The Mesmerist's Victim

“Miraculous!”

“But you do not believe!”

“Honestly not, count,” said the duke; “how can you expect any one to believe such things?”

“Would you believe if I told you what the courier is doing who bears this letter to the Duke of Choiseul?”

“Of course,” responded the countess.

“I shall when I hear the voice,” subjoined the duke.

“But you magicians and necromanciers have the privilege of seeing and hearing the supernatural.”

Balsamo shot at the speaker so singular a glance that the countess thrilled in every vein and the sceptical egotist felt a chill down his neck and back.

“True,” said he, after a long silence, “I alone see and hear things and beings beyond your ken: but when I meet those of your grace’s rank and hight of intellect and of your beauty, fair lady, I open my treasures and share. You shall hear the mystic voice.”

The countess trembled, and the duke clenched his fist not to do the same.

“What language shall it use?”

“French,” faltered the countess. “I know no other and a strange one would give me too much fright.”

“The French for me,” said the duke. “I long to repeat what the devil says, and mark if he can discourse as correctly as my friend Voltaire.”

With his head lowered, Balsamo walked over to the little parlor door which opened on the secret stairs.

“Let me shut us in so that you will be less exposed to evil influences,” he explained.

Turning pale, the countess took the duke’s arm.

Almost touching the staircase door, Balsamo stepped into the corner where the inner dwelling was located, and where Lorenza was, and in a loud voice uttered in Arabic the words, which we translate:

“My dear, do you hear? if so, ring the bell twice.”

He watched for the effect on his auditor’ faces, for they were the more touched from not understanding the speech. The bell rang twice. The countess bounded up on the sofa and the duke wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

“Since you hear me,” went on the magician in the same tongue, “push the marble knob which represents the lion’s right eye in the mantelpiece of sculpture, and a panel will open. Walk through the opening, cross my room, come down the stairs, and enter the room next where I am speaking.”

Next instant, a light rustle, like a phantom’s flight, warned Balsamo that his orders had been understood and carried out.

“What gibberish is that? the cabalistic?” queried Richelieu to appear cool.

“Yes, my lord, used in invocations of the demons. You will understand the Voice but not what I conjure it with.”

“Demons? is it the devil?”

“A superior being may invoke a superior spirit. This spirit is now in direct communication with us,” he said as he pointed to the wall which seemed to end the house and had not a perceptible break in it.

“I am afraid, duke – and are not you?”

“To tell the truth I would rather be back in the battles of Mahon or before Philipsburg.”

“Lady and lord, listen for you would hear,” said Balsamo sternly. In the midst of solemn silence, he proceeded in French:

“Are you there?”

“I am here,” replied a pure and silvery voice which penetrated the wall and tapestry so muffled as to seem a sweet-toned bell sounded at an incalculable distance, rather than a human voice.

“Plague on it! this is growing exciting,” said the duke; “and yet without red fire, the trombone, and the gong.”

“It is dreadful,” stammered the countess.

“Take heed of my questioning,” said Balsamo. “First tell me how many persons I have with me?”

“Two, a man and a woman: the man is the Duke of Richelieu, the woman, the Countess Dubarry.”

“Reading in his mind,” uttered the duke; “this is pretty clever.”

“I never saw the like,” said the countess, trembling.

“It is well,” said Balsamo; “now, read the first line of the letter which I hold.”

The Voice obeyed.

Duke and countess looked at each other with astonishment rising to admiration.

“What has happened to this letter, which I wrote under your dictation?”

“It is travelling to the west and is afar.”

“How is it travelling?”

“A horseman rides with it, clad in green vest, a hareskin cap and high boots. His horse is a piebald.”

“Where do you see him?” asked Balsamo sternly.

“On a broad road plated with trees.”

“The King’s highway – but which one?”

“I know not – roads are alike.”

“What other objects are on it?”

“A large vehicle is coming to meet the rider; on it are soldiers and priests – ”

“An omnibus,” suggested Richelieu.

“On the side at the top is the word ‘VERSAILLES.’”

“Leave this conveyance, and follow the courier.”

“I see him not – he has turned the road.”

“Take the turn, and after!”

“He gallops his horse – he looks at his watch – ”

“What see you in front of him?”

“A long avenue – splendid buildings – a large town.”

“Go on.”

“He lashes his steed; it is streaming with sweat – poor horse! the people turn to hear the ringing shoes on the stones. Ah, he goes down a long hilly street, he turns to the right, he slackens his pace, he stops at the door of a grand building.”

“You must now follow with attention. But you are weary. Be your weariness dispelled! Now, do you still see the courier?”

“Yes, he is going up a broad stone staircase, ushered by a servant in blue and gold livery. He goes through rooms decorated with gold. He reaches a lighted study. The footman opens the door for him and departs.”

“Enter, you! What see you?”

“The courier bows to a man sitting at a desk, whose back is to the door. He turns – he is in full dress with a broad blue ribbon crossing his breast. His eye is sharp, his features irregular, his teeth good; his age fifty or more.”

“Choiseul,” whispered the countess to the duke who nodded.

“The courier hands the man a letter – ”

“Say the duke – it is a duke.”

“A letter,” resumed the obedient Voice, “taken from a leather satchel worn on his back. Unsealing it, the duke reads it with attention. He takes up a pen and writes on a sheet of paper.”

“It would be fine if we could learn what he wrote,” said Richelieu.

“Tell me what he writes,” said Balsamo.

“It is fine, scrawling, bad writing.”

“Read, I will it!” said the magician’s imperative voice.

The auditors held their breath.

And they heard the voice say:

“DEAR SISTER: be of good heart. The crisis has passed. I await the morrow with impatience for I am going to take the offensive with all presaging decisive success. All well about the Rouen Parliament, Lord X., and the squibs. To-morrow, after business with the King, I will append a postscript to this letter and despatch by this courier.”

While with his left hand Balsamo seemed to wrest out each word with difficulty, with his right he wrote the lines which Duke Choiseul was writing in Versailles.

“What is the duke doing?”

“He folds up the paper and puts it in a small pocketbook taken from the left side of his coat. He dismisses the courier, saying: ‘Be at one o’clock at the Trianon gateway.’ The courier bows and comes forth.”

“That is so,” said Richelieu: “he is making an appointment for the man to get the answer.”

Balsamo silenced him with a gesture.

“What is the duke doing?”

“He rises, holding the letter he received. He goes to his couch, passes between its edge and the wall, pushes a spring which opens an iron safe in the wall, throws in the letter and shuts the safe.”

“Oh, pure magic!” ejaculated the countess and the marshal, both pallid.

“Do you know all you wished?” Balsamo asked La Dubarry.

“My lord,” said she, going to him, but in terror, “you have done me a service for which I would pay with five years of my life, or indeed I can never repay. Ask me anything you like.”

“Oh, you know we are already in account. The time is not come to settle.”

“You shall have it, were it a million – ”

“Pshaw, countess!” exclaimed the old nobleman, “you had better look to the count for a million. One who knows – who can see what he sees, might discover gold and diamonds in the bowels of the earth as he does thoughts in the mind of man.”

“Nay, countess, I will give you the chance some day of acquitting yourself as regards me.”

“Count,” said the duke, “I am subjugated, vanquished, crushed – I believe!”

“You know you saw but that is not belief.”

“Call it what you please; I know what I shall say if magicians are spoken of before me.”

“My Spirit is fatigued,” said Balsamo smiling: “let me release it by a magical spell. Lorenza,” he pursued, but in Arabic, “I thank you, and I love you. Return to your room as you came and wait for me. Go, my darling!”

“I am most tired – make haste, Acharat!” replied the Voice, in Italian, sweeter than during the invocation. And the faint sound as of a winged creature flying was heard diminishing.

Convinced of his medium’s departure in a few minutes, the mesmerist bowed profoundly but with majestic dignity to his two frightened visitors, absorbed in the flood of thoughts tumultuously overwhelming them. They got back to their carriage more like intoxicated persons than reasonable ones.

CHAPTER XI

THE DOWNFALL AND THE ELEVATION

THE great clock of Versailles Palace was striking eleven when King Louis XV., coming out of his private apartments, crossed the gallery nearest and called out for the Master of Ceremonies, Duke Vrilliere. He was pale and seemed agitated, though he tried to conceal his emotion. An icy silence spread among the courtiers, among whom were included Duke Richelieu and Chevalier Jean Dubarry, a burly coarse bully, but tolerated as brother of the favorite. They were calm, affecting indifference and ignorance of what was going on.

The duke approaching was given a sealed letter for Duke Choiseul which would find him in the palace. The courtiers hung their heads while muttering, like ears of wheat when the squall whistles over them. They surrounded Richelieu while Vrilliere went on his errand, but the old marshal pretended to know no more than they, while smiling to show he was not a dupe.

When the royal messenger returned he was besieged by the inquisitive.

“Well, it was an order of exile,” said he, “for I have read it. Thus it ran,” and he repeated what he had retained by the implacable memory of old courtiers:

COUSIN: My discontent with your services obliges me to exile your grace to Chanteloup, where you should be in twenty-four hours. I should send you farther but for consideration of the duchess’s state of health. Have a care that your conduct does not drive me to a severer measure.

The group murmured for some time.

“What did he say,” queried Richelieu.

“That he was sure I found pleasure in bearing such a message.”

“Rather rough,” remarked Dubarry.

“But a man cannot get such a chimney-brick on his head Without crying out something,” added the marshal-duke. “I wonder if he will obey?”

“Bless us, here he comes, with his official portfolio under his arm!” exclaimed the Master of Ceremonies aghast, while Jean Dubarry had the cold shivers.

Lord Choiseul indeed was crossing the courtyard, with a calm, assured look blasting with his clear glance his enemies and those who had declared against him after his disgrace. Such a step was not foreseen and his entrance into the royal privy chambers was not opposed.

“Hang it! will he coax the King over, again?” muttered Richelieu.

Choiseul presented himself to the King with the letter of exile in his hand.

“Sire, as it was understood that I was to hold no communication from your Majesty as valid without verbal confirmation, I come for that.”

“This time it holds good,” rejoined the King.

“Such an offensive letter holds good against a devoted servitor?”

“Against the servitor – you who received a letter in your house here, from Lady Grammont, by courier – ”

“Surely brother and sister may correspond?”

“Not with such letters – ” And the monarch held out a copy of the letter dictated by Balsamo’s Voice – this time made by the King’s own hand. “Deny not – you have the original locked up in the iron safe in your bedroom.”

Pale as a spectre the duke listened to the sovereign continuing pitilessly.

“This is not all. You have an answer for Lady Grammont in your pocketbook only waiting for its postscript to be added when you leave my presence. You see I am well informed.”

The duke bowed without saying a word and staggered out of the room as though he were struck by apoplexy. But for the open air coming on his face he would have dropped backwards; but he was a man of powerful will and recovering composure, he passed through the courtiers to enter his rooms where he burnt certain papers. A quarter of an hour following he left the palace in his coach.

The disgrace of Choiseul was a thunderbolt which set fire to France.

The Parliament which his tolerance had upheld, proclaimed that the State had lost its strongest prop. The nobility sustained him as one of their order. The clergy felt fostered by a man whose severe style made his post almost sacerdotal. The philosophical party, very numerous by this time and potent, because the most active, intelligent and learned formed it, shouted aloud when “their” Government escaped from the hands of the protector of Voltaire, the pensioner of the Encyclopedist writers and the preserver of the traditions of Lady Pompadour playing the Maccenas-in-petticoats for the newspaper writers and pamphleteers.

The masses also complained and with more reason than the others. Without deep insight they knew where the shoe pinched.

From the general point of view Choiseul was a bad minister and a bad citizen, but he was a paragon of patriotism and morality compared with the sycophants, mistresses and their parasites – particularly Lady Dubarry whom a lampoonist qualified as less to be respected than a charcoal-man’s wife. To see the reins pass into the hands of the pet of a favorite made the future blacker than before.

Hence nearly everybody flocked on the road to cheer the Minister as he went away in exile.

There was a block to the traffic at the Enfer Tollbar, on the Touraine Road. A hundred carriages escorted the duke after he had got through here.

Cheers and sighs followed him, but he was too sharp not to know that there was less regret over his going than fear about those who would replace him.

On the crowded highway a postchaise came tearing and would have run down the minister but for a violent swerving of the postboy.

A head was stuck out of the chaise window at the same time as the Duke of Choiseul looked out of his.

It was the Duke of Aiguillon, nephew of Richelieu, who would probably have a place in the cabinet which the marshal duke, as the new minister, would form. No doubt he had received the cue and was hurrying to take the berth. He saluted the fallen one very lowly. The latter drew back in the coach, for in this second the sight had withered all the laurels.

At the same time, as compensation up came a carriage with the royal colors, drawn by eight horses on the Sevres branch-road, and crossing with Choiseul’s equipage by chance or the block.

On the back seat was the Dauphiness with her mistress of the Household, Lady Noailles; on the front one was Andrea de Taverney.

Red with glory and delight, Choiseul leaned out and bowed lowly.

“Farewell, princess,” he said in a choking voice.

“Farewell, my lord, till soon we meet again!” was the reply. The Archduchess gave an imperial smile and showed majestic disdain for court etiquet, by replying.

“Choiseul forever!” shouted an enthusiastic voice close upon these words.

Andrea turned rapidly towards the speaker, for she knew the voice.

“Room, make room there,” roared the royal squires, forcing Gilbert, pale and hot with getting to the front to see into the line along the roadside ditch.

It was indeed our hero, who had in a fit of philosophical fervor, shouted for Choiseul.

CHAPTER XII

ANDREA IN FAVOR

AT three in the afternoon Mdlle. de Taverney came out of her rooms dressed to perform her duty as reader to the princess.

On reaching the Trianon Summerhouse she was told that her mistress was in the grounds with her architect and head-gardener. In the upper story could be heard the whizz of the turning-lathe with which the Dauphin was busy making a safety lock for a chest which he thought a great deal of.

To join the Dauphiness, Andrea crossed the garden where, although the season had come on the pale flowers were lifting their heads to catch the fleeting rays of a still paler sun. Dark came at six, and the gardeners were covering the plants from the frost with glass bells.

On the lawn at the end of a walk hedged with trimmed trees and Bengal roses, Andrea suddenly perceived one of these men who, on seeing her, rose from stooping over his spade and saluted her with more grace and politeness than a common man could do. Looking she recognized Gilbert, whom she had seen from a child on her father’s estate. She blushed in spite of herself, for the presence of this ex-retainer seemed a very curious kindness of destiny.

He repeated the salute and she had to return it as she passed on. But she was too courageous and straight-forward a creature to resist a movement of the spirit and leave a question unanswered of her disturbed soul.

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