Balsamo, the Magician; or, The Memoirs of a Physician

"Well, supposing such an usurper comes, he must die some day, being mortal, but before dying he must do good to even those whom he oppressed; for he would have changed the nature of the upper classes. Obliged to have some kind of support, he will choose the popular as the strongest. To the equality which abases, he will oppose the kind which elevates. Equality has no fixed water mark, but takes the level of him who makes it. In raising the lowest classes he will have hallowed a principle unknown before his time. The Revolution will have made the French free; the Protectorate of another Cæsar or Cromwell will have made them equal."

"What a stupid fellow this is!" said Althotas, starting in his chair. "To spend twenty years in bringing up a child so that he shall came and tell you, who taught him all you knew – 'Men are equal.' Before the law, maybe; but before death? how about that? One dies in three days – another lives a hundred years! Men, equals before they have conquered death? Oh, the brute, the triple brute!"

Althotas sat back to laugh more freely at Balsamo, who kept his head lowered, gloomy and thoughtful. His instructor took pity on him.

"Unhappy sophist that you are, bear in mind one thing, that men will not be equals until they are immortal. Then they will be gods, and these alone are undying."

"Immortal – what a dream!" sighed the mesmerist.

"Dream? so is the steam, the electric fluid, all that we are hunting after and not yet caught – a dream. But we will seize and they will be realities. Move with me the dust of ages, and see that man in all times has been seeking what I am engaged upon, under the different titles of the Bliss, the Best, the Perfection. Had they found it, this decrepit world would be fresh and rosy as the morning. Instead, see the dry leaf, the corpse, the carrion heap! Is suffering desirable – the corpse pleasant to look upon – the carrion sweet?"

"You yourself are saying that nobody has found this water of life," observed Balsamo, as the old man was interrupted by a dry cough. "I tell you that nobody will find it."

"By this rule there would be no discoveries. Do you think discoveries are novelties which are invented? Not so – they are forgotten things coming up anew. Why were the once-found things forgotten. Because the inventor's life was too short for him to derive from it all its perfection. Twenty times they have nearly consummated the water of life. Chiron would have made Achilles completely immortal but for the lack of the three drops of blood which you refuse me. In the flaw death found a passage, and entered. I repeat that Chiron was another Althotas prevented by an Acharat from completing the work which would save all mankind by shielding it from the divine malediction. Well, what have you to say to that?"

"Merely," said Balsamo, visibly shaken, "that you have your work and I mine. Let each accomplish his, at his risks and perils. But I will not second yours by a crime."

"A crime? when I ask but three drops of blood – one child – and you would deluge a country with billions of gallons! Tell me now who is the cannibal of us two? Ha, ha! you do not answer me."

"My answer is that three drops would be nothing if you were sure of success."

"Are you sure, who would send millions to the scaffold and battle-field? Can you stand up before the Creator and say, 'O Master of Life, in return for four millions of slain men, I will warrant the happiness of humanity.'"

"Master, ask for something else," said Balsamo, eluding the point.

"Ha! you do not answer; you cannot answer," taunted Althotas triumphantly.

"You must be mistaken on the efficacy of the means. It is impossible."

"It looks as if you argued with me, disputed, deem me a liar," said the old alchemist, rolling with cold anger his gray eyes under his white brows.

"No, but I am in contact with men and things, and you dwell in a nook, in the pure abstraction of a student; I see the difficulties and have to point them out."

"You would soon overcome such difficulties if you liked, or believed."

"I do not believe."

"But do you believe that death is an incontestable thing, invincible and infinite? And when you see a dead body, does not the perspiration come to your brow, and a regret is born in your breast?"

"No regret comes in to my breast because I have familiarized myself to all human miseries; and I esteem life as a little thing: but I say in presence of the corpse: 'Dead! thou who wert mighty as a god! O Death! it is thou who reign sovereignly, and nothing can prevail against thee.'"

Althotas listened in silence, with no other token of impatience than fidgeting with a scalpel in his hands. When his disciple had finished the solemn and doleful phrase, he smiled while looking round. His eyes, so burning that no secrets seemed to exist for him, stopped on a nook in the room, where a little dog trembled on a handful of straw. It was the last of three of a kind, which Balsamo had provided on request of the elder for his experiments.

"Bring that dog to this table," said he to Balsamo, who laid the creature on a marble slab.

Seeming to foresee its doom and having probably already been handled by the dissector, the animal shuddered, wriggled and yelped at contact of the cold stone.

"So you believe in life, since you do in death?" squeaked Althotas. "This dog looks live enough, eh?"

"Certainly, as it moves and whines."

"How ugly black dogs are! I should like white ones another time. Howl away, you cur," said the vivisectionist with his lugubrious laugh; "howl, to convince Grand Seignior Acharat that you live."

He pierced the animal at a certain muscle so that he whimpered instead of barking.

"Good! push the bell of the air pump hither. But stay, I must ask what kind of death you prefer for him – deem best?"

"I do not know what you mean; death is death, master."

"Very correct, what you say, and I agree with you. Since one kind of death is the same as another, exhaust the air, Acharat."

Balsamo worked the air pump, and the air in the bell of glass hissed out at the bottom, so that the little puppy grew uneasy at the first, looked around, began to sniff, put his paw to the issue till the pain of the pressure made him take it away, and then he fell suffocated, puffed up and asphyxiated.

"Behold the dog dead of apoplexy," pronounced the sage; "this is a fine mode with no long suffering. But you do not seem fully convinced. I suppose you know how well laden I am with resources, and you think I have the method of restoring the respiration."

"No, I am not supposing that. The dog is truly not alive."

"Never mind, we will make assurance doubly sure by killing the canine twice. Lift off the receiver, Acharat."

The glass bell was removed and there lay the victim, never stirring, with eyes shut and heart without a beat.

"Take the scalpel and sever the spinal column without cutting the larynx."

"I do so solely because you say it."

"And to finish the poor creature in case it be not dead," said the other, with the smile of obstinacy peculiar to the aged.

With one incision Balsamo separated the vertebral column a couple of inches from the brain, and opened a yawning gash. The body remained unmoving.

"He is an inert animal, icy cold, forever without movement, eh? You say nothing prevails against death? No power can restore even the appearance of life, far less life itself, to this carcass?"

"Only the miracle of Heaven!"

"But Heaven does not do such things. Supreme wisdom kills because there is reason or benefit in the act. An assassin said so, and he was quite right. Nature has an interest in the death. Now, what will you say if this dog opens his eyes and looks at you?"

"It would much astonish me," said the pupil smiling.

"I am glad to hear that it would do as much as that."

As he drew the dog up to an apparatus which we know as a voltaic pile, he rounded off his words with his false and grating laugh. The pile was composed of a vessel containing strips of metal separated by felt. All were bathed in acidulated water; out of the cup came the two ends of wire – the poles to speak technically.

"Which eye shall it open, Acharat?" inquired the experimentalist.

"The right."

The two extremities were brought together, but parted by a little silk, on a neck muscle. In an instant the dog's right eye opened and stared at Balsamo, who could not help recoiling.

"Look out," said the infernal jester, with his dry laugh; "our dead dog is going to bite you!"

Indeed, the animal, in spite of its sundered spine, with gaping jaws and tremulous eye, suddenly got upon its four legs, and tottered on them. With his hair bristling, Balsamo receded to the door, uncertain whether to flee or remain.

"But we must not frighten you to death in trying to teach you," said Althotas, pushing back the cadaver and the machine; the contact broken, the carcass fell back into immovability.

"You see that we may arrive at the point I spoke of, my son, and prolong life since we can annul death?"

"Not so, for you have only obtained a semblance of life," objected Balsamo.

"In time, we shall make it real. The Roman poets – and they were esteemed prophets – assert that Cassidæus revived the dead."

"But one objection: supposing your elixir perfect and a dog given some, it would live on – until it fell into the hands of a dissector who would cut its throat."

"I thought you would take me there," chuckled the old wizard, clapping his hands.

"Your elixir will not prevent a chimney falling on a man, a bullet going clear through him, or a horse kicking his skull open?"

Althotas eyed the speaker like a fencer watching his antagonist make a lunge which lays him open to defeat.

"No, no, no, and you are a true logician. No, my dear Acharat, such accidents cannot be avoided; the wounds will still be made, but I can stop the vital spirit issuing by the hole. Look!"

Before the other could interfere he drove the lancet into his arm. The old man had so little blood that it was some time flowing to the cut; but when it came it was abundantly.

"Great God! you have hurt yourself!" cried the younger man.

"We must convince you."

Taking up a phial of colorless fluid, he poured a few drops on the wound; instantly the liquid congealed, or rather threw out fibres materializing, and, soon a plaster of a yellow hue covered in the gash and stanched the flow. Balsamo had never seen collodion, and he gazed in stupefaction at the old sage.

"You are the wisest of men, father!"

"At least if I have not dealt Death a death-blow, I have given him a thrust under which he will find it hard to rise. You see, my son, that the human frame has brittle bones – I will harden and yet supple them like steel. It has blood which, in flowing out, carries life with it – I will stop the flow. The skin and flesh are soft – I will tan them so that they will turn the edge of steel and blunt the points of spears, while bullets will flatten against it. Only let an Althotas live three hundred years. Well, give me what I want, and I shall live a thousand. Oh, my dear Acharat, all depends on you. Bring me the child."

"I will think it over, and do you likewise reflect."

The sage darted a look of withering scorn on his adept.

"Go!" he snarled, "I will convince you later. Besides, human blood is not so precious that I cannot use a substitute. Go, and let me seek – and I shall find. I have no need of you. Begone!"

Balsamo walked over to the elevator, and with a stamp of the foot, caused it to carry him down to the other floor. Mute, crushed by the genius of this wizard, he was forced to believe in impossible things by his doing them.

CHAPTER XLII

THE KING'S NEW AMOUR

This same long night had been employed by Countess Dubarry in trying to mold the king's mind to a new policy according to her views.

Above all she had dwelt upon the necessity of not letting the Choiseul party win possession of the dauphiness. The king had answered carelessly that the princess was a girl and Choiseul an old statesman, so that there was no danger, since one only wanted to sport and the other to labor. Enchanted at what he thought a witticism, he cut short further dry talk.

But Jeanne did not stay stopped, for she fancied the royal lover was thinking of another.

He was fickle. His great pleasure was in making his lady-loves jealous, as long as they did not sulk too long or become too riotous in their jealous fits.

Jeanne Dubarry was jealous naturally, and from fear of a fall. Her position had cost her too much pains to conquer and was too far from the starting-point for her to tolerate rivals as Lady Pompadour had done.

Hence she wanted to know what was on the royal mind.

He answered by these memorable words, of which he did not mean a jot:

"I intend to make my daughter-in-law very happy and I am afraid that my son will not make her so."

"Why not, sire?"

"Because he looks at other women a good deal, and very seldom at her."

"If any but your majesty said that, I should disbelieve them, for the archduchess is sweetly pretty."

"She might be rounded out more; that Mademoiselle de Taverney is the same age and she has a finer figure. She is perfectly lovely."

Fire flashed in the favorite's eyes and warned the speaker of his blunder.

"Why, I wager that you were plump as Watteau's shepherdesses at sixteen," said he quickly, which adulation improved matters a little, but the mischief was done.

"Humph," said she, bridling up under the pleased smile, "is the young lady of the Taverney family so very, very fair?"

"I only noticed that she was not a bag of bones. You know I am short-sighted and the general outline alone strikes me. I saw that the new-comer from Austria was not plump, that is all."

"Yes, you must only see generally, for the Austrian is a stylish beauty, and the provincial lady a vulgar one."

"According to this, Jeanne, you would be the vulgar kind," said the monarch. "You are joking, I think."

"That is a compliment, but it is wrapped up in a compliment to another," thought the favorite, and aloud she said: "Faith, I should like the dauphiness to choose a bevy of beauties for maids of honor. A court of old tabbies is frightful."

"You are talking over one won to your side, for I was saying the same thing to the dauphin; but he is indifferent."

"However, she begins well, you think, to take this Taverney girl. She has no money?"

"No, but she has blood. The Taverney Redcastles are a good old house and long-time servants of the realm."

"Who is backing them?"

"Not the Choiseuls, for they would be overfeasted with pensions in that case."

"I beg you not to bring in politics, countess!"

"Is it bringing in politics to say the Choiseuls are blood-sucking the realm?"

"Certainly." And he arose.

An hour after he regained the Grand Trianon palace, happy at having inspired jealousy, though he said to himself, as a Richelieu might do at thirty:

"What a bother these jealous women are!"

Dubarry went into her boudoir, where Chon was impatiently waiting for the news.

"You are having fine success," she exclaimed; "day before yesterday presented to the dauphiness, you dined at her table yesterday."

"That's so – but much good in such nonsense."

"Nonsense, when a hundred fashionable carriages are racing to bring you courtiers?"

"I am vexed, sorry for them, as they will not have any smiles from me this morning. Let me have my chocolate."

"Stormy weather, eh?"

Chon rang and Zamore came in to get the order. He started off so slowly, and humping up his back, that the mistress cried:

"Is that slowcoach going to make me perish of hunger? If he plays the camel and does not hurry, he'll get a hundred lashes on his back."

"Me no hurry – me gubbernor," replied the black boy, majestically.

"You a governor?" screamed the lady, flourishing a fancy riding whip kept to maintain order among the spaniels. "I'll give you a lesson in governing."

But the negro ran out yelling.

"You are quite ferocious, Jeanne," remarked her sister.

"Surely I have the right to be ferocious in my own house?"

"Certainly; but I am going to elope, for fear I may be devoured alive."

Three knocks on the door came to interrupt the outbreak.

"Hang it all – who is bothering now?" cried the countess, stamping her foot.

"He is in for a nice welcome," muttered Chon.

"It will be a good thing if I am badly received," said Jean, as he pushed open the door as widely as though he were a king, "for then I should take myself off and not come again. And you would be the greater loser of the two."

"Saucebox – "

"Because I am not a flatterer. What is the matter with the girl this morning, Chon?"

"She is not safe to go near."

"Oh, here comes the chocolate! Good-morning, Chocolate," said the favorite's brother, taking the platter and putting it on a small table, at which he seated himself. "Come and tuck it in, Chon! those who are too proud won't get any, that's all."

"You are a nice pair," said Jeanne, "gobbling up the bread and butter instead of wondering what worries me."

"Out of cash, I suppose?" said Chon.

"Pooh, the king will run out before I do."

"Then lend me a thousand – I can do with it," said the man.

"You will get a thousand fillips on the nose sooner than a thousand Louis."

"Is the king going to keep that abominable Choiseul?" questioned Chon.

"That is no novelty – you know that they are sticks-in-the-mud."

"Has the old boy fallen in love with the dauphiness?"

"You are getting warm; but look at the glutton, ready to burst with swilling chocolate and will not lift a finger to help me out of my quandary."

"You never mean to say the king has another fancy?" cried Chon, clasping her hands, and turning pale.

"If I did not say so your brother would, for he will either choke with the chocolate or get it out."

Thus adjured, Jean managed to gasp the name:

"Andrea of Taverney!"

"The baron's daughter – oh, mercy!" groaned Chon.

"I do not know what keeps me from tearing his eyes out, the lazybones, to go puffing them up with sleep when our fortunes stagger."

"With want of sleep you mean," returned Jean. "I am sleepy, as I am hungry, for the same reason – I have been running about the streets all night."

"Just like you."

"And all the morning."

"You might have run to some purpose, and found out where that intriguing jade is housed."

"The very thing – I questioned the driver of the carriage lent to them, and he took them to Coq Heron street. They are living in a little house at the back, next door to Armenonville House."

"Jean, Jean, we are good friends again," said the countess. "Gorge as you like. But we must have all the particulars about her, how she lives, who calls on her, and what she is about. Does she get any love letters – these are important to know."

"I have got us started on the right road anyway," said Jean; "suppose you do a little now."

"Well," suggested Chon, "there must be rooms to let in that street."

"Excellent idea," said the countess. "You must be off quickly to the place, Jean, and hire a flat there, where a watcher can mark down all her doings."

"No use; there are no rooms to hire there; I inquired; but I can get what we want in the street at the back, overlooking their place, Plastrière Street."

"Well, quick! get a room there."

"I have done that," answered Jean.

"Admirable fellow – come, let me buss thee!" exclaimed the royal favorite.

Jean wiped his mouth, received the caress and made a ceremonious bow to show that he was duly grateful for the honor.

"I took the little suite for a young widow. Young widow, you, Chon."

"Capital! it shall be Chon who will take the lodgings and keep an eye on what goes on. But you must not lose any time. The coach," cried Dubarry, ringing the bell so loudly that she would have roused all the spellbound servants of the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.

The three knew how highly to rate Andrea, for at her first sight she had excited the king's attention; hence she was dangerous.

"This girl," said the countess while the carriage was being got ready; "cannot be a true country wench if she has not made some sweetheart follow her to Paris. Let us hunt up this chap and get her married to him offhand. Nothing would so **** off the king as rustic lovers getting wedded."

"I do not know so much about that," said Jean. "Let us be distrustful. His most Christian majesty is greedy for what is another's property."

Chon departed in the coach, with Jean's promise that he would be her first visitor in the new lodgings. She was in luck, for she had hardly more than taken possession of the rooms, and gone to look out of the window commanding a view of the rear gardens than a young lady came to sit at the summer-house window, with embroidery in her hand.

It was Andrea.

CHAPTER XLIII

TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE

Chon had not been many minutes scanning the Taverney lady, when Viscount Jean, racing up the stairs four at a time like a schoolboy, appeared on the threshold of the pretended widow's room.

"Hurrah, Jean, I am placed splendidly to see what goes on, but I am unfortunate about hearing."

"You ask too much. Oh, I say, I have a bit of news, marvelous and incomparable. Those philosophic fellows say a wise man ought to be ready for anything, but I cannot be wise, for this knocked me. I give you a hundred chances to guess who I ran up against at a public fountain at the corner; he was sopping a piece of bread in the gush, and it was – our philosopher."

"Who? Gilbert?"

"The very boy, with bare head, open waistcoat, stockings ungartered, shoes without buckles, in short, just as he turned out of bed."

"Then he lives by here? Did you speak to him?"

"We recognized one another, and when I thrust out my hand, he bolted like a harrier among the crowd, so that I lost sight of him. You don't think I was going to run after him, do you?"

"Hardly, but then you have lost him."

"What a pity!" said the girl Sylvie, whom Chon had brought along as her maid.

"Yes, certainly," said Jean; "I owe him a hundred stripes with a whip, and they would not have spoilt by keeping any longer had I got a grip of his collar; but he guessed my good intentions and fled. No matter, here he is in town; and when one has the ear of the chief of police, anybody can be found."

"Shut him up when you catch him," said Sylvie, "but in a safe place."

"And make you turnkey over him," suggested Jean, winking. "She would like to take him his bread and water."

"Stop your joking, brother," said Chon; "the young fellow saw your row over the post-horses, and he is to be feared if you set him against you."

"How can he live without means?"

"Tut, he will hold horses or run errands."

"Never mind him; come to our observatory."

Brother and sister approached the window with infinity of precautions. Jean had provided himself with a telescope.

Andrea had dropped her needlework, put up her feet on a lower chair, taken a book, and was reading it with some attention, for she remained very still.

"Fie on the studious person!" sneered Chon.

"What an admirable one!" added Jean. "A perfect being – what arms, what hands! what eyes! lips that would wreck the soul of St. Anthony – oh, the divine feet – and what an ankle in that silk hose?"

"Hold your tongue! this is coming on finely," said Chon. "You are smitten with her, now. This is the drop that fills the bucket."

"It would not be a bad job if it were so, and she returned me the flame a little. It would save our poor sister a lot of worry."

"Let me have the spyglass a while. Yes, she is very handsome, and she must have had a sweetheart out there in the woods. But she is not reading – see, the book slips out of her hand. I tell you, Jean, that she is in a brown study."

"She sleeps, you mean."

"Not with her eyes open – what lovely eyes! This a good glass, Jean – I can almost read in her book."

"What is the book, then?"

Chon was leaning out a little when she suddenly drew back.