CHAPTER XXIX
THE LIQUOR OF BEAUTY
THE beautiful favorite of Louis XV. had been shown into the parlor where she impatiently waited for Balsamo while turning over the leaves of Holbein’s Dance of Death, which caught her attention on the table. She had just arrived at the picture of the Beauty powdering her cheek before a mirror, when the host opened the door and bowed to her with a smile of joy over his face.
“I am sorry to have made you wait,” he said, “but I was a little out in my calculation about the speed of your horses.”
“Gracious, did you know that I was coming?”
“Certainly; at least you gave the orders for your sister to transmit them for your departure, while lounging in your blue boudoir.”
“Wizard that you are, if you can see all that goes on there, you must apprise me.”
“I only look in where doors are open.”
“But you saw my intention as regards you?”
“I saw that it was good.”
“So are all mine to you, count. But you merit more than mere intentions for it seems to me that you are too good and useful to me in taking the part of tutor the most difficult to play that I know.”
“You make me very happy; what can I do for you?”
“Have you not, to begin with, some of the seed which makes one invisible: for on the way it seemed to me that one of Richelieu’s men was riding after me.”
“The Duke of Richelieu cannot be dangerous to you in any meeting,” said the mesmerist.
“But he was, my lord, before this last scheme failed.”
Balsamo comprehended that here was a plot of which Lorenza had not informed him. So he smiled without venturing on the unknown ground.
“I nearly fell a victim to the scheme, in which you had a share.”
“I, in a scheme against you? never.”
“Did you not give Richelieu a philter to make the drinker fail madly in love?”
“Oh, no, my lady: he composes those things himself; I did give him a simple narcotic – a sleeping draft. He called for it on the eve of the day when I sent you the note by my man Fritz to meet me at Sartines.”
“That is it – the very time when the King went to little Taverney’s rooms. It is all clear now, for the narcotic saved us.”
“I am happy to have served your ladyship, though unawares,” he said without knowing the matter.
“Yes; the King must have seen the girl under the influence of this soporific, for he was seen to stagger out of the chapel corridor during the storm, crying ‘She is dead!’ Nothing frightens the King more than the dead, or next to it those in a death-like sleep. Finding Mdlle. de Taverney in a sleep, he took it for death.”
“Yes, like death, with all the appearances,” said the other, remembering that he had fled without reviving Andrea. “Go on, my lady!”
“The King woke with a touch of fever and was only better at noon. He came over to see me in the evening, where I discovered that Richelieu is almost as great a conjurer as your lordship.”
The countess’s triumphant face, and her gesture of coquetry and grace completed her thought, and perfectly encouraged the Italian about her sway over the King.
“So you are satisfied with me?” he asked.
She held out in token of thanks her white, soft and scented hand, only it was not fresh like Lorenza’s.
“Now, count, if you preserved me from a great danger, I believe I have saved you from one not to be despised.”
“I had no need to be grateful to you,” said Balsamo, hiding his emotion, “but I should like to know – ”
“That casket really contained cipher correspondence which Sartines had his experts write out plain: That is what he brought to Versailles this morning, with blank warrants to imprison parties named in the documents: one was filled with your name, but I would not let him slip that under the royal hand for the signature. Since Damiens stuck him with the penknife, he can be frightened into anything by the bogey of assassination. Sartines persisted and so did I, but the King said with a smile and looking at me in a style which I know:
“‘Let her alone, Sartines: I can refuse her nothing to-day.’
“As I was by, Sartines did not like to vex me by accusing you direct but he talked of the King of Prussia bolstering up the philosophers of a numerous and powerful sect formed of courageous, resolute and skillful adepts, working away underhandedly against his Royal Majesty. He said they spread evil reports, as for instance that the King was in the scheme to starve the people. To which Louis replied: ‘Let anybody come forward, saying so and I will give him the lie by furnishing him with board and lodging for nothing. I will feed him in the Bastile.’”
Balsamo felt a shiver run through him, but he stood firm.
“And the end?”
“It was the day after the sleeping potion, you understand,” he preferred my company to Sartines; and turned to me.
“‘Drive away this ugly man,’ I said, ‘he smells of the prison.’
“‘You had better go, Sartines,’ said the King.
“Seeing he was in a scrape, he came to me and kissing my hand humbly, he said: ‘Lady, let us say no more on this head – (your head, count) – but you will ruin the realm. Since you so strongly wish it, my men shall protect your protegé.’”
The conspirator was buried in thought.
“So you see you must thank me for not having been clapped into the Bastile,” concluded the countess: “not unjust, perhaps, but disagreeable.”
Without replying Balsamo took from his pocket a phial containing a fluid of blood color.
“For the liberty you give me,” he said, “I give you twenty years more youthfulness.”
She slipped the bottle into her corsage and went off, joyous and triumphant.
“They might have been saved but for the coquetry of this woman,” he murmured. “It is the little foot of this courtesan which spurns them into the abyss. Beyond doubt, God is on our side!”
CHAPTER XXX
THE BLOOD
LADY DUBARRY had not seen the street door close after her before Balsamo hurried up into the room where he had left Lorenza. But she was gone.
Her fine flowered cashmere shawl remained on the cushions as a token of her stay in the room.
A painful thought struck him that she had feigned to sleep. Thus she would have dispelled all uneasiness, doubts and mistrust in her husband’s mind only to flee at the first chance for liberty. This time she would be surer of what to do, instructed by her former experience.
This idea made him bound. He searched without avail after ringing for Fritz to come to him. But nobody was about, as nobody had gone out behind the countess.
To run about, moving the furniture, calling Lorenza, looking without seeing, listening without hearing, thrilling without living, and pondering without thinking – such was the state of the infuriate for three minutes, which were as many ages.
He came out of his hallucination and dipping his hand in a vase of iced water, he held it on his forehead. By his will he chased away that throbbing of the blood in the brains which goes on silently in life but when heard means madness or death.
“Come, come, let us reason,” he said, “Lorenza is no more here, and consequently must have gone forth. How? Through Andrea de Taverney I can ascertain all – whether my incorruptible Fritz was bribed and – then, if love is a sham, if science is an error, and fidelity a snare – Balsamo will punish without pity or reservation – like the powerful man smites when he has put aside mercy and preserves but pride. I must let Fritz perceive nothing while I haste to Trianon.”
In taking up his hat to go, he stopped.
“Goodness, I am forgetting the old man,” he said. “I must attend to Althotas before all. In my monstrous love, I left my unfortunate friend to himself – I have been inhuman and ungrateful.”
With the fever animating his movements he sprang to the trap which he lowered and on which he stepped.
Scarcely had he reached the level of the laboratory, than he was struck by the old man’s voice crooning a song. To Balsamo’s high astonishment his first words were not a reproach as he expected; he was received by a natural and simple outburst of gaiety.
The old man was lolling back in his easy chair, snuffing the air as though he were drinking in new life at each sniff. His eyes were filled with dull fire, but the smile on his lips made them lighter as they were fastened on the visitor.
In this close, warm atmosphere, Balsamo felt giddy as if respiration and his strength failed him simultaneously.
“Master,” said he, looking for something to lean against, “you must not stay here: one cannot breathe. Let me open a window overhead for there seems to reek from the floor the odor of blood.”
“Blood? ha, ha, ha!” roared Althotas. “I noticed it but did not mind: it is you who have tender heart and brain who is easily affected.”
“But you have blood on your hands and it is on the table – this smell is of blood – and human blood,” added the younger man, passing his hand over his brow streaming with perspiration.
“Ha, he has a subtile scent,” said the old sage. “Not only does he recognize blood but can tell it is human, too.”
Looking round, Balsamo perceived a brass basin half full with a purple liquid reflected on the sides.
“Whence comes this blood?” he gasped.
He uttered a terrible roar! Part of the table, usually cumbered by alembics, crucibles, flasks, galvanic batteries and the like, was now clothed with a white damask sheet, worked with flowers. Among the flowers here and there, spots of a red hue oozed up. Balsamo took one corner of the sheet and plucked the whole towards him.
His hair bristled up, and his opened mouth could not let the horrible yell come forth – it died in the gullet.
It was the corpse of Lorenza which stiffened on the board. The livid head seemed still to smile and hung back as though drawn down by the weight of her hair.
A large cut yawned above the clavicle, but not a drop of blood was issuing now. The hands were rigid and the eyes closed under the violet lids.
“Yes, thanks for your having placed her under my hand where I could so readily take her,” said the horrible old man; “in her have I found the blood I wanted.”
“Villain of the vilest,” screamed Balsamo, with the cry of despair bursting from all pores, “you have nothing to do but die – for this was my wife since four days ago! You have murdered her to no gain.”
“She was not a virgin?”
Althotas quivered to the eyes at this revelation, as if an electric shock made them oscillate in their orbits. His pupils frightfully dilated; his gums gnashed for want of teeth; his hand let fall the phial of the elixir of long life, and it fell and shivered into a thousand splinters. Stupefied, annihilated, struck at the same time in heart and brain, he dropped back heavily in his armchair.
Balsamo, bending with a sob over the body of his wife, swooned as he was kissing the tresses.
Time passed silently and mournfully in the death-chamber where the blood congealed.
Suddenly in the midst of the night a bell rang in the room itself.
Fritz must have guessed that his master was in the laboratory of Althotas to have sent the warning thither. He repeated it three times and still Balsamo did not lift his head.
In a few minutes the ringing came, still louder, without rousing the mourner from his stupor.
But at another call, the impatient jangle made him look up though not with a start. He questioned the space with the cold solemnity of a corpse coming forth from a grave.
The bell kept on ringing.
Energy, reviving, at last aroused intelligence in the husband of Lorenza Feliciani. He took away his head from hers; it had lost its warmth without warming hers.
“Great news or a great danger,” he said to himself. “I should as lief meet a great danger.”
He rose upright.
“But why should I answer this appeal?” he asked without perceiving the sombre effect of his voice under the gloomy skylight and in the funeral chamber. “Is there anything in this world to alarm or interest me?”
As if to answer him the bell was so roughly shaken that the iron tongue broke loose and fell on a glass alembic which it shivered on the floor.
He held back no longer; besides, it was important that neither Fritz nor another should come here to find him.
With a tranquil tread he opened the trap and descended. When he opened the staircase door, Fritz stood on the top step, pale and breathless, holding a torch in one hand and the broken bell-pull in the other.
At sight of his master, he uttered a cry of satisfaction and then one of surprise and fright. Respectful as he usually was, he took the liberty of seizing him by the arm and dragging him up to a Venetian mirror.
“Look, excellency,” he said.
Balsamo shuddered. In an hour he had grown twenty years older. In his eyes were lustre; in his skin no blood; and over all his lineaments was spread an expression of stupor and lack of intelligence. Bloody foam bathed his lips, and on the white front of his shirt a large blood spot spread. He looked at himself for an instant without recognition. Then he plunged his glance steadily into that of his reflected self.
“You are quite right, Fritz,” he said. “But why did you call me?”
“They are here, master,” said the faithful servant, with disquiet: “the five masters.”
“All here?” queried Balsamo, starting.
“With each an armed servant in the yard. They are impatient which is why I rang so often and roughly.”
Without adjusting his dress or hiding the blood spot, Balsamo went down the stairs to the parlor.
“Has your excellency no orders to give me about weapons?” asked the valet.
“Why should I take a sword even?”
“I do not know, I only feared – I thought – ”
“Thanks, you can go.”
“Yes: but your double-barrelled pistols are in the ebony box on the gilded buffet.”
“Go, I bid you,” said the master, and he entered the parlor.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE TRIAL
THE parlor was well lighted, and Balsamo entering could see the grim air of the five men who kept their seats until he was before them and bowed. Then they all rose and returned the salute.
He took an armchair facing theirs without appearing to remark that theirs formed a horse-shoe in front of his so that he occupied the place of the culprit at a trial.
He did not speak first as he would have done on another occasion. From the painful dulness which succeeded the shock to him he looked without seeing.
“You seem to have understood what we come for, brother,” said the man who held the central chair: “yet you were long coming and we were deliberating if we should not send for you.”
“I do not understand you,” simply replied the mesmerist.
“That did not seem so when you took the place of the accused.”
“Accused?” faltered the other, vaguely. “Still I do not understand.”
“It will not be hard to make you do so,” said the chief officer: “judging by your pale front, dull eyes and tremulous voice. Do you not hear me?”
“Yes, I hear,” was the reply, while he shook his head to drive away the thoughts oppressing him.
“Do you remember, brother,” said the president, “that at the last meeting, the Superior Committee gave you warning of treason meditated by one of the main upholders of the Order?”
“Perhaps so, I do not know.”
“You answer as with a perturbed and tumultuous conscience. But recover – do not be cast down. Answer with the clearness and preciseness which a dreadful position demands. Answer with such certainty that you will convince us, for we come with no more hatred than prejudice. We are the Law. It speaks not till after the judges pronounce.”
Balsamo made no reply.
Seeing the calm and immobility of the accused, the others stared at him not without astonishment, before fastening their eyes on the chief again.
“You are warned. Protect yourself, for I resume.
“After this warning the Order delegated five of the members to watch at Paris about him who was designated as a traitor. It was not easy to watch a man like you, whose power was to enter everywhere. You had at your disposal all the means, which are immense, of our association, given for the triumph of our cause. But we respected the mystery of your conduct as you fluctuated between the adherents of Dubarry, of Richelieu and Rohan. But three days ago, five warrants of arrest, signed by the King and put in motion by Sartines, were presented on the same day to five of our principal agents, very faithful and devoted brothers who have been taken away. Two are put in solitary confinement in the Bastile, two at Vincennes Castle, in the dungeons, and one is in Bicetre in the deepest cell. Did you know of this?”
“No,” replied the accused.
“Strange, with the close connections you have with royalty. But this is stranger still. To arrest those friends, Sartines must have had the note naming them, the only one, under Arabian characters, which was addressed to the Supreme Circle in 1769, when you received them and gave them the grade assigned to them. But the sixth name was the Count of Fenix’s.”
“I grant that,” said Balsamo.
“Then how comes it that they five should be arrested as by that list while you were spared? you deserved prison as well as they. What have you to answer?”
“Nothing.”
“Your pride survives your honor. The police discovered those names in reading our papers which you kept in a casket. One day a woman came out of your house with this casket and went to the Chief of Police. Thus all was discovered. Is this true?”
“Perfectly true.”
The president stood up.
“Who was this woman?” he said. “A fair and passionate one devoted to you body and soul and affectionately loved. Lorenza Feliciani is your wife, Balsamo.”
He groaned in despair.
“A quarter of an hour after she called on the head of the police, you called in your turn. She had sown the seed and you were to gather the harvest. An obedient servant she committed the treachery and you had but to give the finishing touches to the infernal work. Lorenza came out alone. No doubt you arranged this and did not want to be compromised by her company. You came out triumphantly with Lady Dubarry, called there to receive from your mouth the information which she was to pay. You got into the carriage of this courtesan, leaving the papers which ruined us in the hands of Lord Sartines but carrying away the empty casket. Happily we saw you. The light of the All-seeing Eye did not fail us on all occasions.”
Balsamo bowed still without remark.
“I conclude,” said the chief judge. “Two guilty ones are pointed out: the woman who was your accomplice and may have unwittingly injured us by conveying the revelations of our secrets; the second, yourself the Grand Copt, the luminous ray who had the cowardice to let your wife shield you in this deed of treason.”
Balsamo slowly raised his pale face, and fixed on the speaker a glance with the fire in it which had accumulated while the speech was made.
“Why do you accuse this woman?” he demanded.
“We know that you will try to defend her; that you love her to idolatry and prefer her above all. She is your treasure of science, happiness and fortune; the most precious of your instruments.”
“You know this?”
“And that in striking her we hurt you more than in striking you. This is the sentence, then: Joseph Balsamo is a traitor. He has broken his oath, but his science is immense and useful to the Order. He ought to live for the cause he has betrayed; he belongs still to his brothers though he has renounced them. A perpetual prison will protect the society against future perfidy, and at the same time let the brothers gather the gain due to them if only as a forfeit. As for Lorenza Feliciani, a dreadful doom – ”
“Stay,” said Balsamo, with the greatest calm in his voice. “You are forgetting that I have not defended myself. The accused ought to have a hearing in his justification. One word will suffice – one piece of evidence. Wait for me one moment while I bring the proof I speak of.”
The judges consulted an instant.
“Do you fear that I will commit suicide?” said the accused with a bitter smile. “I wear a ring that would kill this room-full of people were I to open it. Do you fear that I will flee? Let me be escorted, if that be your fear.”
“Go,” said the president.
For only a while did the prisoner disappear; then they heard his step descending the stairs, heavily. He entered.
On his shoulder was the cold discolored, rigid corpse of Lorenza, with her white hand sweeping the floor.
“As you said, this woman – whom I adored and was my treasure, my only joy, my very life – she betrayed us,” he said: “here she is – take her! The High Justicer of heaven did not wait for you to come and slay her.”
With a movement as swift as lightning, he slid the corpse out of his arms, and rolled it to the feet of the judges. The dark hair and inert hands struck them with all their profound horror while by the lamplight the wound glared with its ominous red, deeply yawning in the midst of the swan-white neck.
“Utter your sentence, now,” said Balsamo.
Aghast, the judges uttered a terror-stricken cry, and fled dizzily in confusion inexpressible. The horses of their carriage and escort were heard neighing in the yard and trampling; the carriage-gate groaned on its hinges and then solemn silence sat once more on the abode of death and despair.