“Being long-lived, I can be patient. I carry your fate—ay, that of the world in the hollow of my hand. I will not open it to let out the lightnings till I see fit. Let us come down from these sublime hights and walk on the earth.
“Gentlemen, I say with simplicity and full belief, it is not yettime. The King now reigning is the last reflection of the glory of the Great Louis who dazzles still enough to pale your ineffectual fires. A King, he will die royally: of an insolent race but pure-bred. Slay him and that will happen which befel Charles First of England: his executioners will bow to him and courtiers will kiss the ax which lops off his head. You know that England was in too much of a hurry. It is true that Charles Stuart died on the scaffold but the block was a stepping-stone for his son to reach the throne and he died on it.”
“Wait, wait, brothers, for the times are becoming propitious.
“We are sworn to destroy the lilies but we must root them up—not a stalk must be left. But the breath of fate is going to shrivel royalty up to nothing. Draw nearer and hear this—the Dauphiness, though a year wedded—— ”
“Well?” asked the chiefs with anxiety.
“She is still as when she came from her mother’s land.”
An ominous murmur, so full of hatred and revengeful triumph as to make all Kings flee, escaped like a blast of hell from the lips of this narrow circle of six heads almost touching, but towered over by Balsamo’s bending down from the stage.
“In this state of things,” he pursued, “two suppositions are presented. The race will die out and our friends will have no difficulties, combats or troubles. As happens every time three Kings succeed, the Dauphin, Provence and Artois will reign but die without posterity—it is the law of destiny.
“The other hypothesis is that the Dauphiness will yet bear children. That is the trap into which our enemies will rush in the belief that we will fall into it. We will rejoice when she is a mother, just like them; for we possess a dread secret, comprising crimes which no power, prestige or efforts can counteract. We can easily make out that the heir which she gives the throne is illegitimate and the more fecund she may be, the worse will appear her conduct.
“This is why, my brothers, that I wait; judging it useless as yet to unchain popular passions to be employed efficaciously when the right time comes.
“Now, brothers, you know how I have employed this year.You see the extent of my mines. Be persuaded that we shall succeed, but with the genius and courage of some, who are the eyes and the brain; with the labor and perseverance of others, who represent the arms; and with the faith and devotedness of others still, who are the heart.
“Be penetrated with the necessity of blind obedience which makes the Grand Copt himself stand ready to be immolated to the will of the Order’s statutes when the day comes.
“There is a good act yet to do, and an evil to point out.
“The great author who came to us this evening and would have joined us but for the stormy behavior of one of our brothers who alarmed the sensitive spirit—he was right as against us and I am sorry one of the profane was in the right before a majority of our society, who know the ritual badly and our aims not at all. Triumphing with the sophisms of his works over our Order’s truths, he represents a vice which I shall extirpate with fire and sword, unless it can be done with persuasion, as I hope. The self-conceit of one of our brothers showed itself vilely. He placed us secondary in the argument. I trust that no such fault will again be committed or else I shall have recourse to discipline.
“Now, brothers, propagate the faith with mildness and persuasion. Insinuate rather than impose, and do not try to make truths enter with hammer and ax blows like the torturers who use wedge and sledge. Remember that we shall be acknowledged great only after having proved that we have done good, and that will only happen when we shall appear better than those round us. Remember, too, that the good are nothing without science, art and faith; nothing beside those whom the Divine Architect has stamped with a peculiar seal to command men and rule an empire.
“Brothers, the meeting adjourns.”
He put on his hat and wrapped himself in his mantle. Each freemason went out in his turn, alone and silent so as not to awaken suspicion. The last with the Supreme Master was the Surgeon Marat.
Very pale, he humbly approached him for he knew the terrible speaker’s power was unlimited.
“Master, did I commit a fault?” he inquired.
“A great one, and all the worse as you are not conscious that you did so,” replied the man of mystery.
“I confess it; not only ignorant, but I thought I spoke becomingly.”
“Pride—destructive demon! men hunt for fever in the veins and search for the cancer in the vitals, but they let pride shoot up such roots deeply in their heart as never to be able to wrench them out.”
“You have a very poor opinion of me, master,” returned Marat. “Am I so paltry a fellow that I am not to be counted among my equals? Have I culled the fruit of the tree of knowledge so clumsily that I am incapable of saying a word without being taxed with ignorance? Am I so lukewarm a member that my conviction is suspected? Were this all so, still I exist by reason of my devotion to the masses.”
“Brother, it is because the spirit of evil contends in you with that of good and seems to me to promise to overpower it one day, that I undertake to correct you. If I succeed it will be in one hour, unless pride has the upperhand of all your other passions.”
“Master, make an appointment which I will keep.”
“I will call on you.”
“Mind what you promise. I am living in a garret in Cordelier’ Street. A garret, mark you, while you—” he emphasized the word with an affectation of proud simplicity.
“While I—— ”
“While, so they say, you live in a palace.”
The master shrugged his shoulders as a giant might do when jeered at by a dwarf.
“I will call upon you in your garret in the morning.”
“I go to the dissection hall at daybreak and then to the hospital.”
“That will suit me very well; I should have suggested it if you had not said it.”
“You understand—early—I do not sleep much.”
“And I never sleep at peep of day,” said Balsamo.
Upon this they separated, as they had reached the street door, dark and lonely on their going forth as it had been noisy and lively when they went in.
BALSAMOwas punctual and found, at six o’clock, Marat and his servant, a woman of all work, decking up the room with flowers in a vase in honor of the visitor. At sight of the master, the surgeon blushed more plainly than was becoming in a stoic.
“Where are we first going?” asked Balsamo when they got down to the street door.
“To Surgeon’ Hall,” was the reply. “I have selected a corpse there, a subject which died of acute meningitis; I have to make some observations on the brain and do not wish my colleagues to cut it up before I do.”
“Let us to the hall, then.”
“It is only a couple of steps; besides, you need not go in; you might wait for me at the door.”
“On the contrary, I want to go in with you and have your opinion on the subject, since it is a dead body.”
“Take care,” said Marat; “For I am an expert anatomist and have the advantage of you there.”
“Pride, more pride,” muttered the Italian.
“What is that?”
“I say that we shall see about that. Let us enter.”
Balsamo followed him without shrinking into the amphitheatre, on Hautefeuille Street. On a marble slab in the long, narrow hall were two corpses, a man’s and a woman’s. She had died young: he was old and bald; a wornout sheet veiled their bodies but half exposed their faces.
Side by side on the chilly bed, they might never have met in life and if their souls could see them now, they would have been mutually surprised at the neighborhood.
Marat pulled off the shroud of coarse linen from the two unfortunates equalised by death under the surgeon’s knife. They were nude.
“Is not the sight repugnant to you?” asked Marat with his usual braggadocia.
“It makes me sad,” replied the other.
“From not being habituated to it,” said the dissector. “I see the thing daily and I feel neither sadness nor dislike. We surgical practitioners have to live with the lifeless and we do not on their account interrupt any of the functions of our life.”
“It is a sad privilege of your profession.”
“And why should I feel in the matter? Against sadness, I have reflection; against the other thing, habit. What is to frighten me in a corpse, a statue of flesh instead of stone?”
“As you say, in a corpse there is nothing, while in the living body there is—— ”
“Motion,” replied Marat loftily.
“You have not spoken of the soul.”
“I have never come across it when I searched with my scalpel.”
“Because you searched the dead only.”
“Oh, I have probed living bodies.”
“But have met nothing more than in dead ones?”
“Yes, pain; you don’t call that the soul, do you?”
“Do you not believe in the soul?”
“I believe in it but I may call it the Moving Power, if I like.”
“Very well; all I ask is if you believe in the soul; it makes me happy to think so.”
“Stop an instant, master,” interrupted Marat with his viper-like smile: “let us come to an understanding and not exaggerate; we surgical operators are rather materialists.”
“These bodies are quite cold,” mused Balsamo aloud, “and this woman was good-looking. A fine soul must have dwelt in that fine temple.”
“There was the mistake—it was a vile blade of metal in that showy scabbard. This body, master, is that of a drab who was taken from the Magdalen Prison of St. Lazare where she died of brain fever, to the Main Hospital. Her story is very scandalous and long. If you call her moving impulse a soul, you do ours wrong.”
“The soul might have been healed and it was lost, because no physician for the soul came along.”
“Alas, master, this is another of your theories. Only for bodies are there medicines,” sneered Marat with a bitter laugh. “You use words which are a reflection of a part of ‘Macbeth,’ and it makes you smile. Who can minister to a mind diseased? Shakespeare calls your ‘sou’ the mind.”
“No, you are wrong, and you do not know why I smile. For the moment we are to conclude that these earthly vessels are empty?”
“And senseless,” went on Marat, raising the head of the woman and letting it fall down on the slab with a bang, without the remains shuddering or moving.
“Very well: let us go to the hospital now,” said Balsamo.
“Not until I have cut off the head and put it by, as this coveted head is the seat of a curious malady.”
He opened his instrument-case, took out a bistory, and picked up in a corner a mallet spotted with blood. With a skilled hand he traced a circular incision separating all the flesh and neck muscles. Cleaving to the spine, he thrust his steel between two joints and gave with the maul a sharp, forcible rap. The head rolled on the table, and bounced to the ground. Marat was obliged to pick it up with his moistened hands. Balsamo turned his head not to fill the operator with too much delight.
“One of these days,” said the latter, thinking he had caught his superior in a weak moment, “some philanthropist who ponders over death as I do over life will invent a machine to chop off the head to bring about instantaneous extinction of the vital spark, which is not done by any means of execution now in practice. The rack, the garrote the rope, these are all methods of torture appertaining to barbarous peoples and not to the civilized. An enlightened nation like France ought to punish and not revenge: for the society which racks, strangles and decapitates by the sword inflicts punishment by the pain besides that of death alone, the culprit’s portion. This is overdoing the penalty by half, I think.”
“It is my opinion, too. What idea do you have of such an instrument?”
“A machine, cold and emotionless as the Law itself; the man charged with the inflection is affected by the sight of thecriminal in his own likeness; and he misses his stroke, as at the beheading of Chalais and of the Duke of Monmouth. A machine would not do that, say, a wooden arm which brought down an ax on the neck.”
“I have seen something of the kind in operation, the Maiden, it is called in Scotland, and the Mannaja, in Italy. But I have also seen the decapitated criminals rise without their heads, from the seat on which they were placed, and stagger off a dozen paces. I have picked up such heads, by the hair, as you just did that one which tumbled off the table, and when I uttered in the ear the name with which it was baptized, I saw the eyes open to see who called and showed that still on the earth it had quitted one could cry after what was passing from time to eternity.”
“Merely a nervous movement.”
“Are not the nerves the organs of sense? I conclude that it would be better for man, instead of seeking a machine to kill without pain for punishment, he had better seek the way to punish without killing. The society that discovers that will be the best and most enlightened.”
“Another Utopia!” exclaimed Marat.
“Perhaps you are right, this once,” responded Balsamo. “It is time that will enlighten us.”
Marat wrapped up the female head in his handkerchief which he tied by the four corners in a knot.
“In this way, I am sure that my colleagues will not rob me of my head,” he said.
Walking side by side the dreamer and the practitioner went to the great Hospital.
“You cut that head off coldly and skillfully,” said the former. “Have you less emotion when dealing with the quick? Does suffering affect you less than insensibility? Are you more pitiless with living bodies than the dead?”
“No, for it would be a fault, as in an executioner to let himself feel anything. A man would die from being miscut in the limb as surely as though his head were struck off. A good surgeon ought to operate with his hand and not his heart, though he knows in his heart that he is going to give years of life and happiness for the second’s suffering. That is the golden lining to our profession.”
“Yes; but in the living, I hope you meet with the soul?”
“Yes, if you hold that the soul is the moving impulse—the sensitiveness; that I do meet, and it is very troublesome sometimes for it kills more patients than my scalpel.”
Guided by Marat, who would not put aside his ghastly burden, Balsamo was introduced into the operation ward, crowded with the chief surgeon and the students.
The aids brought in a young man, knocked down the previous week by a heavy wagon which had crushed his foot. A hasty operation at that time had not sufficed; mortification had spread and amputation of the leg was necessary. Stretched on the bed of anguish, the poor fellow looked with a terror which would have melted tigers, on the band of eager men who waited for the time of his martyrdom, his death perchance, to study the science of life—the marvellous phenomenon which conceals the gloomy one of death. He seemed to sue from the surgeon and assistants some smile of comfort, but he met indifference on all sides, steel in every eye.
A remnant of courage and manly pride kept him mute, reserving all to try to check the screams which agony would tear from him.
Still, when he felt the kindly heavy hand of the porter on his shoulder, and the aid's arms interlace him like serpents, and heard the operator’s voice saying “Keep up your pluck my brave man!” he ventured to break the stillness by asking in a plaintive tone:
“You are not going to hurt me much?”
“Not at all; be quiet,” replied Marat, with a false smile which might seem sweet to the sufferer, but was ironical to Balsamo, and noting that the latter had seen through him, the young surgeon whispered to him:
“It is a dreadful operation. The bone is splintered and sensitive so as to make any one pity him. He will die of the pain, not the injury; that will make his soul want to fly away.”
“Why operate on him—why not let him die tranquilly?”
“Because it is a surgeon’s duty to attempt a cure when it is impossible.”
“But you say that he will suffer dreadfully on account ofhis having a soul too tender for his frame? then, why not operate on the soul so that the tranquillity of the one will be the salvation of the other?”
“Just what I have done,” replied Marat, while the patient was tied down. “By my words, I spoke to the soul—to his sensitiveness, what made the Greek philosopher say, ‘Pain, thou art no ill.’ I told him he would not feel much pain, and it is the business of his soul not to feel any. That is the only remedy known up to the present. As for the questions of the soul—lies! why is this deuce of a soul clamped to the body? When I knocked this head off a spell ago, the body said nothing. Yet that was a grave operation enough. But the movement had ceased, sensitiveness was no more and the soul had fled, as you spiritualists say. That is why the head and the body which I severed, made no remonstrance to me. But the body of this unhappy fellow with the soul still in, will be yelling awfully in a little while. Stop up your ears closely, master. For you are sensitive, and your theory will be killed by the shock, until the day when your theory can separate the soul from the body.”
“You believe such separation will never come?” said Balsamo.
“Try, for this is a capital opening.”
“I will; this young man interests me and I do not want him to feel the pain.”
“You are a leader of men,” said Marat, “but you are not a heavenly being, and you cannot prevent the lad from suffering.”
“If he should not suffer, would his recovery be sure?”
“It would be likely, but not sure.”
Balsamo cast an inexpressible look of triumph on the speaker and placing himself before the patient, whose frightened and terror-filled eyes he caught, he said: “Sleep!” not with the mouth solely but with look, will, all the heat of his blood and the fluid electricity in his system.
At this instant the chief surgeon was beginning to feel the injured thigh and point out to the pupils the extent of the ail.
But at this command from the mesmerist, the young man,who had been raised by an assistant, swung a little and let his head sink, while his eyes closed.
“He feels bad,” said Marat; “he loses consciousness.”
“Nay, he sleeps.”
Everybody looked at this stranger whom they took for a lunatic.
Over Marat’s lips flitted a smile of incredulity.
“Does a man usually speak in a swoon?” asked Balsamo. “Question him and he will answer you.”
“I say, young man,” shouted Marat.
“No, there is no need for you to halloo at him,” said Balsamo, “he will hear you in your ordinary voice.”
“Give us an idea what you are doing?”
“I was told to sleep, and I am sleeping,” replied the patient, in a perfectly unruffled voice strongly contrasting with that heard from him shortly before.
All the bystanders stared at one another.
“Now, untie him,” said Balsamo.
“No, you must not do that,” remonstrated the head surgeon, “the operation would be spoilt by the slightest movement.”
“I assure you that he will not stir, and he will do the same: ask him.”
“Can you be left free, my friend?”
“I can.”
“And you promise not to budge?”
“I promise, if I am ordered so.”
“I order you.”
“Upon my word, sir,” said the chief surgeon, “you speak with so much certainty that I am inclined to try the experiment.”
“Do so, and have no fear.”
“Unbind him,” said the surgeon.
As the men obeyed Balsamo went to the head of the couch.
“From this time forward do not stir till I bid you.”
A statue on a tombstone could not be more motionless than the patient after this command.
“Now, sir, proceed with the operation; the patient is properly prepared.”
The surgeon had his steel ready, but he hesitated at the beginning.
“Proceed,” repeated Balsamo with the manner of an inspired prophet.
Mastered as Marat and the patient had been and as all the rest were, the surgeon put the knife edge to the flesh: it “squeaked” literally at the cut, but the patient did not flinch or utter a sigh.
“What countryman are you, friend?” asked the mesmerist.
“From Brittany, my lord.”
“Do you love your country?”
“Ay, it is such a fine one,” and he smiled.
Meanwhile the operator was making the circular incisions which are the preliminary steps in amputations to lay the bone bare.
“Did you leave it when early in life?” continued Balsamo.
“I was only ten years old, my lord.”
The cuts being made, the surgeon applied the saw to the gash.
“My friend,” said Balsamo, “sing me that song the saltmakers of Batz sing on knocking off work of an evening. I only remember the first line which goes:
‘Hail to the shining salt!’”
The saw bit into the bone: but at the request of the magnetiser, the patient smilingly commenced to sing, slowly and melodiously like a lover or a poet:
“Hail to the shining salt,Drawn from the sky-blue lake:Hail to the smoking kiln,And my rye-and-honey cake!Here comes wife and dad,And all my chicks I love:All but the one who sleeps,Yon, in the heather grove.Hail! for there ends the day,And to my rest I come:After the toil the pay;After the pay, I’m home.”
The severed limb fell on the board, but the man was still singing. He was regarded with astonishment and the mesmeriser with admiration. They thought both were insane. Marat repeated this impression in Balsamo’s ear.
“Terror drove the poor lad out of his wits so that he felt no pain,” he said.
“I am not of your opinion,” replied the Italian sage: “far from having lost his wits, I warrant that he will tell us if I question him, the day of his death if he is to die; or how long his recovery will take if he is to get through.”
Marat was now inclined to share the general opinion that his friend was mad, like the patient.
In the meantime the surgeon was taking up the arteries from which spirted jets of blood.
Balsamo took a phial from his pocket, let a few drops fall on a wad of lint, and asked the chief surgeon to apply this to the cut. He obeyed with marked curiosity.
He was one of the most celebrated operators of the period, truly in love with his science, repudiating none of its mysteries, and taking hazard as the outlet to doubt. He clapped the plug to the wound, and the arteries seared up, hissing, and the blood came through only drop by drop. He could then tie the grand artery with the utmost facility.
Here Balsamo obtained a true triumph, and everybody wanted to know where he had studied and of what school he was.
“I am a physician of the University of Gottingen,” he replied, “and I made the discovery which you have witnessed. But, gentlemen and brothers of the lancet and ligature, I should like it kept secret, as I have great fear of being burnt at the stake, and the Parliament of Paris might once again like the spectacle of a wizard being so treated.”
The head surgeon was brooding; Marat was dreaming and reflecting. But he was the first to speak.
“You asserted,” he said, “that if this man were interrogated about the result of his operation he would certainly tell it though it is in the womb of the future?”
“I said so: what is the man’s name?”
“Havard.”
Balsamo turned to the patient, who was still humming the lay.
“Well, friend, what do you augur about our poor Havard’s fate?” he asked.
“Wait till I come back from Brittany, where I am, and get to the Hospital where Havard is.”
“Of course. Come hither, enter, and tell me the truth about him.”
“He is in a very bad way; they have cut off his leg. That was neatly done, but he has a dreadful strait to go through; he will have fever to-night at seven o’clock—— ”
The bystanders looked at each other.
“This fever will pull him down; but I am sure he will get through the first fit.”
“And will be saved?”
“No: for the fever returns and—poor Havard! he has a wife and little ones!”
His eyes filled with tears.
“His wife will be left a widow and the little ones orphans?”
“Wait, wait—no, no!” he cried, clasping his hands. “They prayed so hard for him that their prayers have been granted.”
“He will get well?”
“Yes, he will go forth from here, where he came five days ago, a hale man, two months and fifteen days after.”
“But,” said Marat, “incapable of working and consequently to feed his family.”
“God is good and he will provide.”
“How?” continued Marat: “while I am gathering information, I may as well learn this?”
“God hath sent to his bedside a charitable lord who took pity on him, and he is saying to himself: ‘I am not going to let poor Havard want for anything.’”
All looked at Balsamo, who smiled.
“Verily, we witness a singular incident,” remarked the head surgeon, as he took the patient’s hand and felt his pulse and his forehead. “This man is dreaming aloud.”
“Do you think so?” retorted the mesmerist. “Havard, awake,” he added with a look full of authority and energy.
The young man opened his eyes with an effort and gazed with profound surprise on the bystanders, become for him as inoffensive as they were menacing at the first.
“Ah, well,” he said, “have you not begun your work? Are you going to give me pain?”
Balsamo hastened to speak as he feared a shock to the sufferer. There was no need for him to hasten as far as the others were concerned as none of them could get out a word, their surprise was so great.
“Keep quiet, friend,” he said; “the chief surgeon has performed on your leg an operation which suits the requirement of your case. My poor lad, you must be rather weak of mind, for you swooned away at the outset.”
“I am glad I did for I felt nothing of it,” replied the Breton merrily: “my sleep was a sweet one and did me good. What a good thing that I am not to lose my leg.”
At this very moment he looked over himself, and saw the couch flooded with blood and the severed limb. He uttered a scream and swooned away, this time really.
“Question him, now, and see whether he will reply,” said Balsamo sternly to Marat.
Taking the chief surgeon aside while the aids carried the patient to his bed, he said:
“You heard what the poor fellow said—— ”
“About his getting well?”
“About heaven having pity on him and inspiring a nobleman to help his family. He spoke the truth on that head as on the other. Will you please be the intermediary between heaven and your patient. Here is a diamond worth about twenty thousand livres; when the man is nearly able to go out, sell it and give him the money. Meanwhile, since the soul has great influence on the body, as your pupil Marat says justly, tell Havard that his future is assured.”
“But if he should not recover,” said the doctor hesitating.
“He will.”
“Still I must give you a receipt; I could not think of taking an object of this value otherwise.”
“Just as you please; my name is Count Fenix.”
Five minutes afterwards Balsamo put the receipt in his pocket, and went out accompanied by Marat.
“Do not forget your head!” said Balsamo, to whom the absence of mind in this cool student was a compliment.
Marat parted from the chief of the Order with doubt in his heart but meditation in his eyes, and he said to himself: “Does the soul really exist?”
ROUSSEAUhad been cheated into going to take breakfast with the royal favorite: he was formally invited by the Dauphiness to come to Trianon to conduct in person one of his operas in which she and her ladies and titled amateurs generally were to take the parts even to the supernumeraries.
He had not attired himself specially and he had stuffed his head with a lot of disagreeable plain truths to speak to the King, if he had a chance.
To the courtiers, however, it was the same to see him as any other author or composer, curiosities all, whom the grandees hire to perform in their parlors or on their lawns.
The King received him coldly on account of his costume, dusty with the journey in the omnibus, but he addressed him with the limpid clearness of the monarch which drove from Rousseau’s head all the platitudes he had rehearsed.
But as soon as the rehearsal was begun, the attention was drawn to the piece and the composer was forgotten.
But he was remarking everything; the noblemen in the dress of peasants sang as far out of tune as the King himself; the ladies in the attire of court shepherdesses flirted. The Dauphiness sang correctly, but she was a poor actress; besides, she had so little voice that she could hardly be heard. The Dauphin spoke his lines. In short, the opera scarcely got on in the least.
Only one consolation came to Rousseau. He caught sightof one delightful face among the chorus-ladies and it was her voice which sounded the best of all.
“Eh,” said the Dauphiness, following his look, “has Mdlle. de Taverney made a fault?”
Andrea blushed as she saw all eyes turn upon her.
“No, no!” the author hastened to say, “that young lady sings like an angel.”
Lady Dubarry darted a glance on him sharper than a javelin.
On the other hand Baron Taverney felt his heart melt with joy and he smiled his warmest on the composer.
“Do you think that child sings well?” questioned Lady Dubarry of the King, whom Rousseau’s words had visibly struck.
“I could not tell,” he said: “while they are all singing together. One would have to be a regular musician to discover that.”
Rousseau still kept his eyes on Andrea who looked handsomer than ever with a high color.
The rehearsal went on and Lady Dubarry became atrociously out of temper: twice she caught Louis XV. absent-minded when she was saying cutting things about the play.
Though the incident had also made the Dauphiness jealous, she complimented everybody and showed charming gaiety. The Duke of Richelieu hovered round her with the agility of a youth, and gathered a band of merrymakers at the back of the stage with the Dauphiness as the centre: this furiously disquieted the Dubarry clique.
“It appears that Mdlle. de Taverney is blessed with a pretty voice,” he said in a loud voice.
“Delightful,” said the princess; “if I were not so selfish, I would have her play Colette. But I took the part to have some amusement and I am not going to let another play it.”
“Nay, Mdlle. de Taverney would not sing it better than your Royal Highness,” protested Richelieu, “and—— ”
“She is an excellent musician,” said Rousseau, who was penetrated with Andrea’s value in his line.
“Excellent,” said the Dauphiness; “I am going to tell the truth, that she taught me my part; and then she dances ravishingly, and I do not dance a bit.”
You may judge of the effect of all this on the King, his favorite, and all this gathering of the envious, curious, intriguers, and news-mongers. Each received a gain or a sting, with pain or shame. There were none indifferent except Andrea herself.
Spurred on by Richelieu, the Dauphiness induced Andrea to sing the ballad:
“I have lost my only joy—Colin leaves me all alone.”
The King was seen to mark time with a nodding of the head, in such keen pleasure that the rouge scaled off Lady Dubarry’s face in flakes like a painting in the damp.
More spiteful than any woman, Richelieu enjoyed the revenge he was having on Dubarry. Sidling round to old Taverney, the pair resembled a group of Hypocrisy and Corruption signing a treaty of union.
Their joy brightened all the more as the cloud darkened on Dubarry’s brow. She finished by springing up in a pet, which was contrary to all etiquet, for the King was still in his seat.
Foreseeing the storm like ants, the courtiers looked for shelter. So the Dauphiness and La Dubarry were both clustered round by their friends.
The interest in the rehearsal gradually deviated from its natural line and entered into a fresh order of things. Colin and Colette, the lovers in the piece, were no longer thought of, but whether Madame Dubarry might not have to sing:
“I have lost my only joy—Colin leaves me all alone.”
“Do you see the stunning success of that girl of yours?” asked Richelieu of Taverney.
He dashed open a glazed door to lead him into the lobby, when the act made a knave who was standing on the knob to peer into the hall, drop to the ground.
“Plague on the rogue,” said the duke; brushing his sleeve, for the shock of the drop had dusted him. He saw that thespy was clad like one of the working people about the Palace.
It was a gardener’s help, in fact, for he had a basket of flowers on his arm. He had saved himself from falling but spilt the flowers.
“Why, I know the rogue,” said Taverney, “he was born on my estate. What are you doing here, rascal?”
“You see, I am looking on,” replied Gilbert proudly.
“Better finish your work.”
“My work is done,” replied the young man humbly to the duke, without deigning to reply to the baron.
“I run up against this idle vagabond everywhere,” grumbled the latter.
“Here, here, my lord,” gently interrupted a voice; “my little Gilbert is a good workman and a most earnest botanist.”
Taverney turned and saw Dr. Jussieu stroking the cheek of his ex-dependent. He turned red with rage and went off.
“The lackeys poking their noses in here!” he growled.
“And the maids, too—look at your Nicole, at the corner of the door there. The sly puss, she does not let a wink escape her.”
Among twenty other servants, Nicole was holding her pretty head over theirs from behind and her eyes, dilated by surprise and admiration, seemed to see double. Perceiving her, Gilbert turned aloof.
“Come,” said the duke to Taverney, “it is my belief that the King wants to speak to you. He is looking round for somebody.”
The two friends made their way to the royal box.
Lady Dubarry and Aiguillon, both on their feet, were chatting.
Rousseau was alone in the admiration of Andrea; he was busy falling into love with her.
The illustrious actors were changing their dresses in their retiring rooms, where Gilbert had renewed the floral decorations.
Taverney, left by himself in the corridor while Richelieu went to the King, felt his heart alternately frozen and seared by the expectation.
Finally his envoy returned and laid a finger on his lips.His friend turned pale with joy, and was drawn under the royal box, where they heard what had few auditors.
Lady Dubarry was saying: “Am I to expect your Majesty to supper this evening?” and the reply was “I am afraid I am too tired and should like to be excused.”
At this juncture the Dauphin dropped into the box and said, almost stepping on the countess’s toes without appearing to see her:
“Sire, is your Majesty going to do us the honor of taking supper at the Trianon?”
“No, my son; I was just saying to the countess that I am too tired for anything. All your youthful liveliness bewilders me; I shall take supper alone.”
The prince bowed and retired. Lady Dubarry courtseyed very low and went her way, quivering with ire. The King then beckoned to Richelieu.
“Duke, I have some business to talk to you upon; I have not been pleased with the way matters go on. I want an explanation, and you may as well make it while we have supper. I think I know this gentleman, duke?” he continued, eyeing Taverney.
“Certainly—it is Taverney.”
“Oh, the father of this delightful songstress?”
“Yes, Sire.”
The King whispered in the duke’s ear while the baron dug his nails into his flesh to hide his emotion.
A moment after, Richelieu said to his friend: “Follow me, without seeming to do so.”
“Where?”
“Never mind—come, all the same.”
The duke set off and Taverney followed within twenty paces to a room where the following gentleman stopped in the anteroom.
He had not long to wait there. Richelieu, having asked the royal valet for what his master had left on the toilet table, came forth immediately with an article which the baron could not distinguish in its silken wrapper. But the marshal soon drew him out of his disquiet when he led him to the side of the gallery.
“Baron, you have sometimes doubted my friendship for you,” observed the duke when they were alone, “and then you doubted the good fortune of yourself and children. You were wrong, for it has come about for you all with dazzling rapidity.”
“You don’t say that?” said the old cynic, catching a glimpse of part of the truth; he was not yet sundered from good and hence not entirely enlisted by the devil. “How is this?”
“Well, we have Master Philip made a captain with a company of soldiers furnished by the King. And Mdlle. de Taverney is nigh to being a marchioness.”
“Go to! my daughter a—— ”
“Listen to me, Taverney: the King is full of good taste. When talent accompanies grace, beauty and virtue, it enchants him. Now, your girl unites all these gifts in an eminent degree so that he is delighted by her.”
“I wish you would make the word ‘delighted’ clearer, duke,” said the other, putting on an air of dignity more grotesque than the speaker’s, which the latter thought grotesque as he did not like pretences.
“Baron,” he drily replied, “I am not strong on language and not even good at spelling. For me, delighted signifies pleased beyond measure. If you would not be delighted beyond measure to see your sovereign content with the grace, beauty and virtue of your offspring, say so. I will go back to his Majesty,” and he spun round on his red heels with quite youthful sprightliness.
“Duke, you don’t understand me—hang it! how sudden you are,” grumbled Taverney, stopping him.
“Why do you say you are not pleased?”
“I never said so.”
“You ask comments on the King’s good pleasure—plague on the dunce who questions it!”
“Again, I tell you, I never opened my mouth on that subject. It is certain that I am pleased.”
“Yes, you—for any man of sense would be: but your girl?”
“Humph!”
“My dear fellow, you have brought up the child like the savage that you are.”
“My dear fellow, she has brought herself up all alone; you might guess that I did not bother myself about her. It was hard enough to keep alive in that hole at Taverney. Virtue sprang up in her of its own impulsion.”
“Yet I thought that the rural swains rooted out ill weeds. In short, your girl is a nun.”
“You are wrong—she is a dove.”
Richelieu made a sour face.
“The dove had better get another turtle to mate, for the chances to make a fortune with that blessing are pretty scarce nowadays.”
Taverney looked at him uneasily.
“Luckily,” went on the other, “the King is so infatuated with Dubarry that he will never seriously lean towards others.”
Taverney’s disquiet became anxiety.
“You and your daughter need not worry,” continued Richelieu. “I will raise the proper objections to the King and he will think no more about it.”
“About what?” gasped the old noble, pale, as he shook his friend’s arm.
“About making a little present to Mdlle. Andrea.”
“A little present—what is it?” cried the baron full of hope and greediness.
“A mere trifle,” said Richelieu, negligently, as he opened the parcel and showed a diamond collar. “A miserable little trinket costing only a few thousand livres, which his Majesty, flattered by having heard his favorite song sung well, wanted the singer to be sued to accept. It is the custom. But let us say no more since your daughter is so easily frightened.”
“But you do not seem to see that a refusal would offend the King.”
“Of course; but does not virtue always tread on the corn of somebody or other?”
“To tell the truth, duke, the girl is not so very lost to reason. I know what she will say or do.”
“The Chinese are a very happy people,” observed Richelieu.
“How so?” asked Taverney, stupefied.
“Because they are allowed to drown girls who are a trouble to their parents and nobody says a word.”
“Come, duke, you ought to be fair,” said Taverney; “suppose you had a daughter.”
“‘Sdeath! have I not a daughter, and it would be mighty unkind of anybody to slander her by saying she was ice. But I never interfere with my children after they get out of the nursery.”
“But if you had a daughter and the King were to offer her a collar?”
“My friend, pray, no comparisons. I have always lived in the court and you have lived latterly like a Red Indian; there is no likeness. What you call virtue I rate as stupidity. Learn for your guidance that nothing is more impolite than to put it to people what they would do in such a case. Besides, your comparison will not suit. I am not the bearer of a diamond collar to Mdlle. de Taverney, as Lebel the valet of the King is a carrier; when I have such a mission, which is honorable as the present is rich, I am moral as the next man. I do not go near the young lady, who is admirable for her virtue—I go to her father—I speak to you, Taverney, and I hand you the collar, saying: Take it or leave it.”
“If the present is only a matter of custom,” observed the baron: “if legitimate and paternal—— ”
“Why, you are never daring to suspect his Majesty of evil intentions,” said Richelieu, gravely.
“God forbid, but what will the world say—I mean, my daughter—— ”
“Yes or no, do you take it,” demanded the intermediary, shrugging his shoulders.
Out darted Taverney’s fingers, as he said with a smile twin-like to the envoy’s:
“Thus you are moral.”
“Is it not pure morality,” returned the marshal, “to place the father, who purifies all, between the enchanted state of the monarch and the charm of your daughter? Let Jean Jacques Rousseau, who was in these precincts a while ago, be the judge: he will declare that the famous Joseph of Biblical name was impure alongside of me.”
He uttered these words with a phlegm, dry nobility, and perkiness imposing silence on Taverney’s observations, andhelping him to believe that he ought to dwell convinced. So he grasped his illustrious friend’s hand and as he squeezed it, he said:
“Thanks to your delicacy, my daughter may accept this present.”
“The source and origin of the fortune of which I was speaking to you at the commencement of our annoying discussion on virtue.”
“I thank you with all my heart, duke.”
“One word: most carefully keep the news of this boon from the Dubarry’s friends. She is capable of quitting the King and running away.”
“Would the King be sorry for that?”
“I do not know, but the countess would bear you ill-will. I would be lost, in that case; so be wary.”
“Fear nothing: but bear my most humble thanks to his Majesty.”
“And your daughter’s—I shall not fail. But you are not at the end of the favor. You can thank him personally, dear friend, for you are invited to sup with him. We are a family party. We—his Majesty, you, and I, will talk about your daughter’s virtue. Good bye, Taverney! I see Dubarry with Aiguillon and they must not spy us in conversation.”
Light as a page, he skipped out of the gallery, leaving the old baron with the jewels, like a child waking up and finding what Santa Claus left in his sock while he slept.
THEmarshal found his royal master in the little parlor, whither a few courtiers had followed him, preferring to lose their meal than have his glances fall on somebody else.
But Louis had other matters to do than look at these lords. The paltriness of these parasites would have made him smile at another time: but they awakened no emotion on this occasion in the railing monarch, who would spare no infirmity in his best friend—granting that he had any friends.
He went to the window and saw the coach of Dubarry driven away at great speed.
“The countess must be in a rage to go off without saying good-bye to me,” he said aloud.
Richelieu, who had been waiting for his cue to enter, glided in at this speech.
“Furious, Sire?” he repeated; “because your Majesty had a little sport this evening? that would be bad on her ladyship’s part.”
“Duke, deuce a bit did I find sport,” said the King: “on the other hand, I am fagged, and want repose. Music enervates me: I should have done better to go over to Luciennes for supper and wine: yes, plenty of drink, for though the wine there is wretched, it sends one to sleep. Still I can have a doze here.”
“Your Majesty is a hundred times right.”
“Besides, the countess will find more fun without me. Am I so very lively a companion? though she asserts I am, I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Your Majesty is a hundred times wrong, now.”
“No, no, duke; really! I count my days now and I fall into brown studies.”
“Sire, the lady feels that she will never meet a jollier companion and that is what makes her mad.”
“Dash me if I know how you manage it, duke; you lure all the fair sex after you, as if you were still twenty. At that age, man may pick and choose: but at mine—women lead us by the nose.”
The marshal laughed.
“My lord, if the countess is finding diversion elsewhere, the more reason for us to find ours where we can.”
“I do not say that she is finding but that she will seek it.”
“I beg to say that such a thing was never known.”
“Duke,” said the King, rising from the seat he had taken, “I should like to know by a sure hand whether the countess has gone home.”
“I have my man Rafté, but it seems to me that the countesshas gone sure enough. Where but straight home do you imagine she would go?”
“Who can tell—jealousy has driven her mad.”
“Sire, would it not rather be your Majesty who has given her cause for it—any other assumption would be humiliating to all of us.”
“I, make her jealous,” said the King with a forced laugh; “in fact, duke, are you speaking in earnest?”
Richelieu did not believe what he said: he was close to the truth in thinking that the King wanted to know whether Lady Dubarry had gone home in order to be sure that she would not drop in at the Trianon.
“I will send Rafté to learn,” he said: “what is your Majesty going to do before supper?”
“We shall sup at once. Is the guest without?”
“Overflowing with gratitude.”
“And the daughter?”
“He has not mentioned her yet.”
“If Lady Dubarry were jealous and was to come back—— ”
“Oh, Sire, that would show such bad taste, and I do not believe the lady is capable of such enormity.”
“My lord, she is fit for anything at such times, particularly when hate supplements her spite. She execrates Taverney, as well as your grace.”
“Your Majesty might include a third person still more execrated—Mdlle. Andrea.”
“That is natural enough,” granted the King; “so it ought to be prepared that no uproar could be made to-night. Here is the steward—hush! give your orders to Rafté, and bring the person into the supper room.”
In five minutes, Richelieu rejoined the King, accompanied by Taverney, to whom the host wished good evening most pleasantly.
The baron was sharp and he knew how to reply to crowned and coroneted heads so that they would see he was one of themselves and be on easy terms with them.
They sat at table and began to feast.
Louis XV. was not a good King, but he was a first-rate boon companion; when he liked, he was fine company for thosewho like jolly eaters, hearty drinkers and merry talkers. He ate well and drew the conversation round to Music. Richelieu caught the ball on the fly.
“Sire,” said he, “if Music brings men into harmony, as our ballet-master says and your Majesty seems to think, I wonder if it works the same with the softer sex?”
“Oh, duke, do not drag them into the chat,” said the King. “From the siege of Troy to our days, women have always exerted the contrary effect to music. You above all have good reasons not to bring them on the board. With one, and not the least dangerous, you are at daggers-drawn.”
“The countess, Sire? is it any fault of mine?”
“It is.”
“I hope your Majesty will kindly explain—— ”
“I can briefly; and will with pleasure,” returned the host jestingly: “public rumor says that she offered you the portfolio of some ministerial office and you refused it, which won you the people’s favor.”
Richelieu of course only too clearly saw that he was impaled in the dilemma. The King knew better than anybody that he had not been offered any place in any cabinet. But it was necessary to keep Taverney in the idea that it had been done. Hence the duke had to answer the joke so skillfully as to avoid the reproach the baron was getting ready for him.
“Sire,” said he, “let us not argue about the effects so much as the cause. My refusal of a portfolio is a secret of state which your Majesty is the last to divulge at a merry board; but the cause of my rejecting, it is another matter.”
“Ho, ho, so the cause is not a state secret, eh?” said the King chuckling.
“No, Sire, particularly none for your Majesty: who is at present, for my lord baron and myself, the most amiable host man mortal ever had; I have no secrets from my master. I yield up my whole mind to him for I do not wish it to be said that the King of France has a servant who does not tell him the truth.”
“Pray, let us have the whole truth,” said the monarch, while Taverney smoothed his face in imitation of the King’s for fear the duke would go too far.
“Sire, in the kingdom are two powers that should be obeyed; your will, to begin with, and next that of the friends whom you deign to choose as intimates. The first power is irresistible and none try to elude it. The second is more sacred as it imposes duties of the heart on whomsoever serves you. This is called your trust: a minister ought to love while he obeys the favorite of your Majesty.”
“Duke,” said the King, laughing: “That is a fine maxim which I like to hear coming from your mouth. But I defy you to shout it out on the market-place.”
“Oh, I am well aware that it would make the philosophers fly to arms,” replied the old politician; “but I do not believe their cries or their arms much daunt your Majesty or me. The main point is that the two preponderating wills of the realm should be satisfied. Well, I shall speak out courageously to your Majesty, though I incur my disgrace or even my death—I cannot subscribe to the will of Lady Dubarry.”
Louis was silent.
“But then,” went on the duke, “is that ever to be the only other will? the contrary idea struck me the other day, when I looked around the court and saw the beavy of radiantly beauteous noble girls; were I the ruler of France, the choice would not be difficult to make.”
Louis turned to the second guest, who, feeling that he was being brought into the arena, was palpitating with hope and fear while trying to inspire the marshal, like a boy blows on the sail of his toy-boat in a tub of water.
“Is this your way of thinking, baron?” he asked.
“Sire,” responded the baron with a swelling heart, “it seems to me that the duke is saying capital things.”
“You agree with him about the handsome girls?”
“Why, my lord, it is plain that the court is adorned with the fairest blossoms of the country.”
“Do you exhort me then to make a choice among the court beauties?”
“I should say I am altogether of the marshal’s advice if I knew it was your Majesty’s opinion.”
During a pause the monarch looked complaisantly on the last speaker.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I should snap at your advice were I thirty; but I am a little too old now to be credulous about my inspiring a flame.”
“Oh, Sire,” said Richelieu, “I did think up to the time being that your Majesty was the most polite gentleman in the realm; but I see with profound grief that I was wrong; for I am old as Mathusaleh, for I was born in ‘94. Just think of it, I am sixteen years older than your Majesty.”
This was adroit flattery. Louis always admired the lusty old age of this man who had outlived so many promising youngsters in his service; for with such an example he might hope to reach the same age.
“Granted: but I suppose you do not still fancy you can be loved for your own sake?”
“If I thought that aloud, I should be in disgrace with two ladies who told me the contrary this very morning.”
“Ha, ha! but we shall see, my lords! Nothing like youthful society to rejuvenate a man.”
“Yea, my lord, and noble blood is a salutary infusion, to say nothing of the gain to the mind.”
“Still, I can remember that my grandfather, when he was getting on in years, never courted with the same dash as earlier.”
“Pish, Sire,” said Richelieu. “You know my respect for the King who twice put me in the Bastile; but that ought not to stay me from saying that there is no room for a comparison between the old age of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. at his prime.”
The King was in the meet state this evening to receive this praise, which fell on him like the spray from the Fountain of Youth, or Althota’s magic elixir.
Thinking the opening had come, Richelieu gave Taverney the hint by knocking his knee against his.
“Sire,” said the baron, “will your Majesty allow me to present my thanks for the magnificent present made my daughter?”
“Nothing to thank me for, my lord. Mdlle. de Taverney pleased me with her decent and honorable bearing. I only wish my daughters had come from the convent as creditably.Certainly, Mdlle. Andrea—I think I have the name—— ”
“Yes, Sire,” cried the noble, delighted at the King having his daughter’s name so pat.
“A pretty name! Certainly, she would have been the first on my list, and not solely from the alphabetical order: but it is not to be thought of—all my time is monopolized. But, baron, take this as settled: the young lady shall have all my protection. I fear she is not richly dowered?”
“Alas, no, Sire!”
“Then, I shall arrange about her marriage.”
Taverney saluted very lowly.
“Rest on that score: but nothing presses, for she is quite young.”
“Yes, and shrinks from marriage.”
“Look at that, now!” exclaimed Louis, rubbing his hands and glancing at Richelieu. “In any case, apply to me if you are bothered in any way. Marshal,” called the King, rising. “Did the little creature like the jewel?” he asked him.
“Pardon my speaking in an undertone,” said the duke, “but I do not want the father to hear. I want to say that though the creature shrinks from marriage, it does not follow that she shrinks from Majesty.”
This was uttered with a freedom which pleased the King by its excess. The marshal trotted away to join Taverney, who had drawn aside to be respectful, and the pair quitted the gallery and went through the gardens.
It was here that Gilbert, in ambush, heard the old diplomatist say to his friend:
“All things taken into account and pondered over, it must be stated, though it may come hard, that you ought to send your daughter back into the convent, for I wager the King is enamored of her.”
These words turned Gilbert more white than the snowflakes falling on his shoulder and brow.