The Mesmerist's Victim

In this close, warm atmosphere, Balsamo felt giddy as if respiration and his strength failed him simultaneously.

“Master,” said he, looking for something to lean against, “you must not stay here: one cannot breathe. Let me open a window overhead for there seems to reek from the floor the odor of blood.”

“Blood? ha, ha, ha!” roared Althotas. “I noticed it but did not mind: it is you who have tender heart and brain who is easily affected.”

“But you have blood on your hands and it is on the table – this smell is of blood – and human blood,” added the younger man, passing his hand over his brow streaming with perspiration.

“Ha, he has a subtile scent,” said the old sage. “Not only does he recognize blood but can tell it is human, too.”

Looking round, Balsamo perceived a brass basin half full with a purple liquid reflected on the sides.

“Whence comes this blood?” he gasped.

He uttered a terrible roar! Part of the table, usually cumbered by alembics, crucibles, flasks, galvanic batteries and the like, was now clothed with a white damask sheet, worked with flowers. Among the flowers here and there, spots of a red hue oozed up. Balsamo took one corner of the sheet and plucked the whole towards him.

His hair bristled up, and his opened mouth could not let the horrible yell come forth – it died in the gullet.

It was the corpse of Lorenza which stiffened on the board. The livid head seemed still to smile and hung back as though drawn down by the weight of her hair.

A large cut yawned above the clavicle, but not a drop of blood was issuing now. The hands were rigid and the eyes closed under the violet lids.

“Yes, thanks for your having placed her under my hand where I could so readily take her,” said the horrible old man; “in her have I found the blood I wanted.”

“Villain of the vilest,” screamed Balsamo, with the cry of despair bursting from all pores, “you have nothing to do but die – for this was my wife since four days ago! You have murdered her to no gain.”

“She was not a virgin?”

Althotas quivered to the eyes at this revelation, as if an electric shock made them oscillate in their orbits. His pupils frightfully dilated; his gums gnashed for want of teeth; his hand let fall the phial of the elixir of long life, and it fell and shivered into a thousand splinters. Stupefied, annihilated, struck at the same time in heart and brain, he dropped back heavily in his armchair.

Balsamo, bending with a sob over the body of his wife, swooned as he was kissing the tresses.

Time passed silently and mournfully in the death-chamber where the blood congealed.

Suddenly in the midst of the night a bell rang in the room itself.

Fritz must have guessed that his master was in the laboratory of Althotas to have sent the warning thither. He repeated it three times and still Balsamo did not lift his head.

In a few minutes the ringing came, still louder, without rousing the mourner from his stupor.

But at another call, the impatient jangle made him look up though not with a start. He questioned the space with the cold solemnity of a corpse coming forth from a grave.

The bell kept on ringing.

Energy, reviving, at last aroused intelligence in the husband of Lorenza Feliciani. He took away his head from hers; it had lost its warmth without warming hers.

“Great news or a great danger,” he said to himself. “I should as lief meet a great danger.”

He rose upright.

“But why should I answer this appeal?” he asked without perceiving the sombre effect of his voice under the gloomy skylight and in the funeral chamber. “Is there anything in this world to alarm or interest me?”

As if to answer him the bell was so roughly shaken that the iron tongue broke loose and fell on a glass alembic which it shivered on the floor.

He held back no longer; besides, it was important that neither Fritz nor another should come here to find him.

With a tranquil tread he opened the trap and descended. When he opened the staircase door, Fritz stood on the top step, pale and breathless, holding a torch in one hand and the broken bell-pull in the other.

At sight of his master, he uttered a cry of satisfaction and then one of surprise and fright. Respectful as he usually was, he took the liberty of seizing him by the arm and dragging him up to a Venetian mirror.

“Look, excellency,” he said.

Balsamo shuddered. In an hour he had grown twenty years older. In his eyes were lustre; in his skin no blood; and over all his lineaments was spread an expression of stupor and lack of intelligence. Bloody foam bathed his lips, and on the white front of his shirt a large blood spot spread. He looked at himself for an instant without recognition. Then he plunged his glance steadily into that of his reflected self.

“You are quite right, Fritz,” he said. “But why did you call me?”

“They are here, master,” said the faithful servant, with disquiet: “the five masters.”

“All here?” queried Balsamo, starting.

“With each an armed servant in the yard. They are impatient which is why I rang so often and roughly.”

Without adjusting his dress or hiding the blood spot, Balsamo went down the stairs to the parlor.

“Has your excellency no orders to give me about weapons?” asked the valet.

“Why should I take a sword even?”

“I do not know, I only feared – I thought – ”

“Thanks, you can go.”

“Yes: but your double-barrelled pistols are in the ebony box on the gilded buffet.”

“Go, I bid you,” said the master, and he entered the parlor.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE TRIAL

THE parlor was well lighted, and Balsamo entering could see the grim air of the five men who kept their seats until he was before them and bowed. Then they all rose and returned the salute.

He took an armchair facing theirs without appearing to remark that theirs formed a horse-shoe in front of his so that he occupied the place of the culprit at a trial.

He did not speak first as he would have done on another occasion. From the painful dulness which succeeded the shock to him he looked without seeing.

“You seem to have understood what we come for, brother,” said the man who held the central chair: “yet you were long coming and we were deliberating if we should not send for you.”

“I do not understand you,” simply replied the mesmerist.

“That did not seem so when you took the place of the accused.”

“Accused?” faltered the other, vaguely. “Still I do not understand.”

“It will not be hard to make you do so,” said the chief officer: “judging by your pale front, dull eyes and tremulous voice. Do you not hear me?”

“Yes, I hear,” was the reply, while he shook his head to drive away the thoughts oppressing him.

“Do you remember, brother,” said the president, “that at the last meeting, the Superior Committee gave you warning of treason meditated by one of the main upholders of the Order?”

“Perhaps so, I do not know.”

“You answer as with a perturbed and tumultuous conscience. But recover – do not be cast down. Answer with the clearness and preciseness which a dreadful position demands. Answer with such certainty that you will convince us, for we come with no more hatred than prejudice. We are the Law. It speaks not till after the judges pronounce.”

Balsamo made no reply.

Seeing the calm and immobility of the accused, the others stared at him not without astonishment, before fastening their eyes on the chief again.

“You are warned. Protect yourself, for I resume.

“After this warning the Order delegated five of the members to watch at Paris about him who was designated as a traitor. It was not easy to watch a man like you, whose power was to enter everywhere. You had at your disposal all the means, which are immense, of our association, given for the triumph of our cause. But we respected the mystery of your conduct as you fluctuated between the adherents of Dubarry, of Richelieu and Rohan. But three days ago, five warrants of arrest, signed by the King and put in motion by Sartines, were presented on the same day to five of our principal agents, very faithful and devoted brothers who have been taken away. Two are put in solitary confinement in the Bastile, two at Vincennes Castle, in the dungeons, and one is in Bicetre in the deepest cell. Did you know of this?”

“No,” replied the accused.

“Strange, with the close connections you have with royalty. But this is stranger still. To arrest those friends, Sartines must have had the note naming them, the only one, under Arabian characters, which was addressed to the Supreme Circle in 1769, when you received them and gave them the grade assigned to them. But the sixth name was the Count of Fenix’s.”

“I grant that,” said Balsamo.

“Then how comes it that they five should be arrested as by that list while you were spared? you deserved prison as well as they. What have you to answer?”

“Nothing.”

“Your pride survives your honor. The police discovered those names in reading our papers which you kept in a casket. One day a woman came out of your house with this casket and went to the Chief of Police. Thus all was discovered. Is this true?”

“Perfectly true.”

The president stood up.

“Who was this woman?” he said. “A fair and passionate one devoted to you body and soul and affectionately loved. Lorenza Feliciani is your wife, Balsamo.”

He groaned in despair.

“A quarter of an hour after she called on the head of the police, you called in your turn. She had sown the seed and you were to gather the harvest. An obedient servant she committed the treachery and you had but to give the finishing touches to the infernal work. Lorenza came out alone. No doubt you arranged this and did not want to be compromised by her company. You came out triumphantly with Lady Dubarry, called there to receive from your mouth the information which she was to pay. You got into the carriage of this courtesan, leaving the papers which ruined us in the hands of Lord Sartines but carrying away the empty casket. Happily we saw you. The light of the All-seeing Eye did not fail us on all occasions.”

Balsamo bowed still without remark.

“I conclude,” said the chief judge. “Two guilty ones are pointed out: the woman who was your accomplice and may have unwittingly injured us by conveying the revelations of our secrets; the second, yourself the Grand Copt, the luminous ray who had the cowardice to let your wife shield you in this deed of treason.”

Balsamo slowly raised his pale face, and fixed on the speaker a glance with the fire in it which had accumulated while the speech was made.

“Why do you accuse this woman?” he demanded.

“We know that you will try to defend her; that you love her to idolatry and prefer her above all. She is your treasure of science, happiness and fortune; the most precious of your instruments.”

“You know this?”

“And that in striking her we hurt you more than in striking you. This is the sentence, then: Joseph Balsamo is a traitor. He has broken his oath, but his science is immense and useful to the Order. He ought to live for the cause he has betrayed; he belongs still to his brothers though he has renounced them. A perpetual prison will protect the society against future perfidy, and at the same time let the brothers gather the gain due to them if only as a forfeit. As for Lorenza Feliciani, a dreadful doom – ”

“Stay,” said Balsamo, with the greatest calm in his voice. “You are forgetting that I have not defended myself. The accused ought to have a hearing in his justification. One word will suffice – one piece of evidence. Wait for me one moment while I bring the proof I speak of.”

The judges consulted an instant.

“Do you fear that I will commit suicide?” said the accused with a bitter smile. “I wear a ring that would kill this room-full of people were I to open it. Do you fear that I will flee? Let me be escorted, if that be your fear.”

“Go,” said the president.

For only a while did the prisoner disappear; then they heard his step descending the stairs, heavily. He entered.

On his shoulder was the cold discolored, rigid corpse of Lorenza, with her white hand sweeping the floor.

“As you said, this woman – whom I adored and was my treasure, my only joy, my very life – she betrayed us,” he said: “here she is – take her! The High Justicer of heaven did not wait for you to come and slay her.”

With a movement as swift as lightning, he slid the corpse out of his arms, and rolled it to the feet of the judges. The dark hair and inert hands struck them with all their profound horror while by the lamplight the wound glared with its ominous red, deeply yawning in the midst of the swan-white neck.

“Utter your sentence, now,” said Balsamo.

Aghast, the judges uttered a terror-stricken cry, and fled dizzily in confusion inexpressible. The horses of their carriage and escort were heard neighing in the yard and trampling; the carriage-gate groaned on its hinges and then solemn silence sat once more on the abode of death and despair.

CHAPTER XXXII

MAN AND GOD

NOTHING had meanwhile changed in the other part of the house. But the old wizard had seen Balsamo enter his study and carry away the remains of Lorenza, which had recalled him to life.

Shrieks of “Fire!” from the old man reached Balsamo, when, rid of his dread visitors, he had carried Lorenza back to the sofa where only two hours previously she had been reposing before the old sage broke in.

Suddenly he appeared to Althota’ eyes.

“At last,” said the latter, drunk with joy; “I knew you would have fear! see how I can revenge myself! It was well you came, for I was going to set fire to the place.”

His pupil looked at him contemptuously without deigning a word.

“I am thirsty. Give me some water out of that bottle,” he said wildly.

His features were breaking up fast; no steady fire was in his eyes, only frightful gleams, sinister and infernal; under his skin was no more blood. His long arms in which he had carried Lorenza as though she were a child, now dangled like cuttlefish’s suckers. In anger had been consumed the strength momentarily restored him by desperation.

“You won’t give me to drink? You want to kill me with thirst. You covet my books and manuscripts and lore, my treasures! Ah, you think you will enjoy them – wait a bit. Wait, wait!”

Making a supreme effort, he drew from under the cushion on which he was huddled up a bottle which he uncorked. At the contact of air, a flame spouted up from the glass and Althotas, like a magic creature, shook this flame around him.

Instantly, the writings piled up around the old man, the scattered books, the rolls of papyrus extracted with so many hardships from the pyramids of Egypt and the libraries of Herculaneum, caught fire with the quickness of gunpowder. The marble flour was turned into a sheet of fire, and seemed to Balsamo one of those fiery rings described by Dante.

No doubt the old man thought that his disciple would rush among the flames to save him, but he was wrong. He merely drew himself away calmly out of the scope of the fire.

It enveloped the incendiary himself; but instead of frightening him it seemed as if he were in his element. The flame caressed him as if he were a salamander, instead of scorching him.

Though as he sat, it devoured the lower part of his frame, he did not seem to feel it.

On the contrary, the contact appeared salutary, for the dying one’s muscles relaxed, and a new serenity covered his features like a mask. Isolated at this ultimate hour, the spirit forgot the matter, and the old prophet, on his fiery car, seemed about to ascend to heaven.

Calm and resigned, analysing his sensations, listening to his own pangs as the last voices of earth, the old Magus let his farewell sullenly escape to life, hope and power.

“I die with no regret,” he said; “I have enjoyed all earthly boons; I have known everything; I have held all given to the creature to possess – and I am going into immortality.”

Balsamo sent forth a gloomy laugh which attracted the old man’s attention.

Althotas darted on him a look through the veiling flames, which was impressed with ferocious majesty.

“Yea, you are right: I had not foreseen one Thing – God!”

As if this mighty word had snatched the soul out of him, he dwindled up in the chair: his last breath had gone up to the Giver whom he had thought to deprive of it.

Balsamo heaved a sigh, and without trying to save a thing from the pyre of this modern Zoroaster dying, he went down to Lorenza, having set the trap so that it closed in all the fire as in an immense kiln.

All through the night the volcano blazed over Balsamo with the roaring of a whirlwind, but he neither sought to extinguish it or to flee. After having burnt up all that was combustible, and left the study bare to the sky, the fire went out, and Balsamo heard its last roar die away like Althota’ in a sigh.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE FAINTING FITS

ANDREA was in her room, giving a final touch to her rebellious curls when she heard the step of her father, who appeared as she crossed the sill of the antechamber with a book under her arm.

“Good morning, Andrea,” said the baron; “going out, I see.”

“I am going to the Dauphiness who expects me.”

“Alone?”

“Since Nicole ran away, I have no attendant.”

“But you cannot dress yourself alone; no lady ever does it: I advised you quite another course.”

“Excuse me, but the Dauphiness awaits – ”

“My child, you will get yourself ridiculed if you go on like this and ridicule is fatal at court.”

“I will attend to it, father: but at present the Dauphiness will overlook the want of an elaborate attire for the haste I show to join her.”

“Be back soon for I have something serious to say. But you are never going out without a touch of red on the cheeks. They look quite hollow and your eyes are circled with large rings. You will frighten people thus.”

“I have no time to do anything more, father.”

“This is odious, upon my word,” said Taverney, shrugging his shoulders: “there is only one woman in the world who does not think anything of herself and I am cursed with her for my daughter. What atrociously bad luck! Andrea!”

But she was already at the foot of the stairs. She turned.

“At least, say you are not well,” he suggested. “That will make you interesting at all events.”

“There will be no telling lies there, father, for I feel really very ill at present.”

“That is the last straw,” grumbled the baron. “A sick girl on my hands, with the favor of the King lost and Richelieu cutting me dead! Plague take the nun!” he mumbled.

He entered his daughter’s room to ferret about for some confirmation of his suspicions.

During this time Andrea had been fighting with an unknown indisposition as she made her way through the shrubbery to the Little Trianon. Standing on the threshold, Lady Noailles made her understand that she was late and that she was looking out for her.

The titular reader to the Dauphiness, an abbe, was reciting the news, above all desonating on the rumor that a riot had been caused by the scarcity of corn and that five of the ringleaders had been arrested and sent to jail.

Andrea entered. The Dauphiness was in one of her wayward periods and this time preferred the gossip to the book; she regarded Andrea as a spoilsport. So she remarked that she ought not to have missed her time and that things good in themselves were not always good out of season.

Abashed by the reproach and particularly its injustice, the vice-reader replied nothing, though she might have said her father detained her and that her not feeling well had retarded her walk. Oppressed and dazed, she hung her head, and closing her eyes as if about to die, she would have fallen only for the Duchess of Noailles catching her.

“Oh, dear, she is white as her handkerchief,” said the Archduchess; “it is my fault for scolding her. Poor girl, take a seat! Do you think you could go on with your reading?”

“Certainly; I hope so, at least.”

But hardly had she cast her eyes on the page before black specks began to swarm and float before her sight and they made the print indecipherable.

She turned pale anew; cold perspiration beaded her brow; and the dark ring round her eyes with which Taverney had blamed his daughter enlarged so that the princesses exclaimed, as Andrea’s faltering made her raise her head.

“Again? look, duchess, the poor child must be ill, for she is losing her senses.”

“The young lady must get home as soon as possible,” said the Mistress of the Household drily. “Thus commences the small pox.”

The priest rose and stole away on tiptoe, not wanting to risk his beauty.

“Yes,” said the Dauphiness, in whose arms the girl came to, “you had better retire, but do not go indoors at once. A stroll in the garden may do you good. Oh, send me back my abbe, who is yonder among the tulips.”

Andrea was glad to be out doors, but she felt little improved. To reach the priest she had to make a circuit. She walked with lowered head, heavy with the weight of the strange dulness with which she had suffered since rising. She paid no attention to the birds hunting each other among the blooming hedges or to the bees humming amid the thyme and lilacs. She did not remark, only a few paces off, Dr. Jussieu giving a lesson in gardening to Gilbert. Since the pupil perceived the promenader, he made but a poor auditor.

“Oh, heavens!” interrupted he, suddenly extending his arms.

“What is the matter?” asked the lecturer.

“She has fainted!”

“Who? are you mad?”

“A lady,” answered Gilbert, quickly.

His pallor and his alarm would have betrayed him as badly as his cry of “She” but Jussieu had looked off in the other direction.

He saw Andrea fallen on a garden seat, ready to give up the last sensible breath.

It was the time when the King had the habit of paying the Dauphin a visit and came through this way. He suddenly appeared, holding a hothouse peach, with a true selfish king’s wonder, thinking whether it would not be better for the welfare of France that he should enjoy it rather than the princess.

“What is the matter?” he cried as he saw the two men racing towards the swooning girl whom he vaguely distinguished but did not recognize, thanks to his weak sight.

“The King!” exclaimed Jussieu, holding Andrea in his arms.

“The King!” murmured she, swooning away in earnest this time.

Approaching, the King knew her at last and exclaimed with a shudder:

“Again? this is an unheard-of thing! when people have such maladies, they ought to shut themselves up! it is not proper to go dying all over the house and grounds at all hours of the day and night.”

And on he went, grumbling all sorts of disagreeable things against poor Andrea. Jussieu did not understand the allusion, but seeing Gilbert in fear and anxiety, he said:

“Come along, Gilbert; you are stronger; carry Mdlle. de Taverney to her lodgings.”

“I?” protested Gilbert, quivering; “She would never forgive me for touching her. No, never!”

And off he ran, calling for help.

When the gardeners and some servants came up, they transported the girl to her rooms where they left her in the hands of her father.

But from another point arrived the Dauphiness, who had heard of the disaster from the King, and who not only came but brought her physician.

Dr. Louis was a young man, but he was intelligent.

“Your highness,” he reported to his patroness, “the young lady’s malady is quite natural and not usually dangerous.”

“And do you not prescribe anything?”

“There is absolutely nothing to be done.”

“Very well; she is luckier than I, for I shall die unless you send me the sleeping pills you promised.”

“I will prepare them myself when I get home.”

When he was gone the princess remained by her reader.

“Cheer up, my dear Andrea,” she said with a kindly smile. “There is nothing serious in your case for the doctor will not prescribe anything whatever.”

“I am glad to hear it, but he is a little wrong, for I do not feel at all well, I declare to you.”

“Still the ail cannot be severe at which a doctor laughs. Have a good sleep, my child; I will send somebody to attend you for I notice that you are quite alone. Will you accompany me, my Lord of Taverney?”