The Mesmerist's Victim

CHAPTER III
THE RESTORATION

WHILE the thousand casualties were precipitated upon each other, Baron Taverney escaped all the dangers by some miracle.

An old rake, and hardened in cynicism, he seemed the least likely to be so favored, but he maintained himself in the thick of a cluster by his skill and coolness, while incapable of exerting force against the devouring panic. His group, bruised against the Royal Storehouse, and brushed along the square railings, left a long trail of dead and dying on both flanks but, though decimated, its centre was kept out of peril.

As soon as these lucky men and women scattered upon the boulevard, they yelled with glee. Like them, Taverney found himself out of harm’s reach. During all the journey, the baron had thought of nobody but his noble self. Though not emotional, he was a man of action, and in great crises such characters put Caesar’s adage into practice – Act for yourself. We will not say he was selfish but that his attention was limited.

But soon as he was free on the main street, escaped from death and re-entering life, the old baron uttered a cry of delight, followed by another of pain.

“My daughter,” he said, in sorrow, though it was not so loud as the other.

“Poor dear old man,” said some old women, flocking round ready to condole with him, but still more to question.

He had no popular inclinations. Ill at ease among the gossips he made an effort to break the ring, and to his credit got off a few steps towards the square. But they were but the impulse of parental love, never wholly dead in a man; reason came to his aid, and stopped him short.

He cheered himself with the reasoning that if he, a feeble old man had struggled through, Andrea, on the strong arm of her brave and powerful brother, must have likewise succeeded. He concluded that the two had gone home, and he proceeded to their Paris lodging, in Coq-Heron street.

But he was scarcely within twenty paces of the house, on the street leading to a summerhouse in the gardens, where Philip had induced a friend to let them dwell, when he was hailed by a girl on the threshold. This was a pretty servant maid, who was jabbering with some women.

“Have you not brought Master Philip and Mistress Andrea?” was her greeting.

“Good heavens, Nicole, have they not come home?” cried the baron, a little startled, while the others were quivering with the thrill which permeated all the city from the exaggerated story of the first fugitives spreading.

“Why, no, my lord, no one has seen them.”

“They could not come home by the shortest road,” faltered the baron, trembling with spite at his pitiful line of reasoning falling to pieces.

There he stood, in the street, with Nicole whimpering, and an old valet, who had accompanied the Taverneys to town, lifting his hands to the sky.

“Oh, here comes Master Philip,” ejaculated Nicole, with inexpressible terror, for the young man was alone.

He ran up through the shades of evening, desperate, calling out as soon as he saw the gathering at the house door:

“Is my sister here?”

“We have not seen her – she is not here,” said Nicole. “Oh, heavens, my poor young mistress!” she sobbed.

“The idea of your coming back without her!” said the baron with anger the more unfair as we have shown how he quitted the scene of the disaster.

By way of answer he showed his bleeding face and his arm broken and hanging like a dead limb by his side.

“Alas, my poor Andrea,” sighed the baron, falling, seated on a stone bench by the door.

“But I shall find her, dead or alive,” replied the young man gloomily.

And he returned to the place with feverish agitation. He would have lopped off his useless arm, if he had an axe, but as it was, he tucked the hand into his waistcoat for an improvised sling.

It was thus we saw him on the square, where he wandered part of the night. As the first streaks of dawn whitened the sky, he turned homeward, though ready to drop. From a distance he saw the same familiar group which had met his eyes on the eve. He understood that Andrea had not returned, and he halted.

“Well?” called out the baron, spying him.

“Has she not returned? no news – no clew?” and he fell, exhausted, on the stone bench, while the older noble swore.

At this juncture, a hack appeared at the end of the street, lumbered up, and stopped in front of the house. As a female head appeared at the window, thrown back as if in a faint, Philip, recognizing it, leaped that way. The door opened, and a man stepped out who carried Andrea de Taverney in his arms.

“Dead – they bring her home dead,” gasped Philip, falling on his knees.

“I do not think so, gentlemen,” said the man who bore Andrea, “I trust that Mdlle. de Taverney is only fainted.”

“Oh, the magician,” said the baron, while Philip uttered the name of “the Baron of Balsamo.”

“I, my lord, who was happy enough to spy Mdlle. de Taverney in the riot, near the Royal wardrobe storehouse.”

But Philip passed at once from joy to doubt and said:

“You are bringing her home very late, my lord.”

“You will understand my plight,” replied Balsamo without astonishment. “I was unaware of the address of your sister, though your father calls me a magician, kindly remembering some little incidents occurring at your country-seat. So I had her carried by my servants to the residence of the Marchioness of Savigny, a friend who lives near the Royal Stables. Then this honest fellow – Comtois,” he said, waving a footman in the royal livery to come forward, “being in the King’s household and recognizing the young lady from her being attendant of the Dauphiness, gave me this address. Her wonderful beauty had made him remark her one night when the royal coach left her at this door. I bade him get upon the box, and I have the honor to bring to you, with all the respect she merits – the young lady, less ill than she may appear.”

He finished by placing the lady with the utmost respect in the hands of Nicole and her father. For the first time the latter felt a tear on his eyelid, and he was astonished as he let it openly run down his wrinkled cheek.

“My lord,” said Philip, presenting the only hand he could use to Balsamo, “You know me and my address. Give me a chance to repay the services you have done me.”

“I have merely accomplished duty,” was the reply. “I owed you for the hospitality you once favored me at Taverney.” He took a few paces to depart, but retracing them, he added: “I ask pardon; but I was forgetting to leave the precise address of Marchioness Savigny; she lives in Saint Honore Street, near the Feuillant’s Monastery. This is said in case Mdlle. de Taverney should like to pay her a visit.”

In this explanation, exactness of details and accumulation of proofs, the delicacy touched the young lord and even the old one.

“My daughter owes her life to your lordship,” said the latter.

“I am proud and happy in that belief,” responded Balsamo.

Followed by Comtois, who refused the purse Philip offered, he went to the carriage and was gone.

Simultaneously, as if the departure made the swooning of Andrea cease, she opened her eyes. For a while she was dumb, and stunned, and her look was frightened.

“Heavens, have we but had her half restored – with her reason gone?” said Philip.

Seeming to comprehend the words, Andrea shook her head. But she remained mute, as if in ecstasy. Standing, one of her arms was levelled in the direction in which Balsamo had disappeared.

“Come, come, it is high time our worry was over,” said the baron. “Help your sister indoors my son.”

Between the young gentleman and Nicole, Andrea reached the rear house, but walked like a somnambulist.

“Philip – father!” she uttered as speech returned to her at last.

“She knows us,” exclaimed the young knight.

“To be sure I know you; but what has taken place?”

Her eyes closed in a blessed sleep this time, and Nicole carried her into her bedroom.

On going to his own room, Captain Philip found a doctor whom the valet Labrie had sent for. He examined the injured arm, not broken but dislocated, and set the bone. Still uneasy about his sister, he took the medical man to her bedside. He felt her pulse, listened to her breathing and smiled.

“Her slumber is calm and peaceful as a child’s,” he said. “Let her sleep on, young sir, there is nothing more to do.”

The baron was sound asleep already assured about his children on whom were built the ambitious schemes which had lured him to the capital.

CHAPTER IV
AN AERIAL JOURNEY

MORE fortunate than Andrea, Gilbert had in lieu of an ordinary practitioner, a light of medical science to attend to his ails. The eminent Dr Jussieu, a friend of Rousseau’s, though allied to the Court, happened to call in the nick to be of service. He promised that the young man would be on his legs in a week.

Moreover, being a botanist like Rousseau, he proposed that on the coming Sunday they should give the youth a walk with them in the country, out Marly way. Gilbert might rest while they gathered the curious plants.

With this prospect to entice him, the invalid returned rapidly to health.

But while Rousseau believed that his ward was well, and his wife Therese told the gossips that it was due to the skill of the celebrated Dr. Jussieu, Gilbert was running the worst danger ever befalling his obstinacy and perpetual dreaming.

Gilbert was the son of a farmer on the land of Baron Taverney. The master had dissipated his revenue and sold his principal to play the rake in Paris. When he returned to bring up his son and daughter in poverty in the dilapidated manor house, Gilbert was a hanger-on, who fell in love with Nicole as a stepping-stone to becoming infatuated with her mistress. As at the fireworks, the youth never thought of anything but this mad love.

From the attic of Rousseau’s house he could look down on the garden where the summerhouse stood in which Andrea was also in convalescence.

He did not see her, only Nicole carrying broth as for the invalid. The back of the little house came to the yard of Rousseau’s in another street.

In this little garden old Taverney trotted about, taking snuff greedily as if to rouse his wits – that was all Gilbert saw.

But it was enough to judge that a patient was indoors, not a dead woman.

“Behind that screen in the room,” he mused, “is the woman whom I love to idolatry. She has but to appear to thrill my every limb for she holds my existence in her hand and I breathe but for us two.”

Merged in his contemplation he did not perceive that in another window of an adjoining house in his street, Plastriere Street, a young woman in the widow’s weeds, was also watching the dwelling of the Taverneys. This second spy knew Gilbert, too, but she took care not to show herself when he leaned out of the casement as to throw himself on the ground. He would have recognized her as Chon, the sister of Jeanne, Countess Dubarry, the favorite of the King.

“Oh, how happy they are who can walk about in that garden,” raved the mad lover, with furious envy, “for there they could hear Andrea and perhaps see her in her rooms. At night, one would not be seen while peeping.”

It is far from desire to execution. But fervid imaginations bring extremes together; they have the means. They find reality amid fancies, they bridge streams and put a ladder up against a mountain.

To go around by the street would be no use, even if Rousseau had not locked in his pet, for the Taverneys lived in the rear house.

“With these natural tools, hands and feet,” reasoned Gilbert, “I can scramble over the shingles and by following the gutter which is rather narrow, but straight, consequently the shortest path from one point to another, I will reach the skylight next my own. That lights the stairs, so that I can get out. Should I fall, they will pick me up, smashed at her feet, and they will recognize me, so that my death will be fine, noble, romantic – superb!

“But if I get in on the stairs I can go down to the window over the yard and jump down a dozen feet where the trellis will help me to get into her garden. But if that worm-eaten wood should break and tumble me on the ground that would not be poetic, but shameful to think of! The baron will say I came to steal the fruit and he will have his man Labrie lug me out by the ear.

“No, I will twist these clotheslines into a rope to let me down straight and I will make the attempt to-night.”

From his window, at dark, Gilbert was scanning the enemy’s grounds, as he qualified Taverney’s house-lot, when he spied a stone coming over the garden-wall and slapping up against the house-wall. But though he leaned far out he could not discry the flinger of the pebble.

What he did see was a blind on the ground floor open warily and the wide-awake head of the maid Nicole show itself. After having scrutinized all the windows round, Nicole came out of doors and ran to the espalier on which some pieces of lace were drying.

The stone had rolled on this place and Gilbert had not lost sight of it. Nicole kicked it when she came to it and kept on playing football with it till she drove it under the trellis where she picked it up under cover of taking off the lace. Gilbert noticed that she shucked the stone of a piece of paper, and he concluded that the message was of importance.

It was a letter, which the sly wench opened, eagerly perused and put in her pocket without paying any more heed to the lace.

Nicole went back into the house, with her hand in her pocket. She returned with a key which she slipped under the garden gate, which would be out in the street beside the carriage-doorway.

“Good, I understand,” thought the young man: “it is a love letter. Nicole is not losing her time in town – she has a lover.”

He frowned with the vexation of a man who supposed that his loss had left an irreparable void in the heart of the girl he jilted, and discovered that she had filled it up.

“This bids fair to run counter to my plans,” thought he, trying to give another turn to his ill-humor. “I shall not be sorry to learn what happy mortal has succeeded me in the good graces of Nicole Legay.”

But Gilbert had a level mind in some things; he saw that the knowledge of this secret gave him an advantage over the girl, as she could not deny it, while she scarcely suspected his passion for the baron’s daughter, and had no clew to give body to her doubts.

The night was dark and sultry, stifling with heat as often in early spring. From the clouds it was a black gulf before Gilbert, through which he descended by the rope. He had no fear from his strength of will. So he reached the ground without a flutter. He climbed the garden wall but as he was about to descend, heard a step beneath him.

He clung fast and glanced at the intruder.

It was a man in the uniform of a corporal of the French Guards.

Almost at the same time, he saw Nicole open the house backdoor, spring across the garden, leaving it open, and light and rapid as a shepherdess, dart to the greenhouse, which was also the soldier’s destination. As neither showed any hesitation about proceeding to this point, it was likely that this was not the first appointment the pair had kept there.

“No, I can continue my road,” reasoned Gilbert; “Nicole would not be receiving her sweetheart unless she were sure of some time before her, and I may rely on finding Mdlle. Andrea alone. Andrea alone!”

No sound in the house was audible and only a faint light was to be seen.

Gilbert skirted the wall and reached the door left open by the maid. Screened by an immense creeper festooning the doorway, he could peer into an anteroom, with two doors; the open one he believed to be Nicole’s. He groped his way into it, for it had no light.

At the end of a lobby, a glazed door, with muslin curtains on the other side, showed a glimmer. On going up this passage, he heard a feeble voice.

It was Andrea’s.

All Gilbert’s blood flowed back to the heart.

CHAPTER V
SUSPICIONS

THE voice which made answer to the girl’s was her brother Philip’s. He was anxiously asking after her health.

Gilbert took a few steps guardedly and stood behind one of those half-columns carrying a bust which were the ornaments in pairs to doorways of the period. Thus in security, he looked and listened, so happy that his heart melted with delight; yet so frightened that it seemed to shrink up to a pin’s head.

He saw Andrea lounging on an invalid-chair, with her face turned towards the glazed door, a little on the jar. A small lamp with a large reflecting shade placed on a table heaped with books, showed the only recreation allowed the fair patient, and illumined only the lower part of her countenance.

Seated on the foot of the chair, Philip’s back was turned to the watcher; his arm was still in a sling.

This was the first time the lady sat up and that her brother was allowed out. They had not seen each other since the dreadful night; but both had been informed of the respective convalescence. They were chatting freely as they believed themselves alone and that Nicole would warn them if any one came.

“Then you are breathing freely,” said Philip.

“Yes, but with some pain.”

“Strength come back, my poor sister?”

“Far from it, but I have been able to get to the window two or three times. How nice the open air is – how sweet the flowers – with them it seems that one cannot die. But I am so weak from the shock having been so horrid. I can only walk by hanging on to the furniture; I should fall without support.”

“Cheer up, dear; the air and flowers will restore you. In a week you will be able to pay a visit to the Dauphiness who has kindly asked after you, I hear.”

“I hope so, for her Highness has been good to me; to you in promoting you to be captain in her guards, and to father, who was induced by her benevolence to leave our miserable country house.

“Speaking of your miraculous escape,” said Philip, “I should like to know more about the rescue.”

Andrea blushed and seemed ill at ease. Either he did not remark it or would not do so.

“I thought you knew all about it,” said she; “father was perfectly satisfied.

“Of course, dear Andrea, and it seemed to me that the gentleman behaved most delicately in the matter. But some points in the account seemed obscure – I do not mean suspicious.”

“Pray explain,” said the girl with a virgin’s candor.

“One point is very out of the way – how you were saved. Kindly relate it.”

“Oh, Philip,” she said with an effort, “I have almost forgotten – I was so frightened.”

“Never mind – tell me what you do remember.”

“You know, brother, that we were separated within twenty paces of the Royal Wardrobe Storehouse? I saw you dragged away towards the Tuileries Gardens, while I was hurled into Royale Street. Only for an instant did I see you, making desperate efforts to return to me. I held out my arms to you and was screaming, ‘Philip!’ when I was suddenly wrapped in a whirlwind, and whisked up towards the railings. I feared that the current would dash me up against the wall and shatter me. I heard the yells of those crushed against the iron palings; I foresaw my turn coming to be ground to rags. I could reckon how few instants I had to live, when – half dead, half crazed, as I lifted eyes and arms in a last prayer to heaven, I saw the eyes sparkle of a man who towered over the multitude and it seemed to obey him.”

“You mean Baron Balsamo, I suppose?”

“Yes, the same I had seen at Taverney. There he struck me with uncommon terror. The man seems supernatural. He fascinates my sight and my hearing; with but the touch of his finger he would make me quiver all over.”

“Continue, Andrea,” said the chevalier, with darkening brow and moody voice.

“This man soared over the catastrophe like one whom human ills could not attain. I read in his eyes that he wanted to save me and something extraordinary went on within me: shaken, bruised, powerless and nearly dead though I was, to that man I was attracted by an invincible, unknown and mysterious force, which bore me thither. I felt arms enclasp me and urge me out of this mass of welded flesh in which I was kneaded – where others choked and gasped I was lifted up into air. Oh, Philip,” said she with exaltation, “I am sure it was the gaze of that man. I grasped at his hand and I was saved.”

“Alas,” thought Gilbert, “I was not seen by her though dying at her feet.”

“When I felt out of danger, my whole life having been centred in this gigantic effort or else the terror surpassed my ability to contend – I fainted away.”

“When do you think this faint came on?”

“Ten minutes after we were rent asunder, brother.”

“That would be close on Midnight,” remarked the Knight of Red Castle. “How then was it you did not return home until three? You must forgive me questions which may appear to you ridiculous but they have a reason to me, dear Andrea.”

“Three days ago I could not have replied to you,” she said, pressing his hand, “but, strange as it may be, I can see more clearly now. I remember as though a superior will made me do so.”

“I am waiting with impatience. You were saying that the man took you up in his arms?”

“I do not recall that clearly,” answered Andrea, blushing. “I only know that he plucked me up out of the crowd. But the touch of his hand caused me the same shock as at Taverney, and again I swooned or rather I slept, for it was a sleep that was good.”

Gilbert devoured all the words, for he knew that so far all was true.

“On recovering my senses, I was in a richly furnished parlor. A lady and her maid were by my side, but they did not seem uneasy. Their faces were benevolently smiling. It was striking half-past twelve.”

“Good,” said the knight, breathing freely. “Continue, Andrea, continue.”

“I thanked the lady for the attentions she was giving, but, knowing in what anxiety you must all be, I begged to be taken home at once. They told me that the Count – for they knew our Baron Balsamo as Count Fenix, had gone back to the scene of the accident, but would return with his carriage and take me to our house. Indeed, about two o’clock, I heard carriage wheels and felt the same warning shiver of his approach. I reeled and fell on a sofa as the door opened; I barely could recognize my deliverer as the giddiness seized me. During this unconsciousness I was put in the coach and brought here. It is all I recall, brother.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Philip, in a joyful voice; “your calculations of the time agree with mine. I will call on Marchioness Savigny and personally thank her. A last word of secondary import. Did you notice any familiar face in the excitement? Such as little Gilbert’s, for instance?”

“Yes, I fancy I did see him a few paces off, as you and I were driven apart,” said Andrea, recollecting.

“She saw me,” muttered Gilbert.

“Because, when I was seeking you, I came across the boy.”

“Among the dead?” asked the lady with the shade of assumed interest which the great take in their inferiors.

“No, only wounded, and I hope he will come round. His chest was crushed in.”

“Ay, against hers,” thought Gilbert.

“But the odd part of it was that I found in his clenched hand a rag from your dress, Andrea,” pursued Philip.

“Odd, indeed; but I saw in this Dance of Death such a series of faces, that I can hardly say whether his figured truly there or not, poor little fellow!”

“But how do you account for the scrap in his grip?” pressed the captain.

“Good gracious! nothing more easy,” rejoined the girl with tranquillity greatly contrasting with the eavesdropper’s frightful throbbing of the heart. “If he were near me and he saw me lifted up, as I stated, by the spell of that man, he might have clutched at my skirts to be saved as the drowning snatch at a straw.”

“Ugh,” grumbled Gilbert, with gloomy contempt for this haughty explanation, “what ignoble interpretation of my devotion! How wrongly these aristocrats judge us people. Rousseau is right in saying that we are worth more than they – our heart is purer and our arms stronger.”

At that he heard a sound behind him.

“What, is not that madcap Nicole here?” asked Baron Taverney, for it was he who passed by Gilbert hiding and entered his daughter’s room.

“I dare say she is in the garden,” replied his daughter, the latter with a quiet proving that she had no suspicion of the listener; “good evening, papa.”

The old noble took an armchair.

“Ha, my children, it is a good step to Versailles when one travels in a hackney coach instead of one of the royal carriages. I have seen the Dauphiness, though, who sent for me to learn about your progress.”

“Andrea is much better, sir.”

“I knew that and told her Royal Highness so. She is good enough to promise to call her to her side when she sets up her establishment in the Little Trianon Palace which is being fitted up to her liking.”

“I at court?” said Andrea timidly.

“Not much of a court; the Dauphiness has quiet tastes and the Prince Royal hates noise and bustle. They will live domestically at Trianon. But judging what the Austrian princess’s humor is, I wager that as much will be done in the family circle as at official assemblies. The princess has a temper and the Dauphin is deep, I hear.”

“Make no mistake, sister, it will still be a court,” said Captain Philip, sadly.

“The court,” thought Gilbert with intense rage and despair, “a hight I cannot scale – an abyss into which I cannot hurl myself! Andrea will be lost to me!”

“We have neither the wealth to allow us to inhabit that palace, nor the training to fit us for it,” replied the girl to her father. “What would a poor girl like me do among those most brilliant ladies of whom I have had a glimpse? Their splendor dazzled me, while their wit seemed futile though sparkling. Alas, brother, we are obscure to go amid so much light!”

“What nonsense!” said the baron, frowning. “I cannot make out why my family always try to bemean what affects me! obscure – you must be mad, miss! A Taverney Redcastle, obscure! who should shine if not you, I want to know? Wealth? we know what wealth at court is – the crown is a sun which creates the gold – it does the gilding, and it is the tide of nature. I was ruined – I become rich, and there you have it. Has not the King money to offer his servitors? Am I to blush if he provides my son with a regiment and gives my daughter a dowry? or an appanage for me, or a nice warrant on the Treasury – when I am dining with the King and I find it under my plate?”

“No, no, only fools are squeamish – I have no prejudices. It is my due and I shall take it. Don’t you have any scruples, either. The only matter to debate is your training. You have the solid education of the middle class with the more showy one of your own; you paint just such landscapes as the Dauphiness doats upon. As for your beauty, the King will not fail to notice it. As for conversation, which Count Artois and Count Provence like – you will charm them. So you will not only be welcome but adored. That is the word,” concluded the cynic, rubbing his hands and laughing so unnaturally that Philip stared to see if it were a human being.

But, taking Andrea’s hand as she lowered her eyes, the young gentleman said:

“Father is right; you are all he says, and nobody has more right to go to Versailles Palace.”

“But I would be parted from you,” remonstrated Andrea.

“Not at all,” interrupted the baron; “Versailles is large enough to hold all the Taverneys.”

“True, but the Trianon is small,” retorted Andrea, who could be proud and willful.

“Trianon is large enough to find a room for Baron Taverney,” returned the old nobleman, “a man like me always finds a place” – meaning “can find a place. Any way, it is the Dauphiness’s order.”

“I will go,” said Andrea.

“That is good. Have you any money, Philip?” asked the old noble.

“Yes, if you want some; but if you want to offer me it, I should say that I have enough as it is.”

“Of course, I forgot you were a philosopher,” sneered the baron. “Are you a philosopher, too, my girl, or do you need something?”

“I should not like to distress you, father.”

“Oh, luck has changed since we left Taverney. The King has given me five hundred louis – on account, his Majesty said. Think of your wardrobe, child.”

“Oh, thank you, papa,” said Andrea, joyously.

“Oho, going to the other extreme now! A while ago, you wanted for nothing – now you would ruin the Emperor of China. Never mind, for fine dresses become you, darling.”

With a tender kiss, he opened the door leading into his own room, and disappeared, saying:

“Confound that Nicole for not being in to show me a light!”

“Shall I ring for her, father?”

“No, I shall knock against Labrie, dozing on a chair. Good night, my dears.”

“Good night, brother,” said Andrea as Philip also stood up: “I am overcome with fatigue. This is the first time, I have been up since my accident.”

The gentleman kissed her hand with respect mixed with his affection always entertained for his sister and he went through the corridor, almost brushing against Gilbert.

“Never mind Nicole – I shall retire alone. Good bye, Philip.”