The Mesmerist's Victim

CHAPTER IX

THE HUNT

A LONG rank 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 guess it lives.”

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.

CHAPTER X

A SEANCE OF MESMERISM

IT was 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.

“DEAR BROTHER: 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

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 in us, os or as, 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 longer amusable, 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.”