The Mesmerist's Victim

Opening one of the twenty-four drawers of the famous desk, he took out a little register on which was written in fine writing three or four hundred names, preceded, accompanied or followed by flourishes of the pen.

“Whew! we have a lot about this busy B,” he muttered.

He read several pages with non-equivocal tokens of discontent.

He replaced the register in the drawer to go on with inventorying the contents of the packet. He did not go far without being deeply impressed. Soon he came to a note full of names with the text in cipher. This appeared important to him; the edges were worn with fingering and pencil marks were made on the margin.

Sartines rang a bell for a servant to whom he said:

“Bring me the Chancellor’s cryptographist at once, going through the offices to gain time.”

Two minutes subsequently, a clerk presented himself, with pen in hand, his hat under one arm, and a large book under the other. Seeing him in the mirror, Sartines held out the paper to him over his shoulders, saying:

“Decipher that.”

This unriddler of secret writing was a little thin man, with puckered up lips, brows bent by searching study; his pale face was pointed up and down, and the chin quite sharp, while the deep moony eyes became bright at times.

Sartines called him his Ferret.

Ferret sat down modestly on a stool, drew his knees close together to be a table to write upon, and wrote, consulting his memory and his lexicon with an impassible face. In five minutes time he had written:

“Order to gather 3000 Brothers in Paris.

“Order to compose three circles and six lodges.

“Order to select a guard for the Grand Copt, and to provide four residences for him, one to be in a royal domicile.

“Order to set aside five hundred thousand francs for his police department.

“Order to enroll in the first Parisian lodge all the cream of literature and philosophy.

“Order to bribe or in some way get a hold on the magistracy, and particularly make sure of the Chief of Police, by bribery, violence or trickery.”

Ferret stopped at this passage, not because the poor man reflected but because he had to wait for the page to dry before he could turn over.

Sartines, being impatient, snatched the sheet from his knees and read it. Such an expression of terror spread over his features at the final paragraph, that it made him turn pale to see himself in the glass. He did not hand this sheet back to the clerk but passed him a clean one.

The man went on with his work, accomplishing it with the amazing rapidity of decipherers when once they hold the key.

Sartines now read over his shoulder.

“Drop the name of Balsamo beginning to be too well known, to take that of Count Fe – ”

A blot of ink eclipsed the rest of the name.

At the very time when the Police Chief was seeking the absent letters, the out-door bell rang and a servant came in to announce:

“His Lordship, Count Fenix!”

Sartines uttered an outcry, and clasped his hands above his wig at risk of demolishing that wonderful structure. He hastened to dismiss the writer by a side door, while, taking his place at his desk, he bade the usher show in the visitor.

In his mirror, a few seconds after, Sartines saw the stern profile of the count as he had seen him on the day when Lady Dubarry was presented at court.

Balsamo-Fenix entered without any hesitation whatever.

Sartines rose, made a cold bow, and sat himself ceremoniously down again, crossing his legs.

At the first glance he had seen what was the object of this interview. At a glance also Balsamo had seen the opened casket on the desk. His glance, however fleeting, had not escaped the magistrate.

“To what chance do I owe this visit, my lord?” inquired the Chief of Police.

“My Lord,” returned Balsamo with a smile full of amenity, “I have found introducers to all the sovereigns of Europe, all their ministers and ambassadors: but none to present me to your lordship; so I have presented myself.”

“You arrive most timely, my lord,” replied Sartines: “For I am inclined to think that if you had not called I should have had to send for you.”

“Indeed – how nicely this chimes in.”

Sartines bowed with a satirical smile.

“Am I happy enough to be useful to your lordship?” queried Balsamo.

These words were pronounced without a shade of emotion or disquiet clouding the smiling brow.

“You have travelled a good deal, count,” said the Police Chief.

“A great deal! I suppose you want for some geographical items. A man of your capacity is not cramped up in France but must embrace Europe and the world – ”

“Not geographical, my lord, but personal – ”

“Do not restrict yourself; in both, I am at your orders.”

“Well, count, just imagine that I am looking after a very dangerous man, in faith, who seems to be an atheist, conspirator, forger, adulterer, coiner, charlatan, and chief of a secret league; whose history I have on my records and in this casket, which your lordship sees.”

“I understand,” said Balsamo; “you have the story but not the man. Hang it, that seems to me the more important matter.”

“No doubt: but you will see presently how near he is to our hand. Certainly, Proct Proteon Proteus had not more shapes, Jupiter more names: Acharat in Egypt, Balsamo in Italy, Somini in Sardinia, the Marquis of Anna in Malta, Marquis Pellegrini in Corsica, and lastly, Count Fe – this last name I have not been able to make out; but I am almost sure that you will help me to it for you must have met this man in the course of your travels in the countries I have mentioned. I suppose, though, you would want some kind of description?”

“If your lordship pleases?”

“Well,” continued Sartines, fixing on the other an eye which he endeavored to make like an inquisitor’s, “he is a man of your age and stature, and bearing; sometimes a mighty nobleman distributing gold, or a charlatan seeking natural secrets, or a dark conspirator allied to the mysterious brotherhood which has vowed in darkness the death of kings and the downfall of thrones.”

“This is vague,” replied Balsamo, “and you cannot guess how many men I have met who would answer to this description! You will have to be more precise if you want my help. In the first place, which is his country by preference?”

“He lives everywhere at home.”

“But at present?”

“In France, where he directs a vast conspiracy.”

“This is a good piece of intelligence. If you know what conspiracy he directs you have one end of a clew in your hands which will lead you up to the man.”

“I am of your opinion.”

“If you believe so, why do you ask my advice? It is useless.”

“It is because I am debating whether or not to arrest him.”

“I do not understand the Not, my lord, for if he conspires – ”

“But he is in a measure protected by his title – ”

“Ah, now I follow you. But by what title? Needless to say that I shall be glad to aid you in your searches, my lord.”

“Why, sir, I told you that I knew the names he hides under but I do not know that under which he shows himself, or else – ”

“You would arrest him? Well, Lord Sartines, it is a blessed thing that I happened in as I did, for I can do you the very service you want. I will tell you the title he figures under.”

“Pray say it,” said Sartines who expected to hear a falsehood.

“The Count of Fenix.”

“What, the name under which you were announced?”

“My own.”

“Then you would be this Acharat, Balsamo, and Company?”

“It is I,” answered the other simply.

It took Sartines a minute to recover from the amazement which this impudence had caused him.

“You see I guessed,” he said; “I knew that Fenix and Balsamo were one and the same.”

“I confess it. You are a great minister.”

“And you are a great fool,” said the magistrate, stretching out his hand towards his bell.

“How so?”

“Because I am going to have you arrested.”

“Nonsense, a man like me is never arrested,” said Balsamo, stepping between the magistrate and the bell.

“Death of my life, who will prevent it? I want to know.”

“As you want to know, my dear Lieutenant of Police, I will tell you – I shall blow out your brains – and with the more facility and the less injury to myself as this weapon is charged with a noiseless explosive which, for its quality of silence, is not the less deadly.”

Whipping out of his pocket, a pistol, with a barrel of steel as exquisitely carved as though Cellini had chiselled it, he tranquilly leveled it at the eye of Sartines, who lost color and his footing, falling back into his armchair.

“There,” said the other, drawing another chair up to the first and sitting down in it; “now that we are comfortably seated, let us have a chat.”

It was an instant before Lord Sartines was master of himself after so sharp an alarm. He almost looked into the muzzle of the firearm, and felt the ring of its cold iron on his forehead.

“My lord,” he said at last. “I have the advantage over you of knowing the kind of man I coped with and I did not take the cautionary measures I should with an ordinary malefactor.”

“You are irritated and you use harsh words,” replied Balsamo. “But you do not see how unjust you are to one who comes to do you a service. And yet you mistake my intentions. You speak of conspirators, just when I come to speak to you about a conspiracy.”

But the round phrase was all to no purpose as Sartines was not paying great attention to his words: so that the word Conspiracy, which would have made him jump at another time, scarcely caused him to pick up his ears.

“Since you know so well who I am,” he proceeded, “you must know my mission in France. Sent by the Great Frederick – that is as an ambassador, more or less secret of his Prussian Majesty. Who says ambassador, says ‘inquisitor;’ and as I inquire, I am not ignorant of what is going on; and one of the things I have learnt most about is the forestalling of grain.”

Simply as Balsamo uttered the last words they had more power over the Chief of Police than all the others for they made him attentive. He slowly raised his head.

“What is this forestalling of the grain?” he said, affecting as much ease as Balsamo had shown at the opening of the interview. “Will you kindly enlighten me?”

“Willingly, my lord. Skillful speculators have persuaded his Majesty, the King of France, that he ought to build grainaries to save up the grain for the people in case of dearth. So the stores were built. While they were about it they made them on a large scale, sparing no stone or timber. The next thing was to fill them, as empty grainarers are useless. So they filled them. You will reckon on a large quantity of corn being wanted to fill them? Much breadstuffs drawn out of the markets is a means of making the people hungry. For, mark this well, any goods withdrawn from circulation are equivalent to a lack of production. A thousand sacks of corn in the store are the same as a thousand less in the market. Multiply these thousands by a ten only and up goes the price of grain.”

Sartines coughed with irritation. Balsamo stopped quietly till he was done.

“Hence, you see the speculator in the storehouses enriched by the increase in value. Is this clear?”

“Perfectly clear,” replied the other. “But it seems to me that you are bold enough to promise to denounce a crime or a plot of which his Majesty is the author.”

“You understand it plainly,” said Balsamo.

“This is bold, indeed, and I should be curious to know how the King will take the charge. I am afraid that the result will be precisely the same as that I conceived when I looked through your papers; take care, my lord, you will get into the Bastile all the same.”

“How poorly you judge me and how wrong you are in still taking me for a fool. Do you imagine that I, an ambassador, a mere curious investigator, would attack the King in person? That would be the act of a blockhead. Pray hear me out.”

Sartines nodded to the man with the pistol.

“Those who discovered this plot against the French people – pardon the precious time I am consuming, but you will see presently that it is not lost time – they are economists, who, very minute and painstaking, by applying their microscopic lenses to this rigging of the market, have remarked that the King is not working the game alone. They know that his Majesty keeps an exact register of the market rate of grain in the different markets: that he rubs his hands when the rise wins him eight or ten thousand crowns; but they also know that another man is filling his own alongside of his Majesty’s – an official, you will guess – who uses the royal figures for his own behalf. The economists, therefore, not being idiots, will not attack the King, but the man, the public officer, the agent who gambles for his sovereign.”

Sartines tried to shake his wig into the upright but it was no use.

“I am coming to the point, now,” said Balsamo. “In the same way as you know I am the Count of Fenix through your police, I know you are Lord Sartines through mine.”

“What follows?” said the embarrassed magistrate; “a fine discovery that I am Lord Sartines!”

“And that he is the man of the market-notebooks, the gambling, the ring, who, with or without the knowledge of the King, traffics on the appetites of the thirty millions of French whom his functions prescribe him to feed on the lowest possible terms. Now, just imagine the effect in a slight degree of this discovery! You are little loved by the people; the King is not an affectionate man. As soon as the cries of the hungry are heard, yelling for your head, the King, to avoid all suspicion of connivance with you, if any there be, or to do justice if there is no complicity, will hasten to have you strung upon a gibbet like that on which dangled Enguerrand de Marigny, which you may remember?”

“Imperfectly,” stammered Sartines, very pale, “and you show very poor taste to talk of the gibbet to a nobleman of my degree!”

“I could not help bringing him in,” replied Balsamo, “as I seemed to see him again – poor Enguerrand! I swear to you he was a perfect gentleman out of Normandy, of very ancient family and most noble house. He was Lord High Chamberlain and Captain of the Louvre Palace, and eke Count of Longueville, a much more important county than yours of Alby. But still I saw him hooked up on the very gibbet at Montfaucon which was built under his orders, although it was not for the lack of my telling him:

“Enguerrand, my dear friend, have a care! you take a bigger slice out of the cake of finance than Charles of Valois will like. Alas, if you only knew how many chiefs of police, from Pontius Pilate down to your predecessor, who have come to grief!”

Sartines rose, trying in vain to dissimulate the agitation to which he was a prey.

“Well, accuse me if you like,” he said: “what does the testimony of a man like you amount to?”

“Take care, my lord,” Balsamo said: “men of no account were very often the very ones who bring others to account. When I write the particulars of the Great Grain Speculation to my correspondent, or Frederick who is a philosopher, as you are aware, he will be eager to transcribe it with comments for his friend, Voltaire, who knows how to swing his pen: to Alembert, that admirable geometrician, who will calculate how far these stolen grains, laid in a line side by side, will extend; in short when all the lampoon writers, pamphleteers and caricaturists get wind of this subject, you, my lord of Alby, will be a great deal worse off than my poor Marigny, – for he was innocent, or said so, and I would hardly believe that of your lordship.”

With no longer respect for decorum, Sartines took off his wig and wiped his skull.

“Have it so,” he said, “ruin me if you will. But I have your casket as you have your proofs.”

“Another profound error into which you have fallen, my lord,” said Balsamo: “You are not going to keep this casket.”

“True,” sneered the other; “I forgot that Count Fenix is a knight of the road who robs men by armed force. I did not see your pistol which you have put away. Excuse me, my lord the ambassador.”

“The pistol is no longer wanted, my lord. You surely do not think that I would fight for the casket over your body here where a shout would rouse the house full of servants and police agents? – No, when I say that you will not keep my casket, I mean that you will restore it to me of your own free will.”

“I?” said the magistrate, laying his fist on the box with so much force that he almost shattered it. “You may laugh, but you shall not take this box but at the cost of my life. Have I not risked it a thousand times – ought I not pour out the last drop of my blood in his Majesty’s service? Kill me, as you are the master; but I shall have enough voice left to denounce you for your crimes. Restore you this,” he repeated, with a bitter laugh, “hell itself might claim it and not make me surrender.”

“I am not going to require the intervention of subterranean powers; merely that of the person who is even now knocking at your street door.”

Three loud knocks thundered at the door.

“And whose carriage is even now entering the yard,” added the mesmerist.

“Some friend of yours who does me the honor to call?”

“Just as you say, a friend of mine.”

“The Right Honorable the Countess Dubarry!” announced a valet at the study door, as the lady, who had not believed she wanted the permission to enter, rushed in. It was the lovely countess, whose perfumed and hooped skirts rustled in the doorway.

“Your ladyship!” exclaimed Sartines, hugging the casket to his bosom in his terror.

“How do you do, Sartines?” she said, with her gay smile.

“And how are you, count?” she added to Fenix, holding out her hand.

He bowed familiarly over it and pressed his lips where the King had so often laid his. In this movement he had time to speak four words to her which the Chief of Police did not hear.

“Oh, here is my casket,” she said.

“Your casket,” stammered the Lieutenant of Police.

“Mine, of course. Oh, you have opened it – do not be nice about what does not belong to you! How delightful this is. This box was stolen from me, and I had the idea of going to Sartines to get it back. You found it, did you, oh, thank you.”

“With all respect to your ladyship,” said Sartines, “I am afraid you are letting yourself be imposed upon.”

“Impose? do you use such a word to me, my lord?” cried Balsamo. “This casket was confided to me by her ladyship a few days ago with all its contents.”

“I know what I know,” persisted the magistrate.

“And I know nothing,” whispered La Dubarry to the mesmerist. “But you have claimed the promise I made you to do anything you asked at the first request.”

“But this box may contain the matter of a dozen conspiracies,” said Sartines.

“My lord, you know that that is not a word to bring you good luck. Do not say it again. The lady asks for her box – are you going to give it to her or not?”

“But at least know, my lady – ”

“I do not want to know more than I do know,” said the lady: “Restore me my casket – for I have not put myself out for nothing, I would have you to understand!”

“As you please, my lady,” said Sartines humbly and he handed the countess the box, into which Balsamo replaced the papers strewn over the desk.

“Count,” said the lady with her most winning smile, “will you kindly carry my box and escort me to my carriage as I do not like to go back alone through those ugly faces. Thank you, Sartines.”

“My lady,” said Balsamo, “you might tell the count who bears me much ill will from my insisting on having the box, that you would be grieved if anything unpleasant befel me through the act of the police and how badly you would feel.”

She smiled on the speaker.

“You hear what my Lord says, Sartines,” she said; “it is the pure truth: the count is an excellent friend of mine and I should mortally hate you if you were to vex him in any way. Adieu, Sartines.”

He saw them march forth without showing the rage Balsamo expected.

“Well, they have taken the casket but I have the woman,” he chuckled.

To make up for his defeat he began to ring his bell as though to break it.

“How is the lady getting on whom you took into the next room?”

“Very well indeed, my lord: for she got up and went out.”

“Got up? why, she could not stand.”

“That is so, my lord,” said the usher: “but five minutes or so after the Count of Fenix arrived, she awoke from her swoon, from which no scent would arouse her, and walked out. We had no orders to detain her.”

“The villain is a magician,” thought the magistrate. “I have the royal police and he Satan’s.”

That evening he was bled and put to bed: the shock was too great for him to bear, and the doctor said that if he had not been called in he would have died of apoplexy.

In the meantime the count had conducted the lady to her coach. She asked him to step in, and a groom led the Arab horse.

“Lady,” he said, “you have amply paid the slight service I did you. Do not believe what Sartines said about plots and conspiracies. This casket contains my chemical recipes written in the language of Alchemy which his ignorant clerks interpreted according to their lights. Our craft is not yet enfranchised from prejudices and only the young and bright like your ladyship are favorable to it.”

“What would have happened if I had not come to your help?”

“I should have been sent into some prison, but I can melt stone with my breath so that your Bastile would not long have retained me. I should have regretted the loss of the formula for the chemical secrets by which I hope to preserve your marvelous beauty and splendid youthfulness.”

“You set me at ease and you delight me, count. Do you promise me a philter to keep me young?”

“Yes: but ask me for it in another twenty years. You cannot now want to be a child forever!”

“Really, you are a capital fellow! But I would rather have that draft in ten, nay five years – one never knows what may happen.”

“When you like.”

“Oh, a last question. They say that the King is smitten with the Taverney girl. You must tell me; do not spare me if it is true; treat me as a friend and tell me the truth.”

“Andrea Taverney will never be the mistress of the King. I warrant it, as I do not so will it.”

“Oh!” cried Lady Dubarry.

“You doubt? never doubt science.”

“Still, as you have the means, if you would block the King’s fancies – ”

“I can create sympathies and so I can antipathies. Be at ease, countess, I am on the watch.”

He spoke at random as he was all impatience to get away and rejoin Lorenza.

“Surely, count,” said the lady, “you are not only my prophet of good but my guardian angel. Mind, I will defend you if you help me. Alliance!”

“It is sealed,” he said, kissing her hand.

He alighted and whistling for his horse, mounted and gallopped away.

“To Luciennes,” ordered Lady Dubarry, comforted.

CHAPTER XXVII

LOVE VERSUS SCIENCE

IN five minutes Balsamo was in his vestibule, looking at Fritz and asking with anxiety:

“Has she returned?”

“She has gone up into the room of the arms and the furs, very wornout, from having run so rapidly that I was hardly in time to open the door after I caught sight of her. I was frightened; for she rushed in like a tempest. She ran up the stairs without taking breath, and fell on the great black lion’s-skin on entering the room. There you will find her.”

Balsamo went up precipitately and found her as said. He took her up in his arms and carried her into the inner house where the secret door closed behind them.

He was going to awake her to vent the reproaches on her which were nursed in his wrath, when three knocks on the ceiling notified him that the sage called Althotas, in the upper room, was aware of his arrival and asked speech of him.

Fearing that he would come down, as sometimes happened, or that Lorenza would learn something else detrimental to the Order, he charged her with a fresh supply of the magnetic fluid, and went up by a kind of elevator to Althota’ laboratory.

In the midst of a wilderness of chemical and surgical instruments, phials and plants, this very aged man was a terrible figure at this moment.

Such part of his face as seemed yet to retain life was empurpled with angry fire: his knotted hands like those of a skeleton, trembled and cracked – his deepset eyes seemed to shake loose in the sockets and in a language unknown even to his pupil he poured invectives upon him.