The Mesmerist's Victim

“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.

Having left his padded armchair to go to the trap by which Balsamo came up through the floor, he seemed to move solely by his long spider-like arms. It must be extraordinary excitement to make him leave the seat where he conducted his alchemical work and enter into our worldly life.

Balsamo was astonished and uneasy.

“So you come, you sluggard, you coward, to abandon your master,” said Althotas.

As was his habit, the other summoned up all his patience to reply to his master.

“I thought you had only just called me, my friend,” he meekly said.

“Your friend, you vile human creature,” cried the alchemist, “I think you talk to me as if I were one of your sort. Friend? I should think I were more than that: more than your father, for I have reared you, instructed you and enriched you. But you are no friend to me, oh, no! for you have left me, you let me starve, and you will be my death.”

“You have a bilious attack, master, and you will make yourself ill by going on thus.”

“Illness – rubbish! Have I ever been ill save when you made me feel the petty miseries of your mean human life? I, ill, who you know am the physician to others.”

“At all events, master, here I am,” coldly observed Balsamo. “Let us not waste time.”

“You are a nice one to remind me of that. You force me to dole out what ought to be unmeasured to all human creatures. Yes, I am wasting time: my time, like others, is falling drop by drop into eternity when it ought to be itself eternity.”

“Come, master, let us know what is to be done?” asked the other, working the spring which closed the trap in the floor. “You said you were starved. How so, when you know you were doing your fortnight’s absolute fast?”

“Yes; the work of regeneration was commenced thirty-two days ago.”

“What are you complaining about in that case – I see yet two or three decanters of rainwater, the only thing you take.”

“Of course: but do you think I am a silkworm to perform alone the great task of transformation and rejuvenation? Can I without any strength alone compose my draft of life? Do you think I shall have my ability when I am lying down with no support but refreshing drink, if you do not help me? abandoned to my own resources, and the minute labor of my regeneration – you know you ought to help and succor, if a friend?”

“I am here,” responded Balsamo, taking the old man and placing him in his chair as one might a disagreeable child, “what do you want? You have plenty of distilled water: your loaves of barley and sesame are there; and I have myself given you the white drops you prescribed.”

“Yes; but the elixir is not composed. The last time I was fifty, I had your father to help me, your faithful father. I got it ready a month beforehand. For the blood of a virgin which I had to have, I bought a child of a trader at Mount Ararat where I retired. I bled it according to the rites; I took three drops of arterial blood and in an hour my mixture, only wanting that ingredient, was composed. Therefore my regeneration came off passing well: my hair and teeth fell during the spasms caused by the draft, but they came again – the teeth badly, I admit, for I had neglected to use a golden tube for decanting the liquor. But my hair and nails came as if I were fifteen again. But here I am once more old; and the elixir is not concocted. If it is not soon in this bottle, with all care given to compounding it, the science of a century will be lost in me, and this admirable and sublime secret which I hold will be lost for man, who would thus through me be linked with divinity. Oh, if I go wrong, if I fail, you, Acharat, will have been the cause, and my wrath will be dreadful!”

As these final words made a spark flash from his dying eye, the hideous old man fell back in a convulsion succeeded by violent coughing. Balsamo at once gave him the most eager care. The old doctor came to his senses; his pallor was worse; this slight shaking had so exhausted him that he seemed about to die.

“Tell me what you want, master, and you shall have it, if possible.”

“Possible?” sneered the other, “You know that all is possible with time and science. I have the science; but time is only about to be conquered by me. My dose has succeeded; the white drops have almost eradicated most of my old nature. My strength has nearly disappeared. Youth is mounting and casting off the old bark, so to say. You will remark, Acharat, that the symptoms are excellent; my voice is faint; my sight weakened by three parts; I feel my senses wander at times; the transitions from heat to cold are insensible to me. So it is urgent that I get my draft made so that on the proper day of my fifteenth year, I shall pass from a hundred years to twenty without hesitation. The ingredients are gathered, the gold tube for the decanting is ready; I only lack the three drops of pure blood which I told you of.”

Balsamo made a start in repugnance.

“Oh, well, let us give up the idea of a child,” sneered Althotas, “since you dream of nothing but your wife with whom you shut yourself up instead of coming to aid me.”

“My wife,” repeated Balsamo, sadly: “a wife but in name. I have had to sacrifice all to her, love, desire, all, I repeat, in order to preserve her pure that I may use her spirit as a seer’s to pierce the almost impenetrable. Instead of making me happy, she makes the world so.”

“Poor fool,” said Althotas, “I believe you gabble still of your amelioration of society when I talk to you of eternal youth and life for man.”

“To be acquired at the price of a horrid crime! and even then – ”

“You doubt – he doubts!”

“But you said you renounced that want: what can you substitute?”

“Oh, the blood of the first virgin creature which I find – or you supply within a week.”

“I will attend to it, master,” said Balsamo.

Another spark of ire kindled the old man’s eye.

“You will see about it!” he said, “that is your reply, is it? However, I expected it, and I am not astonished. Since when, you insignificant worm, does the creature speak thus to its creator? Ah, you see me feeble, solicitating you and you fancy I am at your mercy! Do you think I am fool enough to rely on your mercy? Yes or no, Acharat – and I can read in your heart whether you deceive me or not – ay, read in your heart – for I will judge you and pursue you.”

“Master, have a care! your anger will injure you. I speak nothing but the truth to my master. I will see if I can procure you what you want without its bringing harm, nay, ruin upon us both. I will seek the wretch who will sell you what you wish but I shall not take the crime upon me. That is all I can say.”

“You are very dainty. Then, you would expose me to death, scoundrel; you would save the three drops of the blood of some paltry thing in order to let the wondrous being that I am fall into the eternal abysm. Acharat, mark me,” continued the weird old man, with a frightful smile, “I no longer ask you for anything. I want absolutely nothing of you. I shall wait: but if you do not obey me, I shall take for myself; if you abandon me I shall help myself. You hear? away!”

Without answering the threat in any way, Balsamo prepared all things for the old man’s wants; like a good servant or a pious son attending to his father. Absorbed in quite another thought than that torturing Althotas, he went down through the trap-hole without noticing the old sage’s ironical glance following him. He smiled like an evil genius when he saw the mesmerist beside Lorenza, still asleep.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE ULTIMATE TEST

BEFORE the Italian beauty, Balsamo stopped, with his heart full of painful but no longer violent thoughts.

“Here I stand,” he mused, “sad but resolute, and plainly seeing my situation. Lorenza hates me and betrayed me as she vowed she would do. My secret is no longer mine but in the hands of this woman who casts it to the winds. I resemble the fox caught in the trap, who gnaws off his leg to get away, but the hunter coming on the morrow and seeing this token can say: ‘He has escaped but I shall know him when I catch him again.’

“Althotas could not understand this misfortune, which is why I have not told him; it breaks all my hope of fortune in this country and consequently in the Old World, of which France is the heart – it is due to this lovely woman, this fair statue with the sweet smile. To this accursed angel I owe captivity, exile or death, with ruin and dishonor meanwhile.

“Hence,” he continued, animating, “the sum of pleasure is surpassed by that of harm, and Lorenza is a noxious thing to me. Oh, serpent with the graceful folds, they stifle: your golden throat is full of venom; sleep on, for I shall be obliged to kill you when you wake.”

With an ominous smile he approached the girl, whose eyes turned to his like the sunflower follows the sun.

“Alas, in slaying her who hates me, I shall slay her who loves.”

His heart was filled with profound grief strangely blended with a vague desire.

“If she might live, harmless?” he muttered. “No, awake, she will renew the struggle – she will kill herself or me, or force me to kill her. Lorenza, your fate is written in letters of fire: to love and to die. In my hands I hold your life and your love.”

The enchantress, who seemed to read his thoughts in an open book, rose, fell at the mesmerist’s feet, and taking one of his hands which she laid on her heart, she said with her lips, moist as coral and as glossy:

“Dead be it, but loved.”

Balsamo could resist no longer; a whirl of flames enveloped him.

“As long as a human being could contend have I struggled,” he sighed; “demon or angel of the future, you ought to be satisfied. I have long enough sacrificed pride and egotism to all the generous passions seething in my heart. No, no, I have not the right to revolt against the only human feeling fermenting in me. I love this woman, and such passionate love will do more against her than the keenest hate. What, when I appear before the Supreme Architect, will not I, the deceiver, the charlatan, the false prophet, have one well cut stone to show for my craftsmanship – not one generous deed to avow, not a single happiness whose memory would comfort me amid eternal sufferings? Oh, no, no, Lorenza, I know that I lose the future by loving you; I know that my revealing angel mounts to heaven while this woman comes down to my arms – but I wish Lorenza!”

“My beloved,” she gasped.

“Will you accept this life instead of the real one?”

“I beg for it, for it is love and bliss.”

“Never will you accuse me before man or heaven of having deceived your heart?”

“Never, never! before heaven and men, I shall thank you for having given me love, the only boon, the only jewel of price in this world.”

Balsamo ran his hand over his forehead.

“Be it so,” he said. “Besides, have I absolutely need of her – is she the only medium? No; while this one makes me happy, the other shall make me rich and mighty. Andrea is predestined and is as clairvoyante as she. Andrea is young, and pure, and I do not love Andrea. Nevertheless, in her mesmeric sleep, she is submissive as you are. In Andrea I have a victim ready to replace you, one to be the corpus vili of the physician to be employed for experiments. She can fly as far, perhaps farther, in the shades of the Unknown as you. Andrea, I take you for my kingdom. Lorenza, come to my arms for my darling and my wife. With Andrea I am powerful; with Lorenza I am happy! Henceforth, my life is complete, and I realise the dream of Althotas, without the immortality, and become the peer of the gods!”

And lifting up the Italian beauty, he opened his arms from off his heaving breast on which Lorenza enclasped herself as the ivy girdles the oak.

Another life commenced for the magician, unknown to him previously in his active, multiple, perplexed existence. For three days he felt no more anger, apprehension or jealousy; he heard nothing of plots, politics or conspiracies. Beside Lorenza he forgot the whole world. This strange love threw him into felicity composed of stupor and delirium, soaring over humanity, as it were, full of misery and intoxication, a phantom love – for he knew he could at a sign or a word change the sweet mistress into an implacable enemy.

Singularly, she remained of astonishing lucidity as far as regarded himself; but he wanted to learn if this were not sheer sympathy; if she became dark outside of the circle traced by his love – if the eyes of this new Eve clearly seeing in Eden, would not be this blind when expelled from Paradise.

He dared not make a decisive test, but he hoped, and hope was the starry crown to his happiness.

With gentle melancholy Lorenza said to him:

“Acharat, you are thinking of another woman than me, a woman of the North, with fair hair and blue eyes – Acharat, this woman walks beside you and me in your mind. Shall I tell you her name?”

“Yes,” he said in wonderment.

“Wait – it is Andrea.”

“Right. Yes, you can read my mind; one last fear troubles me. Can you still see through space though blocked by material obstacles?”

“Try me.”

He took her hand, and in his mind went away from that place, taking her soul with him.

“What do you see?”

“A vast valley with woods on one side, a town on the other, while a river separates them and is lost in the distance after bathing the walls of a palace.”

“It is so, Lorenza. The wood is Vesinet, the town St. Germain; the palace Maisons. Let us go into the summerhouse behind us. What do you see?”

“A young negro, eating candies.”

“It is Zamore, Countess Dubarry’s blackmoor. Go on.”

“An empty drawing-room, splendidly furnished, with the panels painted with goddesses and Cupids.”

“Next?”

“We are in a lovely boudoir hung with blue satin worked with flowers in their natural colors. A woman is reclining on a sofa. I have seen her before – it is Countess Dubarry. She is thinking of you – ”

“Thinking of me? Lorenza, you will drive me mad.”

“You made her the promise to give her the water of beauty which Venus gave to Phaon to be revenged on Sappho.”

“That is so; go on.”

“She makes up her mind to a step, for she rings a bell. A woman comes – it is like her – ”

“Her sister, Chon?”

“Her sister. She wants the horses put to the carriage! in two hours she will be here.”

Balsamo dropped on his knees.

“Oh heaven, if she should be here in that time, I shall have no more to beg of you for you will have had pity on my happiness.”

“Poor dear,” said she, “why do you fear? Love which completes the physical existence, enlarges the moral one. Like all good passions, love emanates from heaven whence cometh all light.”

“Lorenza, you make me wild with joy.”

Still he waited for this last test; the arrival of Lady Dubarry.

Two strokes of the bell, the signal of an important visitor, from Fritz told him that the vision was realised.

He led Lorenza into the room hung with fur and armor.

“You will not go away from here?” asked the mesmerist.

“Order me to stay and you will find me here on your return. Besides, the Lorenza who loves you is not the one who dreads you.”

“Be it so, my beloved Lorenza; sleep and await me.”

Still struggling with the spell, she laid a last kiss on her husband’s lips, and tottered to sink upon a lounge, murmuring.

“Soon again, my Balsamo, soon?”

He waved his hand: she was already reposing.

As he closed the door he thought he heard a sound: but no, Lorenza was sound asleep. He went through the parlor without fear or any foreshadowing, carrying paradise in his heart.

Lorenza dreamed: it seemed to her that the ceiling opened and that a kind of aged Caliban descended with a regular movement. The air seemed to fail her as two long fleshless arms like living grapnels clutched her white dress, raised her off the divan, and carried her to the trap. This movable platform began to rise, with the grinding of metal and a shrill, hideous laugh issued from the mouth of this human-faced monster who bore her upwards without any shock.