Kitabı oku: «Balsamo, the Magician; or, The Memoirs of a Physician», sayfa 15

CHAPTER XXXVI
BALSAMO AT HOME

The house in St. Claude Street, to which Joseph Balsamo invited the Cardinal Prince of Rohan did not look strange in his day, but it resembled a fortress to such an extent that it would be remarkable at present. Strongly built, and with barred windows and grated doors, to say nothing of the ditch in front and high balconies, it was in keeping with this part of the town, pretty unsafe at this epoch after dark.

There were scarcely a dozen houses on the quarter of a league to the Bastille, and the municipal authorities did not think it worth while to supply lamps. Along this deserted and unlighted highway a carriage was driven after nine one evening, which stopped at the low, deep doorway where gleamed the brazen griffin for a knocker which Count Fenix had described.

The arms of the nobleman were on the carriage panels. He preceded it by some yards, riding Djerid, who whisked his long tail till it whistled in the dust of the dirty pavement.

Behind the closed blinds slumbered Lorenza on the cushions.

At the rolling of the wheels, the door opened as by enchantment, and the carriage vanished in the black gulf of the mansion courtyard.

There was no need of any mystery, for nobody was about to see the count come home or mark what he brought, even if it were the treasure-chest of St. Denis Abbey.

A skillful calculator, given the size of the building lot and that of the house on street, would be surprised how so small a one covered so much ground. The fact of the matter was that there stood a house behind the outer house, known only to the tenant.

A German servant, aged about thirty; closed the coachway door and bolted it. Opening the coach door while the emotionless driver unharnessed the team, he drew from within the senseless Lorenza, whom he carried indoors to an antechamber. He laid her on a table and discreetly wrapped her in her long veil to the feet.

He went out to light at the coach lamps a seven-candle chandelier, with which he came back.

During that short space, Lorenza had disappeared.

In fact Count Fenix had entered after the valet went out. He had taken up the girl in his arms, and carried her out by a secret passage into a room furnished with trophies of outlandish weapons.

With his foot he pressed the spring of the backplate of the high fireplace, which turned on well-oiled hinges, so that the count could go forth, as he did, while the secret panel slid to behind him.

On the other side of the chimney was another flight of steps. Mounting a dozen, covered with Utrecht velvet carpet, he reached the sill of a room elegantly tapestried with satin, so wonderfully embroidered in high relief with flowers in their natural colors that they seemed real.

The extremely rich furniture was of a boudoir and toilet chamber leading to a parlor.

Curtains hid two windows, but as it was night, they were not wanted to give light. Lamps burning perfumed oil burnt here night and day, for the room had no external openings. They were drawn up through apertures in the ceiling by unseen hands when they needed replenishing.

Not a sound penetrated here, and one might feel as a thousand miles out of the world. But gilding flashed on all sides and Bohemian glass mirrors sparkled as, dissatisfied with the light, after having placed Lorenza on a sofa, the count struck a fire with the silver phosphorus matchbox so startling to Gilbert, and kindled two pink candled chandeliers on the mantel-piece.

Returning to Lorenza, and kneeling with one knee on a pile of cushions beside her, he called her by name. Though her eyes remained closed, she rose on one elbow, but without replying.

"Are you sleeping naturally or through the magnetic spell?"

"Lorenza sleeps in the magnetic sleep," she replied.

"Then you can answer my questions. Look into the room of the Princess Louise which we have just quitted, and tell me if the Cardinal of Rohan is there."

"No; the abbess is praying before going to rest."

"Look through the house for the cardinal. Is his carriage at the door? Is it on the road? Come along nearer to Paris, as we drove. Nearer!"

"Ah, I see it! It has stopped at the tollbar. A footman gets down to speak with his master."

"List to him, Lorenza, for it is important that I should know what the cardinal says to this man."

"You did not order me to listen in time, for he has done speaking to the man. But the man speaks to the coachman, who is told to drive to St. Claude Street, in the swamp, by the rampart road."

"Thank you, Lorenza."

The count went to the wall, pulled aside an ornament which disclosed an ivory mouthpiece and spoke some words in a tube of unknown length and direction; it was his way of corresponding here with his man of trust, Fritz.

"Are you content with me?" asked the medium.

"Yes, dear Lorenza, and here is your reward," he said, giving her a fond caress.

"Oh, Joseph, how I love you!" she said with an almost painful sigh.

Her arms opened to enfold Balsamo on her heart.

CHAPTER XXXVII
THE DOUBLE EXISTENCE

But he recoiled swiftly, and the arms came together ere falling folded on her bosom.

"Would you like to speak with your friend?" he asked.

"Yes, speak to me often. I like to hear your voice."

"You have often told me, dearest, that you would be very happy if we could dwell together afar from the world."

"That would indeed be bliss."

"Well, I have realized your wish, darling. We are by ourselves in this parlor, where none can hear and none intrude."

"I am glad to hear it."

"Tell me how you like the place."

"Order me to see it."

"Does it please you?" asked the count, after a pause.

"Yes; here are my favorite flowers. Thank you, my kind Joseph. How good you are!"

"I do all I can to please you."

"Oh, you are a hundred times kinder to me than I deserve."

"You confess that you have been wicked?"

"Very badly so, but you will overlook that?"

"After you explain the enigma which I have struggled against ever since I knew you."

"Hearken, Balsamo. In me are two Lorenzas, quite distinct. One loves you and the other detests you, as if I lived two existences. One during which I enjoy the delights of paradise, the other when I suffer the opposite."

"These two existences are your waking mood and your magnetic sleep?"

"Yes."

"Why do you hate me when in your waking senses and love me when in the charmed sleep?"

"Because Lorenza is the superstitious Italian girl who believes that science is a crime and love a sin. Then she is afraid of the sage Balsamo and the loving Joseph. She has been told that to love would destroy her soul; and so she flees from the lover to the confines of the earth."

"But when Lorenza sleeps?"

"It is another matter. She is no longer a Roman girl and superstitious, but a woman. She sees that the genius of Balsamo dreams of sublime themes. She understands how petty an object she is compared with him. She longs to live by him and die at his side, in order that the future shall breathe her name while it trumpets the glory of – Cagliostro."

"Is that the name I am to be celebrated under?"

"The name."

"Dear Lorenza! so you like our new home?"

"It is richer than any you have found for me; but that is not why I like it more – but because you say you will be oftener with me here."

"So, when you sleep, you know how fondly I adore you?"

"Yes," she said with a faint smile, "I see that passion, then, and yet there is something you love above Lorenza," she sighed. "Your dream."

"Rather say, my task."

"Well, your ambition!"

"Say, my glory."

"Oh, heaven!" and her heart was laboring; her closed lids allowed tears to struggle out.

"What is it you see?" inquired Balsamo, astounded at the lucidity which frightened even him.

"I see phantoms gliding about among the shadows. Some hold in their own hands their severed crowned heads, like St. Denis in that Abbey; and you stand in the heart of the battle like a general in command. You seem to rule, and you are obeyed."

"Does that not make you proud of me?" inquired the other joyfully.

"You are good enough not to care to be great. Besides, in looking for myself in this scene, I see nothing of me. Oh, I shall not be there," she sighed. "I shall be in the grave."

"You dead, my dearest Lorenza!" said Balsamo, frowning. "No, we shall live and love together."

"No, you love me no more, or not enough," crowding upon his forehead, held between her hands, a multitude of glowing kisses. "I have to reproach you for your coldness. Look now how you draw away from me as though you fled my fondlings. Oh, restore to me my maiden quietude, in my nunnery of Subiaco – when the night was so calm in my cell. Return me those kisses which you sent on the wings of the wind coming to me in my solitude like golden-pinioned sylph, which melted on me in delight. Do not retreat from me. Give me your hand, that I may press it; let me kiss your dear eyes – let me be your wife, in short."

"Lorenza, sweetest, you are my well-beloved wife."

"Yet you pass by the chaste and solitary flower and scorn the perfume? I am sure that I am nothing to you."

"On the contrary, you are everything – my Lorenza. For it is you who give me strength, power and genius – without you I should be nothing. Cease, then, to love me with this insensate fever which wrecks the nights of your people, and love me as I love you. Thus I am happy."

"You call that happiness?" scornfully said the Italian.

"Yes, for to be great is happiness."

She heaved a long sigh.

"Oh, if you only knew the gladness in being able to read the hearts of man and manipulate them with the strings of their own dominant passions."

"Yes, I know that in this I serve your purpose."

"It is not all. Your eyes read the sealed book of the future. You, sweet dove, pure and guideless, you have taught me what I could not ascertain in twenty years' application. You enlighten my steps, before which my enemies multiply traps and snares; on my mind depend my life, fortune and liberty – you dilate it like the lynx's eye which sees in the dark. As your lovely orbs close on this world, they open in superhuman clarity. They watch for me. It is you who make me rich, free and powerful."

"And in return, you make me unhappy," replied Lorenza, wrapped up in her frenzy.

More fiery than ever, she enfolded him in her arms, so that he was impregnated with a flame which he feebly resisted. But he made such an effort that he broke the living bondage.

"Have pity, Lorenza!" he sued.

"Was it to pity you that I left my native land, my name, my family, my faith!" she said, almost threatening with her lovely arms, rising white and yet muscular amid the waves of her long black tresses coming down. "Why have you laid on me this absolute empire, so that if I am your slave and have to give you my life and breath? Was it to mock me ever with the name of the virgin Lorenza?"

Balsamo sighed, himself crushed by the weight of her immense despair.

"Alas, is it your fault, or that of the Creator. Why were you made the angel with the infallible gaze, by whose aid I should make the universe submit? Why is it that you are the one to read a soul through its bodily envelope as one may read a book through a glass! Because you are an angel of purity, Lorenza, and nothing throws a shadow upon your soul. In your radiant and immaculate bosom the divine spark may be enshrined, a place without sullying where it may fitly nestle. You are a seer because you are blameless, Lorenza; as a woman, you would be but so much substance."

"And you prefer this to my love," continued the Italian, clapping her hands with such rage that they became impurpled; "you set my love beneath these whims that you pursue and fables that you invent? You snatch me out of the cold cloister, but, in the bustling, ardent world you condemn me to the conventional chastity? Joseph, you commit a crime, I tell you."

"Do not blaspheme," said Balsamo, "for I suffer, too. Read in my heart, and never again say that I love you not. I resist you because I want to raise you on the throne of the world."

"Ugh, your ambition!" sneered the young Roman; "will your ambition ever give you what you might have in my love?"

He yielded to her and his head rested in her arms.

"Ah, yes," she cried, "I see at last that you love me more than your ambition, than power, than your aspiration! Oh, you love me as I love you!"

But at the touch of their lips, reason came to him who would be master of Europe. With his hands he beat aside the air charged with magnetic vapor.

"Lorenza, awake, I bid you!"

Thereupon the chain which he could not break was relaxed, and the opening arms were dropped, while the kiss died away on the paling lips of Lorenza, languishing in her last sigh. Her closed eyes parted their lids; the dilated pupils resumed their normal size. She shook herself with an effort, and sank in lassitude, but awake, on the sofa.

Seated three paces from her, the mesmerist sighed deeply.

"Good-bye to the dream!" he said; "good-bye to happiness!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE WAKEFUL STATE

As soon as Lorenza's sight had recovered its power, she glanced rapidly around her. After examining everything without one of the many knick-knacks which delight woman brightening her brow, she stopped with her look upon Balsamo, and nervously shuddered.

"You again?" she said, receding.

On her physiognomy appeared all the tokens of alarm; her lips became white and perspiration came as pearls at the root of her hair.

"Where am I?" she asked as he said nothing.

"As you know where you came from, you can readily guess where you are," he responded.

"You are right in reminding me; I do, indeed, remember. I know that I have been pursued by you, and torn from the arms of the royal intermediary whom I chose between heaven and you."

"Then you ought to know that this princess has been unable to defend you, however powerful she may be."

"You have overruled her by some witching violence," said Lorenza, wringing her hands, "Oh, saints of mercy, deliver me from this demon!"

"Where do you see anything demoniacal in me," returned Balsamo, shrugging his shoulders. "Once for all I beg you to lay aside this pack of puerile beliefs brought from Rome, and all the rubbish of absurd superstitions which you have carted about with you since you ran away from the nunnery."

"Oh, my dear nunnery – who will restore me to my dear nunnery?" cried the Italian, bursting into tears.

"Indeed, a nunnery is much to be deplored," said Balsamo.

Lorenza ran to one of the windows, opened the curtains and then the sash, but came against iron bars, which were there unmistakably – however many flowers were masking them.

"If I must live in a prison," she said, "I prefer that whence one goes to heaven to that which has a trap door into hades." And she began trying the bars with her dainty hands.

"Were you more reasonable, Lorenza, you would find only flowers at your window, and not bars."

"Was I not reasonable when you confined me in that other prison, the one on wheels, with the vampire you call Althotas? But still you kept your eye on me when by, and never left me till you had breathed into me that spirit which possesses me and I cannot shake it off. Where is that horrid old man who frightens me to death? In some corner, I suppose. Let us hush and listen till his ghostly voice be heard."

"You let your fancy sway you, like a child," said Balsamo. "My friend and preceptor, Althotas, my second father, is an inoffensive old man who has never seen you, let alone approached you, or if he did come near, he would not heed you, being absorbed in his work."

"His work – tell me what the work is!" muttered the Roman.

"He is seeking the elixir of long life, for which superior minds have been seeking these two thousand years."

"What are you working for?"

"Human perfection."

"A pair of demons!" said Lorenza, lifting her hands to heaven.

"Is this your fit coming on again? You are ignorant of one thing: your life is divided into two parts. During one, you are gentle, good and sensible: during the other, you are mad."

"And you shut me up under the vain pretext of this malady."

"It had to be done."

"Oh, barbarian, be cruel, without pity! imprison me, and kill me, but do not play the hypocrite and pretend to feel for me while you tear me to pieces."

"Do you call it torture to live in a luxurious suite of rooms?" said Balsamo with a kindly smile and not at all disturbed.

"With bars to all the issues!"

"Put there for the sake of your life, Lorenza."

"Oh, he roasts me to death at a slow fire, and he talks of my life's sake!" exclaimed the Italian.

Approaching, he offered to take her hand, but she repelled his as if it were a serpent.

"Do not touch me!" she said.

"Do you hate me so much, Lorenza!"

"Ask the victim how he likes the executioner."

"It is because I do not want to be one that I restrict your liberty a little. Could you come and go as you like, who can tell what your folly might drive you to."

"Wait till I am free some day, and see what I shall do!"

"Lorenza, you are behaving badly toward the husband whom you chose. You are my wife."

"That was the work of Satan."

"Poor crazy creature!" said the mesmerist, with a tender look.

"I am a daughter of Rome," continued she, "and some day I shall take revenge."

"Do you say that merely to frighten me?" he asked, gently shaking his head.

"No, no; I will do what I say."

"What are you saying – and you a Christian woman?" exclaimed Balsamo with surprising authority in his voice. "Is your creed which bids you return good for evil but a hypocrisy, that you pretend to follow it, and you boast of revenge – evil for good?"

"Oh," replied Lorenza, for an instant struck by the argument. "It is duty, not revenge, to denounce society's enemies."

"If you denounced me as a master in the black art, it would be not be as an offender against society, but against heaven. Were I to defy heaven, which need but comprise me as one atom in the myriads slain by an earthquake or pestilence, but which takes no pains to punish me, why should weak men like myself undertake to punish me?"

"Heaven forgets, or tolerates – waiting for you to reform," said the Italian.

"Meanwhile," said the other, smiling, "you are advised to tolerate your husband, friend and benefactor?"

"Husband? Oh, that I should have to endure your yoke!"

"Oh, what an impenetrable mystery?" muttered the magician, pursuing his thought rather than heeding the speaker.

"Let us have done. Why do you take away my liberty?"

"Why, having bestowed it on me, would you take it back? Why flee from your protector? Why unceasingly threaten one who never threatens you, with revelation of secrets which are not yours and have aims beyond anything you can conceive?"

"Oh," said Lorenza, without replying to the question, "the prisoner who yearns for freedom eventually obtains it, and your house bars will no more hold me than your wagon-sides."

"Happily for you, they are stout," replied Balsamo, with ominous tranquillity.

"Heaven will send another such storm as befel us in Lorraine, and some thunderbolt will shatter them."

"Take my advice to pray for nothing of the kind, Lorenza; distrust these romantic transports: I speak to you as a friend – listen to me."

Stunned at the height of her rebellion, Lorenza listened in spite of herself, from so much concentrated wrath being in his voice, and gloomy fire in his eye, while his white but powerful hand opened and shut so strangely as he slowly and solemnly spoke:

"Mark this, my child, that I have tried to have this place fit for a queen, with nothing lacking for your comfort. So calm your folly. Live here as you would do in your convent cell. You must become habituated to my presence. As I have great sorrows, I will confide in you; dreadful disappointment, for which I will crave a smile. The kinder, more patient and attentive you are, the more of your bars I will remove, so that in some months – who knows how soon? – you will become perhaps more free than I am, in the sense that you will not want to curtail my liberty."

"No, no," replied the Italian, unable to understand that firm resolution could be allied to such gentle words, "no more professions and falsehoods. You abducted me, so that I am my own property still; restore me to heaven, if you will not let me be my own mistress. I have borne with your despotism so far from remembering that you saved me from the robbers who would have ruined me; but this gratitude is much enfeebled. A few days more of this captivity against which I revolt, and I shall no longer feel obliged to you; a few more, and I shall perhaps believe you were in concert with those highwaymen."

"So you honor me with a captaincy of brigands," sneered Balsamo.

"I do not know about that, but I noticed secret signs and peculiar words."

"But," replied the other, losing color, "you will never tell them; never to a living soul? You will bury them in the remotest place in your memory so that they shall die there, smothered."

"Just the other way," retorted Lorenza, delighted as angry persons are at having found the antagonist's vulnerable point. "My memory shall piously preserve those words, which I will repeat over and over again when alone, and say aloud when the opening comes, as already I have done."

"To whom?"

"To the princess royal."

"Lorenza, mind this well," said he, clenching his nails in his flesh to subdue his fury and check his rushing blood at the thought that his brothers were in danger through the woman whom he had selected to aid them all, "if you said them, never again will you do so. For the doors will be kept fastened, those bars pointed at the head, and those walls reared as high as Babel's."

"I have already told you, Balsamo, that any soul wherein the love of liberty is reinforced by the hate of tyranny must escape from all prison houses."

"Well and good; try it, woman; but mark this well: you will only twice try it. For the first time I will punish you so severely that you will weep all the tears in your body; and for the second I will strike you pitilessly that you will pour forth all the blood in your veins."

"Help, help, he is murdering me," shrieked the woman, at the last paroxysm of wrath, tearing her hair and rolling on the carpet.

For an instant Balsamo considered her with mingled rage and pity, the latter overcoming the other.

"Come, come, Lorenza, return to your senses, and be calm. A day will come when you will be rewarded amply for what you have suffered, or fancy."

"Imprisoned," screamed the Italian, "and beaten."

"These are times to try the mind. You are mad, but you shall be cured."

"Better throw me into a madhouse at once; shut me up in a real jail."

"No, you have warned me what you would do against me."

"Then," said the infuriate, "let me have death straightway."

Springing up with the suppleness and rapidity of the wild beast, she leaped to break her head against the wall. But Balsamo had merely to stretch out his hands toward her and utter a single word rather with his will than with his lips, to stop her dead. She stopped, indeed, reeled and dropped sleep-stricken in the magnetiser's arms.

The strange enchanter, who seemed to rule all the material part of the woman though the mental portion baffled him, lifted up Lorenza in his arms and carried her to the couch; there he laid a long kiss on her lips, drew the curtains of bed and windows, and left her.

A sweet and blessed sleep enveloped her like the cloak of a kind mother wrapping the willful child who has much suffered and wept.