt nothing.”
“Why should I doubt when the simple matter is to prove to the King that the Duke of Choiseul betrays him—from the King’s point of view, for of course the duke does not think he is betraying him, in what he does.”
“And what is he doing?”
“You know as well as I, countess, that he is upholding Parliamentary opposition against the royal authority.”
“Certainly, but by what means?”
“By agents who foster the movement while he warrants their impunity.”
“But we want to know these agents.”
“The King sees in the journey of Lady Grammont merely an exile but you cannot believe that she went for any other errand than to fan the ardent and fire the cool.”
“Certainly, but how to prove the hidden aim?”
“By accusing the lady.”
“But the difficulty is in proving the accusation,” said the countess.
“Were it clearly proved, would the duke remain Prime Minister?”
“Surely not!” exclaimed the countess.
“This necromancer is delightful,” said old Richelieu, laughing heartily as he leaned back in his chair: “catch Choiseul redhanded in treason? that is all, and quite enough, too, ha, ha, ha!”
“Would not a confidential letter do it?” said Balsamo impassibly. “Say from Lady Grammont?”
“My good wizard, if you could conjure up one!” said the countess. “I have been trying to get one for five years and spent a hundred thousand francs a year and have never succeeded.”
“Because, madam, you did not apply to me. I should have lifted you out of the quandary.”
“Oh, I hope it is not too late!”
“It is never too late,” said Count Fenix, smiling.
“Then you have such a letter?” said the lady, clasping her hands. “Which would compromise Choiseul?”
“It would prove he sustains the Parliament in its bout with the King; eggs on England to war with France; so as to keep him indispensable: and is the enemy of your ladyship.”
“I would give one of my eyes to have it.”
“That would be too dear; particularly as I shall give you the letter for nothing.” And he drew a piece of paper folded twice from his pocket.
“The letter you want!” And in the deepest silence the letter was read by him which he had transcribed from Lorenza’s thought reading.
The countess stared as he proceeded and lost countenance.
“This is a slanderous forgery—deuce take it, have a care!” said Richelieu.
“It is the plain, literal copy of a letter from Lady Grammont on the way, by a courier from Rouen this morning, to the Duke de Choiseul at Versailles.”
“The duchess wrote such an imprudent letter?”
“It is incredible, but she has done it.”
The old courtier looked over to the countess who had no strength to say anything.
“Excuse me, count,” she said, “but I am like the duke, hard to accept this as written by the witty lady, and damaging herself and her brother; besides to have knowledge of it one must have read it.”
“And the count would have kept the precious original as a treasure,” suggested the marshal.
“Oh,” returned Balsamo, shaking his head gently; “that is the way with those who break open seals to read letters but not for those who can read through the envelopes. Fie, for shame! Besides, what interest have I in destroying Lady Grammont and the Choiseuls? You come in a friendly way to consult me and I answer in that manner. You want service done, and I do it. I hardly suppose you came fee in hand, as to a juggler in the street?”
“Oh, my lord!” exclaimed Dubarry.
“But who advised you, count?” asked Richelieu.
“You want to know in a minute as much as I, the sage, the adept, who has lived three thousand and seven hundred years.”
“Ah, you are spoiling the good opinion we had of you,” said the old nobleman.
“I am not pressing you to believe me, and it was not I who asked you to come away from the royal hunt.”
“He is right, duke,” said the lady visitor. “Do not be impatient with us, my lord.”
“The man is never impatient who has time on his hands.”
“Be so good—add this favor to the others you have done me, to tell me how you obtain such secrets?”
“I shall not hesitate, madam,” said Balsamo slowly as if he were matching words with her speech, “the revelation is made to me by a bodiless Voice. It tells me all that I desire.”
“Miraculous!”
“But you do not believe!”
“Honestly not, count,” said the duke; “how can you expect any one to believe such things?”
“Would you believe if I told you what the courier is doing who bears this letter to the Duke of Choiseul?”
“Of course,” responded the countess.
“I shall when I hear the voice,” subjoined the duke.
“But you magicians and necromanciers have the privilege of seeing and hearing the supernatural.”
Balsamo shot at the speaker so singular a glance that the countess thrilled in every vein and the sceptical egotist felt a chill down his neck and back.
“True,” said he, after a long silence, “I alone see and hear things and beings beyond your ken: but when I meet those of your grace’s rank and hight of intellect and of your beauty, fair lady, I open my treasures and share. You shall hear the mystic voice.”
The countess trembled, and the duke clenched his fist not to do the same.
“What language shall it use?”
“French,” faltered the countess. “I know no other and a strange one would give me too much fright.”
“The French for me,” said the duke. “I long to repeat what the devil says, and mark if he can discourse as correctly as my friend Voltaire.”
With his head lowered, Balsamo walked over to the little parlor door which opened on the secret stairs.
“Let me shut us in so that you will be less exposed to evil influences,” he explained.
Turning pale, the countess took the duke’s arm.
Almost touching the staircase door, Balsamo stepped into the corner where the inner dwelling was located, and where Lorenza was, and in a loud voice uttered in Arabic the words, which we translate:
“My dear, do you hear? if so, ring the bell twice.”
He watched for the effect on his auditor’ faces, for they were the more touched from not understanding the speech. The bell rang twice. The countess bounded up on the sofa and the duke wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“Since you hear me,” went on the magician in the same tongue, “push the marble knob which represents the lion’s right eye in the mantelpiece of sculpture, and a panel will open. Walk through the opening, cross my room, come down the stairs, and enter the room next where I am speaking.”
Next instant, a light rustle, like a phantom’s flight, warned Balsamo that his orders had been understood and carried out.
“What gibberish is that? the cabalistic?” queried Richelieu to appear cool.
“Yes, my lord, used in invocations of the demons. You will understand the Voice but not what I conjure it with.”
“Demons? is it the devil?”
“A superior being may invoke a superior spirit. This spirit is now in direct communication with us,” he said as he pointed to the wall which seemed to end the house and had not a perceptible break in it.
“I am afraid, duke—and are not you?”
“To tell the truth I would rather be back in the battles of Mahon or before Philipsburg.”
“Lady and lord, listen for you would hear,” said Balsamo sternly. In the midst of solemn silence, he proceeded in French:
“Are you there?”
“I am here,” replied a pure and silvery voice which penetrated the wall and tapestry so muffled as to seem a sweet-toned bell sounded at an incalculable distance, rather than a human voice.
“Plague on it! this is growing exciting,” said the duke; “and yet without red fire, the trombone, and the gong.”
“It is dreadful,” stammered the countess.
“Take heed of my questioning,” said Balsamo. “First tell me how many persons I have with me?”
“Two, a man and a woman: the man is the Duke of Richelieu, the woman, the Countess Dubarry.”
“Reading in his mind,” uttered the duke; “this is pretty clever.”
“I never saw the like,” said the countess, trembling.
“It is well,” said Balsamo; “now, read the first line of the letter which I hold.”
The Voice obeyed.
Duke and countess looked at each other with astonishment rising to admiration.
“What has happened to this letter, which I wrote under your dictation?”
“It is travelling to the west and is afar.”
“How is it travelling?”
“A horseman rides with it, clad in green vest, a hareskin cap and high boots. His horse is a piebald.”
“Where do you see him?” asked Balsamo sternly.
“On a broad road plated with trees.”
“The King’s highway—but which one?”
“I know not—roads are alike.”
“What other objects are on it?”
“A large vehicle is coming to meet the rider; on it are soldiers and priests—— ”
“An omnibus,” suggested Richelieu.
“On the side at the top is the word ‘VERSAILLES.’”
“Leave this conveyance, and follow the courier.”
“I see him not—he has turned the road.”
“Take the turn, and after!”
“He gallops his horse—he looks at his watch—— ”
“What see you in front of him?”
“A long avenue—splendid buildings—a large town.”
“Go on.”
“He lashes his steed; it is streaming with sweat—poor horse! the people turn to hear the ringing shoes on the stones. Ah, he goes down a long hilly street, he turns to the right, he slackens his pace, he stops at the door of a grand building.”
“You must now follow with attention. But you are weary. Be your weariness dispelled! Now, do you still see the courier?”
“Yes, he is going up a broad stone staircase, ushered by a servant in blue and gold livery. He goes through rooms decorated with gold. He reaches a lighted study. The footman opens the door for him and departs.”
“Enter, you! What see you?”
“The courier bows to a man sitting at a desk, whose back is to the door. He turns—he is in full dress with a broad blue ribbon crossing his breast. His eye is sharp, his features irregular, his teeth good; his age fifty or more.”
“Choiseul,” whispered the countess to the duke who nodded.
“The courier hands the man a letter—— ”
“Say the duke—it is a duke.”
“A letter,” resumed the obedient Voice, “taken from a leather satchel worn on his back. Unsealing it, the duke reads it with attention. He takes up a pen and writes on a sheet of paper.”
“It would be fine if we could learn what he wrote,” said Richelieu.
“Tell me what he writes,” said Balsamo.
“It is fine, scrawling, bad writing.”
“Read, I will it!” said the magician’s imperative voice.
The auditors held their breath.
And they heard the voice say: