The Mesmerist's Victim

CHAPTER VI
WHAT GILBERT EXPECTED

A SHIVER ran through the watcher as the girl rose from her chair. With her alabaster hands she pulled out her hairpins one by one while the wrapper, slipping down upon her shoulders, disclosed her pure and graceful neck, and her arms, carelessly arched over her head, threw out the lower curve of the body to the advantage of the exquisite throat, quivering under the linen.

Gilbert felt a touch of madness and was on the verge of rushing forward, yelling:

“You are lovely, but you must not be too proud of your beauty since you owe it to me – it was I saved your life!”

Suddenly a knot in the corset string irritated Andrea who stamped her foot and rang the bell.

This knell recalled the lover to reason. Nicole had left the door open so as to run back. She would come.

He wanted to dart out of the house, but the baron had closed the other doors as he came along. He was forced to take refuge in Nicole’s room.

From there he saw her hurry in to her mistress, assist her to bed and retire, after a short chat, in which she displayed all the fawning of a maid who wishes to win her forgiveness for delinquency.

Singing to make her peace of mind be believed, she was going through on the way to the garden when Gilbert showed himself in a moonbeam.

She was going to scream but taking him for another, she said, conquering her fright:

“Oh, it is you – what rashness!”

“Yes, it is I – but do not scream any louder for me than the other,” said Gilbert.

“Why, whatever are you doing here?” she challenged, knowing her fellow-dependent at Taverney. “But I guess – you are still after my mistress. But though you love her, she does not care for you.”

“Really?”

“Mind that I do not expose you and have you thrown out,” she said in a threatening tone.

“One may be thrown out, but it will be Nicole to whom stones are tossed over the wall.”

“That is nothing to the piece of our mistress’s dress found in your hand on Louis XV Square, as Master Philip told his father. He does not see far into the matter yet, but I may help him.”

“Take care, Nicole, or they may learn that the stones thrown over the wall are wrapped in love-letters.”

“It is not true!” Then recovering her coolness, she added: “It is no crime to receive a love-letter – not like sneaking in to peep at poor young mistress in her private room.”

“But it is a crime for a waiting-maid to slip keys under garden doors and keep tryst with soldiers in the greenhouse!”

“Gilbert, Gilbert!”

“Such is the Nicole Virtue! Now, assert that I am in love with Mdlle. Andrea and I will say I am in love with my playfellow Nicole and they will believe that the sooner. Then you will be packed off. Instead of going to the Trianon Palace with your mistress, and coqueting with the fine fops around the Dauphiness, you will have to hang around the barracks to see your lover the corporal of the Guards. A low fall, and Nicole’s ambition ought to have carried her higher. Nicole, a dangler on a guardsman!”

And he began to hum a popular song:

“In the French Guards my sweetheart marches!”

“For pity’s sake, Gilbert, do not eye me thus – it alarms me.”

“Open the door and get that swashbuckler out of the way in ten minutes when I may take my leave.”

Subjugated by his imperious air, Nicole obeyed. When she returned after dismissing the corporal, her first lover was gone.

Alone in his attic, Gilbert cherished of his recollections solely the picture of Andrea letting down her fine tresses.

CHAPTER VII
THE TRAP TO CATCH PHILOSOPHERS

INDIFFERENT to everything since he had learnt of Andrea’s going soon to the court, Gilbert had forgotten the excursion of Rousseau and his brother botanist on Sunday. He would have preferred to pass the day at his garret window, watching his idol.

Rousseau had not only taken special pains over his attire, but arrayed Gilbert in the best, though Therese had thought overalls and a smockfrock quite good enough to wander in the woods, picking up weeds.

He was not wrong for Dr. Jussieu came in his carriage, powdered, pommaded and freshened up like springtime: Indian satin coat, lilac taffety vest, extremely fine white silk stockings and polished gold buckled shoes composed his botanist’s outfit.

“How gay you are!” exclaimed Rousseau.

“Not at all, I have dressed lightly to get over the ground better.”

“Your silk hose will never stand the wet.”

“We will pick our steps. Can one be too fine to court Mother Nature?”

The Genevan Philosopher said no more – an invocation to Nature usually shutting him up. Gilbert looked at Jussieu with envy. If he were arrayed like him, perhaps Andrea would look at him.

An hour after the start, the party reached Bougival, where they alighted and took the Chestnut Walk. On coming in sight of the summerhouse of Luciennes, where Gilbert had been conducted by Mdlle. Chon when he was picked up by her, a poor boy on the highway, he trembled. For he had repaid her succor by fleeing when she had wished to make a buffoon of him as a peer to Countess Dubarry’s black boy, Zamore.

“It is nine o’clock,” observed Dr. Jussieu, “suppose we have breakfast?”

“Where? did you bring eatables in your carriage?”

“No, but I see a kiosk over there where a modest meal may be had. We can herborize as we walk there.”

“Very well, Gilbert may be hungry. What is the name of your inn?”

“The Trap.”

“How queer!”

“The country folks have droll ideas. But it is not an inn; only a shooting-box where the gamekeepers offer hospitality to gentlemen.”

“Of course you know the owner’s name?” said Rousseau, suspicious.

“Not at all: Lady Mirepoix or Lady Egmont – or – it does not matter if the butter and the bread are fresh.”

The good-humored way in which he spoke disarmed the philosopher who besides had his appetite whetted by the early stroll. Jussieu led the march, Rousseau followed, gleaning, and Gilbert guarded the rear, thinking of Andrea and how to see her at Trianon Palace.

At the top of the hill, rather painfully climbed by the three botanists, rose one of those imitation rustic cottages invented by the gardeners of England and giving a stamp of originality to the scene. The walls were of brick and the shelly stone found naturally in mosaic patterns on the riverside.

The single room was large enough to hold a table and half-a-dozen chairs. The windows were glazed in different colors so that you could by selection view the landscape in the red of sunset, the blue of a cloudy day or the still colder slate hue of a December day.

This diverted Gilbert but a more attractive sight was the spread on the board. It drew an outcry of admiration from Rousseau, a simple lover of good cheer, though a philosopher, from his appetite being as hearty as his taste was modest.

“My dear master,” said Jussieu, “if you blame me for this feast you are wrong, for it is quite a mild set-out – ”

“Do not depreciate your table, you gormand!”

“Do not call it mine!”

“Not yours? then whose – the brownies, the fairies?” demanded Rousseau, with a smile testifying to his constraint and good nature at the same time.

“You have hit it,” answered the doctor, glancing wistfully to the door.

Gilbert hesitated.

“Bless the fays for their hospitality,” said Rousseau, “fall on! they will be offended at your holding back and think you rate their bounty incomplete.”

“Or unworthy you gentlemen,” interrupted a silvery voice at the summerhouse door, where two pretty women presented themselves arm in arm.

With smiles on their lips, they waved their plump hands for Jussieu to moderate his salutations.

“Allow me to present the Author Rousseau to your ladyship, countess,” said the latter. “Do you not know the lady?”

Gilbert did, if his teacher did not, for he stared and, pale as death, looked for an exit.

“It is the first time we meet,” faltered the Citizen of Geneva.

“Countess Dubarry!” explained the other botanist.

His colleague started as though on a redhot plate of iron.

Jeanne Dubarry, favorite of King Louis X. was a lovely woman, just of the right plumpness to be a material Venus; fair, with light hair but dark eyes she was witching and delightful to all men who prefer truth to fancy in feminine beauty.

“I am very happy,” she said “to see and welcome under my roof one of the most illustrious thinkers of the era.”

“Lady Dubarry,” stammered Rousseau, without seeing that his astonishment was an offense. “So it is she who gives the breakfast?”

“You guess right, my dear philosopher,” replied Jussieu, “she and her sister, Mdlle. Chon, who at least is no stranger to Friend Gilbert.”

“Her sister knows Gilbert?”

“Intimately,” rejoined the impudent girl with the audacity which respected neither royal ill-humor nor philosopher’s quips. “We are old boon companions – are you already forgetful of the candy and cakes of Luciennes and Versailles?”

This shot went home; Rousseau dropped his arms. Habituated in his conceit to think the aristocratic party were always trying to seduce him from the popular side, he saw traitors and spies in everybody.

“Is this so, unhappy boy?” he asked of Gilbert, confounded. “Begone, for I do not like those who blow hot and cold with the same breath.”

“But I ran away from Luciennes where I was locked up, and I must have preferred your house, my guide, my friend, my philosopher!”

“Hypocrisy!”

“But, M. Rousseau, if I wanted the society of these ladies, I should go with them now?”

“Go where you like! I may be deceived once but not twice. Go to this lady, good and amiable – and with this gentleman,” he added pointing to Jussieu, amazed at the philosopher’s rebuke to the royal pet, “he is a lover of nature and your accomplice – he has promised you fortune and assistance and he has power at court.”

He bowed to the women in a tragic manner, unable to contain himself, and left the pavillion statelily, without glancing again at Gilbert.

“What an ugly creature a philosopher is,” tranquilly said Chon, watching the Genevan stumble down the hill.

“You can have anything you like,” prompted Jussieu to Gilbert who kept his face buried in his hands.

“Yes, anything, Gilly,” added the countess, smiling on the returned prodigal.

Raising his pale face, and tossing back the hair matted on his forehead, he said in a steady voice:

“I should be glad to be a gardener at Trianon Palace.”

Chon and the countess glanced at each other, and the former touched her sister’s foot while she winked broadly. Jeanne nodded.

“If feasible, do it,” she said to Jussieu.

Gilbert bowed with his hand on his heart, overflowing with joy after having been drowned with grief.

CHAPTER VIII
THE LITTLE TRIANON

WHEN Louis XIV. built Versailles and perceived the discomfort of grandeur, he granted it was the sojourneying-place for a demi-god but no home for a man. So he had the Trianon constructed to be able to draw a free breath at leisure moments.

But the sword of Achilles, if it tired him, was bound to be of insupportable weight to a myrmidon. Trianon was so much too pompous for the Fifteenth Louis that he had the Little Trianon built.

It was a house looking with its large eyes of windows over a park and woods, with the wing of the servant’s lodgings and stables on the left, where the windows were barred and the kitchens hidden by trellises of vines and creepers.

A path over a wooden bridge led to the Grand Trianon through a kitchen garden.

The King brought Prime Minister Choiseul into this garden to show him the improvements introduced to make the place fit for his grandson the Dauphin, and the Dauphiness.

Duke Choiseul admired everything and passed his comments with a courtier’s sagacity. He let the monarch say the place would become more pleasant daily and he added that it would be a family retreat for the sovereign.

“The Dauphiness is still a little uncouth, like all young German girls,” said Louis; “She speaks French nicely, but with an Austrian accent jarring on our ears. Here she will speak among friends and it will not matter.”

“She will perfect herself,” said the duke. “I have remarked that the lady is highly accomplished and accomplishes anything she undertakes.”

On the lawn they found the Dauphin taking the sun with a sextant. Louis Aguste, duke of Berry, was a meek-eyed, rosy complexioned man of seventeen, with a clumsy walk. He had a more prominent Bourbon nose than any before him, without its being a caricature. In his nimble fingers and able arms alone he showed the spirit of his race, so to express it.

“Louis,” said the King, loudly to be overheard by his grandson, “is a learned man, and he is wrong to rack his brain with science, for his wife will lose by it.”

“Oh, no,” corrected a feminine voice as the Dauphiness stepped out from the shrubbery, where she was chatting with a man loaded with plans, compass, pencil and notebook.

“Sire, this is my architect, Mique,” she said.

“Have you caught the family complaint of building?”

“I am going to turn this sprawling garden into a natural one!”

“Really? why, I thought that trees and grass and running water are natural enough.”

“Sire, you have to walk along straight paths between shaped boxwood trees, hewn at an angle of forty-five, to quote the Dauphin, and ponds agreeing with the paths, and star centres, and terraces! I am going to have arbors, rockeries, grottoes, cottages, hills, gorges, meadows – ”

“For Dutch dolls to stand up in?” queried the King.

“Alas, Sire, for kings and princes like ourselves,” she replied, not seeing him color up, and that she had spoken a cutting truth.

“I hope you will not lodge your servants in your woods and on your rivers like Red Indians, in the natural life which Rousseau praises. If you do, only the Encyclopædists will eulogise you.”

“Sire, they would be too cold in huts, so I shall keep the out-buildings for them as they are.” She pointed to the windows of a corridor, over which were the servant’ sleeping rooms and under which were the kitchens.

“What do I see there?” asked the King, shielding his eyes with his hand, for he had short-sight.

“A woman, your Majesty,” said Choiseul.

“A young lady who is my reading-woman,” said the princess.

“It is Mdlle. de Taverney,” went on Choiseul.

“What, are you attaching the Taverneys to your house?”

“Only the girl.”

“Very good,” said the King, without taking his eyes off the barred window out of which innocently gazed Andrea, with no idea she was watched.

“How pale she is!” remarked the Prime Minister.

“She was nearly killed in the dreadful accident of the 30th of May, my lord.”

“For which we would have punished somebody severely,” said Louis, “but Chancellor Seguier proved it was the work of Fate. Only that fellow Bignon, Provost of the Merchants, was dismissed – and – poor girl! he deserved it.”

“Has she recovered?” asked Choiseul quickly.

“Yes, thank heaven!”

“She goes away,” said the King.

“She recognized your Majesty, and fled. She is timid.”

“A cheerless dwelling for a girl!”

“Oh, no, not so bad.”

“Let us have a look round inside, Choiseul?”

“Your Majesty, Council of Parliament at Versailles at half-past two.”

“Well, go and give those lawyers a shaking!”

And the sovereign, delighted to look at buildings, followed the Dauphiness who was delighted, also, to show her house. They passed Mdlle. de Taverney under the eaves of the little kitchen yard.

“This is my reader’s room,” remarked the Dauphiness. “I will show you it as a sample of how my ladies will fare.”

It was a suite of anteroom and two parlors. The furniture was placed; books, a harpsichord, and particularly a bunch of flowers in a Japanese Vase, attracted the King’s attention.

“What nice flowers! how can you talk of changing your garden? who the mischief supplies your ladies with such beauties? do they save any for the mistress?”

“It is very choice.”

“Who is the gardener here so sweet upon Mdlle. de Taverney?”

“I do not know – Dr. Jussieu found me somebody.”

The King looked round with a curious eye, and elsewhere, before departing. The Dauphin was still taking the sun.

CHAPTER IX
THE HUNT

A LONG rank of carriages filled the Forest at Marly where the King was carrying on what was called an afternoon hunt. The Master of the Buckhounds had deer so selected that he could let the one out which would run before the hounds just as long as suited the sovereign.

On this occasion, his Majesty had stated that he would hunt till four P. M.

Countess Dubarry, who had her own game in view, promised herself that she would hunt the King as steadfastly as he would the deer.

But huntsmen propose and chance disposes. Chance upset the favorite’s project, and was almost as fickle as she was herself.

While talking politics with the Duke of Richelieu, who wanted by her help or otherwise to be First Minister instead of Choiseul, the countess – while chasing the King, who was chasing the roebuck – perceived all of a sudden, fifty paces off the road, in a shady grove, a broken down carriage. With its shattered wheels pointing to the sky, its horses were browsing on the moss and beech bark.

Countess Dubarry’s magnificent team, a royal gift, had out-stripped all the others and were first to reach the scene of the breakdown.

“Dear me, an accident,” said the lady, tranquilly.

“Just so, and pretty bad smash-up,” replied Richelieu, with the same coolness, for sensitiveness is unknown at court.

“Is that somebody killed on the grass?” she went on.

“It makes a bow, so I guess it lives.”

And at a venture Richelieu raised his own three-cocked hat.

“Hold! it strikes me it is the Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan. What the deuce is he doing there?”

“Better go and see. Champagne, drive up to the upset carriage.”

The countess’s coachman quitted the road and drove to the grove. The cardinal was a handsome gentleman of thirty years of age, of gracious manners and elegant. He was waiting for help to come, with the utmost unconcern.

“A thousand respects to your ladyship,” he said. “My brute of a coachman whom I hired from England, for my punishment, has spilled me in taking a short cut through the woods to join the hunt, and smashed my best carriage.”

“Think yourself lucky – a French Jehu would have smashed the passenger! be comforted.”

“Oh, I am philosophic, countess; but it is death to have to wait.”

“Who ever heard of a Rohan waiting?”

“The present representative of the family is compelled to do it; but Prince Soubise will happen along soon to give me a lift.”

“Suppose he goes another way?

“You must step into my carriage; if you were to refuse, I should give it up to you, and with a footman to carry my train, walk in the woods like a tree nymph.”

The cardinal smiled, and seeing that longer resistance might be badly interpreted by the lady, he took the place at the back which the old duke gave up to him. The prince wanted to dispute for the lesser place but the marshal was inflexible.

The countess’s team soon regained the lost time.

“May I ask your Eminence if you are fond of the chase again,” began the lady, “for this is the first time I have seen you out with the hounds.”

“I have been out before; but this time I come to Versailles to see the King on pressing business; and I went after him as he was in the woods, but thanks to my confounded driver, I shall lose the royal audience as well as an apartment in Paris.”

“The cardinal is pretty blunt – he means a love appointment,” remarked Richelieu.

“Oh, no, it is with a man – but he is not an ordinary man – he is a magician and works miracles.”

“The very one we are seeking, the duke and I,” said Jeanne Dubarry. “I am glad we have a churchman here to ask him if he believes in miracles?”

“Madam, I have seen things done by this wizard which may not be miraculous though they are almost incredible.”

“The prince has the reputation of dealing with spirits.”

“What has your Eminence seen?”

“I have pledged myself to secresy.”

“This is growing dark. At least you can name the wizard?”

“Yes, the Count of Fenix – ”

“That won’t do – all good magicians have names ending in the round O.”

“The cap fits – his other name is Joseph Balsamo.”

The countess clasped her hands while looking at Richelieu, who wore a puzzled look.

“And was the devil very black? did he come up in green fire and stir a saucepan with a horrid stench?”

“Why, no! my magician has excellent manners; he is quite a gentleman and entertains one capitally.”

“Would you not like him to tell your fortune, countess?” inquired the duke, well knowing that Lady Dubarry had asserted that when she was a poor girl on the Paris streets, a man had prophesied she would be a queen. This man she maintained was Balsamo. “Where does he dwell?”

“Saint Claude Street, I remember, in the Swamp.”

The countess repeated the clew so emphatically that the marshal, always afraid his secrets would leak out, especially when he was conspiring to obtain the government, interrupted the lady by these words:

“Hist, there is the King!”

“In the walnut copse, yes. Let us stay here while the prince goes to him. You will have him all to yourself.”

“Your kindness overwhelms me,” said the prelate who gallantly kissed the lady’s hand.

“But the King will be worried at not seeing you.”

“I want to tease him!”

The duke alighted with the countess, as light as a schoolgirl, and the carriage rolled swiftly away to set down the cardinal on the knoll where the King was looking all about him to see his darling.

But she, drawing the duke into the covert, said:

“Heaven sent the cardinal to put us on the track of that magician who told my fortune so true.”

“I met one – at Vienna, where I was run through the body by a jealous husband. I was all but dead when my magician came up and cured my wound with three drops of an elixir, and brought me to life with three more imbibed.”

“Mine was a young man – ”

“Mine old as Mathusaleh, and adorned with a sounding Greek name, Althotas.”

The carriage was coming back.

“I should like to go, if only to vex the King who will not dismiss Choiseul in your favor; but I shall be laughed at.”

“In good company, then, for I will go with you.”

At full speed the horses drew the carriage to Paris, containing the young and the old plotter.