The Mesmerist's Victim

“Do you think so? perhaps it would,” answered Andrea, without paying much heed, but extending her feet on a rug as she sat.

The girl accepted this reclining pose as a signal for her to take down her mistress’s headdress for the night; the unbuilding of a structure of ribbons, flowers and wire, which the most skillful “house-breaker” could not have demolished in an hour. Nicole was not a quarter of that time doing it.

The toilet for the night being completed, Andrea gave her orders for the coming day. The tuner was to come for her harpsichord and some books which Philip had sent to Versailles were to be fetched. Nicole tranquilly answered that if she were not roused in the night she would be up early, and would do everything before her mistress rose.

As Andrea, in her long night wrapper, was dreaming in her chair, Nicole put two drops of the draught Richelieu had given her, into the glass of drink on the night-table. Turbid for a moment, the water took an opal tint which faded away gradually.

“Your night-drink is set out,” said the maid: “your dresses folded up and the night-light lit. As I must be up early, can I go to bed now?”

“Yes,” replied Andrea, absently.

Nicole went out and glided into the garden.

Gilbert was looking out for her as he promised himself he would do, and saw her go up to the gates where she passed the master key to Beausire, who was ready. The gate was opened and the girl slipped through. The gate was locked again and the key thrown over, where Gilbert noticed its place of falling on the sward.

He drew a long breath in relief for he was quit of Nicole, an enemy. Andrea was left alone, and he might penetrate to her room.

This idea set his blood boiling with all the fury of fear and disquiet, curiosity and desire.

But, as he placed his foot on the lowest stairs of the flight leading to Andrea’s corridor, he beheld her, garbed in white, at the top step, coming down.

So white and solemn was she that he recoiled, and buried himself in a copse.

Once before, at Taverney, he had seen her thus walking in her sleep, when she was, without his suspecting it, under the mesmeric influence of Balsamo, the Magician.

Andrea passed Gilbert, almost touched him but did not see him.

Bewildered and overwhelmed, he felt his knees crook beneath him: he was frightened.

Not knowing to what errand to ascribe this night roaming, he watched her: but his reason was confounded, and his blood beat with impetuosity in his temples, being nearer folly than the coolness which a good observer ought to possess. He viewed her as he had always done since this fatal passion had entered his heart.

All of a sudden he thought the mystery was revealed: Andrea was not wandering out of her mind, but going to keep an appointment, albeit her step was slow and sepulchral.

A lightning flash illumined the sky. By its bluish glare Gilbert caught sight of a man, hiding in the linden walk, with pale visage and clothes in disorder. He stretched out one hand towards the girl as though to beckon her to him.

Something like pincers nipped Gilbert’s heart and he half rose to see the better.

Another lightning stroke streaked the sky.

He recognized Baron Balsamo, covered with dust, who had by the aid of mysterious intelligence, entered the locked-up Trianon, and was as invincibly and fatally drawing Andrea to him as a snake may a bird. Not till within two steps of him did she stop, when he took her hand and she quivered all over her body.

“Do you see?” he asked.

“Yes,” was her reply, “but you have nearly been the death of me in bringing me out like this.”

“It cannot be helped,” returned Balsamo: “I am in a whirl, and am ready to die with the craze upon me.”

“You do indeed suffer,” said she, informed of his state by the contact of his hand alone.

“Yes, and I come to you for consolation. You alone can save me. Can you follow me – ”

“Yes, if you conduct me with your mind.”

“Come!”

“Ah,” said Andrea, “we are in Paris – a street lit by a single lamp – we enter a house – we go up to the wall which opens to let us pass through. We are in so strange a chamber, with no doors and the windows are barred. How greatly in disorder is everything!”

“But it is empty? where is the person who was there last?”

“Give me some object of hers that I may be in touch.”

“This is a lock of her hair.”

Andrea laid the hair on her bosom.

“Oh, I know this woman, whom I have seen before – she is fleeing into the city.”

“Yes; but what was she doing these two hours before? Trace back.”

“Wait: she is lying on a sofa with a cut in the breast. She wakes from a sleep, and seeks round her. Taking a handkerchief she ties it to the window bars. Come down, poor woman! She weeps, she is in distress, she wrings her arms – ah! she is looking for a corner of the wall on which to dash out her brains. She springs towards the chimney-place where two lion heads in marble are embossed. On one of them she would beat out her brains when she sees a spot of blood on the lion’s eye. Blood, and yet she had not struck it?”

“It is mine,” said the mesmerist.

“Yes, yours. You cut your fingers with a dagger, the dagger with which she stabbed herself and you tried to get it away from her. Your bleeding fingers pressed the lion’s head.”

“It is true: how did she get out?”

“I see her examine the blood, reflect, and then lay her finger where yours was pressed. Oh, the lion’s head gives way – it is a spring which works: the chimney-plate opens.”

“Cursed imprudence of mine,” groaned the conspirator: “unhappy madman! I have betrayed myself through love. But she has gone out and flees?”

“The poor thing must be pardoned, she is so distressed.”

“Whither goes she, Andrea? follow, follow, I will it!”

“She stops in a room where are armor and furs: a safe is open but a casket usually kept in it is now on a table: she knows it again. She takes it.”

“What is in it?”

“Your papers. It is covered with blue velvet and studded with silver, the lock and bands are of the same metal.”

“Ha! was it she took the casket?” cried Balsamo, stamping his foot.

“Yes, she. Going down the stairs to the anteroom, she opens the door, draws the chain undoing the street door and is out in the street.”

“It is late?”

“It is nighttime. Once out, she runs like a mad thing up on the main street towards the Bastile. She knocks up against passengers and questions.”

“Lose not a word – what does she say?”

“She asks a man clad in black where she can find the Chief of Police.”

“So it was not a vain threat of hers. What does she do?”

“Having the address, she retraces her steps to cross a large square – ”

“Royale Place – it is the right road. Read her intention.”

“Run, run quick! she is going to denounce you – if she arrives at Criminal Lieutenant Sartine’ before you, you are lost!”

Balsamo uttered a terrible yell, sprang into the hedges, burst a small door, and got upon the open ground. There an Arab horse was waiting, on which he leaped at a bound. It started off like an arrow towards Paris.

Andrea stood mute, pale, and cold. But as though the magnetiser carried life away with him, she collapsed and fell. In his eagerness to overtake Lorenza, Balsamo had forgotten to arouse Andrea from the mesmeric sleep.

She had barely touched the ground before Gilbert leaped out with the vigor and agility of the tiger. He seized her in his arms and without feeling what a burden he had undertaken, he carried her back to the room which she had left on the call of Balsamo.

All the doors had been left open by the girl, and the candle was still burning.

As he stumbled against the sofa when he blundered in, he naturally placed her upon it. All became enfevered in him, though the lifeless body was cold. His nerves shivered and his blood burned.

Yet his first idea was pure and chaste: it was to restore consciousness to this beautiful statue. He sprinkled her face with water from the decanter.

But at this period, as his trembling hand was encircling the narrow neck of the crystal bottle, he heard a firm but light step make the stairs of wood and brick squeak on the way to the chamber.

It could not be Nicole who was on the way with Beausire or Balsamo who was galloping to Paris.

Whoever it was, Gilbert would be caught and expelled from the palace.

He fully comprehended that he was out of his place here. He blew out the candle and dashed into Nicole’s room, timing his movement as the thunder boomed in the heavens.

Through its glazed door he could see into the room he quitted and the anteroom.

In this latter burnt a night-light on a small table. Gilbert would have put that out also if he had time, but the steps creaked now on the landing. A man appeared on the sill, timidly glided through the antechamber, and shut the door which he bolted.

Gilbert held his breath, glued his face to the glass and listened with all his might.

The storm growled solemnly in the skies, large raindrops spattered on the windows, and in the corridor, an unfastened shutter banged sinisterly against the wall from time to time.

But the tumult of nature, these exterior sounds, however alarming, were nothing to Gilbert: all his thought, mind and being were concentrated in his gaze, fastened on this man.

Passing within two paces, this intruder walked into the other room. Gilbert saw him grope his way up to the bed, and make a gesture of surprise at finding it untenanted. He almost knocked the candle off the table with his elbow; but it fell on the table where the glass save-all jingled on the marble top.

“Nicole,” the stranger called twice, in a guarded voice.

“Why, Nicole?” muttered Gilbert. “Why does this man call on Nicole when he ought to address her mistress?”

No voice replying, the man picked up the candle and went on tiptoe to light it at the night-lamp.

Then it was that Gilbert’s attention was so concentrated on this strange night visitor that his eyes would have pierced a wall.

Suddenly he started and drew back a step although he was in concealment.

By the light of the two flames he had recognized in the man holding the candle – the King! All was clear to him: the flight of Nicole, the money counted down between her and Beausire, and all the dark plot of Richelieu and Taverney of which Andrea was the object.

He understood why the King should call upon Nicole, the complaisant female Judas who had sold her mistress.

At the thought of what the royal villain had come to commit in this room, the blood rushing to the young man’s head blinded him.

He meant to call out; but the reflection that this was the Lord’s anointed, the being still full of awe as the King of France – that froze the tongue of Gilbert to his mouth-roof.

Meanwhile, Louis XV. entered the room once more, bearing the light. He perceived Andrea, in the white muslin wrapper, with her head thrown back on the sofa pillow, with one foot on another cushion and the other, cold and stiff, out of the slipper, on the carpet.

At this sight the King smiled. The candle lit up this evil smile; but almost instantly a smile as sinister lighted up Andrea’s face.

Louis uttered some words, probably of love; and placing the light on the table, he cast a glance out at the enflamed sky, before kneeling to the girl, whose hand he kissed.

This was so chilly that he took it between both his to warm it, and with his other arm enclasping the soft and so beautiful body, he bent over to murmur some of the loving nonsense fitted for sleeping maids. His face was so close to hers that it touched it.

Gilbert felt in his pocket for a knife with a long blade which he used in pruning trees.

The face was as cold as the hand, which made the royal lover rise; his eyes wandered to the Cinderella foot, which he took hold of – it was as cold as the hand and the cheek. He shuddered for all seemed a marble statue.

Gilbert gritted his teeth and opened the knife, as he beheld so much beauty and regarded the royal threat as a robbery intended on him.

But the King dropped the foot as he had the hand. Surprised at the sleep which he had thought to be feigned in prudery by a coquet, he prepared to learn the nature of this insensibility.

Gilbert crept half way out of the doorway, with set teeth, glittering eye and the knife bared in his grip to stab the King.

Suddenly a frightful flash of lightning lit up Andrea’s face with a vivid glare of violet and sulphur light while the thunder made every article of furniture dance in the room. Frightened by her pallor, immobility and silence, Louis XV. recoiled, muttering:

“Truly the girl is dead!”

The idea of having wooed a corpse sent a shudder through his veins. He took up the candle and looked at Andrea by its flickering flame. Seeing the brown-circled eyes, the violet lips, the disheveled tresses, the throat which no breath raised, he uttered a shriek, let the candlestick fall, and staggered out through the antechamber like a drunken man, knocking against the wainscotting in his alarm.

Knife still in hand, Gilbert came out of his covert. He advanced to the room door and for a space contemplated the lovely young maid still in the profound sleep.

The candle smouldering on the floor lit up the delicate foot and the pure lines above it of the adorable creature.

Gilbert trod on the wick and in sudden obscurity was blotted out the dreadful smile which was curling his lips.

“Andrea,” he muttered, “I swore that you should not escape me the third time that you fell into my hands as you did the other two. Andrea, a terrible end was needed to the romance which you mocked at me for composing!”

With extended arms he walked towards the sofa where the girl was still cold, motionless and deprived of all feeling.

CHAPTER XXVI

SARTINES BELIEVES BALSAMO IS A MAGICIAN

THE mesmerist had galloped on the barb through Versailles in a few seconds and a league on the road to Paris when an idea came as comfort in the midst of his misery at the fear that all he did would be too late. He saw his brothers of the secret society at the mercy of his foes, and the woman who caused all this, through his infatuation for her, going free.

“Oh, if ever she returns into my power – ”

He made a desperate gesture, as he pulled up the splendid horse short on its haunches.

“Let me see,” he said, frowning, “is silence a word or a fact? can it do or not do? let me try my will, again. Lorenza,” he said while making the passes to throw the magnetic fluid to a distance, “Lorenza, sleep, I will it! Wherever you are, sleep, I will it, and rely upon it. Cleave the air, oh, my supreme will! cross all the currents antipathetic or indifferent; go through the walls like a cannonball; strike her and annihilate her will. Lorenza, I will have you sleep – I will have you mute!”

After this mighty effort of animal magnetism, he resumed the race, but used neither whip nor spur and gave the Arab rein.

It appeared as if he wanted to make himself believe in the potency of the spell he exercised.

While he was apparently peacefully proceeding, he was framing a plan of action. It was finished as he reached the paving stones of Sevres. He stopped at the Park gates as if he expected somebody. Almost instantly a man emerged from a coach-doorway and came to him.

It was his German attendant Fritz.

“Have you gathered information?” asked the master.

“Yes, Lady Dubarry is in Paris.”

Balsamo raised a triumphant glance to heaven.

“How did you come?”

“On Sultan, now ready saddled in the inn stables here.”

He went for the horse and came back on its back.

Balsamo was writing under the lantern of the town tax-gatherer’s office door with a pen which was self-fed with ink.

“Ride back to town with this note,” said he, “to be given to Lady Dubarry herself. Do it in half an hour. Then get home to St. Claude street, where you will await Signora Lorenza, who will soon be coming home. Let her pass without staying her or saying anything.”

At the same time he said “He would!” Fritz laid spur and whip on Sultan, who sprang off, astonished at this unaccustomed aggression, with a painful neigh.

Balsamo rode on by the Paris Road, entering the capital in three quarters of an hour, almost smooth of face and calm in eye – if not a little thoughtful.

The mesmerist had reasoned correctly: as rapid as Dejerrid the steed might be, it was not as swift as the will, and that alone could outstrip Lorenza escaped from her prison-house.

As Andrea – the other medium had clearly seen, the vengeful Italian had found her way to the residence of Lieutenant Sartines.

Questioned by an usher, she replied merely by these words:

“Are you Lord Sartines?”

The servant was surprised that this young and lovely woman, richly clothed and carrying a velvet-covered casket under her arm, should confuse his black coat and steel chain of office with the embroidered coat and perriwig of the Lieutenant of Police, though a foreigner. But as a lieutenant is never offended at being called a captain, and as the speaker’s eye was too steady and assured to be a lunatic’s, he was convinced that she brought something of value in the casket and showed her into the secretaries.

The upshot of all was that she was allowed to see the Minister of Police.

He sat in an octagonal room, lighted by a number of candles.

Sartines was a man of fifty, in a dressing gown, and enormous wig, limp with curling and powder; he sat before a desk with looking-glass panels enabling him to see any one coming into the study without having to turn and study their faces before arranging his own.

The lower part of the desk formed a secretary where were kept in drawers his papers and those in cipher which could not be read even after his death, unless in some still more secret drawer were found the key to the cipher. This piece of mechanism was built expressly for the Regent Duke of Orleans to keep his poisons in, and it came to Sartines from his Prime Minister Cardinal Dubois per the late Chief of Police. Rumor had it that it contained the famous contract called the “Compact of Famine,” the statutes of the Great Grain Ring among the directors of which figured Louis XV.

So the Police Chief saw in this mirror the pale and serious face of Lorenza as she advanced with the casket under her arm.

“Who are you – what do you want?” he challenged without looking round.

“Am I in the presence of Lord Sartines, Head of the Police?”

“Yes,” he curtly answered.

“What proof have I of that?” she asked.

This made him turn round.

“Will it be good proof if I send you to prison?”

She did not reply but looked round for the seat which she expected to be offered her by right, as to any lady of her country. He was vanquished by that single look for Count Alby de Sartines was a well-bred gentleman.

“Take a chair,” he said brusquely.

Lorenza drew an armchair to her and sat down.

“Speak quick,” said the magistrate; “what do you want?”

“To place myself under your protection,” answered Lorenza.

“Ho, ho,” said he with a jeering look, peculiar to him.

“My lord, I have been abducted from my family and forced into a clandestine marriage by a man who has been ill-using me during three years and would be my death.”

He looked at the noble countenance and was moved by the voice so sweet that it seemed to sing.

“Where do you come from?” he asked.

“I am a Roman and my name is Lorenza Feliciani.”

“Are you a lady of rank, for I do not know the name?”

“I am a lady and I crave justice on the man who has incarcerated and sequestrated me.”

“This is not in my province, since you say you are his wife.”

“But the marriage was performed while I was asleep.”

“Plague on it! you must enjoy sound sleep! I mean to say that this is not in my way. Apply to a lawyer, for I never care to meddle in these matrimonial squabbles.” He waved his hand as much as to say “Be off!” but she did not stir.

“I have not finished;” she said “you will understand that I have not come here to speak of frivolities, but to have revenge. The women of my country revenge and do not go to law.”

“This is different,” said Sartines: “but have despatch for my time is dear.”

“I told you that I come for protection against my oppressor. Can I have it?”

“Is he so powerful?”

“More so than any King.”

“Pray, explain, my dear lady: why should I accord you my protection against a man according to your statement more powerful than a king, for a deed which may not be a crime. If you want to be revenged, take revenge, only do not bring yourself under our laws; if you do a misdeed it will be you whom I must arrest. Then we shall see all about it. That is the bargain.”

“No, my lord, you will not arrest me, for my revenge is of great utility to you, the King and France. I revenge myself by revealing the secrets of this monster.”

“Ha, this man has secrets,” said Sartines interested perforce.

“Great political secrets, my lord. But will you shield me?”

“What kind of shield?” coldly asked the magistrate; “silver or official?”

“I want to enter a convent, to live buried there, forgotten. I want a living tomb which will never be violated by any one.”

“You are not asking much. You shall have the convent. Speak!”

“As I have your word, take this casket,” said Lorenza; “it contains mysteries which will make you tremble for the safety of the sovereign and the realm. I know them but superficially but they exist, and are terrible.”

“Political mysteries, you say?”

“Have you ever heard of the great secret society?”

“The Freemasons?”

“These are the Invisibles.”

“Yes; I do not believe in them, though.”

“When you open this box, you will.”

“Let us look into it then,” he said, taking the casket from her; but, reflecting, he placed it on his desk. “No, I would rather you opened it yourself,” he added with distrust.

“I have not the key,” she replied.

“Not got the key? you bring me a box containing the fate of an empire and you forget the key?”

“Is it so hard to open a lock?”

“Not when one knows the sort it is.”

He held out to her a bunch of keys in every shape. As she took it, he noticed that her hand was cold as stone.

“Why did you not bring the key with you?” he asked.

“Because the master of the casket never lets it go from him.”

“This is the man more powerful than the King?”

“Nobody can tell what he is; eternity alone knows how long he has lived. None but the God above can see the deeds he commits.”

“But his name, his name?’

“He has changed it to my knowledge a dozen times – I knew him as Acharat.”

“And he lives – ”

“Saint – ”

Suddenly Lorenza started, shuddered, let the casket and the keys fall from her hands. She made an effort to speak, but her mouth only was contorted in a painful convulsion; she clapped her hands to her throat as if the words about to issue were stopped and choked her. Then, lifting her arms to heaven, trembling and unable to articulate a word, she fell full length on the carpet.

“Poor dear!” muttered Sartines: “but what the devil is the matter with her? she is really very pretty. There is some jealousy in this talk of revenge.”

He rang for the servants while he lifted up the Italian, who seemed with her astonished eyes and motionless lips, to be dead and far detached from this world.

“Carry out this lady with care,” he commanded to the two valets; “and leave her in the next room. Try to bring her to, but mind, no roughness. Go!”

Left alone, Sartines examined the box like a man who could value fully the discovery. He tried the keys until convinced that the lock was only a sham. Thereupon with a cold chisel he cut it off bodily. Instead of the fulminating powder or the poison which he perhaps expected, to deprive France of her most important magistrate, a packet of papers bounded up.

The first words which started up before his eyes were the following, traced in a disguised hand:

“It is time for the Grand Master to drop the name of Baron Balsamo.”

There was no signature other than the three letters “L. P. D.”

“Aha,” said the head of police, “though I do not know this writing I believe I know this name. Balsamo – let us look among the B’s.”