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Balsamo, the magician; or, the memoirs of a physician

by Alexandre Dumas · English · Gutenberg #45822 · 547,750 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Balsamo, the magician; or, the memoirs of a physician

Author: Alexandre Dumas
        Auguste Maquet

Translator: Henry Llewellyn Williams


        
Release date: May 30, 2014 [eBook #45822]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45822

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        Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BALSAMO, THE MAGICIAN; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN ***

  Price, 25 Cents. No. 76

  THE SUNSET SERIES.

  By Subscription, per Year, Nine Dollars. January 15, 1894.
  Entered at the New York Post Office as second-class matter.

  Copyright 1891, by J. S. OGILVIE.




  Balsamo,
  The Magician.

  BY

  Alex. Dumas.


  NEW YORK:
  J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
  57 ROSE STREET.




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  BALSAMO THE MAGICIAN;
  OR,
  THE MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN.

  AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION

  BY ALEX. DUMAS,

  _Author of "The Mesmerist's Victim," "The Queen's Necklace,"
  "Taking The Bastile," "The Hero of The People," "The Royal
  Life Guard," "The Countess of Charny," "The Knight of
  Redcastle," Etc., Etc._

  An Entirely New Copyright Translation from the Latest Paris
  Edition,
  by Henry Llewellyn Williams.

  NEW YORK:
  J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
  57 ROSE STREET.




_Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1892, by A. E. Smith
& Co., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington._




  BALSAMO THE MAGICIAN.
  BY ALEX. DUMAS.




CHAPTER I.

THE GRAND MASTER OF THE SECRET SOCIETY.


On the left bank of the Rhine, near the spot where the Selz rivulet
springs forth, the foothill ranges rise of many mountains, of which
the bristling humps seem to rush northerly like herds of frightened
buffaloes, disappearing in the haze. These mountains tower over a
deserted region, forming a guard around one more lofty than the rest,
whose granite brow, crowned with a ruined monastery, defies the skies.
It is Thunder Mount.

On the sixth of May, 1770, as the great river wavelets were dyed in
the rainbow hues of the setting sun, a man who had ridden from Maintz,
after a journey through Poland, followed the path out of Danenfels
Village until it ended, and, then, alighting and leading his steed,
tied it up in the pine woods.

"Be quiet, my good _Djerid_ (javelin)," said the horseman to the animal
with this Arabian name which bespoke its blood, and its speed; "and
good-bye, if we never meet again."

He cast a glance round him as if he suspected he were overheard.

The barb neighed and pawed with one foot.

"Right, Djerid, the danger is around us."

But as if he had made up his mind not to struggle with it, the
venturesome stranger drew the charges from a pair of splendid pistols
and cast the powder and bullets on the sward before replacing them in
the holsters. He wore a steel-hilted sword which he took off with the
belt, and fastened it to the stirrup leather so as to hang from the
saddle-horn point down.

These odd formalities being done, he ungloved, and searching his
pockets produced nail-scissors and pocket-knife, which he flung over
his shoulder without looking to see whither they went.

Drawing the longest possible breath, he plunged at random into the
thicket, for there was no trace of a path.

He was a man about thirty, taller than the average, but so wonderfully
well built that the utmost strength and skill seemed to circulate in
his supple and nervy limbs. He wore a black velvet overcoat with gilt
buttons; the flaps of an embroidered waistcoat showed below its lowest
buttons, and the buckskin riding breeches defined legs worthy to be a
sculptor's models; the elegant feet were cased in patent leather boots.

His countenance was a notable mixture of power and intelligence,
with all the play of Southern races; his glance, able to display any
emotion, seemed to pierce any one on whom it fell with beams that
sounded the very soul. His cheeks had been browned by a sun hotter than
that of France. His mouth was large but finely shaped, and parted to
reveal magnificent teeth, all the whiter from his dark complexion. His
hand was small but muscular; his foot long but fine.

Scarcely had he taken a dozen steps within the glade before he heard
faint footsteps. He rose on tiptoe and perceived that unseen hands had
unhitched Djerid and were leading him away. He frowned slightly, and a
faint smile curled his full cheeks and choicely chiseled lips.

He continued into the heart of the forest.

For a space the twilight guided him, but soon that died out, and he
stood in gloom so dense that he had to stop lest he blundered blindly.

"I reached Danenfels from Maintz," he said, aloud, "as there was a
road. I reached this forest as there was a path: I am here as there was
some light: but I must stop now as I have no sight."

Scarcely had he spoken, in a dialect part French, part Sicilian, than a
light flashed out only fifty paces off.

"Thanks! I will follow the light as long as it leads."

The light at once moved onward, regularly and steadily, like a stage
lamp managed by the lime-light operator.

At a hundred paces, a breath in the adventurer's ear made him wince.

"Turn and you die!" came this whisper.

"All right," answered the stranger.

"Speak, and you die!" whispered a voice on the left-hand.

He bowed without speaking.

"But," said a voice seeming to issue from the bowels of the earth, "if
you are afraid, go back to the plain, by which it will be clear that
you are daunted, and renounce your errand."

The traveler waved his hand to imply that he was going ahead, and ahead
he went.

But it was so late and the shade so deep that he stumbled during the
hour the magic light preceded him, but he did not murmur or show any
tremor in fear, while he heard not a breath.

All of a sudden, the light went out!

He had passed through the woodland, for on lifting his eyes, he could
see a few stars glitter on the darksome sky.

He kept on in the same direction till he saw loom up the somber mass of
the ruins of a castle--its spectre. At the same time his foot met its
fallen stones.

A clammy thing wound itself round his forehead and sealed his eyes.
He could no longer see even the shadows. It was a wet linen cloth.
It must have been an expected thing, for he made no resistance to
being blindfolded. But he put forth his hand silently as a blinded
man naturally does to grope. The gesture was understood, for on the
instant a cold, dry, bony hand clutched his fingers. He knew it was a
skeleton's, but had it possessed feeling, it must have owned that his
own hand no more trembled.

For a hundred yards the seeker was dragged forward rapidly.

All at once the bandage was plucked aloof, and he stopped; he had
reached the top of the Thunder Mount.

Before him rose the moldy, mossy steps of the portico of the old Castle
of Donnerberg. On the first slab stood the phantom with the osseous
hand which had guided him thither. From head to foot a long shroud
enwrapped it; through a slit the dead eyes peered without luster.
The fleshless hand pointed into the ruins where the goal seemed to
be a hall too high up to be viewed, but with the collapsed ceiling
flickering with a fickle light.

The traveler nodded in consent. Slowly the ghost mounted the steps one
by one, till amid the ruins. The man followed with the same solemn and
tranquil pace regulating his walk, and he also entered.

Behind him slammed the principal door as noisily as a ringing bronze
gate.

The phantom guide had paused on the threshold of a round hall hung with
black and illumined with greenish hues of three lamps.

"Open your eyes," said the ghastly guide.

"I see," replied the other, stopping ten paces from him.

Drawing a double-edged sword from his shroud with a swift and haughty
gesture, the phantom smote with it a brazen column which boomed a note
like a gong.

Immediately, all around, the slabs of the hall floor rose up, and
countless ghosts like the guide, stole in with drawn swords and took
posts on steps where they stood like statues on their pedestals, cold
and motionless. They stood out against the sable drapery.

Higher than the steps was a dais for seven chairs; on these six ghosts
took place, leaving one seat vacant; they were chiefs.

"What is our number, brothers?" challenged one of the six rising in the
middle.

"Three hundred is the right tally," answered the spectres, with one
voice thundering through the hall and dying amid the black hangings.

"Three hundred," said the presiding chief, "representing each ten
thousand associates; three hundred swords worth three millions of
daggers. What do you want, stranger?" he demanded, turning to the
intruder.

"To see the Light," was the rejoinder.

"The paths leading to the Mountain of Fire are hard and toilsome--fear
you not to tread them?"

"I fear nothing."

"You can not turn back once you start. Bear this in mind."

"I mean to stop only at the goal."

"Are you ready to take the oath?"

"Say it and I will repeat."

The president lifted his hand and slowly and solemnly uttered these
words:

"In the name of the Master Carpenter, swear to break all carnal bonds
tying you to whomsoever, and above all to those to whom you may have
pledged faith, obedience or service."

The new-comer in a firm voice repeated what was pronounced.

"From this out," continued the president, "you are absolved from
plights made to native land and rulers. Swear to reveal to your new
leader what you have seen and done, heard or learned, read or guessed,
and further to spy and discover all passing under your eyes."

On his ceasing the novice repeated.

"Honor and respect the Water of Death," went on the president without a
change of voice, "as a prompt means in skilled hands, sure and needful,
to purge the globe by the death or insanity of those who strive to
stifle the Truth or snatch it from our hands."

An echo could not more faithfully repeat the vow.

"Avoid Spain, Naples, and all accursed lands; and moreover the
temptation to let out what you learn and hear--for the lightning is
less swift to strike than we with our unseen but inevitable blade,
wheresoever you may flee. Now, live in the name of the Supernal Three!"

In spite of the final threat, no emotion could be descried on the
novice's face, as he reiterated the words with as calm a tone as he
used at the outset.

"Now, deck the applicant with the sacred ribbon," said the president.

Two shrouded figures placed on the bent brow of the stranger a sky-blue
ribbon with silver letters and female figures; the ends of the badge
were tied behind on the nape. They stepped aside, leaving him alone
again.

"What do you want?" asked the chief officer.

"Three things: the iron hand to strangle tyranny; the fiery sword
to drive the impure from earth; and the diamond scales to weigh the
destinies of mankind."

"Are you prepared for the tests?"

"Who seeks to be accepted, should be ready for everything."

"The tests!" shouted the ghosts.

"Turn round," said the president.

The stranger faced a man, pale as death, bound and gagged.

"Behold a traitor who revealed the secrets of the Order after taking
such an oath as you did. Thus guilty, what think you he deserves?"

"Death."

"Death!" cried the three hundred sword-bearers.

Instantly the unhappy culprit, despite superhuman resistance, was
dragged to the back of the hall. The initiated one saw him wrestling
and writhing in the torturers' hands and heard his voice hissing past
the gag. A poniard flashed in the lamplight like lightning, and after
it fell, with a slapping sound of the hilt, the dead body landed
heavily on the stone floor.

"Justice has been executed," observed the stranger, turning round to
the terrifying circle, whose greedy eyes had gazed on him out of their
grave clothes.

"So you approve of the execution?"

"Yes, if the slain were truly guilty."

"And would you drink the downfall of any one who sold the secrets of
this Ancient Association?"

"In any beverage."

"Bring hither the cup," said the arch-officer.

One of the two executioners drew near with a skull brimming with a warm
and ruddy liquid. The stranger took the goblet by its brass stem and
said, as he held it up: "I drink to the death of all false brothers."
Lowering the cup to his lips, he drained it to the last drop, and
calmly returned it to the giver.

A murmur of astonishment ran around the assemblage, as the phantoms
glanced at one another.

"So far well. The pistol," said the chief.

A ghost stole up to the speaker holding a pistol in one hand, and
powder and ball in the other, without the novice seeming to deign a
glance in that direction.

"Do you promise passive obedience to the brotherhood, even though it
were to recoil on yourself?"

"Whoso enters the household of the Faithful is no longer his own
property."

"Hence you will obey any order given you?"

"Straightway."

"Take this firearm and load it."

"What am I to do with it?"

"Cock it."

The stranger set the hammer, and the click of it going on full cock was
plainly heard in the deep stillness.

"Clap the muzzle to your temple," ordered the president, and the
suppliant obeyed without hesitating.

The silence deepened over all; the lamps seemed to fade, and the
bystanders had no more breath than ghosts.

"Fire!" exclaimed the president.

The hammer fell and the flint emitted sparks in the pan; but it was
only the powder there which took fire and no report followed its
ephemeral flame.

An outcry of admiration burst from nearly every breast, and the
president instinctively held out his hand toward the novice.

But two tests were not enough for some doubters who called out: "The
dagger!"

"Since you require it, bring the dagger," said the presiding officer.

"It is useless," interrupted the stranger, shaking his head
disdainfully.

"What do you mean?" asked several voices.

"Useless," repeated the new-comer, in a voice rising above all the
others, "for you are wasting precious time. I know all your secrets,
and these childish proofs are unworthy the head of sensible beings.
That man was not murdered; the stuff I drank was wine hid in a pouch on
his chest; the bullet and powder I loaded the trick-pistol with fell
into a hollow in the stock when the weapon was cocked. Take back the
sham arm, only good to frighten cowards. Rise, you lying corpse; you
cannot frighten the strong-minded."

A terrible roar shook the hall.

"To know our mysteries, you must be an initiate or a spy," said the
president.

"Who are you?" demanded three hundred voices together, as a score of
swords shone in the grip of the nearest and were lowered by the regular
movement of trained soldiers toward the intruder's bosom.

Calm and smiling, he lifted his head, wound round with the sacred
fillet, and replied:

"I am the Man for the Time."

Before his lordly gaze the blades lowered unevenly as they on whom it
fell obeyed promptly or tried to resist the influence.

"You have made a rash speech," said the president, "but it may have
been spoken without your knowing its gravity."

"I have replied as I was bound," said the other, shaking his head and
smiling.

"Whence come you, then?" questioned the chief.

"From the quarter whence cometh the Light," was the response.

"That is the East, and we are informed that you come from Sweden."

"I may have passed through there from the Orient," said the stranger.

"Still we know you not. A second time, who are you?"

"I will tell you in a while, since you pretend not to know me; but,
meantime, I will tell you who you are."

The spectres shuddered and their swords clanked as they shifted them
from the left to the right hands again to point them at his breast.

"To begin with you," said the stranger, pointing to the chief, "one
who fancies himself a god and is but a forerunner--the representative
of the Swedish Circles--I will name you, though I need not name the
others. Swedenborg, have not the angels, who speak familiarly with you,
revealed that the Man you expect was on the way?"

"True, they told me so," answered the principal, parting his shroud the
better to look out.

This act, against the rule and habit during the rites, displayed the
venerable countenance and snowy beard of an old man of eighty.

"And on your left," continued the stranger, "sits the representative of
Great Britain, the chief of the Scottish Rites. I salute your lordship.
If the blood of your forefathers runs in your veins, England may hope
not to have the Light die out."

The swords dropped, for anger was yielding to surprise.

"So this is you, captain?" went on the stranger to the last leader
on the president's left; "in what port have you left your handsome
cruiser, which you love like a lass. The _Providence_ is a gallant
frigate, and the name brings good luck to America."

"Now for your turn, Prophet of Zurich," he said to the man on the right
of the chief. "Look me in the face, since you have carried the science
of Physiognomy to divination, and tell me if you do not read my mission
in the lines of my face?"

The person addressed recoiled a step.

"As for you, descendant of Pelagius, for a second time the Moors must
be driven out of Spain. It would be an easy matter if the Castilians
have not lost the sword of the Cid."

Mute and motionless dwelt the fifth chief: the voice seemed to have
turned him to stone.

"Have you nothing to say to me?" inquired the sixth delegate,
anticipating the denouncer who seemed to forget him.

"Yea, to you I have to say what the Son of the Great Architect said to
Judas, and I will speak it in a while."

So replied the traveler, fastening on him one of those glances which
pierced to the heart.

The hearer became whiter than his shroud, while a murmur ran round the
gathering, wishful to call the accused one to account.

"You forget the delegate of France," observed the chief.

"He is not among you--as you well know, for there is his vacant place,"
haughtily made answer the stranger. "Bear in mind that such tricks make
them smile who can see in the dark; who act in spite of the elements,
and live though Death menaces them."

"You are a young man to speak thus with the authority of a divinity,"
resumed the principal. "Reflect, yourself--impudence only stuns the
ignorant or the irresolute."

"You are all irresolute," retorted the stranger, with a smile of
supreme scorn, "or you would have acted against me. You are ignorant,
since you do not know me, while I know ye all. With boldness alone
I succeed against you, but boldness would be vain against one with
irresistible power."

"Inform us with a proof of this power," said the Swedenborg.

"What brings ye together?"

"The Supreme Council."

"Not without intention," went on the visitant, "have you come from all
quarters, to gather in the sanctuary of the Terrible Faith."

"Surely not," replied the Swede; "we come to hail the person who has
founded a mystic empire in the Orient, uniting the two hemispheres in a
commonalty of beliefs, and joining the hands of human brotherhood."

"Would you know him by any token?"

"Heaven has been good enough to unveil it by the intermediation of its
angels," answered the visionary.

"If you hold this secret alone and have not revealed it to a soul, tell
it aloud, for the time has come."

"On his breast," said the chief of the Illuminati, "he wears a diamond
star, in the core of which shines the three initials of a phrase known
to him alone."

"State those initials."

"L. P. D."

With a rapid stroke the stranger opened his overcoat, coat and
waistcoat and showed on the fine linen front, gleaming like flame, a
jeweled plate on which flared the three letters in rubies.

"HE!" ejaculated the Swede: "can this be he?"

"Whom all await?" added the other leaders, anxiously.

"The Hierophant of Memphis--the Grand Copt?" muttered the three hundred
voices.

"Will you deny me now?" demanded the Man from the East, triumphantly.

"No," cried the phantoms, bowing to the ground.

"Speak, Master," said the president and the five chiefs, bowing, "and
we obey."

The visitor seemed to reflect during the silence, some instants long.

"Brothers," he finally said, "you may lay aside your swords uselessly
fatiguing your arms, and lend me an attentive ear, for you will learn
much in the few words I address you. The source of great rivers is
generally unknown, like most divine things: I know whither I go, but
not my origin. When I first opened my eyes to consciousness, I was
in the sacred city of Medina, playing about the gardens of the Mufti
Suleyman. I loved this venerable old man like a father, but he was
none of mine, and he addressed me with respect though he held me in
affection. Three times a day he stood aside to let another old man
come to me whose name I ever utter with gratitude mixed with awe. This
august receptacle of all human wisdom, instructed in all things by the
Seven Superior Spirits, bore the name of Althotas. He was my tutor and
master, and venerable friend, for he is twice the age of the oldest
here."

Long shivers of anxiety hailed this speech, spoken in solemnity, with
majestic gesticulation and in a voice severe while smooth.

"One day in my fifteenth year, in the midst of my studies, my old
master came to me with a phial in hand. 'Acharat,' he said--it was my
name--'I have always told you that nothing is born to die forever in
this world. Man only lacks clearness of mind to be immortal. I have
found the beverage to scatter the clouds, and next will discover that
to dispel death. Yesterday I drank of this distillation: I want you to
drink the rest to-day.'

"I had extreme trust in my teacher but my hand trembled in taking this
phial, like Eve's in taking the apple of Life.

"'Drink,' he said, smiling. And I drank.

"'Sleep,' he said, laying his hands on my head. And I slept.

"Then all that was material about me faded away, and the soul that
solitarily remained lived again, like Pythagoras, for centuries through
which it had passed. In the panorama unfolded before it, I beheld
myself in previous existence, and, awaking, comprehended that I was
more than man."

He spoke with so strong a conviction, and his eyes were fixed
heavenward with so sublime an expression that a murmur of admiration
hailed him: astonishment had yielded to wonder, as wrath had to
astonishment.

"Thereupon," continued the Enlightened One, "I determined to devote my
existence at present, as well as the fruit of all my previous ones,
to the welfare of mankind. Next day, as though he divined my plan,
Althotas came to me and said:

"'My son, your mother died twenty years ago as she gave birth to you;
for twenty years your sire has kept hidden by some invincible obstacle;
we will resume our travels and if we meet him, you may embrace him--but
not knowing him.' You see that all was to be mysterious about me, as
with all the Elect of heaven.

"At the end of our journeys, I was a Theosophist. The many cities had
not roused my wonderment. Nothing was new to me under the sun. I had
been in every place formerly in one or more of my several existences.
The only thing striking me was the changes in the peoples. Following
the March of Progress, I saw that all were proceeding toward Freedom.
All the prophets had been sent to prop the tottering steps of mankind,
which, though blind at birth, staggers step by step toward Light.
Each century is an age for the people. Now you understand that I come
not from the Orient to practice simply the Masonic rites, but to say:
Brothers, we must give light to the world. France is chosen to be the
torch-bearer. It may consume, but it will be a wholesome conflagration,
for it will enlighten the world. That is why France has no delegate
here; he may have shrunk from his duty. We want one who will recoil
from nothing--and so I shall go into France. It is the most important
post, the most perilous, and I undertake it."

"Yet you know what goes on there?" questioned the president.

Smiling, the man called Acharat replied: "I ought to know, for I have
been preparing matters. The king is old, timid, corrupt, but less
antiquated and hopeless of cure than the monarchy he represents. Only
a few years further will he sit on the throne. We must have the future
laid out from when he dies. France is the keystone of the arch. Let
that stone be wrenched forth by the six millions of hands which will
be raised at a sign from the Inner Circle, and down will fall the
monarchical system. On the day when there shall be no longer a king in
France, the most insolently enthroned ruler in Europe will turn giddy,
and spring of his own accord into the gulf left by the disappearance of
the throne of Saint Louis."

"Forgive the doubt, most venerated Master," interrupted the chief
on the right, with the Swiss accent, "but have you taken all into
calculation?"

"Everything," replied the Grand Copt, laconically.

"In my studies, master, I was convinced of one truth--that the
characteristics of a man were written on their faces. Now, I fear that
the French people will love the new rulers of the country you speak
of--the sweet, clement king, and the lovely amiable queen. The bride of
the Prince Royal, Marie Antoinette, is even now crossing the border.
The altar and the nuptial bed are being made ready at Versailles. Is
this the moment to begin your reformation?"

"Most illustrious brother," said the supreme chief to the Prophet of
Zurich, "if you read the faces of man, I read the features of the
future. Marie Antoinette is proud and will obstinately continue the
conflict, in which she will fall beneath our attacks. The Dauphin,
Louis Auguste, is good and mild; he will weaken in the strife and
perish like his wife, and with her. But each will fall and perish by
the opposite virtue and fault. They esteem each other now--we will not
give them time to love one another, and in a year they will entertain
mutual contempt. Besides, brothers, why should we debate on the point
whence cometh the light, since it is shown to me? I come from out of
the East, like the shepherds guided by the star, announcing a new birth
of man. To-morrow, I set to work, and with your help I ask but twenty
years to kill not a mere king but a principle. You may think twenty
years long to efface the idea of royalty from the hearts of those who
would sacrifice their children's lives for the little King Louis XV.
You believe it an easy matter to make odious the lilyflowers, emblem of
the Bourbon line, but it would take you ages to do it.

"You are scattered and tremble in your ignorance of one another's
aspirations. I am the master-ring which links you all in one grand
fraternal tie. I tell you that the principles which now you mutter
at the fireside; scribble in the shadows of your old towers; confide
to one another under the rose and the dagger for the traitor or the
imprudent friend who utters them louder than you dare--these principles
may be shouted on the housetops in broad day, printed throughout
Europe and disseminated by peaceful messengers, or on the points of
the bayonets of five hundred soldiers of Liberty, whose colors will
have them inscribed on their folds. You tremble at the name of Newgate
Prison; at that of the Inquisition's dungeon; or of the Bastile, which
I go to flout at--hark ye! We shall all laugh pity for ourselves on
that day when we shall trample on the ruins of the jails, while our
wives and children dance for joy. This can come to pass only after the
death of monarchy as well as of the king, after religious powers are
scorned, after social inferiority is completely forgotten, and after
the extinction of aristocratic castes and the division of noblemen's
property. I ask for a generation to destroy an old world and rear a
new one, twenty seconds in Eternity, and you think it is too much!"

A long greeting in admiration and assent hailed the somber prophet's
speech. It was clear that he had won all the sympathy of the mysterious
mandatories of European intellect. Enjoying his victory just a space,
the Grand Copt resumed:

"Let us see now, brothers, since I am going to beard the lion in his
den, what you will do for the cause for which you pledged life, liberty
and fortune? I come to learn this."

Silence, dreadful from its solemnity, followed these words. The
immobile phantoms were absorbed in the thoughts which were to overthrow
a score of thrones. The six chiefs conferred with the groups and
returned to the president to consult with him before he was the first
to speak.

"I stand for Sweden," he said. "I offer in her name the miners who
raised the Vasas to the throne--now to upset it, together with a
hundred thousand silver crown pieces."

Drawing out tablets, the Hierophant wrote this offer. On the
president's left spoke another:

"I am sent by the lodges of England and Scotland. I can promise nothing
for the former country, which is burning to fight us Scots. But in the
name of poor Erin and poor Scotia, I promise three thousand men, and
three thousand crowns yearly."

"I," said the third speaker, whose vigor and rough activity was
betrayed beneath the winding sheet fettering such a form. "I represent
America, where every stick and stone, tree and running brook, and drop
of blood belong to rebellion. As long as we have gold in our hills,
we will send it ye; as long as blood to shed, we will risk it; but we
cannot act till we ourselves are out of the yoke. We are so divided as
to be broken strands of a cable. Let a mighty hand unite but two of the
strands, and the rest will twist up with them into a hawser to pull
down the crowned evils from their pride of place. Begin with us, most
venerable master. If you want the French to be delivered from royalty,
make us free of British domination."

"Well spoken," said the Hierophant of Memphis. "You Americans shall be
free, and France will lend a helping hand. In all languages, the Grand
Architect hath said: 'Help each other!' Wait a while. You will not have
long to bide, my brother."

Turning to the Switzer, he drew these words from him:

"I can promise only my private contribution. The sons of our republic
have long supplied troops to the French monarchy. They are faithful
bargainers, and will carry out their contracts. For the first time,
most venerated Master, I am ashamed of their loyalty."

"Be it so, we must win without them and in their teeth. Speak, Spain!"

"I am poor," said the grandee, "and have but three thousand brothers to
supply. But each will furnish a thousand _reals_ a year. Spain is an
indolent land, where man would doze though a bed of thorns."

"Be it so," said the Grand Master. "Speak, you, brother."

"I speak for Russia and the Polish clubs. Our brothers are discontented
rich men, or serfs doomed to restless labor and untimely death. In
the name of the latter, owning nothing, not even life, I can promise
nothing; but three thousand rich men will pay twenty louis a head every
year."

The other deputies came forward by turns, and had their offers set down
in the Copt's memorandum book as they bound themselves to fulfill their
plight.

"The word of command," said the leader, "already spread in one part of
the world, is to be dispensed through the others. It is symbolized by
the three letters which you have seen. Let each one wear them in the
heart as well as on it, for we, the Sovereign Master of the shrines
of the Orient and the West, we order the ruin of the Lilies. L. P. D.
signifies _Lilia Pedibus Destrue_--Trample Lilies Under! I order you of
Spain, Sweden, Scotland, Switzerland and America, to Trample down the
Lilies of the Bourbon race."

The cheering was like the roar of the sea, under the vault, escaping by
gusts down the mountain gorges.

"In the name of the Architect, begone," said the Master. "By stream and
strand and valley, begone by the rising of the sun. You will see me
once more, and that will be on the day of triumph. Go!"

He terminated his address with a masonic sign which was understood
solely by the six chiefs, who remained after the inferiors had
departed. Then the Grand Copt took the Swede aside.

"Swedenborg, you are really an inspired man, and heaven thanks you by
my voice. Send the cash into France to the address I shall give you."

The president bowed humbly, and went away amazed by the second sight
which had unveiled his name.

"Brave Fairfax," said the Master to another, "I hail you as the worthy
son of your sire. Remind me to General Washington when next you write
to him."

Fairfax retired on the heels of Swedenborg.

"Paul Jones," went on the Copt to the American deputy, "you have spoken
to the mark, as I expected of you. You will be one of the heroes of the
American Republic. Be both of you ready when the signal is flying."

Quivering as though inspired by a holy breath, the future capturer of
the _Serapis_ likewise retired.

"Lavater," said the Master to the Swiss, "drop your theories for it is
high time to take up practice; no longer study what man is, but what
he may become. Go, and woe to your fellow countrymen who take up arms
against us, for the wrath of the people is swift and devouring even as
that of the God on high!"

Trembling, the physiognomist bowed and went his way.

"List to me, Ximenes," said the Copt to the Spaniard; "you are zealous,
but you distrust yourself. You say, Spain dozes. That is because no one
rouses her. Go and awake her; Castile is still the land of the Cid."

The last chief was skulking forward when the head of the Masons checked
him with a wave of the hand.

"Schieffort, of Russia, you are a traitor who will betray our cause
before the month is over; but before the month is out, you will be
dead."

The Muscovite envoy fell on his knees; but the other made him rise with
a threatening gesture, and the doomed one reeled out of the hall.

Left by himself in the deserted and silent hall, the strange man
buttoned up his overcoat, settled his hat on his head, pushed the
spring of the bronze door to make it open, and went forth. He strode
down the mountain defiles as if they had long been known to him, and
without light or guide in the woods, went to the further edge. He
listened, and hearing a distant neigh, he proceeded thither. Whistling
peculiarly, he brought his faithful Djerid to his hand. He leaped
lightly into the saddle, and the two, darting away headlong, were
enwrapped in the fogs rising between Danenfels and the top of the
Thunder Mountain.




CHAPTER II.

THE LIVING-WAGON IN THE STORM.


A week after the events depicted, a living-wagon drawn by four horses
and conducted by two postboys, left Pont-a-Mousson, a pretty town
between Nancy and Metz. Nothing like this caravan, as show people
style the kind, had ever crossed the bridge, though the good folks see
theatrical carts of queer aspect.

The body was large and painted blue, with a baron's insignia,
surmounting a J. and a B., artistically interlaced. This box was
lighted by two windows, curtained with muslin, but they were in the
front, where a sort of driver's cab hid them from the vulgar eye. By
these apertures the inmate of the coach could talk with outsiders.
Ventilation was given this case by a glazed skylight in the "dickey,"
or hind box of the vehicle, where grooms usually sit. Another orifice
completed the oddity of the affair by presenting a stovepipe, which
belched smoke, to fade away in the wake as the whole rushed on.

In our times one would have simply imagined that it was a steam
conveyance and applauded the mechanician who had done away with horses.

The machine was followed by a led horse of Arab extraction, ready
saddled, indicating that one of the passengers sometimes gave himself
the pleasure and change of riding alongside the vehicle.

At St. Mihiel the mountain ascent was reached. Forced to go at a walk,
the quarter of a league took half an hour.

Toward evening the weather turned from mild and clear to tempestuous. A
cloud spread over the skies with frightful rapidity and intercepted the
setting sunbeams. All of a sudden the cloud was stripped by a lightning
flash, and the startled eye could plunge into the immensity of the
firmament, blazing like the infernal regions. The vehicle was on the
mountain side when a second clap of thunder flung the rain out of the
cloud; after falling in large drops, it poured hard.

The postboys pulled up. "Hello!" demanded a man's voice from inside the
conveyance, "what are you stopping for?"

"We are asking one another if we ought to go on," answered one
postillion with the deference to a master who had paid handsomely.

"It seems to me that I ought to be asked about that. Go ahead!"

But the rain had already made the road downward slippery.

"Please, sir, the horses won't go," said the elder postillion.

"What have you got spurs for?"

"They might be plunged rowels deep without making the balky creatures
budge; may heaven exterminate me if----"

The blasphemy was not finished, as a dreadful lightning stroke cut him
short. The coach was started and ran upon the horses, which had to
race to save themselves from being crushed. The equipage flew down the
sloping road like an arrow, skimming the precipice.

Instead of the traveler's voice coming from the vehicle, it was his
head.

"You clumsy fellows will kill us all!" he said. "Bear to the left,
deuce take ye!"

"Oh, Joseph," screamed a woman's voice inside, "help! Holy Madonna,
help us!"

It was time to invoke the Queen of Heaven, for the heavy carriage was
skirting the abysm; one wheel seemed to be in the air and a horse was
nearly over when the traveler, springing out on the pole, grasped the
postboy nearest by the collar and slack of the breeches. He raised him
out of his boots as if he were a child, flung him a dozen feet clear,
and taking his place in the saddle, gathered up the reins, and said in
a terrifying voice to the second rider:

"Keep to the left, rascal, or I shall blow out your brains!"

The order had a magical effect. The foremost rider, haunted by the
shriek of his luckless comrade, followed the substitute impulse and
bore the horses toward the firm land.

"Gallop!" shouted the traveler. "If you falter, I shall run right over
you and your horses."

The chariot seemed an infernal machine drawn by nightmares and pursued
by a whirlwind.

But they had eluded one danger only to fall into another.

As they reached the foot of the declivity, the cloud split with an
awful roar in which was blended the flame and the thunder.

A fire enwrapped the leaders, and the wheelers and the leaders were
brought to their haunches as if the ground gave way under them. But
the fore pair, rising quickly and feeling that the traces had snapped,
carried away their man in the darkness. The vehicle, rolling on a few
paces, stopped on the dead body of the stricken horse.

The whole event had been accompanied by the screams of the woman.

For a moment of confusion, none knew who was living or dead.

The traveler was safe and sound, on feeling himself; but the lady had
swooned. Although he guessed this was the case, it was elsewhere that
he ran to aid--to the rear of the vehicle.

The led horse was rearing with bristling mane, and shaking the door, to
the handle of which his halter was hitched.

"Hang the confounded beast again!" muttered a broken voice within; "a
curse on him for shaking the wall of my laboratory." Becoming louder,
the same voice added in Arabic: "I bid you keep quiet, devil!"

"Do not wax angry with Djerid, master," said the traveler, untying the
steed and fastening it to the hind wheel; "he is frightened, and for
sound reasons."

So saying, he opened a door, let down the steps, and stepped inside the
vehicle, closing the door behind him.

He faced a very aged man, with hooked nose, gray eyes, and shaking yet
active hands. Sunken in a huge armchair, he was following the lines of
a manuscript book on vellum, entitled "The Secret Key to the Cabinet of
Magic," while holding a silver skimmer in his other hand.

The three walls--for this old man had called the sides of the
living-wagon "walls"--held bookcases, with shelves of bottles, jars and
brass-bound boxes, set in wooden cases like utensils on shipboard so as
to stand up without upsetting. The old man could reach these articles
by rolling the easy chair to them; a crank enabled him to screw up the
seat to the level of the highest. The compartment was, in feet, eight
by six and six in height. Facing the door was a furnace with hood and
bellows. It was now boiling a crucible at a white heat, whence issued
the smoke by the pipe overhead exciting the mystery of the villagers
wherever the wagon went through.

The whole emitted an odor which in a less grotesque laboratory would
have been called a perfume.

The occupant seemed to be in bad humor, for he grumbled:

"The cursed animal is frightened: but what has he got to disturb him,
I want to know? He has shaken my door, cracked my furnace, and spilt a
quarter of my elixir in the fire. Acharat, in heaven's name, drop the
beast in the first desert we cross."

"In the first place, master," returned the other smiling, "we are not
crossing deserts, for we are in France; and next, I would not abandon
a horse worth a thousand louis, or rather priceless, as he is of the
breed of Al Borach."

"I will give you a thousand over and over again. He has lost me more
than a million, to say nothing of the days he has robbed me of. The
liquor would have boiled up without loss of a drop, in a little longer,
which neither Zoroaster nor Paracelsus stated, but it is positively
advised by Borri."

"Never mind, it will soon be boiling again."

"But that is not all--something is dropping down my chimney."

"Merely water--it is raining."

"Water? Then my elixir is spoilt. I must renew the work--as if I had
any time to spare!"

"It is pure water from above. It was pouring, as you might have
noticed."

"Do I notice anything when busy? On my poor soul, Acharat, this is
exasperating. For six months I have been begging for a cowl to my
chimney--I mean this year. You never think of it, though you are young
and have lots of leisure. What will your negligence bring about? The
rain to-day or the wind to-morrow confound my calculations and ruin
all my operations. Yet I must hurry, by Jove! for my hundredth year
commences on the fifteenth of July, at eleven at night precisely,
and if my elixir of life is not then ready, good-night to the Sage
Althotas."

"But you are getting on well with it, my dear master, I think."

"Yes, by my tests by absorption, I have restored vitality to my
paralyzed arm. I only want the plant mentioned by Pliny, which we have
perhaps passed a hundred times or crushed under the wheels. By the way,
what rumbling is that? Are we still going?"

"No; that is thunder. The lightning has been playing the mischief with
us, but I was safe enough, being clothed in silk."

"Lightning? Pooh! wait till I renew my life and can attend to other
matters. I will put a steel bridle on your electric fluid and make it
light this study and cook my meals. I wish I were as sure of making my
elixir perfect----"

"And our great work--how comes it on?"

"Making diamonds? That is done. Look there in the glass dish."

Joseph Balsamo greedily caught up the crystal saucer, and saw a small
brilliant amid some dust.

"Small, and with flaws," he said, disappointed.

"Because the fire was put out, Acharat, from there being no cowl to the
chimney."

"You shall have it; but do take some food."

"I took some elixir a couple of hours ago."

"Nay, that was at six this morning, and it is now the afternoon."

"Another day gone, fled and lost," moaned the alchemist, wringing
his hands; "are they not growing shorter? Have they less than
four-and-twenty hours?"

"If you will not eat, at least take a nap."

"When I sleep, I am afraid I shall never wake. If I lie down for two
hours, you will come and call me, Acharat," said the old man in a
coaxing voice.

"I swear I will, master."

At this point they heard the gallop of a horse and a scream of
astonishment and disquiet.

"What does that mean?" questioned the traveler, quickly opening the
door, and leaping out on the road without using the steps.




CHAPTER III.

THE LOVELY LORENZA.


The woman who was in the fore part of the coach, in the cab, remained
for a time deprived of sense. As fear alone had caused the swoon, she
came to consciousness.

"Heavens!" she cried, "am I abandoned helpless here, with no human
being to take pity upon me?"

"Lady," said a timid voice at hand, "I am here, and I may be some help
to you."

Passing her head and both arms out of the cab by the leather curtains,
the young woman, rising, faced a youth who stood on the steps.

"Is it you offered me help? What has happened?"

"The thunderbolt nearly struck you, and the traces were broken of the
leading pair, which have run off with the postboy."

"What has become of the person who was riding the other pair?" she
asked, with an anxious look round.

"He got off the horses as if all right and went inside the other part
of this coach."

"Heaven be praised," said she, breathing more freely. "But who are you
to offer me assistance so timely?"

"Surprised by the storm, I was in that dark hole which is a quarry
outlet, when I suddenly saw a large wagon coming down at a gallop. I
thought it a runaway, but soon saw it was guided by a mighty hand, but
the lightning fell with such an uproar that I feared I was struck and
was stunned. All seemed to have happened in a dream."

The lady nodded as if this satisfied her, but rested her head on her
hand in deep thought. He had time to examine her. She was in her
twenty-third year, and of dark complexion, but richly colored with the
loveliest pink. Her blue eyes sparkled like stars as she appealed to
heaven, and her hair fell in curls of jet, unpowdered contrary to the
fashion, on her opal neck.

"Where are we?" she suddenly inquired.

"On the Strasburg to Paris highway, near Pierrefittes, a village.
Bar-le-Duc is the next town, with some five thousand population."

"Is there a short cut to it?"

"None I ever heard of."

"What a pity!" she said in Italian.

As she kept silent toward him, the youth was going away, when this drew
her from her reverie, for she called him for another question.

"Is there a horse still attached to the coach?"

"The gentleman who entered, tied it to the wheel."

"It is a valuable animal, and I should like to be sure it is unhurt;
but how can I go through this mud?"

"I can bring it here," proposed the stripling.

"Do so, I prithee, and I shall be most grateful to you."

But the barb reared and neighed when he went up.

"Do not be afraid," said the lady: "it is gentle as a lamb. Djerid,"
she called in a low voice.

The steed recognized the mistress's voice, for it extended its
intelligent head toward the speaker, while the youth unfastened it. But
it was scarcely loose before it jerked the reins away and bounded up to
the vehicle. The woman came forth, and almost as quickly leaped on the
saddle, with the dexterity of those sylphs in German ballads who cling
to riders while seated on the crupper. The youth sprang toward her but
she stopped him with an imperative wave of the hand.

"List to me. Though but a boy, or because you are young, you have
humane feelings. Do not oppose my flight. I am fleeing from a man I
love, but I am above all a good Catholic. This man would destroy my
soul were I to stay by him, as he is a magician whom God sent a warning
to by the lighting. May he profit by it! Tell him this, and bless you
for the help given me. Farewell!"

Light as the marsh mist, she was carried away by the gallop of Djerid.
On seeing this, the youth could not restrain a cry of surprise, which
was the one heard inside the coach.




CHAPTER IV.

GILBERT.


The alarmed traveler closed the coach door behind him carefully, and
looked wistfully round. First he saw the young man, frightened. A flash
of lighting enabled him to examine him from head to foot, an operation
habitual to him on seeing any new person or thing. This was a springald
of sixteen, small, thin and agile; his bold black eyes lacked sweetness
but not charm: shrewdness and observation were revealed in his thin,
hooked nose, fine lip and projecting cheek bones, while the rounded
chin stuck out in token of resolution.

"Was that you screamed just now,--what for?" queried the gentleman.

"The lady from the cab there rode off on the led horse."

The traveler did not make any remark at this hesitating reply; not a
word; he rushed to the fore part and saw by the lightning that it was
empty.

"Sblood!" he roared in Italian, almost like the thunder peal
accompanying the oath.

He looked round for means of pursuit, but one of the coach-horses in
chase of Djerid would be a tortoise after a gazelle.

"Still I can find out where she is," he muttered, "unless----"

Quickly and anxiously he drew a small book from his vest pocket, and in
a folded paper found a tress of raven hair.

His features became serene, and apparently he was calmed.

"All is well," he said, wiping his streaming face. "Did she say nothing
when she started?"

"Yes, that she quitted you not through hate but fear, as she is a
Christian, while you--you are an atheist, and miscreant, to whom God
sought to give a final warning by this storm."

"If that is all, let us drop the subject."

The last traces of disquiet and discontent fled the man's brow. The
youth noticed all this with curiosity mingled with keen observation.

"What is your name, my young friend?" inquired the traveler.

"Gilbert."

"Your Christian name, but----"

"It is my whole name."

"My dear Gilbert, Providence placed you on my road to save me from
bother. I know your youth compels you to be obliging: but I am not
going to ask anything hard of you--only a night's lodging."

"This rock was my shelter."

"I should like a dwelling better where I could get a good meal and
bed."

"We are a league and a half from Pierrefitte, the next village."

"With only two horses that would take two hours. Just think if there is
no refuge nearer."

"Taverney Castle is at hand, but it is not an inn."

"Not lived in?"

"Baron Taverney lives there----"

"What is he?"

"Father of Mademoiselle Andrea de Taverney----"

"Delighted to hear it," smilingly said the other: "but I want to know
the kind of man he is."

"An old nobleman who used to be wealthy."

"An old story. My friend, please take me to Baron Taverney's."

"He does not receive company," said the youth, in apprehension.

"Not welcome a stray gentleman? He must be a bear."

"Much like it. I do not advise your risking it."

"Pooh! The bear will not eat me up alive."

"But he may keep the door closed."

"I will break it in; and unless you refuse to be my guide----"

"I do not; I will show the way."

The traveler took off the carriage lamp, which Gilbert held curiously
in his hands.

"It has no light," he said.

"I have fire in my pocket."

"Pretty hard to get fire from flint and steel this weather," observed
the youth.

But the other drew a silver case from his pocket, and opening the lid
plunged a match into it; a flame sprang up and he drew out the match
aflame. This was so sudden and unexpected by the youth, who only knew
of tinder and the spark, and not of phosphorus, the toy of science
at this period, that he started. He watched the magician restore the
case to his pocket with greed. He would have given much to have the
instrument.

He went on before with the lighted lamp, while his companion forced the
horses to come by his hand on the bridle.

"You appear to know all about this Baron of Taverney, my lad!" he began
the dialogue.

"I have lived on his estate since a child."

"Oh, your kinsman, tutor, master?"

At this word the youth's cheek colored up, though usually pale, and he
quivered.

"I am no man's servant, sir," he retorted. "I am son of one who was a
farmer for the baron, and my mother nursed Mademoiselle Andrea."

"I understand; you belong to the household as foster-brother of the
young lady--I suppose she is young?"

"She is sixteen."

He had answered only one of the two questions, and not the one personal
to him.

"How did you chance to be on the road in such weather?" inquired the
other, making the same reflection as our own.

"I was not on the road, but in the cave, reading a book called 'The
Social Contract,' by one Rousseau."

"Oh, found the book in the lord's library?" asked the gentleman with
some astonishment.

"No, I bought it of a peddler who, like others of his trade, has been
hawking good books hereabouts."

"Who told you 'The Contract' was a good book?"

"I found that out by reading it, in comparison with some infamous ones
in the baron's library."

"The baron gets indecent books, always costly, in this hole?"

"He does not spend money on them as they are sent him from Paris by his
friend the Marshal Duke of Richelieu."

"Oh! of course he does not let his daughter see such stuff?"

"He leaves them about, but Mademoiselle Andrea does not read them,"
rejoined the youth, drily.

The mocking traveler was briefly silent. He was interested in this
singular character, in whom was blended good and evil, shame and
boldness.

"How came you to read bad books?"

"I did not know what they were until read; but I kept on as they
taught me what I was unaware of. But 'The Contract' told me what I had
guessed, that all men are brothers, society badly arranged, and that
instead of being serfs and slaves, individuals are equal."

"Whew!" whistled the gentleman, as they went on. "You seem to be hungry
to learn?"

"Yes, it is my greatest wish to know everything, so as to rise----"

"To what station?"

Gilbert paused, for having a goal in his mind, he wanted to keep it
hidden.

"As far as man may go," he answered.

"So you have studied?"

"How study when I was not rich and was cooped up in Taverney? I can
read and write; but I shall learn the rest somehow one of these days."

"An odd boy," thought the stranger.

During the quarter of an hour they had trudged on, the rain had ceased,
and the earth sent up the sharp tang replacing the sulphurous breath of
the thunderstorms.

"Do you know what storms are?" questioned Gilbert, after deep musing.

"Thunder and lightning are the result of a shock between the
electricity in the air and in the earth," he said, smiling.

"I do not follow you," sighed Gilbert.

The traveler might have supplied a more lucid explanation but a light
glimmered through the trees.

"That is the carriage-gateway of Taverney," said the guide.

"Open it."

"Taverney gate does not open so easily as that."

"Is it a fort? Knock, and louder than that!"

Thus emboldened, the boy dropped the knocker and hung on to the bell,
which clanged so lustily that it might be heard afar.

"That is Mahon barking," said the youth.

"Mahon? He names his watchdog after a victory of his friend my Lord
Richelieu, I see," remarked the traveler.

"I did not know that. You see how ignorant I am," sighed Gilbert.

These sighs summed up the disappointments and repressed ambition of the
youth.

"That is the goodman Labrie coming," said the latter at the sound of
footsteps within.

The door opened, but at the sight of the stranger the old servant
wanted to slam it.

"Excuse me, friend," interposed the traveler; "don't shut the door in
my face. I will risk my travel-stained garb, and I warrant you that I
shall not be expelled before I have warmed myself and had a meal. _I_
hear you keep good wine, eh? You ought to know that?"

Labrie tried still to resist, but the other was determined and led
the horses right in with the coach, while Gilbert closed the gates in
a trice. Vanquished, the servant ran to announce his own defeat. He
rushed toward the house, shouting:

"Nicole Legay!"

"Nicole is Mademoiselle Andrea's maid," explained the boy, as the
gentleman advanced with his usual tranquility.

A light appeared among the shrubbery, showing a pretty girl.

"What is all this riot; what's wanted of me?" she challenged.

"Quick, my lass," faltered the old domestic, "announce to master that
a stranger, overtaken by the storm, seeks hospitality for the night."

Nicole darted so swiftly toward the building as to be lost instantly to
sight. Labrie took breath, as he might be sure that his lord would not
be taken by surprise.

"Announce Baron Joseph Balsamo," said the traveler; "the similarity in
rank will disarm your lord."

At the first step of the portal he looked round for Gilbert, but he had
disappeared.




CHAPTER V.

TAVERNEY AND HIS DAUGHTER.


Though forewarned by Gilbert of Baron Taverney's poverty, Baron Balsamo
was not the less astonished by the meanness of the dwelling which the
youth had dubbed the Castle. On the paltry threshold stood the master
in a dressing gown and holding a candle.

Taverney was a little, old gentleman of five-and-sixty, with bright
eye and high but retreating forehead. His wretched wig had lost by
burning at the candles what the rats had spared of its curls. In his
hands was held a dubiously white napkin, which proved that he had been
disturbed at table. His spiteful face had a likeness to Voltaire's,
and was divided between politeness to the guest and distaste to being
disturbed. In the flickering light he looked ugly.

"Who was it pointed out my house as a shelter?" queried the baron,
holding up the light to spy the pilot to whom he was eager to show his
gratitude, of course.

"The youth bore the name of Gilbert, I believe."

"Ugh! I might have guessed that. I doubted, though, he was good enough
for that. Gilbert, the idler, the philosopher!"

This flow of epithets, emphasized threateningly, showed the visitor
that little sympathy existed between the lord and his vassal.

"Be pleased to come in," said the baron, after a short silence more
expressive than his speech.

"Allow me to see to my coach, which contains valuable property,"
returned the foreign nobleman.

"Labrie," said Lord Taverney, "put my lord's carriage under the shed,
where it will be less uncovered than in the open yard, for some
shingles stick to the roof. As for the horses, that is different, for I
cannot answer for their supper; still, as they are not yours, but the
post's, I daresay it makes no odds."

"Believe me, I shall be ever grateful to your lordship----"

"Oh, do not deceive yourself," said the baron, holding up the candle
again to light Labrie executing the work with the aid of the foreign
noble; "Taverney is a poor place and a sad one."

When the vehicle was under cover, after a fashion, the guest slipped a
gold coin into the servant's hand. He thought it a silver piece, and
thanked heaven for the boon.

"Lord forbid I should think the ill of your house that you speak," said
Balsamo, returning and bowing as the baron began leading him through a
broad, damp antechamber, grumbling:

"Nay, nay, I know what I am talking about; my means are limited. Were
you French--though your accent is German, in spite of your Italian
title--but never mind--you would be reminded of the rich Taverney."

"Philosophy," muttered Balsamo, for he had expected the speaker would
sigh.

The master opened the dining-room door.

"Labrie, serve us as if you were a hundred men in one. I have no other
lackey, and he is bad. But I cannot afford another. This dolt has lived
with me nigh twenty years without taking a penny of wages, and he is
worth it. You will see he is stupid."

"Heartless," Balsamo continued his studies; "unless he is putting it
on."

The dining-room was the large main room of a farmhouse which had been
converted into the manor. It was so plainly furnished as to seem empty.
A small, round table was placed in the midst, on which reeked one dish,
a stew of game and cabbage. The wine was in a stone jar; the battered,
worn and tarnished plate was composed of three plates, a goblet and a
salt dish; the last, of great weight and exquisite work, seemed a jewel
of price amid the rubbish.

"Ah, you let your gaze linger on my salt dish?" said the host. "You
have good taste to admire it. You notice the sole object presentable
here. No, I have another gem, my daughter----"

"Mademoiselle Andrea?"

"Yes," said Taverney, astonished at the name being known; "I shall
present you. Come, Andrea, my child, and don't be alarmed."

"I am not, father," said a sonorous but melodious voice as a maiden
appeared, who seemed a lovely pagan statue animated.

Though of the utmost plainness, her dress was so tasteful and suitable
that a complete outfit from a royal wardrobe would have appeared less
rich and elegant.

"You are right," he whispered to his host, "she is a precious beauty."

"Do not pay my poor girl too many compliments," said the old Frenchman
carelessly, "for she comes from the nunnery school and may credit
them. Not that I fear that she will be a coquette," he continued; "just
the other way, for the dear girl does not think enough of herself,
and I am a good father, who tries to make her know that coquetry is a
woman's first power."

Andrea cast down her eyes and blushed; whatever her endeavor she could
not but overhear this singular theory.

"Was that told to the lady at convent, and is that a rule in religious
education?" queried the foreigner, laughing.

"My lord, I have my own ideas, as you may have noticed. I do
not imitate those fathers who bid a daughter play the prude
and be inflexible and obtuse; go mad about honor, delicacy and
disinterestedness. Fools! they are like seconds who lead their champion
into the lists with all the armor removed and pit him against a man
armed at all points. No, my daughter Andrea will not be that sort,
though reared in a rural den at Taverney."

Though agreeing with the master about his place, the baron deemed it
duty to suggest a polite reproof.

"That is all very well, but I know Taverney; still, be that as it
may, and far though we are from the sunshine of Versailles Palace,
my daughter is going to enter the society where I once flourished.
She will enter with a complete arsenal of weapons forged in my
experience and recollections. But I fear, my lord, that the convent
has blunted them. Just my luck! my daughter is the only pupil who took
the instructions as in earnest and is following the Gospel. Am I not
ill-fated?"

"The young lady is an angel," returned Balsamo, "and really I am not
surprised at what I hear."

Andrea nodded her thanks, and they sat down at table.

"Eat away, if hungry. That is a beastly mess which Labrie has hashed
up."

"Call you partridges so? You slander your feast. Game-birds in May?
Shot on your preserves?"

"Mine? My good father left me some, but I got rid of them long ago. I
have not a yard of land. That lazybones Gilbert, only good for mooning
about, stole a gun somewhere and done a bit of poaching. He will go to
jail for it, and a good riddance. But Andrea likes game, and so far, I
forgive the boy."

Balsamo contemplated the lovely face without perceiving a twinge,
wrinkle or color, as she helped them to the dish, cooked by Labrie,
furnished by Gilbert, and maligned by the baron.

"Are you admiring the salt dish again, baron?"

"No, the arm of your daughter."

"Capital! the reply is worthy the gallant Richelieu. That piece of
plate was ordered of Goldsmith Lucas by the Regent of Orleans.
Subject: the Amours of the Bacchantes and Satyrs--rather free."

More than free, obscene--but Balsamo admired the calm unconcern of
Andrea, not blenching as she presented the plate.

"Do eat," said the host; "do not fancy that another dish is coming, for
you will be dreadfully disappointed."

"Excuse me, father," interrupted the girl with habitual coolness, "but
if Nicole has understood me, she will have made a cake of which I told
her the recipe."

"You gave Nicole the recipe of a cake? Your waiting maid does the
cooking now, eh? The next thing will be your doing it yourself. Do
you find duchesses and countesses playing the kitchen-wench? On the
contrary, the king makes omelets for them. Gracious! that I have lived
to see women-cooks under my roof. Pray excuse my daughter, baron."

"We must eat, father," rebuked Andrea tranquilly. "Dish up, Legay!" she
called out, and the girl brought in a pancake of appetizing smell.

"I know one who won't touch the stuff," cried Taverney, furiously
dashing his plate to pieces.

"But the gentleman, perhaps, will," said the lady coldly. "By the way,
father, that leaves only seventeen pieces in that set, which comes to
me from my mother."

The guest's spirit of observation found plenty of food in this
corner of life in the country. The salt dish alone revealed a facet
of Taverney's character or rather all its sides. From curiosity or
otherwise, he stared at Andrea with such perseverance that she tried to
frown him down; but finally she gave way and yielded to his mesmeric
influence and command.

Meanwhile the baron was storming, grumbling, snarling and nipping the
arm of Labrie, who happened to get into his way. He would have done the
same to Nicole's when the baron's gaze fell on her hands.

"Just look at what pretty fingers this lass has," he exclaimed. "They
would be supremely pretty only for her kitchen work having made corns
at the tips. That is right; perk up, my girl! I can tell you, my
dear guest, that Nicole Legay is not a prude like her mistress and
compliments do not frighten her."

Watching the baron's daughter, Balsamo noticed the highest disdain
on her beauteous face. He harmonized his features with hers and
this pleased her, spite of herself, for she looked at him with less
harshness, or, better, with less disquiet.

"This girl, only think," continued the poor noble, chucking the girl's
chin with the back of his hand, "was at the nunnery with my daughter
and picked up as much schooling. She does not leave her mistress a
moment. This devotion would rejoice the philosophers, who grant souls
to her class."

"Father, Nicole stays with me because I order her to do so," observed
Andrea, discontented.

By the curl of the servant's lip, Balsamo saw that she was not
insensible to the humiliations from her proud superior. But the
expression flitted; and to hide a tear, perhaps, the girl looked aside
to a window on the yard. Everything interested the visitor, and he
perceived a man's face at the panes.

Each in this curious abode had a secret, he thought; "I hope not to be
an hour here without learning Andrea's. Already I know her father's,
and I guess Nicole's."

Taverney perceived his short absence of mind.

"What! are you dreaming?" he questioned. "We are all at it, here; but
you might have waited for bedtime. Reverie is a catching complaint. My
daughter broods; Nicole is wool-gathering; and I get puzzling about
that dawdler who killed these birds--and dreams when he kills them.
Gilbert is a philosopher, like Labrie. I hope you are not friendly with
them? I forewarn you that philosophers do not go down with me."

"They are neither friends nor foes to me," replied the visitor; "I do
not have anything to do with them."

"Very good. Zounds, they are scoundrelly vermin, more venomous than
ugly. They will ruin the monarchy with their maxims, like 'People can
hardly be virtuous under a monarchy;' or, 'Genuine monarchy is an
institution devised to corrupt popular manners, and make slaves;' or
yet, 'Royal authority may come by the grace of God, but so do plagues
and miseries of mankind.' Pretty flummery, all this! What good would
a virtuous people be, I beg? Things are going to the bad, since his
Majesty spoke to Voltaire and read Diderot's book."

At this Balsamo fancied again to spy the pale face at the window, but
it vanished as soon as he fixed his eyes upon it.

"Is your daughter a philosopher?" he asked, smiling.

"I do not know what philosophy is; I only know that I like serious
matters," was Andrea's reply.

"The most serious thing is to live; stick to that," said her father.

"But the young lady cannot hate life," said the stranger.

"All depends," she said.

"Another stupid saying," interrupted Taverney. "That is just the
nonsense my son talks. I have the misfortune to have a son. The
Viscount of Taverney is cornet in the dauphin's horse-guards--a nice
boy; another philosopher! The other day he talked to me about doing
away with negro slavery. 'What are we to do for sugar?' I retorted,
for I like my coffee heavily sweetened, as does Louis XV. 'We must
do without sugar to benefit a suffering race.' 'Suffering monkeys!'
I returned, 'and that is paying them a compliment.' Whereupon he
asserted that all men were brothers! Madness must be in the air. I,
brother of a blackamoor!"

"This is going too far," observed Balsamo.

"Of course. I told you I was in luck. My children are--one an angel,
the other an apostle. Drink, though my wine is detestable."

"I think it exquisite," said the guest, watching Andrea.

"Then you are a philosopher! In my time we learnt pleasant things; we
played cards, fought duels, though against the law; and wasted our
time on duchesses and money on opera dancers. That is my story in a
nutshell. Taverney went wholly into the opera-house; which is all I
sorrow for, since a poor noble is nothing of a man. I look aged, do
I not? Only because I am impoverished and dwell in a kennel, with a
tattered wig, and gothic coat; but my friend the marshal duke, with
his house in town and two hundred thousand a year--he is young, in
his new clothes and brushed up perukes--he is still alert, brisk and
pleasure-seeking, though ten years my senior, my dear sir, ten years."

"I am astonished that, with powerful friends like the Duke of
Richelieu, you quitted the court."

"Only a temporary retreat, and I am going back one day," said the lord,
darting a strange glance on his daughter, which the visitor intercepted.

"But, I suppose, the duke befriends your son?"

"He holds the son of his friend in horror, for he is a philosopher, and
he execrates them."

"The feeling is reciprocal," observed Andrea with perfect calm. "Clear
away, Legay!"

Startled from her vigilant watch on the window, the maid ran back to
the table.

"We used to stay at the board to two A. M. We had luxuries for supper,
then, that's why! and we drank when we could eat no more. But how can
one drink vinegar when there is nothing to eat? Legay, let us have the
Maraschino, provided there is any."

"Liqueurs," said Andrea to the maid, who took her orders from the baron
thus second-hand.

Her master sank back in his armchair and sighed with grotesque
melancholy while keeping his eyes closed.

"Albeit the duke may execrate your son--quite right, too, as he is a
philosopher," said Balsamo, "he ought to preserve his liking for you,
who are nothing of the kind. I presume you have claims on the king,
whom you must have served?"

"Fifteen years in the army. I was the marshal's aid-de-camp, and
we went through the Mahon campaign together. Our friendship dates
from--let me see! the famous siege of Philipsburg, 1742 to 1743."

"Yes, I was there, and remember you----"

"You remember me at the siege? Why, what is your age?"

"Oh, I am no particular age," replied the guest, holding up his glass
to be filled by Andrea's fair hand.

The host interpreted that his guest did not care to tell his years.

"My lord, allow me to say that you do not seem to have been a soldier,
then, as it is twenty-eight years ago, and you are hardly over thirty."

Andrea regarded the stranger with the steadfastness of deep curiosity;
he came out in a different light every instant.

"I know what I am talking about the famous siege, where the Duke
of Richelieu killed in a duel his cousin the Prince of Lixen. The
encounter came off on the highway, by my fay! on our return from the
outposts; on the embankment, to the left, he ran him through the body.
I came up as Prince Deux-ponts held the dying man in his arms. He was
seated on the ditch bank, while Richelieu tranquilly wiped his steel."

"On my honor, my lord, you astound me. Things passed as you describe."

"Stay, you wore a captain's uniform then, in the Queen's Light Horse
Guards, so badly cut up at Fontenoy?"

"Were you in that battle, too?" jeered the baron.

"No, I was dead at that time," replied the stranger, calmly.

The baron stared, Andrea shuddered, and Nicole made the sign of the
cross.

"To resume the subject, I recall you clearly now, as you held your
horse and the duke's while he fought. I went up to you for an account
and you gave it. They called you the Little Chevalier. Excuse me not
remembering before, but thirty years change a man. To the health of
Marshal Richelieu, my dear baron!"

"But, according to this, you would be upward of fifty."

"I am of the age to have witnessed that affair."

The baron dropped back in the chair so vexed that Nicole could not
help laughing. But Andrea, instead of laughing, mused with her looks
on the mysterious guest. He seemed to await this chance to dart two or
three flaming glances at her, which thrilled her like an electrical
discharge. Her arms stiffened, her neck bent, she smiled against her
will on the hypnotizer, and closed her eyes. He managed to touch her
arm, and again she quivered.

"Do you think I tell a fib in asserting I was at Philipsburg?" he
demanded.

"No, I believe you," she replied with a great effort.

"I am in my dotage," muttered Taverney, "unless we have a ghost here."

"Who can tell?" returned Balsamo, with so grave an accent that he
subjugated the lady and made Nicole stare.

"But if you were living at the Siege, you were a child of four or five."

"I was over forty."

The baron laughed and Nicole echoed him.

"You do not believe me. It is plain, though, for I was not the man I
am."

"This is a bit of antiquity," said the French noble. "Was there not a
Greek philosopher--these vile philosophers seem to be of all ages--who
would not eat beans because they contained souls, like the negress,
according to my son? What the deuse was his name?"

"That is the gentleman."

"Why may I not be Pythagoras?"

"Pythagoras," prompted Andrea.

"I do not deny that, but he was not at Philipsburg; or, at any rate, I
did not see him there."

"But you saw Viscount Jean Barreaux, one of the Black Horse Musketeers?"

"Rather; the musketeers and the light cavalry took turns in guarding
the trenches."

"The day after the Richelieu duel, Barreaux and you were in the
trenches when he asked you for a pinch of snuff, which you offered in
a gold box, ornamented with the portrait of a belle, but in the act
a cannon ball hit him in the throat, as happened the Duke of Berwick
aforetimes, and carried away his head."

"Gad! just so! poor Barreaux!"

"This proves that we were acquainted there, for I am Barreaux," said
the foreigner.

The host shrank back in fright or stupefaction.

"This is magic," he gasped; "you would have been burnt at the stake a
hundred years ago, my dear guest. I seem to smell brimstone!"

"My dear baron, note that a true magician is never burnt or hanged.
Only fools are led to the gibbet or pyre. But here is your daughter
sent to sleep by our discussions on metaphysics and occult sciences,
not calculated to interest a lady."

Indeed, Andrea nodded under irresistible force like a lily on the
stalk. At these words she made an effort to repel the subtle fluid
which overwhelmed her; she shook her head energetically, rose and
tottered out of the room, sustained by Nicole. At the same time
disappeared the face glued so often to the window glass on the outside,
which Balsamo had recognized as Gilbert's.

"_Eureka!_" exclaimed Balsamo triumphantly, as she vanished. "I can say
it like Archimedes."

"Who is he?" inquired the baron.

"A very good fellow for a wizard, whom I knew over two thousand years
ago," replied the guest.

Whether the baron thought this boast rather too preposterous, or he did
not hear it, or hearing it, wanted the more to be rid of his odd guest,
he proposed lending him a horse to get to the nearest posting house.

"What, force me to ride when I am dying to stretch my legs in bed? Do
not exaggerate your mediocrity so as to make me believe in a personal
ill will."

"On the contrary, I treat you as a friend, knowing what you will incur
here. But since you put it this way, remain. Labrie, is the Red-Room
habitable?"

"Certainly, my lord, as it is Master Philip's when he is here."

"Give it to the gentleman, since he is bent on being disgusted with
Taverney."

"I want to be here to-morrow to testify to my gratitude."

"You can do that easily, as you are so friendly with Old Nick that you
can ask him for the stone which turns all things to gold."

"If that is what you want, apply to me direct."

"Labrie, you old rogue, get a candle and light the gentleman to bed,"
said the baron, beginning to find such a dialogue dangerous at the late
hour.

Labrie ordered Nicole to air the Red Room while he hastened to obey.
Nicole left Andrea alone, the latter eager for the solitude to nurse
her thoughts. Taverney bade the guest good-night, and went to bed.

Balsamo took out his watch, for he recalled his promise to awake
Althotas after two hours, and it was a half-hour more. He asked the
servant if his coach was still out in the yard, and Labrie answered
in the affirmative--unless it had run off of its own volition. As for
Gilbert, he had been abed most likely since an hour.

Balsamo went to Althotas after studying the way to the Red Room. Labrie
was tidying up the sordid apartment, after Nicole had aired it, when
the guest returned.

He had paused at Andrea's room to listen at her door to her playing on
the harpsichord to dispel the burden of the influence the stranger had
imposed upon her. In a while he waved his hands as in throwing a magic
spell, and so it was, for Andrea slowly stopped playing, let her hands
drop by her sides, and turned rigidly and slowly toward the door, like
one who obeys an influence foreign to will.

Balsamo smiled in the darkness as though he could see through the
panels. This was all he wanted to do, for he groped for the banister
rail, and went up stairs to his room.

As he departed, Andrea turned away from the door and resumed playing,
so that the mesmerist heard the air again from where she had been made
to leave off.

Entering the Red Room, he dismissed Labrie; but the latter lingered,
feeling in the depths of his pocket till at last he managed to say:

"My lord, you made a mistake this evening, in giving me gold for the
piece of silver you intended."

Balsamo looked on the old servingman with admiration, showing that he
had not a high opinion of the honesty of most men.

"'And honest,'" he muttered in the words of Hamlet, as he took out a
second gold coin to place it beside the other in the old man's hand.

The latter's delight at this splendid generosity may be imagined, for
he had not seen so much gold in twenty years. He was retiring, bowing
to the floor, when the donor checked him.

"What are the morning habits of the house?" he asked.

"My lord stays abed late, my lord; but Mademoiselle Andrea is up
betimes, about six."

"Who sleeps overhead?"

"I, my lord; but nobody beneath, as the vestibule is under us."

"Oh, by the way, do not be alarmed if you see a light in my coach, as
an old impotent servant inhabits it. Ask Master Gilbert to let me see
him in the morning."

"Is my lord going away so soon?"

"It depends," replied Balsamo, with a smile. "I ought to be at
Bar-le-Duc tomorrow evening."

Labrie sighed with resignation, and was about to set fire to some old
papers to warm the room, which was damp and there was no wood, when
Balsamo stayed him.

"No, let them be; I might want to read them, for I may not sleep."

Balsamo went to the door to listen to the servant's departing steps
making the stairs creak till they sounded overhead; Labrie was in his
own room. Then he went to the window. In the other wing was a lighted
window, with half-drawn curtains, facing him. Legay was leisurely
taking off her neckerchief, often peeping down into the yard.

"Striking resemblance," muttered the baron.

The light went out though the girl had not gone to rest. The watcher
stood up against the wall. The harpsichord still sounded, with no other
noise. He opened his door, went down stairs with caution, and opened
the door of Andrea's sitting-room.

Suddenly she stopped in the melancholy strain, although she had not
heard the intruder. As she was trying to recall the thrill which had
mastered her, it came anew. She shivered all over. In the mirror she
saw movement. The shadow in the doorway could only be her father or a
servant. Nothing more natural.

But she saw with spiritual eyes that it was none of these.

"My lord," she faltered, "in heaven's name, what want you?"

It was the stranger, in the black velvet riding coat, for he had
discarded his silken suit, in which a mesmerist cannot well work his
power.

She tried to rise, but could not; she tried to open her mouth to
scream, but with a pass of both hands Balsamo froze the sound on her
lips.

With no strength or will, Andrea let her head sink on her shoulder.

At this juncture Balsamo believed he heard a noise at the window.
Quickly turning, he caught sight of a man's face beyond. He frowned,
and, strangely enough, the same impression flitted across the medium's
face.

"Sleep!" he commanded, lowering the hands he had held above her head
with a smooth gesture, and persevering in filling her with the mesmeric
fluid in crushing columns. "I will you to sleep."

All yielded to this mighty will. Andrea leaned her elbow on the
musical-instrument case, her head on her hand, and slept.

The mesmerist retired backward, drew the door to, and went back to his
room. As soon as the door closed, the face he had seen reappeared at
the window; it was Gilbert's.

Excluded from the parlor by his inferior position in Taverney Castle,
he had watched all the persons through the evening whose rank allowed
them to figure in it. During the supper he had noticed Baron Balsamo
gesticulate and smile, and his peculiar attention bestowed on the lady
of the house; the master's unheard-of affability to him, and Labrie's
respectful eagerness.

Later on, when they rose from table, he hid in a clump of lilacs and
snowballs, for fear that Nicole, closing the blinds or in going to her
room, should catch him eavesdropping.

But Gilbert had other designs this evening than spying. He waited,
without clearly knowing for what. When he saw the light in the maid's
window, he crossed the yard on tiptoe and crouched down in the gloom to
peer in at the window at Andrea playing the harpsichord.

This was the moment when the mesmerist entered the room.

At this sight, Gilbert started and his ardent gaze covered the magician
and his victim.

But he imagined that Balsamo complimented the lady on her musical
talent, to which she replied with her customary coldness; but he
had persisted with a smile so that she suspended her practice and
answered. He admired the grace with which the visitor retired.

Of all the interview which he fancied he read aright, he had understood
nothing, for what really happened was in the mind, in silence.

However keen an observer he was, he could not divine a mystery, where
everything had passed quite naturally.

Balsamo gone, Gilbert remained, not watching, but contemplating Andrea,
lovely in her thoughtful pose, till he perceived with astonishment that
she was slumbering. When convinced of this, he grasped his head between
his hands like one who fears his brain will burst from the overflow of
emotions.

"Oh, to kiss her hand!" he murmured, in a gush of fury. "Oh, Gilbert,
let us approach her--I so long to do it."

Hardly had he entered the room than he felt the importance of his
intrusion. The timid if not respectful son of a farmer to dare to raise
his eyes on that proud daughter of the peers. If he should touch the
hem of her dress she would blast him with a glance.

The floor boards creaked under his wary tread, but she did not move,
though he was bathed in cold perspiration.

"She sleeps--oh, happiness, she sleeps!" he panted, drawing with
irresistible attraction within a yard of the statue, of which he took
the sleeve and kissed it.

Holding his breath, slowly he raised his eyes, seeking hers. They were
wide open, but still saw not. Intoxicated by the delusion that she
expected his visit and her silence was consent, her quiet a favor, he
lifted her hand to his lips and impressed a long and feverish kiss.

She shuddered and repulsed him.

"I am lost!" he gasped, dropping the hand and beating the floor with
his forehead.

Andrea rose as though moved by a spring under her feet, passed by
Gilbert, crushed by shame and terror and with no power to crave pardon,
and proceeded to the door. With high-held head and outstretched neck,
as if drawn by a secret power toward an invisible goal, she opened the
door and walked out on the landing.

The youth rose partly and watched her take the stairs. He crawled after
her, pale, trembling and astonished.

"She is going to tell the baron and have me scourged out of the
house--no, she goes up to where the guest is lodged. For she would have
rung, or called, if she wanted Labrie."

He clenched his fists at the bare idea that Andrea was going into the
strange gentleman's room. All this seemed monstrous. And yet that was
her end.

That door was ajar. She pushed it open without knocking; the lamplight
streamed on her pure profile and whirled golden reflections into her
wildly open eyes.

In the center of the room Gilbert saw the baron standing, with fixed
gaze and wrinkled brow, and his hand extended in gesture of command,
ere the door swung to.

Gilbert's forces failed him; he wheeled round on the stairs, clinging
to the rail, but slid down, with his eyes fastened to the last on
the cursed panel, behind which was sealed up all his vanished dream,
present happiness and future hope.




CHAPTER VI.

THE CLAIRVOYANT.


Balsamo had gone up to the young lady, whose appearance in his chamber
was not strange to him.

"I bade you sleep. Do you sleep?"

Andrea sighed and nodded with an effort.

"It is well. Sit here," and he led her by the hand the youth had kissed
to a chair, which she took.

"Now, see!"

Her eyes dilated as though to collect all the luminous rays in the room.

"I did not tell you to see with your eyes," said he, "but with those of
the soul."

He touched her with a steel rod which he drew from under his
waistcoat. She started as though a fiery dart had transfixed her and
her eyes closed instantly; her darkening face expressed the sharpest
astonishment.

"Tell me where you are."

"In the Red Room, with you, and I am ashamed and afraid."

"What of? Are we not in sympathy, and do you not know that my
intentions are pure, and that I respect you like a sister?"

"You may not mean evil to me, but it is not so as regards others."

"Possibly," said the magician; "but do not heed that," he added in a
tone of command. "Are all asleep under this roof?"

"All, save my father who is reading one of those bad books, which he
pesters me to read, but I will not."

"Good; we are safe in that quarter. Look where Nicole is."

"She is in her room, in the dark, but I need not the light to see that
she is slipping out of it to go and hide behind the yard door to watch."

"To watch you?"

"No."

"Then, it matters not. When a girl is safe from her father and her
attendant, she has nothing to fear, unless she is in love----"

"I, love?" she said sneeringly. And shaking her head, she added sadly:
"My heart is free."

Such an expression of candor and virginal modesty embellished her
features that Balsamo radiantly muttered:

"A lily--a pupil--a seer!" clasping his hands in delight. "But, without
loving, you may be loved?"

"I know not; and yet, since I returned from school, a youth has watched
me, and even now he is weeping at the foot of the stairs."

"See his face!"

"He hides it in his hands."

"See through them."

"Gilbert!" she uttered with an effort. "Impossible that he would
presume to love me!"

Balsamo smiled at her deep disdain, like one who knew that love will
leap any distance.

"What is he doing now?"

"He puts down his hands, he musters up courage to mount hither--no, he
has not the courage--he flees."

She smiled with scorn.

"Cease to look that way. Speak of the Baron of Taverney. He is too poor
to give you any amusements?"

"None."

"You are dying of tedium here; for you have ambition?"

"No."

"Love for your father?"

"Yes; though I bear him a grudge for squandering my mother's fortune
so that poor Redcastle pines in the garrison and cannot wear our name
handsomely."

"Who is Redcastle?"

"My brother Philip is called the Knight of Redcastle from a property of
the eldest son, and will wear it till father's death entitles him to be
'Taverney.'"

"Do you love your brother?"

"Dearly, above all else; because he has a noble heart, and would give
his life for me."

"More than your father would. Where is Redcastle?"

"At Strasburg in the garrison; no, he has gone--oh, dear Philip!"
continued the medium with sparkling eyes in joy. "I see him riding
through a town I know. It is Nancy, where I was at the convent school.
The torches round him light up his darling face."

"Why torches?" asked Balsamo in amaze.

"They are around him on horseback, and a handsome gilded carriage."

Balsamo appeared to have a guess at this, for he only said:

"Who is in the coach?"

"A lovely, graceful, majestic woman, but I seem to have seen her
before--how strange! no, I am wrong--she looks like our Nicole; but
as the lily is like the jessamine. She leans out of the coach window
and beckons Philip to draw near. He takes his hat off with respect as
she orders him, with a smile, to hurry on the horses. She says that the
escort must be ready at six in the morning, as she wishes to take a
rest in the daytime--oh, it is at Taverney that she means to stop. She
wants to see my father! So grand a princess stop at our shabby house!
What shall we do without linen or plate?"

"Be of good cheer. We will provide all that."

"Oh, thank you!"

The girl, who had partly risen, fell back in the chair, uttering a
profound sigh.

"Regain your strength," said the magician, drawing the excess of
magnetism from the beautiful body, which bent as if broken, and the
fair head heavily resting on the heaving bosom. "I shall require all
your lucidity presently. O, Science! you alone never deceive man. To
none other ought man sacrifice his all. This is a lovely woman, a pure
angel as Thou knowest who created angels. But what is this beauty and
this innocence to me now?--only worth what information they afford. I
care not though this fair darling dies, as long as she tells me what I
seek. Let all worldly delights perish--love, passion and ecstasy, if I
may tread the path surely and well lighted. Now, maiden, that, in a few
seconds, my power has given you the repose of ages, plunge once more
into your mesmeric slumber. This time, speak for myself alone."

He made the passes which replaced Andrea in repose. From his bosom he
drew the folded paper containing the tress of black hair, from which
the perfume had made the paper transparent. He laid it in Andrea's
hand, saying:

"See!"

"Yes, a woman!"

"Joy!" cried Balsamo. "Science is not a mere name like virtue. Mesmer
has vanquished Brutus. Depict this woman, that I may recognize her."

"Tall, dark, but with blue eyes, her hair like this, her arms sinewy."

"What is she doing?"

"Racing as though carried off on a fine black horse, flecked with foam.
She takes the road yonder to Chalons."

"Good! my own road," said Balsamo. "I was going to Paris, and there we
shall meet. You may repose now," and he took back the lock of hair.

Andrea's arms fell motionless again along her body.

"Recover strength, and go back to your harpsichord," said the
mesmerist, enveloping her, as she rose, with a fresh supply of
magnetism.

Andrea acted like the racehorse which overtaxes itself to accomplish
the master's will, however unfair. She walked through the doorway,
where he had opened the door, and, still asleep, descended the stairs
slowly.




CHAPTER VII.

THE MAID AND THE MISTRESS.


Gilbert had passed this time in unspeakable anguish. Balsamo was but a
man, but he was a strong one, and the youth was weak: He had attempted
twenty times to mount to the assault of the guest room, but his
trembling limbs gave way under him and he fell on his knees.

Then the idea struck him to get the gardener's ladder and by its means
climb up outside to the window, and listen and spy. But as he stooped
to pick up this ladder, lying on the grass where he remembered, he
heard a rustling noise by the house, and he turned.

He let the ladder fall, for he fancied he saw a shade flit across the
doorway. His terror made him believe it, not a ghost--he was a budding
philosopher who did not credit them--but Baron Taverney. His conscience
whispered another name, and he looked up to the second floor. But
Nicole had put out her light, and not another, or a sound came from all
over the house--the guest's room excepted.

Seeing and hearing nothing, convinced that he had deluded himself,
Gilbert took up the ladder and had set foot on it to climb where he
placed it, when Andrea came down from Balsamo's room. With a lacerated
heart, Gilbert forgot all to follow her into the parlor where again she
sat at the instrument; her candle still burned beside it.

Gilbert tore his bosom with his nails to think that here he had kissed
the hem of her robe with such reverence. Her condescension must spring
from one of those fits of corruption recorded in the vile books which
he had read--some freak of the senses.

But as he was going to invade the room again, a hand came out of the
darkness and energetically grasped him by the arm.

"So I have caught you, base deceiver! Try to deny again that you love
her and have an appointment with her!"

Gilbert had not the power to break from the clutch, though he might
readily have done so, for it was only a girl's. Nicole Legay held him a
prisoner.

"What do you want?" he said testily.

"Do you want me to speak out aloud?"

"No, no; be quiet," he stammered, dragging her out of the antechamber.

"Then follow me!" which was what Gilbert wanted, as this was removing
Nicole from her mistress.

He could with a word have proved that while he might be guilty of
loving the lady, the latter was not an accomplice; but the secret of
Andrea was one that enriches a man, whether with love or lucre.

"Come to my room," she said; "who would surprise us there! Not my young
lady, though she may well be jealous of her fine gallant! But folks in
the secret are not to be dreaded. The honorable lady jealous of the
servant,--I never expected such an honor! It is I who am jealous, for
you love me no more."

In plainness, Nicole's bedroom did not differ from the others in
that dwelling. She sat on the edge of the bed, and Gilbert on the
dressing-case, which Andrea had given her maid.

Coming up the stairs, Nicole had calmed herself, but the youth felt
anger rise as it cooled in the girl.

"So you love our young lady," began Nicole with a kindling eye. "You
have love-trysts with her; or will you pretend you went only to consult
the magician?"

"Perhaps so, for you know I feel ambition----"

"Greed, you mean?"

"It is the same thing, as you take it."

"Don't let us bandy words: you avoid me lately."

"I seek solitude----"

"And you want to go up into solitude by a ladder? Beg pardon, I did not
know that was the way to it."

Gilbert was beaten in the first defenses.

"You had better out with it, that you love me no longer, or love us
both."

"That would only be an error of society, for in some countries men have
several wives."

"Savages!" exclaimed the servant, testily.

"Philosophers!" retorted Gilbert.

"But you would not like me to have two beaux on my string?"

"I do not wish tyrannically and unjustly to restrain the impulses of
your heart. Liberty consists in respecting free will. So, change your
affection, for fidelity is not natural--to some."

Discussion was the youth's strong point; he knew little, but more than
the girl. So he began to regain coolness.

"Have you a good memory, Master Philosopher?" said Nicole. "Do you
remember when I came back from the nunnery with mistress, and you
consoled me, and taking me in your arms, said: 'You are an orphan like
me; let us be brother and sister through similar misfortune.' Did you
mean what you said?"

"Yes, then; but five months have changed me; I think otherwise at
present."

"You mean you will not wed me? Yet Nicole Legay is worth a Gilbert, it
seems to me."

"All men are equal; but nature or education improves or depreciates
them. As their faculties or acquirements expand, they part from one
another."

"I understand that we must part, and that you are a scamp. How ever
could I fancy such a fellow?"

"Nicole, I am never going to marry, but be a learned man or a
philosopher. Learning requires the isolation of the mind; philosophy
that of the body."

"Master Gilbert, you are a scoundrel, and not worth a girl like me.
But you laugh," she continued, with a dry smile more ominous than his
satirical laugh; "do not make war with me; for I shall do such deeds
that you will be sorry, for they will fall on your head, for having
turned me astray."

"You are growing wiser; and I am convinced now that you would refuse me
if I sued you."

Nicole reflected, clenching her hands and gritting her teeth.

"I believe you are right, Gilbert," she said; "I, too, see my horizon
enlarge, and believe I am fated for better things than to be so mean as
a philosopher's wife. Go back to your ladder, sirrah, and try not to
break your neck, though I believe it would be a blessing to others, and
may be for yourself."

Gilbert hesitated for a space in indecision, for Nicole, excited by
love and spite, was a ravishing creature; but he had determined to
break with her, as she hampered his passion and his aspirations.

"Gone," murmured Nicole in a few seconds.

She ran to the window, but all was dark. She went to her mistress'
door, where she listened.

"She is asleep; but I will know all about it to-morrow."

It was broad day when Andrea de Taverney awoke.

In trying to rise, she felt such lassitude and sharp pain that she fell
back on the pillow uttering a groan.

"Goodness, what is the matter?" cried Nicole, who had opened the
curtains.

"I do not know. I feel lame all over; my chest seems broken in."

"It is the outbreak of the cold you caught last night," said the maid.

"Last night?" repeated the surprised lady; but she remarked the
disorder of her room, and added: "Stay, I remember that I felt very
tired--exhausted--it must have been the storm. I fell to sleep over my
music. I recall nothing further. I went up hither half asleep, and must
have thrown myself on the bed without undressing properly."

"You must have stayed very late at the music, then," observed Nicole,
"for, before you retired to your bedroom I came down, having heard
steps about----"

"But I did not stir from the parlor."

"Oh, of course, you know better than me," said Nicole.

"You must mistake," replied the other with the utmost sweetness: "I
never left the seat; but I remember that I was cold, for I walked quite
swiftly."

"When I saw you in the garden, however, you walked very freely."

"I, in the grounds?--you know I never go out after dark."

"I should think I knew my mistress by sight," said the maid, doubling
her scrutiny; "I thought that you were taking a stroll with somebody."

"With whom would I be taking a stroll?" demanded Andrea, without seeing
that her servant was putting her to an examination.

Nicole did not think it prudent to proceed, for the coolness of the
hypocrite, as she considered her, frightened her. So she changed the
subject.

"I hope you are not going to be sick, either with fatigue or sorrow.
Both have the same effect. Ah, well I know how sorrows undermine!"

"You do? Have you sorrows, Nicole?"

"Indeed; I was coming to tell my mistress, when I was frightened to see
how queer you looked; no doubt, we both are upset."

"Really!" queried Andrea, offended at the "we both."

"I am thinking of getting married."

"Why, you are not yet seventeen----"

"But you are sixteen and----"

She was going to say something saucy, but she knew Andrea too well to
risk it, and cut short the explanation.

"Indeed, I cannot know what my mistress thinks, but I am low-born and I
act according to my nature. It is natural to have a sweetheart."

"Oh, you have a lover then! You seem to make good use of your time
here."

"I must look forward. You are a lady and have expectations from rich
kinsfolks going off; but I have no family and must get into one."

As all this seemed straightforward enough, Andrea forgot what had been
offensive in tone, and said, with her kindness taking the reins:

"Is it any one I know? Speak out, as it is the duty of masters to
interest themselves in the fate of their servants, and I am pleased
with you."

"That is very kind. It is--Gilbert!"

To her high amaze, Andrea did not wince.

"As he loves you, marry him," she replied, easily. "He is an orphan,
too, so you are both your own masters. Only, you are both rather young."

"We shall have the longer life together."

"You are penniless."

"We can work."

"What can he do, who is good for nothing?"

"He is good to catch game for master's table, anyway; you slander poor
Gilbert, who is full of attention for you."

"He does his duty as a servant----"

"Nay; he is not a servant; he is never paid."

"He is son of a farmer of ours; he is kept and does nothing for it; so,
he steals his support. But what are you aiming at to defend so warmly a
boy whom nobody attacks?"

"I never thought you would attack him! it is just the other way about!"
with a bitter smile.

"Something more I do not understand."

"Because you do not want to."

"Enough! I have no leisure for your riddles. You want my consent to
this marriage?"

"If you please; and I hope you will bear Gilbert no ill will."

"What is it to me whether he loves you or not? You burden me, miss."

"I daresay," said Nicole, bursting out in anger at last; "you have said
the same thing to Gilbert."

"I speak to your Gilbert! You are mad, girl; leave me in peace."

"If you do not speak to him now, I believe the silence will not last
long."

"Lord forgive her--the silly jade is jealous!" exclaimed Andrea,
covering her with a disdainful look, and laughing. "Cheer up, little
Legay! I never looked at your pretty Gilbert, and I do not so much as
know the color of his eyes."

Andrea was quite ready to overlook what seemed folly and not pertness;
but Nicole felt offended, and did not want pardon.

"I can quite believe that--for one cannot get a good look in the
nighttime."

"Take care to make yourself clear at once," said Andrea, very pale.

"Last night, I saw----"

"Andrea!" came a voice from below, in the garden.

"My lord your father," said Nicole, "with the stranger who passed the
night here."

"Go down, and say that I cannot answer, as I am not well. I have a
stiff neck; and return to finish this odd debate."

Nicole obeyed, as Andrea was always obeyed when commanding, without
reply or wavering. Her mistress felt something unusual; though resolved
not to show herself, she was constrained to go to the window left open
by Legay, through a superior and resistless power.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE HARBINGER.


The traveler had risen early to look to his coach and learn how
Althotas was faring.

All were still sleeping but Gilbert, who peeped through a window of his
room over the doorway and spied all the stranger's movements.

The latter was struck by the change which day brought on the scene so
gloomy overnight. The domain of Taverney did not lack dignity or grace.
The old house resembled a cavern which nature embellishes with flowers,
creepers and capricious rookeries, although at night it would daunt a
traveler seeking shelter.

When Balsamo returned after an hour's stroll to the Red Castle ruins,
he saw the lord of it all leave the house by a side door to cull roses
and crush snails. His slender person was wrapped in his flowered
dressing-gown.

"My lord," said Balsamo, with the more courtesy as he had been sounding
his host's poverty, "allow my excuses with my respects. I ought to wait
your coming down, but the aspect of Taverney tempted me, and I yearned
to view the imposing ruins and pretty garden."

"The ruins are rather fine," returned the baron; "about all here worth
looking at. The castle was my ancestors'; it is called the Red Castle,
and we long have borne its name together with Taverney, it being
the same barony. Oh, my lord, as you are a magician," continued the
nobleman, "you ought with a wave of your wand uprear again the old Red
Castle, as well as restore the two thousand odd acres around it. But I
suppose you wanted all your art to make that beastly bed comfortable.
It is my son's, and he growled enough at it."

"I protest it is excellent, and I want to prove it by doing you some
service in return."

Labrie was bringing to his master a glass of spring water on a splendid
china platter.

"Here's your chance," said the baron, always jeering; "turn that into
wine as the greatest service of all."

Balsamo smiling, the old lord thought it was backing out and took the
glass, swallowing the contents at a gulp.

"Excellent specific," said the mesmerist. "Water is the noblest of the
elements, baron. Nothing resists it; it pierces stone now, and one of
these days will dissolve diamonds."

"It is dissolving me. Will you drink with me. It has the advantage over
wine of running freely here. Not like my liquor."

"I might make one useful to you."

"Labrie, a glass of water for the baron. How can the water which I
drink daily comprise properties never suspected by me? As the fellow
in the play talked prose all his life without knowing it, have I been
practising magic for ten years without an idea of it?"

"I do not know about your lordship, but I do know about myself," was
the other's grave reply.

Taking the glass from Labrie, who had displayed marvelous celerity, he
looked at it steadily.

"What do you see in it, my dear guest?" the baron continued to mock.
"I am dying with eagerness. Come, come! a windfall to me, another Red
Castle to set me on my legs again."

"I see the advice here to prepare for a visit. A personage of high
distinction is coming, self-invited, conducted by your son Philip, who
is even now near us."

"My dear lord, my son is on military duty at Strasburg, and he will not
be bringing guests at the risk of being punished as a deserter."

"He is none the less bringing a lady, a mighty dame--and, by the way,
you had better keep that pretty Abigail of yours at a distance while
she stays, as there is a close likeness between them."

"The promised lady guest bears a likeness to my servant Legay? What
contradiction!"

"Why not? Once I bought a slave so like Cleopatra that the Romans
talked of palming her off for the genuine queen in the triumph in their
capital."

"So you are at your old tricks again?" laughed the baron.

"How would you like it, were you a princess, for instance, to see
behind your chair a maid who looked your picture, in short petticoats
and linen neckerchief."

"Well, we will protect her against that. But I am very pleased with
this boy of mine who brings guests without forewarning us!"

"I am glad my forecast affords you pleasure, my dear baron; and, if
you meant to properly greet the coming guest, you have not a minute to
lose."

The baron shook his head like the most incredulous of beings, and as
the two were near the dwelling part of the baron's daughter, he called
out to her to impart the stranger's predictions.

This was the call which brought her to the window despite herself, and
she saw Balsamo. He bowed deeply to her while fixing his eyes upon her.
She reeled and had to catch the sill not to fall.

"Good-morning, my lord," she answered.

She uttered these words at the very moment when Nicole, telling the
baron that his daughter would not come, stopped stupefied and with
gaping mouth at this capricious contradiction.

Instantly Andrea fell on a chair, all her powers quitting her. Balsamo
had gazed on her to the last.

"This is deusedly hard to believe," remarked the baron, "and seeing is
believing----"

"Then, see!" said the wonder-worker, pointing up the avenue, from the
end of which came galloping at full speed a rider whose steed made the
stones rattle under its hoofs.

"Oh, it is indeed----" began the baron.

"Master Philip!" screamed Nicole, standing on tiptoe, while Labrie
grunted in pleasure.

"My brother!" cried out Andrea, thrusting her hands through the window.

"This is the commencement," said Balsamo.

"Decidedly you are a magician," said the baron.

A smile of triumph appeared on the mesmerist's lips.

Soon the horse approached plainly, reeking with sweat and smoking, and
the rider, a young man in an officer's uniform, splashed with mud up
to the countenance, animated by the speed, leaped off and hurried to
embrace his father.

"It is I," said Philip of Taverney, seeing the doubt. "I bear a great
honor for our house. In an hour Marie Antoinette, Archduchess of
Austria and bride of the Dauphin of France, will be here."

The baron dropped his arms with as much humility as he had shown
sarcasm and irony, and turned to Balsamo for his forgiveness.

"My lord," said the latter, bowing, "I leave you with your son, from
whom you have been long separated and to whom you must have a great
deal to say."

Saluting Andrea, who rushed to meet her brother in high delight,
Balsamo drew off, beckoning Nicole and Labrie, who disappeared with him
under the trees.




CHAPTER IX.

THE KNIGHT OF REDCASTLE.


Philip of Taverney, Knight of Redcastle, did not resemble his sister,
albeit he was as handsome for a man as she was lovely for a woman.

Andrea's embrace of him was accompanied by sobs revealing all the
importance of this union to her chaste heart. He took her hand and his
father's, and led them into the parlor, where he sat by their sides.

"You are incredulous, father, and you, sister, surprised. But nothing
can be more true than that this illustrious princess will be here
shortly. You know that the Archduchess made her entry into our realm
at Strasburg? As we did not know the exact hour of her arrival, the
troops were under arms early, and I was sent out to scout. When I came
up with the royal party, the lady herself put her head out of the coach
window, and hailed me. My fatigue vanished as by enchantment. The
dauphiness is young like you, dear, and beautiful as the angels."

"Tell me, you enthusiast," interrupted the baron, "does she resemble
any one you have seen here before?"

"No one could resemble her--stay, come to think of it--why, Nicole has
a faint likeness--but what led you to suggest that?"

"I had it from a magician, who at the same time foretold your coming."

"The guest?" timidly inquired Andrea.

"Is he the stranger who discreetly withdrew when I arrived?"

"The same; but continue your story, Philip."

"Perhaps we had better make something ready," hinted the lady.

"No," said her father, staying her; "the more we do, the more
ridiculous we shall appear."

"I returned to the city with the news, and all the military marched
to receive the new princess. She listened absently to the governor's
speech and said suddenly: 'What is the name of this young gentleman who
was sent to meet me?' And her governess wrote on her tablets my name,
Chevalier Philip Taverney Redcastle. 'Sir,' she said, 'if you have no
repugnance to accompany me to Paris, your superior will oblige me by
relieving you of your military duties here, for I made a vow to attach
to my service the first French gentleman met by me in setting foot in
France; and to make him happy, and his family the same, in case princes
have the power to do so.'"

"What delightful words!" said Andrea, rubbing her hands.

"Hence, I rode at the princess's coach door to Nancy, through which
we marched by torchlight. She called me to her to say that she meant
to stop a while at Taverney, though I said our house was not fit to
receive so mighty a princess.

"'The sweeter will be the welcome, then, the more plain but the more
cordial,' she replied. 'Poor though Taverney may be, it can supply a
bowl of milk to the friend who wishes to forget for a time that she is
the Princess of Austria and the Bride of France.' Respect prevented me
debating further. So I have ridden ahead."

"Impossible," said Andrea; "however kind the princess may be, she would
never be content with a glass of milk and a bunch of flowers."

"And if she were," went on Taverney, "she would not tolerate my
chairs which break one's back, and my ragged tapestry offending the
sight. Devil take capricious women! France will be prettily governed
by a featherbrain, who has such whims. Plague take such a token of a
singular reign!"

"Oh, father! how can you talk so of a princess who floods our house
with favors?"

"Who dishonors me!" returned the old noble. "Who was thinking about
Taverney?--not a soul. My name slept under Redcastle ruins not to come
forth till I arranged the fit time; and here comes the freak of a royal
babe to pull us out into public, dusty, tattered and beggarly. The
newspapers, always on the lookout for food for fun, will make a pretty
comic talk of the brilliant princess's visit to the Taverney hovel.
But, death of my life! an idea strikes me. I know history, and of the
Count of Medina setting fire to his palace to win a queen's attention.
I will burn down my kennel for a bonfire to the Dauphin's bride."

As nimble as though twenty once more, the old peer ran into the kitchen
and plucking a brand, hurried out and over to the barn, but as he was
nearing the trusses of forage, Balsamo sprang forth and clutched his
arm.

"What are you about, my lord?" he asked, wrenching away the flambeau.
"The Archduchess of Austria is no Constable of Bourbon, a traitor,
whose presence so fouls a dwelling that it must be purified by fire."

The old noble paused, pale and trembling and not smiling as usual.

"Go and change your gown, my lord, for something more seemly,"
continued the mysterious guest. "When I knew the Baron of Taverney at
Philipsburg Siege, he wore the Grand Cross of St. Louis. I know not
of any suit that does not become rich and stylish under the ribbon of
that order. Take it coolly: her highness will be kept so busy that she
will not notice whether your house be new or old, dull or dazzling. Be
hospitable, as a noble is bound to be. Never forestall vexations, my
lord. Every dog has his day."

Taverney obeyed with the resignation he had previously shown and went
to join his children, who were hunting for him, uneasy at his absence.
The magician silently retired like one engaged in a piece of work.




CHAPTER X.

MARIE ANTOINETTE.


As Balsamo had warned them, there was no time to lose. On the high
road, commonly so peaceful, resounded a great tumult of coaches, horses
and voices.

Three carriages stopped at the door, held open by Gilbert, whose
distended eyes and feverish tremor denoted the sharpest emotion at
so much magnificence. The principal coach, loaded with gilding and
mythological carvings, was no less mud-spattered and dusty than the
others.

A score of brilliant young noblemen ranked themselves near this coach,
out of which was assisted a girl of sixteen by a gentleman clad in
black, with the grand sash of the St. Louis order under his coat.
She wore no hair powder, but this plainness had not prevented the
hairdresser building up her tresses a foot above her forehead.

Marie Antoinette Josepha, for it was she, brought into France a fame
for beauty not always owned by princesses destined to share the throne
of that realm. Without being fine, her eyes took any expression she
liked; but particularly those so opposite as mildness and scorn;
her nose was well shaped; her upper lip pretty; but the lower one,
the aristocratic inheritance of seventeen kaisers, too thick and
protruding, even drooping, did not suit the pretty visage, except when
it wanted to show ire or indignation.

On this occasion, Marie Antoinette wore her womanly look and womanly
smile, more, that of a happy woman. If possible, she did not mean to be
the royal princess till the following day. The sweetest calm reigned on
her face; the most charming kindness enlivened her eyes.

She was robed in white silk, and her handsome bare arms supported a
heavy lace mantle.

She refused the arm of the gentleman in black, and freely advanced,
snuffing the air, and casting glances around as though wishful to enjoy
brief liberty.

"Oh, the lovely site! What fine old trees! and the pretty little
house!" she ejaculated. "How happy they must dwell in this nice air and
under these trees which hide us in so well."

Philip Taverney appeared, followed by Andrea, giving her arm to her
father, wearing a fine royal blue velvet coat, last vestige of former
splendor. Andrea wore a ruddy gray silk dress and had her hair in long
plaits. Following Balsamo's hint, the baron had donned the insignia of
the Knightly Order.

"Your highness," said Philip, pale with emotion and noble in his
sorrow, "allow me the honor to present Baron de Taverney, Red Castle,
my sire, and Mademoiselle Claire Andrea, my sister."

The old noble bowed low with the style of one who knew how queens
should be saluted; his daughter displayed all the grace of elegant
timidity, and the most flattering politeness of sincere respect.

Regarding the pair, and recalling what Philip had stated on their
poverty, Marie Antoinette felt with them in their suffering.

"Your highness does Taverney Castle too much honor," said the baron;
"so humble a place is nowise worthy to harbor such beauty and nobility."

"I know that I am at the doors of an old soldier of France," was the
royal response, "and my mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, who often
went to the wars, says that in your kingdom the richest in glory are
oft the poorest in gold."

With ineffable grace she held out her hand to Andrea, who knelt to kiss
it.

The dauphiness suddenly extricated the baron from his terror about
harboring the great number of the retinue.

"My lords and gentlemen," she said, "it is not for you to bear the
fatigue of my whims or enjoy the privileges of a royal princess.
Pray, await me here; in half an hour I shall return. Come with me,
Langenshausen," she said to the countess of that house who was her
duenna. "Follow me, my lord," she added to the gentleman in black.

His plain attire was of remarkable style; he was a handsome person of
thirty years and smooth manners; he stood aside to let the princess
go by. She took Andrea to her side and motioned Philip to follow. The
baron fell into place next the fashionable gentleman.

"So you are a Taverney of Redcastle?" queried this fop, as he preened
his fine honiton lace ruffles with aristocratic impertinence.

"Am I to answer a gentleman or a nobleman?" returned the baron with
equal sauciness.

"Prince will do," said the other, "or eminence."

"Well, yes, your eminence, I am a real Taverney," replied the poor
nobleman, without dropping the insolent tone he usually kept.

The prince had the tact of great lords, for he readily perceived that
he was not dealing with a rustic hobbledehoy.

"I suppose this is your summer residence?" he continued.

"My residence in all seasons," replied the baron, desiring to finish
with this examination, but accompanying his answers with deep bows.

Philip kept turning round to his father with uneasiness; the house
seemed towering up to exhibit more and more of their penury. The baron
was just holding his hand toward the sill, deserted by visitors, when
the dauphiness turned to him, saying:

"Excuse me not going indoors, but these shady spots are so pleasant
that I could pass my life beneath them. I am rather weary of interiors.
For a fortnight I have been received under roofs--and I like open air,
flowers and the shade of foliage. Might I not have a drink of milk in
this bower?"

"What a mean refreshment, your highness!" faltered the baron.

"I prefer it, with new-laid eggs, my lord. Such formed my feasts at
Schoenbrunn."

All of a sudden, Labrie, puffed up with pride in a showy livery, and
holding a damask napkin, appeared in the jessamine hung arbor which the
archduchess was eyeing covetously.

"The refreshment is ready for your royal highness," he said with a neat
mingling of respect and serenity.

"Am I housed by an enchanter?" exclaimed the princess, darting into the
bower.

The perturbed baron forgot etiquette to leave the gentleman in black
and run after his guest.

Philip and Andrea looked at each other with even more anxiety than
astonishment.

Under the twining clematis, jessamine and honeysuckle an oval table was
set, dazzling from the whiteness of the damask cloth and the carved
bullion plate upon it. Ten sets of silver awaited as many guests. A
choice but strange collation attracted the visitor's gaze. Foreign
fruit preserved in sugar; cake and crackers from Aleppo and Madeira,
oranges and melons of uncommon size, set in large vases. The richest
and noblest wines glittered in all hues of ruby and topaz in four
cut-glass Persian decanters. The milk asked for filled a crystal cup.

"But you must have expected me, since in no ten minutes which I have
been here could this sumptuous spread be placed." And the princess
glanced at Labrie as much as to say: "With only one servant, too?"

"I did expect your royal highness," faltered the baron; "of your coming
being apprised."

"If your son did not inform you by letter, then it must have been some
fairy--I suppose, the godmother of your daughter."

"It was not so much a fairy, as a magician," said Taverney, offering
a seat to the princess. "I do not know anything about how he has done
this, as I do not dabble in magic, but I owe it to him that I am fitly
entertaining your highness."

"Then I will have none of it. It is contrary to the faith--but his
eminence is going to sin, with that liver-pie!"

"We are rather too worldly, we princes of the Church," replied the
gentleman in black, "to believe the celestial wrath poisons victuals,
and we are too human to visit ill on magicians who provide such good
things."

"But I assure your eminence that this is a real sorcerer who conjured
up this board ready spread, and who may have produced the gold of this
service in the same manner."

"Does he know of the stone which changes all into gold?" questioned the
churchman, with his eyes kindling with covetousness.

"This pleases the cardinal, who has passed his life seeking the
philosopher's stone," said the princess.

"I own that I find nothing more interesting than supernatural things,"
returned the prince; "nothing more curious than what's impossible."

"So I have hit the vital spot, have I?" said the archduchess. "Every
great man has a mystery, particularly when he is a diplomatist. Let
me warn your eminence that I also am a witch, and that I can see into
matters--if not curious and impossible--incredible."

This was an incomprehensible enigma to all but the cardinal, for he was
plainly embarrassed. The gentle eye of the Austrian had flared with one
of those fires denoting a storm gathering. But there was no thunderous
outbreak, for she went on, restraining herself:

"Come my lord of Taverney, make the feast complete by producing your
magician. Where is he? In what box have you put Old Hocus Pocus?"

"Labrie, notify Baron Joseph Balsamo that her Royal Highness the
Dauphiness desires to see him."

"Balsamo?" repeated the high lady, as the valet started off. "What an
odd name!"

"I fancy I have heard it before," murmured the cardinal.

Five minutes passed with none thinking of breaking the stillness, when
Andrea shuddered, for she heard before any other the step beneath
the foliage. The branches were parted and right in front of Marie
Antoinette, Joseph Balsamo appeared.




CHAPTER XI.

A MARVEL OF MAGIC.


Humble was Balsamo's bow; but immediately raising his intelligent and
expressive brow, he fixed his clear eye, though with respect, on the
chief guest, silently waiting for her to question him.

"If you are the person Baron Taverney has mentioned, pray draw nigh
that we may see what a magician is like."

Balsamo came a step nearer and bowed to Marie Antoinette.

"So you make a business of foretelling?" said the latter, sipping the
milk while regarding the new comer with more curiosity than she liked
to betray.

"I make no business of it, but I do foretell, please your royal
highness?" was the answer.

"Educated in an enlightened faith, we place faith solely in the
mysteries of our religion."

"Undoubtedly they are worthy of veneration," responded the other
dialoguist with a profound congé. "But the Cardinal de Rohan here,
though Prince of the Church, will tell you that they are not the only
ones worthy of respect."

The cardinal started, for his title had not been announced.

Not appearing to notice this revelation, Marie Antoinette pursued:

"But you must allow that they alone cannot be controverted."

"There can be fact as well as faith," replied Balsamo, with the same
respect but with the same firmness.

"You speak a trifle darkly, my lord Baron of Magic. I am at heart a
good Frenchwoman, but not in mind, and do not yet understand all the
fineness of the language. They say I shall soon pick it up, even to the
puns. Meanwhile, I must urge you to speak more plainly if you want my
comprehension."

"I ask your highness to let me dwell obscure," said the baron, with a
melancholy smile. "I should feel too much regret to reveal to so great
a princess a future not equal to her hopes."

"Dear me, this is becoming serious," said Marie Antoinette, "and
Abracadabra whets my curiosity in order to make me beg my fortune to be
told."

"Heaven forbid my being forced into it," observed Balsamo coldly.

"Of course, for you would be put to much pains for little result,"
laughed the princess.

But her merriment died away without a courtier's echoing it; all
suffered the influence of the mystic man who claimed the whole
attention.

"Still it was you foretold my coming to Taverney?" said the mighty
lady, to which Balsamo silently bowed. "How was the trick done, my lord
baron?"

"Simply by looking into a glass of water, my liege lady," was the old
noble's answer.

"If that be truly your magic mirror, it is guileless at any rate; may
your words be as clear!"

The cardinal smiled, and the master of the place said:

"Your highness will not have to take lessons in punning."

"Nay, my dear host, do not flatter me, or flatter me better. It seems
to me it was a mild quip; but, my lord," she resumed, turning toward
Balsamo by that irresistible attraction drawing us to a danger, "if you
can read the future in a glass for a gentleman, may you not read it for
a lady in a decanter?"

"Perfectly; but the future is uncertain, and I should shrink from
saddening your royal highness if a cloud veiled it, as I have already
had the honor to say."

"Do you know me beforetimes? Where did you first see me?"

"I saw you as a child beside your august mother, that mighty queen."

"Empress, my lord."

"Queen by heart and mind, but such have weaknesses when they think they
act for their daughters' happiness."

"I hope history will not record one single weakness in Maria Theresa,"
retorted the other.

"Because it does not know what is known solely to your highness, her
mother and myself."

"Is there a secret among us three?" sneered the lady. "I must hear it."

"In Schoenbrunn Palace is the Saxony Cabinet, where the empress sits
in private. One morning, about seven, the empress not being up, your
highness entered this study, and perceived a letter of hers, open, on
the writing-table."

The hearer blushed.

"Reading it, your highness took up a pen and struck out the three words
beginning it."

"Speak them aloud!"

"'My dear Friend.'"

Marie Antoinette bit her lips as she turned pale.

"Am I to tell to whom the letter was addressed?" inquired the seer.

"No, no, but you may write it."

The soothsayer took out his memorandum book fastening with a gilt
clasp, and with a kind of pencil from which flowed ink, wrote on a
leaf. Detaching this page, he presented it to the princess, who read:

"The letter was addressed to the marchioness of Pompadour, mistress of
King Louis XV."

The dauphiness' astounded look rose upon this clearly speaking man,
with pure and steady voice, who appeared to tower over her although he
bowed lowly.

"All this is quite true," she admitted, "and though I am unaware how
you could learn this secret, I am bound to allow, before all, that you
speak true."

"Then I may retire upon this innocent proof of my science."

"Not so, my lord baron," said the princess, nettled; "the wiser you
are, the more I long for your forecast. You have only spoken of the
past, and I demand the future."

Her feverish agitation could not escape the bystanders.

"Let me at least consult the oracle, to learn whether the prediction
may be revealed."

"Good or bad, I must hear it!" cried Marie Antoinette with growing
irritation. "I shall not believe it if good, taking it for flattery;
but bad, I shall regard it as a warning, and I promise any way not to
bear you ill will. Begin your witchcraft."

Balsamo took up the decanter with a broad mouth and stood it in a
golden saucer. He raised it thus high up, and, after looking at it
shook his head.

"I cannot speak. Some things must not be told to princes," he said.

"Because you have nothing to say?" and she smiled scornfully.

Balsamo appeared embarrassed, so that the cardinal began to laugh in
his face and the baron grumbled.

"My wizard is worn out," he said. "Nothing is to follow but the gold
turning into dry leaves, as in the Arabian tale."

"I would have preferred the leaves to all this show; for there is no
shame in drinking from a nobleman's pewter goblet, while a dauphiness
of France ought not to have to use the thimble-rigging cup of a
charlatan."

Balsamo started erect as if a viper had bitten him.

"Your highness shall know your fate, since your blindness drives you to
it."

These words were uttered in a voice so steady but so threatening that
the hearers felt icy chills in their veins. The lady turned pale
visibly.

"Do not listen to him, my daughter," whispered the old governess in
German to her ward.

"Let her hear, for since she wanted to know, know she shall!" said
Balsamo in the same language, which doubled the mystery over the
incident. "But to you alone, lady."

"Be it so," said the latter. "Stand back!"

"I suppose this is just an artifice to get a private audience?" sneered
she, turning again to the magician.

"Do not try to irritate me," said he; "I am but the instrument of a
higher Power, used to enlighten you. Insult fate and it will revenge
itself, well knowing how. I merely interpret its moves. Do not fling at
me the wrath which will recoil on yourself, for you can not visit on me
the woes of which I am the sinister herald."

"Then there are woes?" said the princess, softened by his
respectfulness and disarmed by his apparent resignation.

"Very great ones."

"Tell me all. First, will my family live happy?"

"Your misfortunes will not reach those you leave at home. They are
personal to you and your new family. This royal family has three
members, the Duke of Berry, the Count of Provence, and the Count of
Artois. They will all three reign."

"Am I to have no son?"

"Sons will be among your offspring, but you will deplore that one
should live and the other die."

"Will not my husband love me?"

"Too well. But his love and your family's support will fail you."

"Those of the people will yet be mine."

"Popular love and support--the ocean in a calm. Have you seen it in a
storm?"

"I will prevent it rising, or ride upon the billows."

"The higher its crest, the deeper the abyss."

"Heaven remains to me."

"Heaven does not save the heads it dooms."

"My head in danger? Shall I not reign a queen?"

"Yes--but would to God you never did."

The princess smiled disdainfully.

"Hearken, and remember," proceeded Balsamo. "Did you remark the subject
on the tapestry of the first room you entered on French ground? The
Massacre of the Innocents; the ominous figures must have remained in
your mind. During that storm, did you see that the lightning felled a
tree on your left, almost to crush your coach? Such presages are not to
be interpreted but as fatal ones."

Letting her head fall upon her bosom, the princess reflected for a
space before asking:

"How will those three die?"

"Your husband the king will die headless; Count Provence, legless; and
Artois heartless."

"But myself? I command you to speak, or I shall hold all this as a
paltry trick. Take care, my lord, for the daughter of Maria Theresa
is not to be sported with--a woman who holds in hand the destinies of
thirty millions of souls. You know no more, or your imagination is
exhausted."

Balsamo placed the saucer and the decanter on a bench in the darkest
nook of the arbor, which thus resembled a pythoness' cave; he led her
within the gloom.

"Down on your knees," he said, alarming her by the action; "for you
will seem to be imploring God to spare you the terrible outcome which
you are to view."

Mechanically the princess obeyed, but as Balsamo touched the crystal
with his magic wand, some frightful picture no doubt appeared in it,
for the princess tried to rise, reeled, and screamed as she fell in a
swoon.

They ran to her.

"That decanter?" she cried, when revived.

The water was limpid and stainless.

The wonder-worker had disappeared!




CHAPTER XII.

TAVERNEY'S PROSPECTS BRIGHTEN.


The first to perceive the archduchess's fainting fit, was Baron
Taverney who was on the lookout from being most uneasy about the
interview. Hearing the scream and seeing Balsamo dart out of the bower
he ran up.

The first word of the dauphiness was to call for the bewitched
decanter: her second to bid no harm to be done the sorcerer. It was
time to say it, for Philip Taverney had rushed after the latter.

She attributed the swoon to fever from the journey. She talked of
sleeping for some hours, in Andrea's room, but the Governor of
Strasburg arrived in hot haste with a dispatch from Versailles, and she
had to receive Lord Stainville, who was brother in-law of the prime
minister.

Opening this missive, the princess read:

"The court presentation of Lady Dubarry is fixed on, if she can find a
patroness, which we hope will not be. But the surest method of blocking
the project is to have your royal highness here, in whose presence none
will dare suggest such an offense."

"Very good. My horses must be put to. We depart at once."

Cardinal Rohan looked at Lord Stainville as if for an explanation of
this abrupt change.

"The dauphin is in a hurry to see his wife," whispered the latter with
such cunning that the churchman thought it had slipped his tongue and
was satisfied with it.

Andrea had been trained by her father to understand royal freaks; she
was not surprised at the contradiction. So the lady saw only smoothness
on her face as she turned to her, saying:

"Thank you; your welcome has deeply touched me. Baron, you are aware
that I made the vow to benefit the first French gentleman and his
family, whom I should meet on the frontier. But I am not going to stop
at this point, and Mademoiselle Andrea is not to be forgotten. Yes, I
wish her to be my maid of honor. The brother will defend the king in
the army, the sister will serve me; the father will instruct the first
in loyalty, the other in virtue. I shall have enviable servitors, do
you not agree?" she continued to Philip, who was kneeling. "I will
leave one of my carriages to bring you in my train. Governor, name
somebody to accompany my carriage for the Taverneys, and notify that it
is of my household."

"Beausire," called out the governor, "come forward."

A sharp-eyed cavalier, some twenty-four years old, rode out from the
escort and saluted.

"Set a guard over Baron Taverney's coach, and escort it."

"We shall meet soon again, then," said the princess with a smile. "Let
us be off, my lords and gentlemen."

In a quarter of an hour, all remaining of the whirling cavalcade was
the carriage left in the avenue and the guardsman whose horse was
cropping the dandelions.

"Where is the magician?" inquired Taverney.

"Gone, too, my lord."

"I never heard of the like--leaving all that valuable plate."

"He left a note which Gilbert is fretting to deliver."

"Father," said Andrea, "I know what is tormenting you. You know I have
thirty gold pieces, and the diamond-set watch Queen Maria Leczinska
gave my mother."

"That is well," said the baron, "but keep it, though we must hunt up
means for a handsome robe for your court presentation. Hush! here is
Labrie."

"The note, my lord, which was given Gilbert by the strange gentleman."

The baron snatched it from the servant and read in an undertone:

    "MY LORD: Since an august hand touched this service of plate under
    your roof, it belongs to your lordship, and I pray you to keep it
    as a memento, and sometimes to remember, your grateful guest,

    BALSAMO."

"Labrie, is there a good goldsmith at Bar-le-Duc?"

"Yes, my lord, the one who mended our young lady's jewelry."

"Put aside the cup the princess used, and pack up the rest of the plate
in our carriage. And then, haste to the cellar and serve that officer
with all the liquor left. Come, come, Andrea, courage! We are going to
court, a splendid place where the sun never fails. You are naturally
lovely and have only to set the gem becomingly to outshine them all."

Nicole followed Andrea to her room.

"I am off to arrange my titles of nobility and proofs of service,"
continued the baron, trotting to his room briskly. "We shall be off
from this den in an hour; do you hear, Andrea? And we leave by the
golden gates, too. What a trump that magician is! Really, I have become
as superstitious as the devil's own. But make haste, Labrie!" he cried
to his man groping about in the cellar.

"I can't get on faster, master--we have not a candle left."

"It is plain that we are getting out in the right time," thought the
baron.




CHAPTER XIII.

NICOLE'S DOWER.


Nicole aided her young mistress in her traveling preparations with
ardor which speedily dissipated the cloud risen that morning between
maid and mistress. The latter smiled as she found that she would have
no need to scold her.

"She is a good, devoted girl and grateful," she mused; "only she has
weaknesses, like all womankind. Let us forget."

On her part, Nicole was not the girl not to watch her mistress' face,
and she saw the kindliness increasing.

"I was a fool nearly to get into a scrape with her for that rascal
Gilbert, when she is going to town, where everybody makes a fortune."

"Put my lace in my box. Stop! I gave you that box, I remember; and you
will want it, as you are going to set up housekeeping."

"Oh, my lady," said Nicole, reddening, and replying merrily, "my
wedding garments will be easily kept in no great space."

"How so? I want you to be well off when you wed."

"Have you found me a rich match?"

"No, but a dower of twenty-five gold pieces."

"You would give me such a treasure!" Emotion followed her surprise, and
tears gushed into her eyes as she kissed Andrea's hand.

Nicole began to think that Gilbert had rejected her from fear of
poverty, and that now she had funds, she had better marry the ambitious
spark to whom she would appear more desirable. But a germ of pride
mingled with the generosity, as she wanted to humble one who had jilted
her.

"It looks as though you really loved your Gilbert," observed the lady.
"How incredible for something in the lad to please you. I must have a
look at this lady-killer next time I see him."

Nicole eyed her with lingering doubt. Was this deep hypocrisy or
perfect ignorance?

"Is Gilbert coming to Paris with us?" she inquired, to be settled on
the point.

"What for? he is not a domestic and is not fitted for a Parisian
establishment. The loungers about Taverney are like the birds which can
pick up a living on their own ground; but in Paris a hanger-on would
cost too much, and we cannot tolerate that. If you marry him, you must
stay here. I give you an hour to decide between my household or your
husband's. I detest these connubial details and will not have a married
servant. In any case, here is the money; marry, and have it as dower;
follow me, and it is your first two years' wages, in advance."

Nicole took the purse from her hand and kissed it.

The lady watched her go away and muttered: "She is happy, for she
loves."

Nicole in five minutes was at the window of Gilbert's room, at the back
of which he was turning over his things.

"I have come to tell you that my mistress wants me to go with her to
Paris."

"Good!" said the young man.

"Unless I get married and settled here."

"Are you thinking still of that?" he asked, without any feeling.

"Particularly, since I am rich from my lady dowering me," and she
showed the bright gold.

"A pretty sum," he said drily.

"That is not all. My lord is going to be rich. He will rebuild the
castle, and the house will have to be guarded----"

"By the happy mate of Nicole," suggested Gilbert with irony, not
sufficiently wrapped up not to wound the girl, though she contained
herself. "I refuse the offer, for I am not going to bury myself here
when Paris is open to me also. Paris is my stage, do you understand?"

"And mine, and I understand you. You may not regret me; but you will
fear me, and blush to see to what you drive me. I longed to be an
honest woman, but, when I was leaning over the verge, you repulsed me
instead of pulling me back. I am slipping and I shall fall, and heaven
will ask you to account for the loss. Farewell, Gilbert!"

The proud girl spun round without anger now, or impatience, having
exhausted all her generosity of soul.

Gilbert quietly closed the window and resumed the mysterious business
which Nicole's coming had interrupted.

She returned to her mistress with a deliberate air.

"I shall not marry," she said.

"But your great love?"

"It is not worth the kindness your ladyship has done me. I belong to
you and shall ever so belong. I know the mistress which heaven gave me;
but I might never know the master whom I give myself."

Andrea was touched by this display of emotion, which she was far from
expecting in the maid. She was of course ignorant that Nicole was
making her a pillow to fall back upon. She smiled to believe a human
creature was better than she estimated.

"You are doing right," she said. "If bliss befalls me, you shall have
your share. But did you settle with your sweetheart?"

"I told him that I would have no more to do with him."

She was restored to her former suspicions, and it was fated that the
two should never understand each other--one with her diamond purity and
the other with her tendency to evil.

Meanwhile, the baron had packed up his scanty valuables, and Labrie
shouldered the half-empty trunk, containing them, to accompany his
master out to where the corporal of guards was finishing the wine to
the last drop.

This soldier gallant had remarked the fine waist and pretty limbs of
Nicole, and he was prowling round the pool to see her again. He was
drawn from his reverie by the baron calling for his carriage. Saluting
him, he called in a ringing voice for the driver to come up the
avenue. Labrie put the trunk on the rack behind with unspeakable pride
and delight.

"I am going to ride in the royal coaches," he muttered.

"But up behind, my old boy," corrected Beausire, with a patronizing
smile.

"Who is to keep Taverney if you take Labrie, father?" inquired Andrea.

"That lazy philosopher, Gilbert; with his gun he will have ample to
eat, I warrant, for there is plenty of game at Taverney."

Andrea looked at Nicole, who laughed and added:

"He is a sly dog; he will not starve."

"Leave him a trifle," suggested Andrea.

"It will spoil him. He is bad enough now. If he wants anything we will
send him help."

"He would not accept money, my lord."

"Your Gilbert must be pretty proud, then?"

"Thank heaven, he is no longer my Gilbert!"

"Deuse take Gilbert, whoever's property he is," said Taverney, to cut
short what annoyed his selfishness. "The coach is stopping the way; get
in, daughter."

Andrea gave the house a farewell glance and stepped into the vehicle.
The baron installed himself next her; Labrie in his glorious livery
and Nicole got upon the box, for the driver turned himself into a
postillion and bestrode one of the horses.

"But the corporal?" queried the baron.

"I ride my charger," responded Beausire, ogling Nicole, who colored up
with pleasure at having so soon replaced the rustic lad with a stylish
cavalier.

Gilbert stood with his hat off at the gate, and, without seeming to
see, looked on Andrea alone. She was bending out of the opposite window
to watch the house to the last.

"Stop a bit," ordered Baron Taverney; "hark you, master idler," he
said to Gilbert, "you ought to be a happy dog to be left by yourself,
as suits a true philosopher, with nobody to bother you or upbraid you.
Don't let the house catch afire while you brood, and take care of the
watchdog. Go ahead, coachman!"

Gilbert slammed the gates, groaning for want of oil, and ran back
to his little room, where he had his little bundle ready. It also
contained his savings in a silver piece.

Mahon was howling when he came out, and straining at his chain.

"Am I not cast off like a dog? why should not a dog be cast off like
a man? No, you shall at least be free to seek your livelihood like
myself."

The liberated dog ran round the house, but finding all the doors
closed, he bounded the ruins.

"Now we are going to see who fares the better--man or dog," said
Gilbert. "Farewell, mansion where I have suffered and where all
despised me! where bread was cast to me with the reproach that I was
stealing it by making no return. Farewell--no, curses on you! My heart
leaps with joy at no longer being jailed up in your walls. Forever be
accursed, prison, hell, lair of tyrants!"




CHAPTER XIV.

THE OUTCAST'S LUCK.


But in his long journey to Paris he had often to regret this abode
which he had cursed. Sore, wearied, famished--for he had lost his
coin--he fell in the dusty highway, but with clenched fists and eyes
glaring with rage.

"Out of the way, there!" yelled a hoarse voice, amid cracking of a whip.

He did not hear, for his senses left him. He remained before the hoofs
of the horses, drawing a postchaise up a side road between Vauclere and
Thieblemont, which he had not perceived.

A scream pealed from inside the carriage, which the horses were
whirling along like a feather on the gale. The postboy made a
superhuman effort and managed to keep his horses from trampling on the
boy, though one of the leaders gave him a kick.

"Good God!" screamed a woman again; "you have crushed the unhappy
child."

The lady traveler got out, and the postillion alighted to lift
Gilbert's body from under the wheel.

"What luck!" said the man; "dashed if he be hurted--only swooned."

"With fright, I suppose."

"I'll drag him to the roadside, and let us go on, since your ladyship
is in hot haste."

"I cannot possibly leave this poor boy in such a plight. So young, poor
little thing! It is some truant scholar undertaking a journey beyond
his powers. How pale he is--he will die. No, no! I will not abandon
him. Put him inside, on the front seat."

The postboy obeyed the lady, who had already got in the berlin, as were
called such carriages. Gilbert was put on a good cushion with his back
supported by the padded sides.

"Away you go again," said the lady. "Ten minutes lost, for which you
must make up, while I will pay you the more."

When Gilbert came to his senses he found himself in the coach, swept
along by three posthorses. He was not a little surprised, too, to be
almost in the lap of a young woman who attentively studied him.

She was not more than twenty-five. She had cheeks scorched by the
southern sun, with a turn-up nose and gray eyes. A clear character of
cunning and circumspection was given to her open and jovial countenance
by the little mouth of delicate and fanciful design. Her arms, the
finest in the world, were molded in violet velvet sleeves adorned with
gilt buttons. Nearly the whole vehicle was filled up by the wavy folds
of her large flower-patterned gray silk dress.

As the countenance was smiling and expressed interest, Gilbert stared
for fear he was in a dream.

"Well, are you better, my little man?" asked she.

"Where am I?" counter-queried Gilbert, who had learned this phrase from
novels, where alone it is used.

"In safety, my dear little fellow," replied the lady in a southern
accent. "A while ago you ran great risk of being smashed under my
carriage wheels. What happened you, to drop on the highroad right in
the middle?"

"I swooned from having walked some eighteen leagues since four
yesterday afternoon, or, rather, run."

"Whither are you bound?"

"To Versailles, lady. I come from Taverney, a castle between
Pierrefitte and Bar-le-Duc."

"Did you not give yourself time to eat?"

"I had neither the time nor the means, for I lost a bit of money, and I
soon ate the crusts I carried."

"Poor boy! but you might have asked for more bread."

"I am too proud, lady," said Gilbert, smiling loftily.

"Pride is all very well, but not when it lets one die of hunger."

"Death before disgrace!"

"Hello! where did you learn such talk?"

"Not at home, for I am an orphan. My name is Gilbert, and no more."

"Some by-blow of a country squire," thought the woman. "You are very
young to roam the highway," she continued.

"I was not roaming," said the youth, who thought the truth would
recommend him to a woman. "I was following a carriage."

"With your lady love in it? Dear me! there is a romance in your
adventure?"

Gilbert was not enough his own master not to redden.

"What was the carriage, my little Cato?"

"One of the dauphiness' retinue."

"What, is she ahead of us?" exclaimed the woman. "Are they not making a
fuss over her along the route?"

"They wanted to, but she pressed on after having talked of staying for
rest at Taverney Castle, for a letter came from Versailles, they said,
and she was off in three-quarters of an hour."

"A letter?"

"Brought by the Governor of Strasburg."

"Lord Stainville? Duke Choiseul's brother? The mischief! Whip on,
postillion! faster, faster!"

The whip snapped and Gilbert felt the vehicle jump with more velocity.

"We may outstrip her if she stops for breakfast, or at night,"
meditated the woman. "Postillion, which is the next town of any
account?"

"Vitry."

"Where do we change horses?"

"Vauclere."

"Go on; but tell me if you see a string of carriages on the main road.
Poor child!" she continued, seeing how pale Gilbert was; "it is my
fault for making him chatter when he is dying of hunger and thirst."

To make up for the lost time, she took out a traveling flask with a
silver cap as stopper, into which she poured a cordial.

"Drink that and eat a cake," she said, "until you can have a
substantial breakfast in an hour or two. Now, as you are a whit
refreshed, tell me, if you have any trust in me, what interest you have
in following the carriage belonging to the dauphiness' train?"

He related his story with much clearness.

"Cheer up," she said. "I congratulate you. But you must know that one
cannot live on courage at Versailles or Paris."

"But one can by toil."

"That's so. But you have not the hands of a craftsman or laborer."

"I will work with my head."

"Yes, you appear rather knowing."

"I know I am ignorant," said Gilbert, recalling Socrates.

"You will make a good doctor, then, since a doctor is one who
administers drugs of which he knows little into a body of which he
knows less. In ten years I promise you my custom."

"I shall try to deserve the honor, lady," replied Gilbert.

The horses were changed without their having overtaken the royal party,
which had stopped for the same and to breakfast at Vitry. The lady
offered bounteously for the distance between to be covered, but the
postillion dared not outstrip the princess--a crime for which he would
be sent to prison for life.

"If I might suggest," observed Gilbert, "you could cut ahead by a
by-road."

The vehicle therefore turned off to the right and came out on the main
road at Chalons. The princess had breakfasted at Vitry, but was so
tired that she was reposing, having ordered the horses to be ready to
start again at three or four P. M. This so delighted the lady traveler
that she paid the postboy lavishly and said to Gilbert:

"We shall have a feast at the next posting house."

But it was decreed that Gilbert should not dine there.

The change of horses was to be at Chaussee village. The most remarkable
object here was a man who stood in the mid-road, as if on duty there.
He looked along it and on a long-tailed barb which was hitched to a
window shutter and neighed fretfully for its master to come out of the
cottage.

At length the man knocked on the shutter, and called.

"I say, sir," he demanded of the man who showed his head at the window,
"if you want to sell that horse, here is the customer."

"Not for sale," replied the peasant, banging the shutter to.

This did not satisfy the stranger, who was a lusty man of forty, tall
and ruddy, with coarse hands in lace ruffles. He wore a laced cocked
hat crosswise, like soldiers who want to scare rustics.

"You are not polite," he said, hammering on the shutter. "If you do not
open, I shall smash in the blind."

The panel opened at this menace and the clown reappeared.

"Who does this Arab belong to?"

"A lady lodging here, who is very fond of it."

"Let me speak with her."

"Can't; she is sleeping."

"Ask her if she wants five hundred pistoles for the barb."

"That is a right royal price." And the rustic opened his eyes widely.

"Just, so; the king wants the creature."

"You are not the king."

"But I represent him, and he is in a hurry."

"I must not wake her."

"Then I shall!" and he swung up a cane with a gold head in his
herculean fist.

But he lowered it without hitting, for at the same instant he caught
sight of a carriage tearing up the slope behind three fagged horses.
The skilled eye of the would-be buyer recognized the vehicle, for he
rushed toward it with a speed the Arabian might have envied.

It was the post carriage of Gilbert's guardian angel, which the postboy
was enchanted to stop, on seeing the man wave him to do so, for he knew
the nags would never reach the post house.

"Chon, my dear Chon," said the stranger. "What joy that you turn up, at
last!"

"It is I, Jean," replied the lady to whom was given this odd name;
"what are you doing here?"

"A pretty question, by Jove! I was waiting for you."

The Hercules stepped on the folding-step, and kissed the lady through
the window. Suddenly he caught sight of Gilbert, and turned as black as
a dog from which is snatched a bone, from not knowing the terms between
the pair in the berlin.

"It is a most amusing little philosopher whom I picked up," returned
Chon, caring little whether she wounded the pet's feelings or not, "on
the road--but never mind him."

"Another matter indeed worries us. What about the old Countess of
Bearn?" asked Jean.

"I have done the job, and she will come. I said I was her lawyer's
daughter, Mademoiselle Flageot, and that, passing through Verdun, I
repeated from my father that her case was coming on. I added that she
must appear in person, whereupon she opened her gray eyes, took a pinch
of snuff, and saying Lawyer Flageot was the first of business men, she
gave orders for her departure."

"Splendid, Chon! I appoint you my ambassador extraordinary. Come and
have breakfast!"

"Only too glad, for this poor boy is dying of hunger. But we must make
haste, for the dauphiness is only three leagues off."

"Plague! that changes the tune. Go on to the posting house, with me
hanging on as I am."

In five minutes the coach was at the inn door, where Chon ordered
cutlets, fowl, wine and eggs, as they had to be off forthwith.

"Excuse me, lady, but it will have to be with your own horses, for all
mine are out. If you find one at the manger, I will eat it."

"You ought to have some, for the regulations require it. Let me tell
you," thundered Jean with a hectoring air, "I am not the man to jest."

"If I had fifty in the stable it would be the same as none, for they
are all held on the dauphiness' service."

"Fifty, and you would not let us have three?" said Jean; "I do not ask
for eight, to which number royal highnesses are entitled, but three."

"You shall not have one," returned the post master, springing in
between the stables and the obstinate gentleman.

"Blunderhead, do you know who I am?" cried the other, pale with rage.

"Viscount," interposed Chon, "in heaven's name, no disorder."

"You are right, my dear; no more words; only deeds." He turned to the
innkeeper, saying, "I shall shield you from responsibility by taking
three horses myself."

"It must not be done, I tell 'ee."

"Do not help him harness," said the posting house keeper to the grooms.

"Jean," said Chon, "don't get into a scrape. On an errand one must put
up with anything."

"Except delay," replied Viscount Jean with the utmost ease.

And he began taking down three sets of harness, which he threw on three
horses' backs.

"Mind, master," said the post master, as he followed Jean, leading the
horses out to the coach, "this is high treason."

"I am not stealing the royal horses but taking them on loan."

The innkeeper rushed at the reins but the strong man sent him spinning.

"Brother, oh, brother!" screamed Chon.

"Only her brother!" muttered Gilbert.




CHAPTER XV.

TAVERNEY TO THE RESCUE.


At this period a window in the cottage opened and a lovely woman's face
appeared, above the Arabian courser, the uproar having aroused her.

"The very person wanted," cried Jean. "Fair lady, I offer you five
hundred pistoles for your horse."

"My horse?" questioned the lady in bad French.

"Yes, the barb hitched there."

"Not for sale," and the lady slammed the window.

"Come, come, I am not in luck this day," said Jean, "for folk will
neither sell nor hire. Confound it all! I shall take the Arab, if not
for sale, and the coach horses if not for hire, and run them to their
last legs. Put the horses to," he concluded to the lady traveler's
lackey, who was on the coach.

"Help me, boys?" shouted the post master to his hostlers.

"Oh, don't," cried Chon to her brother; "you will only be massacred."

"Massacred, with three to three? for I count on your philosopher,"
said Jean, shouting to Gilbert, who was stupefied. "Get out and pitch
in with a cane, or a rock, or the fist. And don't look like a plaster
image!"

Here the burlesque battle began, with the horses pulled between Jean
and their owner. The stronger man hurled the latter into the duckpond,
where he floundered among the frightened ducks and geese.

"Help! murder!" he shrieked, while the viscount hastened to get the
fresh horses into the traces.

"Help, in the king's name!" yelled the innkeeper, rallying his two
grooms.

"Who claims help in the royal name?" challenged a horseman who
suddenly galloped into the inn yard and pulled up his reeking steed
amid the fighting party.

"Lieutenant Philip de Taverney!" exclaimed Gilbert, sinking back deeper
than ever in the carriage corner.

Chon, who let nothing slip her, caught this name.

The young officer of the dauphin's dragoon guards leaped off his horse
amid the scene, which was attracting all the villagers. The innkeeper
ran up to him imploringly as the saver.

"Officer, this gentleman is trying to take away the horses kept for her
Royal Highness," he faltered.

"Gentleman?" queried Philip.

"Yes, this gentleman;" retorted Jean.

"You mistake, you are mad--or no gentleman," replied the Chevalier of
Redcastle.

"My dear lieutenant, you are wrong on both points," said the viscount;
"I have my senses, and I am entitled to ride in the royal carriages."

"How dare you, then, lay hands on the horses for the royal princess?"

"Because there are fifty here and the _Royals_ are entitled to but
eight. Am I to go afoot when lackeys have four nags to draw them?"

"If it is the order of his Majesty, they may have what they like. So be
good enough to make your fellow take back those horses."

"Yes, if you are on duty to guard them, lieutenant," replied Jean; "but
I did not know that the dauphiness' dragoons were set to guard grooms.
Better shut your eyes, tell your squad to do the same, and I wish you a
pleasant journey!"

"You are wrong, sir; I am on duty, as the dauphiness has sent me
forward to look after the relays."

"That is different. But allow the remark that you are on paltry duty,
and the young Bonnibel is shamefully treating the army----"

"Of whom are you speaking in such terms?" interrupted Philip.

"Oh, only of that Austrian beauty."

Taverney turned pale as his cravat, but in his usual calm voice he
said, as he caught hold of the bridle:

"Do me the pleasure to acquaint me with your name?"

"If you are bent upon that--I am Viscount Jean Dubarry."

"What, brother of that notorious----"

"Who will send you to rot in the Bastille prison, if you add a word to
the adjective."

The viscount sprang into the coach, up to the door of which went the
baron's son.

"If you do not come forth in a second I give you my word of honor that
I shall run my sword through your body."

Having hold of the door with his left hand, pulling against the
viscount, he drew his sword with the other.

"The idea!" said Chon; "this is murder. Give up the horses, Jean."

"Oh, you threaten me, do you?" hissed the viscount, exasperated, and
snatching his sword from the cushion.

"We shall never get away at this rate," whispered Chon; "do smooth the
officer down."

"Neither violence nor gentleness will stay me in my duty," observed
Taverney, politely bowing to the young woman. "Advise obedience to the
gentleman, or in the name of the king, whom I represent, I shall kill
him if he will fight me, or arrest him if he refuses."

"Shall I lug him out, lieutenant?" asked the corporal, who had
Taverney's half-dozen men as escort.

"No, this is a personal quarrel," said his superior. "You need not
interfere."

There was truly no need; for, after three minutes, Jean Dubarry drew
back from the conflict with Redcastle, his sleeve dyed with blood.

"Go, sir," said the victor, "and do not play such pranks any more."

"Tush, I pay for them," grumbled the viscount.

Luckily three horses came in which would do for the change, and the
innkeeper was only too glad to get rid of the turbulent viscount at
their price. As he mounted the carriage steps, he grumbled at Gilbert's
being in the way.

"Hush, brother," said Chon; "he knows the man who wounded you. He is
Philip of Taverney."

"Then we shall be even yet," said the viscount, with a gleam of
gladness. "You are on the high horse at present, my little dragoon," he
shouted out to Taverney; "but turn about is fair play."

"To the return, if you please," replied the officer.

"Yes, Chevalier Philip de Taverney!" called Jean, watching for the
effect of the sudden declaration of his name.

Indeed, his hearer raised his head with sharp surprise, in which
entered some unease, but recovering himself and lifting his hat, he
rejoined with the utmost grace:

"A pleasant journey, Chevalier Jean Dubarry!"

"A thousand thunders," swore the viscount, grinning horribly as the
coach started. "I am in acute pain, Chon, and shall want a surgeon
sooner than breakfast."

"We will get one at the first stop while this youth has his meal."

"Excuse me," said Gilbert, as the invalid expressed a desire to drink.
"But strong drink is bad for you at present."

"What, are you a doctor as well as philosopher?" queried Jean.

"Not yet, my lord; though I hope to be one some day. But I read that
wounded patients must not take anything heated. But if you will let me
have your handkerchief, I will dip it in water at the first spring and
cool the wound by bandaging it."

The carriage was stopped for Gilbert to get out and wet the cambric.

"This youngster is dreadfully in the way for us to talk business," said
Dubarry.

"Pshaw! we will talk in the Southern dialect," said Chon; and it was
thanks to this precaution that the two communed to the puzzlement of
the youth on the rest of the journey.

But he had the consolation of thinking that he had comforted a viscount
who stood in the king's favor. If Andrea only saw him now! He did not
think of Nicole.

"Hello!" broke off the viscount, as he looked behind out of the window.
"Here comes that Arab with the strange woman on its back. I would give
a thousand pistoles for that steed, and a fortune for the beauty."

The black-eyed woman wrapped in a white cloak, with her brow shaded
by a broad-brimmed felt hat with long feathers, flew by like an arrow
along the roadside, crying:

"_Avanti_, Djerid!"

"She says 'Forward!' in Italian," said the viscount. "Oh, the lovely
creature. If I were not in such pain, I would jump out and after her."

"You could not catch her, on that horse. It is the magician, and she is
his wife."

"Magician?" questioned the Dubarrys together.

"Yes, Baron Joseph Balsamo."

The sister looked at the brother as much as to say: "Was I not right to
keep him?" and he nodded emphatically.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE KING'S FAVORITE.


In the apartments of Princess Adelaide, daughter of King Louis X., he
had housed the Countess Jeanne Dubarry, his favorite since a year, not
without studying the effect it would have on the realm. The jolly,
mirthful, devil-may-care mad-cap had transformed the silent palace into
a monkey-house, where any one was tolerated who kept the fun alive.

At about nine in the morning, the hour of her reception, Jeanne
Vaubernier, to give her her true name, stepped out of her couch,
wrapped in an embroidered gauze gown which allowed a glimpse through
the floating lace of her alabaster arms. This seductive statue,
awakening more and more, drew a lace mantle over her shoulders and
held out her little foot for a slipper which, with its jewels, would
enrich a woodcutter in her native woods had he found it.

"Any news of Chon, or the Viscount Jean?" she asked at once of her
chambermaid.

"None, and no letters, my lady."

"What a bore to be kept waiting!" pouted the royal pet, with a pretty
wry face. "Will they never invent a method of corresponding a hundred
miles apart? Faith, I pity anybody I visit with my vexation this day.
But I suppose that, as this star the dauphiness is coming, I, the poor
glowworm, will be left alone. Who is waiting, tell me?"

"Duke Daiguillon, Prince Soubise, Count Sartines and President Maupeou."

"But the Duke of Richelieu?"

"He has not yet come."

"No more than yesterday. That political weathercock has turned from me.
He is afraid to be injured, Doris. You must send to his house to ask
after him."

"Yes, my lady; but the king is here."

"Very well; I am ready."

The Fifteenth Louis entered the room with a smile on his lips and his
head upright. He was accompanied solely by a gentleman in black, who
tried by a smile to counteract the baleful effect of thin, hard lips
and severe gray eyes. It was Lieutenant of Police Sartines.

The waiting maid and a little negro boy were in the room; but they were
not counted.

"Good-morning, countess," hailed the monarch; "how fresh we are looking
to-day. Don't be afraid of Sartines; he is not going to talk business,
I trust. Oh, how magnificent Zamore is looking!"

The blackamoor was appareled with the barbaric splendor in which
Othello was attired at that period.

"Sire, he has a favor to crave of your Majesty."

"He seems to me very ambitious, after having been granted by you the
greatest boon one can desire--being your slave, like myself."

Sartines bowed, smiling, but bit his lips at the same time.

"How delightful you are, sire," said the countess. "I adore you,
France!" she whispered in the royal ear, and set him smiling.

"Well, what do you desire for Zamore?"

"Recompense for his long service----"

"He is only twelve years old!"

"You will be paying him in advance; that is a good way of not being
treated with ingratitude."

"Capital idea! What do you think, Sartines?" asked the king.

"I support it, as all devoted subjects will gain by it."

"Well, sire, I want Zamore to be appointed governor of my summer
residence, Luciennes, which shall be created a royal place."

"It would be a parody and make all the governors of the royal places
protest, and with reason."

"A good thing, for they are always making a noise for nothing. Zamore,
kneel down and thank his majesty for the favor. Sire, you have another
royal property from this time forward. Get up, Zamore. You are
appointed."

"Sartines, do you know the way to refuse this witch anything?"

"If there is one, it is not yet out into practice, sire."

"When found, I wager it will be by Chief of Police Sartines. I am
expecting him to find me something--and I have been on thorns about it
for three months. I want a magician."

"To have him burnt alive?" asked the sovereign, while Sartines breathed
again. "It is warm weather, now; wait for winter."

"Not to burn him, but to give him a golden rod, sire."

"Oh, did he predict some ill which has not happened?"

"Nay, a blessing which came to pass."

"Tell us, countess," said Louis, settling down in an easy chair, like
one who is not sure he will be pleased or oppressed but will risk it.

"I am agreeable, sire, only you must share in rewarding him."

"I must make the present entirely."

"That is right royal."

"I listen."

"It begins like a fairy tale. Once upon a time, a poor girl was walking
the streets of Paris, what time she had neither pages, carriages, negro
boy to hold up her train and enrage the dowagers, or parrot or monkey.
Crossing the Tuileries gardens, she suddenly perceived that she was
pursued."

"Deuce take it! thereupon she stopped," said the king.

"Fie! It is clear that your experience has been in following duchesses
or marchionesses. She was the more alarmed as a thick fog came on, and
the chaser emerged from it upon her. She screamed."

"For the rogue was ugly?"

"No, he was a bright and handsome young man; but still she sued him to
spare her from harm. He smiled charmingly and called heaven as witness
that he had no such intention. He only wanted her pledge to grant him a
favor when--when she should be a queen. She thought she was not binding
herself much with such a promise, and the man disappeared."

"Sartines is very wrong in not finding him."

"Sire, I do not refuse, but I cannot."

"Cannot ought not to be in the police dictionary," said Dubarry.

"We have a clew."

"Ha, ha! that is the old story."

"It is the truth. The fault is that your description is so slight."

"Slight? she painted him so brightly that I forbid you to find the dog."

"I only want to ask a piece of information."

"What for, when his prophecy is accomplished?"

"If I am almost a queen, I want to ask him when I shall be placed in
the court."

"Presented formally?"

"It is not enough to reign in the night; I want to reign a little in
the daytime."

"That is not the magician's business, but mine," said Louis, frowning
at the conversation getting upon delicate ground. "Or rather yours, for
all that is wanted is an introductress."

"Among the court prudes--all sold to Choiseul or Praslin?"

"Pray let us have no politics here."

"If I am not to speak, I shall act without speaking, and upset the
ministers without any further notice."

At this juncture the maid Doris entered and spoke a word to her
mistress.

"It is Chon, who comes from traveling and begs to present her respects
to your majesty."

"Let us have Chon in, for I have missed something lately, and it may be
her."

"I thank your majesty," said Chon, coming in, and hastening to whisper
to her sister in kissing her:

"I have done it."

The countess could not repress an outcry of delight.

"I am so glad to see her."

"Quite so; go on and chat with her while I confer with Sartines to
learn whence you come, Chon."

"Sire," said Sartines, eager to avoid the pinch, "may I have a moment
for the most important matter?--about these seers, illuminati, miracle
workers----"

"Quacks? make them take out licenses as conjurers at a high figure, and
they will not be any cause of fear."

"Sire, the situation is more serious than most believe. New masonic
lodges are being opened. This society has become a sect to which is
affiliated all the foes of the monarchy, the idealists, encyclopedists
and philosophers. Voltaire has been received at court."

"A dying man."

"Only his pretense. All are agitating, writing, speaking,
corresponding, plotting and threatening. From some words dropped, they
are expecting a leader."

"When he turns up, Sartines, we will turn him down, in the Bastille."

"These philosophers whom you despise will destroy the monarchy."

"In what space of time, my lord?"

"How can I tell?" said the chief of police, looking astonished. "Ten,
fifteen or more years."

"My dear friend, in that time I shall be no more; tell this to my
successor."

He turned away, and this was the opportunity that the favorite was
waiting for, since she heaved a sigh, and said:

"Oh, gracious, Chon, what are you telling me? My poor brother Jean so
badly wounded that his arm will have to be amputated!"

"Oh, wounded in some street affray or in a drinking-saloon quarrel?"

"No, sire! attacked on the king's highway and nearly murdered."

"Murdered?" repeated the ruler, who had no feelings, but could finely
feign them. "This is in your province, Sartines."

"Can such a thing have happened?" said the chief of police, apparently
less concerned than the king, but in reality more so.

"I saw a man spring on my brother," said Chon, "force him to draw his
sword and cut him grievously."

"Was the ruffian alone?"

"He had half a dozen bullies with him."

"Poor viscount forced to fight," sighed the monarch, trying to regulate
the amount of his grief by the countess'; but he saw that she was not
pretending.

"And wounded?" he went on, in a heartbroken tone.

"But what was the scuffle about?" asked the police lieutenant, trying
to see into the affair.

"Most frivolous; about posthorses, disputed for with the viscount, who
was in a hurry to help me home to my sister, whom I had promised to
join this morning."

"This requires retaliation, eh, Sartines?" said the king.

"It looks so, but I will inquire into it. The aggressor's name and
rank?"

"I believe he is a military officer, in the dauphiness' dragoon guards,
and named something like Baverne, or Faver--stop--it is Taverney."

"To-morrow he will sleep in prison," said the chief of police.

"Oh, dear, no," interrupted the countess out of deep silence; "that
is not likely, for he is but an instrument and you will not punish
the real instigators of the outrage. It is the work of the Duke of
Choiseul. I shall leave the field free for my foes, and quit a realm
where the ruler is daunted by his ministers."

"How dare you?" cried Louis, offended.

Chon understood that her sister was going too far, and she struck in.

She plucked her sister by the dress and said:

"Sire, my sister's love for our poor brother carries her away. I
committed the fault and I must repair it. As the most humble subject of
your majesty, I merely apply for justice."

"That is good; I only ask to deal justice. If the man has done wrong,
let him be chastised."

"Am I asking anything else?" said the countess, glancing pityingly at
the monarch, who was so worried elsewhere and seldom tormented in her
rooms. "But I do not like my suspicions snubbed."

"Your suspicions shall be changed to certainty by a very simple course.
We will have the Duke of Choiseul here. We will confront the parties at
odds, as the lawyers say."

At this moment the usher opened the door and announced that the prince
royal was waiting in the king's apartments to see him.

"It is written I shall have no peace," grumbled Louis. But he was not
sorry to avoid the wrangle with Choiseul, and he brightened up. "I am
going, countess. Farewell! you see how miserable I am with everybody
pulling me about. Ah, if the philosophers only knew what a dog's life a
king has--especially when he is king of France."

"But what am I say to the Duke of Choiseul?"

"Send him to me, countess."

Kissing her hand, trembling with fury, he hastened away as usual,
fearing every time to lose the fruit of a battle won by palliatives and
common cunning.

"Alas! he escapes us again!" wailed the courtesan, clenching her plump
hands in vexation.




CHAPTER XVII.

A ROYAL CLOCK-REPAIRER.


In the Hall of the Clocks, in Versailles Palace, a pink-cheeked and
meek-eyed young gentleman was walking about with a somewhat vulgar
step. His arms were pendent and his head sunk forward. He was in his
seventeenth year. He was recognizable as the king's heir by being the
living image of the Bourbon race, most exaggerated. Louis Auguste,
Duke of Berry and heir to the throne as the dauphin, soon wearied of
his lounge and stopped to gaze with the air of one who understood
horology, on the great clock in the back of the hall. It was a
universal machine, which told of time to the century, with the lunar
phases and the courses of the planets, and was always the prince's
admiration.

Suddenly the hands on which his eyes were fastened came to a
standstill. A grain of sand had checked the mechanism, and the
master-piece was dead.

On seeing this misfortune, the royal one forgot what he had come to do.
He opened the clock-case glazed door, and put his head inside to see
what was the matter. All at once he uttered a cry of joy, for he had
spied a screw loose, of which the head had worked up and caught another
part of the machinery. With a tortoise shell pick in one hand, and
holding the wheel with the other, he began to fix the screw, with his
head in the box. Thus absorbed he never heard the usher at the door,
cry out: "The king!"

Louis was some time glancing about before he spied the prince's legs as
he stood half eclipsed before the clock.

"What the deuse are you doing there?" he asked, as he tapped his son on
the shoulder.

The amateur clockmaker drew himself out with the proper precautions for
so noble a timepiece.

"Oh, your majesty, I was just _killing time_ while you were not
present."

"By murdering my clock! Pretty amusement!"

"Oh, no, only setting it to rights. A screw was loose and----"

"Never mind mechanics! What do you want of me? I am eager to be off to
Marly."

He started for the door, always trying to avoid awkward situations.

"Is it money you are after? I will send you some."

"Nay, I have savings out of my last quarter's money."

"What a miser, and yet a spendthrift was his tutor! I believe he has
all the virtues missing in me."

"Sire, is not the bride near at hand yet?"

"Your bride? I should say fifty leagues off. Are you in a hurry."

The prince royal blushed.

"I am not eager for the motive you think."

"No? So much the worse. Hang it all! You are sixteen and the princess
very pretty. You are warranted in being impatient."

"Cannot the ceremonies be curtailed, for at this rate she will be an
age coming. I don't think the traveling arrangements are well made."

"The mischief! thirty thousand horses placed along the route, with men
and carts and coaches--how can you believe there is bad management
when I have made all these arrangements?"

"Sire, in spite of these, I am bound to say that I think, as in the
case of your clock, there is a screw loose. The progress has been right
royally arranged, but did your majesty make it fully understood that
all the horses, men and vehicles were to be employed by the dauphiness?"

A vague suspicion annoyed the monarch, who looked hard at his heir;
this suggestion agreed with another idea fretting him.

"Certainly," he replied. "Of course you are satisfied, then? The bride
will arrive on time, and she is properly attended to. You are rich with
your savings, and you can wind up my clock and set it going again. I
have a good mind to appoint you Clockmaker Extraordinary to the Royal
Household, do you hear?" and, laughing, he was going to snatch the
opportunity to slip away, when, as he opened the door, he faced a man
on the sill.

Louis drew back a step.

"Choiseul!" he exclaimed. "I had forgotten she was to send him to me.
Never mind, he shall pay for my son irritating me. So you have come, my
lord? You heard I wanted you?"

"Yes, sire," replied the prime minister, coldly. "I was dressing to
come, any way."

"Good; I have serious matters to discuss," said the sovereign, frowning
to intimidate the minister, who was, unfortunately, the hardest man to
browbeat in the kingdom.

"Very serious matters I have to discuss, too," he replied, with a
glance for the dauphin, who was skulking behind the clock.

"Oho!" thought the king; "my son is my foe, too. I am in a triangle
with woman, minister and son, and cannot escape."

"I come to say that the Viscount Jean----"

"Was nearly murdered in an ambush?"

"Nay, that he was wounded in the forearm in a duel. I know it
perfectly."

"So do I, and I will tell you the true story."

"We listen," responded Choiseul. "For the prince is concerned in the
affray, so far as it was on account of the dauphiness."

"The dauphiness and Jean Dubarry in some way connected?" questioned
the king. "This is getting curious. Pray explain, my lord, and conceal
nothing. Was it the princess who gave the swordthrust to Dubarry?"

"Not her highness, but one of the officers of her escort," replied
Choiseul, as calm as ever.

"One whom you know?"

"No, sire; but your majesty ought to know him, if your majesty
remembers all his old servants; for his father fought for you at
Fontenoy, Philipsburg and Mahon--he is a Taverney Redcastle."

The dauphin mutely repeated the title to engrave it on his mind.

"Certainly, I know the Redcastles," returned Louis. "Why did he fight
against Jean, whom I like--unless because I like him? Absurd jealousy,
outbreaks of discontent, and partial sedition!"

"Does the defender of the royal princess deserve this reproach?" said
the duke.

"I must say," said the prince, rising erect and folding his arms, "I am
grateful to the young gentleman who risked his life for a lady who will
shortly be my wife."

"What did he risk his life for?" queried the king.

"Because the Chevalier Jean in a hurry wanted to take the horses set
aside by your majesty for the royal bride."

The king bit his lips and changed color, for the new way of presenting
the case was again a menacing phantom.

"Yes, Chevalier Dubarry was putting the insult on the royal house of
taking the reserved royal horses, when up came the Chevalier Redcastle,
sent onward by her highness, and after much civil remonstrance----"

"Oh!" protested the king. "Civil--a military man?"

"It was so," interposed the dauphin. "I have been fully informed.
Dubarry whipped out his sword----"

"Was he the first to draw?" demanded the king.

The prince blushed and looked to Choiseul for support.

"The fact is, the two crossed swords," the latter hastened to say, "one
having insulted the lady, the other defending her and your majesty's
property."

"But who was the aggressor, for Jean is mild as a lamb," said the
monarch, glad that things were getting equalized.

"The officer must have been malapert."

"Impertinent to a man who was dragging away the horses reserved for
your majesty's destined daughter?" exclaimed Choiseul. "Is this
possible?"

"Hasty, anyway," said the king, as the dauphin stood pale without a
word.

"A zealous servitor can never do wrong," remarked the duke, receding a
step.

"Come, now, how did you get the news?" asked the king of his son,
without losing sight of the minister, who was troubled by this abrupt
question.

"I had an advice from one who was offended by the insult to the lady of
my choice."

"Secret correspondence, eh?" exclaimed the sovereign. "Plots,
plots! Here you are, beginning to worry me again, as in the days of
Pompadour."

"No, this is only a secondary matter. Let the culprit be punished, and
that will end the affair."

At the suggestion of punishment, Louis saw Jeanne furious and Chon up
in arms.

"Punish, without hearing the case?" he said. "I have signed quite
enough blank committals to jail. A pretty mess you are dragging me
into, duke."

"But what a scandal, if the first outrage to the princess is allowed to
go unpunished, sire."

"I entreat your majesty," said the dauphin.

"What, don't you think the sword cut was enough punishment?"

"No, sire, for he might have wounded Lieutenant Taverney. In that case
I should have asked for his head."

"Nay," said the dauphin, "I only ask for his banishment."

"Exile, for an alehouse scuffle," said the king. "In spite of your
philosophical notions, you are harsh, Louis. It is true that you are
a mathematician, and such are hard as--well, they would sacrifice the
world to have their ciphering come out correct."

"Sire, I am not angry with Chevalier Dubarry personally, but as he
insulted the dauphiness."

"What a model husband!" sneered the king. "But I am not to be gulled
in this way. I see that I am attacked under all these blinds. It is
odd that you cannot let me live in my own way, but must hate all whom
I like, and like all I dislike! Am I mad, or sane? Am I the master, or
not!"

The prince went back to the clock. Choiseul bowed as before.

"No answer, eh? Why don't you say something? Do you want to worry me
into the grave with your petty hints and strange silence, your paltry
spites and minute dreads?"

"I do not hate Chevalier Dubarry," said the prince.

"I do not dread him," added Choiseul.

"You are both bad at heart," went on the sovereign, trying to be
furious but only showing spite. "Do you want me to realize the fable
with which my cousin of Prussia jeers me, that mine is the Court of
King Petaud? No, I shall do nothing of the kind. I stand on my honor in
my own style and will defend it similarly."

"Sire," said the prince with his inexhaustible meekness but eternal
persistency, "your majesty's honor is not affected--it is the dignity
of the royal princess which is struck at."

"Let Chevalier Jean make excuses, then, as he is free to do. But he is
free to do the other thing."

"I warn your majesty that the affair will be talked of, if thus
dropped," said the prime minister.

"Who cares? Do as I do. Let the public chatter, and heed them
not--unless you like to laugh at them. I shall be deaf to all. The
sooner they make such a noise as to deafen me, the sooner I shall cease
to hear them. Think over what I say, for I am sick of this. I am going
to Marly, where I can get a little quiet--if I am not followed out
there. At least, I shall not meet your sister the Lady Louise there,
for she has retired to the nunnery of St. Denis."

But the dauphin was not listening to this news of the breaking up of
his family.

"It is going," he exclaimed in delight, real or feigned, as the clock
resumed its regular tickings.

The minister frowned and bowed himself out backward from the hall,
where the heir to the throne was left alone.

The king going into his study, paced it with long strides.

"I can clearly see that Choiseul is railing at me. The prince looks
on himself as half the master, and believes he will be entirely so
when he mounts with this Austrian on the throne. My daughter Louise
loves me, but she preaches morality and she gives me the go-by to live
in the nunnery. My three other girls sing songs against me and poor
Jeanne. The Count of Provence is translating Lucretius. His brother of
Artois is running wild about the streets. Decidedly none but this poor
countess loves me. Devil take those who try to displease her!"

Sitting at the table where his father signed papers, his treaties and
grandiloquent epistles, the son of the great king took up the pen.

"I understand why they are all hastening the arrival of the
archduchess. But I am not going to be perturbed by her sooner than can
be helped," and he wrote an order for Governor Stainville to stop three
days at one city and three at another.

With the same pen he wrote:

    "DEAR COUNTESS: This day we install Zamore in his new government.
    I am off for Marly, but I will come over to Luciennes this evening
    to tell you all I am thinking about at present.

    FRANCE."

"Lebel," he said to his confidential valet, "away with this to the
countess, and my advice is for you to keep in her good graces."




CHAPTER XVIII.

THE COUNTESS OF BEARN.


A hackney coach stopping at the doorway of Chancellor Maupeou,
president of Parliament, induced the porter to deign to stalk out to
the door of the vehicle and see why the way was thus blocked.

He saw an old lady in an antiquated costume. She was thin and bony but
active, with cat's eyes rolling under gray brows. But poverty stricken
though she appeared, the porter showed respect as he asked her name.

"I am the Countess of Bearn," she replied; "but I fear that I shall not
have the fortune to find his lordship at home."

"My lord is receiving," answered the janitor. "That is, he will receive
your ladyship."

The old lady stepped out of the carriage, wondering if she did not
dream, while the porter gave two jerks to a bellrope. An usher came to
the portals, where the first servant motioned that the visitor might
enter.

"If your ladyship desires speech with the lord high chancellor," said
the usher, "step this way, please."

"They do speak ill of this official," uttered the lady; "but he has the
good trait that he is easily accessible. But it is strange that so high
an officer of the law should have open doors."

Chancellor Maupeou, buried in an enormous wig and clad in black velvet,
was writing in his study, where the door was open.

On entering, the old countess threw a rapid glance around, but to her
surprise there was no other face than hers and that of the law lord,
thin, yellow and busy, reflected in the mirrors.

He rose in one piece and placed himself with his back to the fireplace.

The lady made the three courtesies according to rule.

Her little compliment was rather unsteady; she had not expected the
honor; she never could have believed that a cabinet minister would give
her some time out of his business or his repose.

Maupeou replied that time was no less precious to subject than his
majesty's ministers, although preference had to be given to persons
with urgent affairs, consequently, he gave what leisure he had to such
clients.

"My lord," said the old lady, with fresh courtesies, "I beg most humbly
to speak to your excellency of a grave matter on which depends my
fortune. You know that my all depends, or rather my son's, on the case
sustained by me against the Saluces family. You are a friend of that
family, but your lordship's equity is so well known that I have not
hesitated to apply to you."

The chancellor was fondling his chin, but he could not help a smile to
hear his fair play extolled.

"My lady, you are right in calling me friend of the Saluces; but I laid
aside friendship when I took the seals of office up. I look into your
business simply as a juris consultus. The case is soon coming on?"

"In another week I should beg your lordship to look over my papers."

"I have done so already."

"Oh! What do you think of it?"

"I beg to say that you ought to be prepared to go home and get the
money together to pay the costs--for you will infallibly lose the case."

"Then my son and I are ruined!"

"Unless you have friends at court to counterbalance the influence of
the Saluces brothers, who are linked with three parts of the courtiers.
In fact, I know not if they have an enemy."

"I am sorry to hear your Excellency say this."

"I am sorry to say so, for I really wanted to be useful to your
ladyship."

The countess shuddered at the tone of feigned kindness, for she seemed
to catch a glimpse of something dark in the mind, if not the speech of
the chancellor; if that obscurity could be swept away she fancied she
would see something favorable to her.

"Do you know nobody at court?" he insisted.

"Only some old noblemen, probably retired, who would blush to see their
old friend so poor. I have my right of entry to the palace, but what is
the good? Better to have the right to enter into enjoyment of my two
hundred thousand livres. Work that miracle, my lord."

"Judges cannot be led astray by private influence," he said, forgetting
that he was contradicting himself. "Why not, however, apply to the
new powers, eager to make recruits? You must have known the royal
princesses?"

"They have grown out of remembrance."

"The prince royal?"

"I never knew him."

"Besides, he is dwelling too much on his bride, who is on the road
hither, to do any one a good turn. Oh! why not address the favorites?"

"The Duke of Choiseul?"

"No, the other, the Countess----"

"Dubarry?" said the prude, opening her fan.

"Yes, she is goodhearted and she likes to do kindnesses to her friends."

"I am of too old a line for her to like me."

"That is where you are wrong; for she is trying to ally herself with
the old families."

"But I have never seen her."

"What a pity! Or her sister, Chon, the other sister Bischi, her brother
Jean, or her negro boy Zamore?"

"What! is her negro a power at court?"

"Indeed he is."

"A black who looks like a pug dog, for they sell his picture in the
streets. How was I to meet this blackamoor, my lord?" and the dame drew
herself up, offended.

"It is a pity you did not, for Zamore would win your suit for you. Ask
the dukes and peers of the realm who take candies to him at Marly or
Luciennes. I am the lord high chancellor, but what do you think I was
about when your ladyship called? Drawing up the instructions for him as
governor of Luciennes, to which Zamore has been appointed."

"The Count of Bearn was recompensed for his services of twenty years
with merely the same title. What degradation! Is the monarchy indeed
going to the dogs?" cried the indignant lady.

"I do not know about the government, but the crumbs are going to them,
and, faith! we must scramble among them to get the tidbits away from
them. If you wanted to be welcomed by Lady Dubarry, you could not do
better than carry these papers for her pet to her."

"It is plain that fate is against me; for, though your lordship has
kindly greeted me, the next step is out of the question. Not only
am I to pay court to a Dubarry, but I must carry her negro-boy's
appointment--a black whom I would not have deigned to kick out of my
way on the street----"

Suddenly the usher interrupted:

"Viscount Jean Dubarry."

The chancellor dropped his hands in stupor, while the old petitioner
sank back in an armchair without pulse or breath.

Our old acquaintance pranced in, with his arm in a sling:

"Oh, engaged? Pray, do not disturb yourself, my lady; I want only
a couple of minutes to make a complaint, a couple of his precious
minutes. They have tried to murder me! I did not mind their making fun
at us, singing lewd ballads, slandering and libeling us; but it is too
much of a vile thing to waylay and murder. But I am interrupting the
lady."

"This is the Countess of Bearn," said the chancellor.

Dubarry drew back gracefully to make a proper bow, and the lady did the
same for her courtesy, and they saluted as ceremoniously as though they
had been in court.

"After you, viscount," she said; "my case is about property; yours
about honor, and so takes the lead."

Profiting by her obligingness Dubarry unfolded his complaint.

"You will want witnesses on your side," observed the chancellor.

"That is awkward, for everybody there seems to be on the other side."

"Not everybody," interrupted the countess, "for if the affray was the
one that happened in Chaussee village, I can be your witness. I came
through there a couple of hours after, and all were talking of it!"

"Have a care, my lady," said the viscount; "for if you speak in my
favor, you will make an enemy of Choiseul."

"She ought to lean on your arm, then; though one is wounded, it will
soon be healed, and the other is still formidable," said the law lord,
while the old dame rolled from one gulf into another.

"Ah, but I know another, whose arms are perfect," said Jean, merrily;
"and service for service, she will offer your ladyship hers. I am going
straight to my sister, and I offer you a seat in my carriage."

"But without motive, without preparations," faltered the countess.

"Here is your excuse," whispered Maupeou, slipping Zamore's
governmental instructions into her sallow, wrinkled hand.

"My lord chancellor, you are my deliverer," she gasped. "And the
viscount is the flower of the chivalry."

Indeed, a splendid coach in the royal colors was waiting at the doors.
The countess placed herself in it, swelling with pride. Jean entered
likewise, and gave the word for the departure.

In her joy at this smooth sailing, the countess forgot that she had
wanted to lay a private complaint before the chancellor as head of the
legal fraternity.

It may be remembered that Chon had decoyed her into traveling to Paris
by pretending to be the daughter of her lawyer Flageot.

What was her amazement, therefore, on calling on that gentleman,
to learn that not only was he a bachelor without a daughter, but
that he had no good news to impart to her on her suit. Burning with
disappointment, she had sought a remedy against this lawyer or this
woman who had hoaxed her.




CHAPTER XIX.

CHON SPOILS ALL.


After the king's departure from the short and unp

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