Александр Дюма
Taking the Bastile
CHAPTER XV.
THE YOUNG VISIONARY
Meeting with a public conveyance, the doctor got into it with Billet and Pitou, and they went to Louis-the-Great College, where Sebastian was still in the sick ward.
The principal received the doctor with deep regard as he knew him to be the foremost pupil of the physicians and chemists, Cabanis and Condorcet.
He imparted his fears, as well to the doctor as to the parent of his pupil, that the boy was too much given to moody fits.
"You are right," said Gilbert, "gravity in a boy is a token of lunacy or weakness."
While Pitou was being refreshed in the principal's residence and Billet shared a bottle with the gentleman himself, the physician conferred with his son.
"I ask you about your health," said the father to the pallid, nervous youth, "and you answer that you are well. Now I ask you if your reserve towards your schoolfellows arises from pride and I hope you will answer, no."
"Be encouraged, father," said Sebastian, "It is neither pride nor ill health, but sorrow. I have a dream which frightens me and yet it is not a terror. When a little boy, I had such visions."
"Ah?"
"Two or three times I was lost in the woods, following this phantom."
Gilbert looked at the speaker in alarm.
"It was thus, father dear: I would be playing with the other children of the village when I saw nothing; but when I left them, I heard the rustle of a silk dress as if some one wearing it were going away from me; I would thrust out my hands to seize it but grasp nothing but air. But as the sound diminished, the vision appeared, more and more distinct. This cloudy vapor would gradually assume a human shape. It was a woman's, who glided rather than walked, and grew the more clear as it was buried in the woody depths.
"A strange, weird, irresistible spell drew me on in the woman's steps. I pursued her with extended arms, mute like she was. Often I tried to call her but my lips would not emit a sound; I pursued without ever overtaking, until the prodigy announcing her coming was reproduced for her departure. She became misty and faded away. Spent with weariness, I would drop on the sward, where she had disappeared. Pitou would find me there, sometimes not till the following day."
Gilbert looked at the youth with increasing disquiet. His fingers were fixed on his pulse. Sebastian seemed to understand his father's feelings.
"Do not be uneasy about it," said he; "I know that it is a phantasm."
"What did this woman look like?"
"Majestic as a queen."
"Have you seen her lately?"
"I have seen her here – that is, in the garden reserved for the teachers. I saw her glide from our grounds into that garden. And one day when Master Berardier, pleased with my composition, asked me to state a favor, I got leave to stroll in this garden. She appeared to me."
"Strange hallucination," thought Gilbert; "yet not so remarkable in the child of a mesmeric medium. Who do you think this woman is?"
"My mother."
Gilbert turned pale and clasped his hand to his heart as though to staunch a re-opening wound. "But this is all a dream and I am almost as crazed as you."
"It may be all a dream," said the youth with pensive eye, "but the reality of the dream exists. I have seen the lady alive, in a magnificent equipage drawn by four horses, in Satory Woods near Versailles, on the last holiday when we were taken out there. I nearly swooned on seeing her, I do not know why. For she could not be my mother, who is dead, and she is the same as the vision."
He remarked the giddiness of his father who ran his hand over his brow, and he was frightened by his white face.
"I see I am wrong to tell you such nonsense," he said.
"Oh, no, speak all you can on the subject and we shall try to cure you," responded the doctor.
"Why? I am born to musing: it takes up half my time. I love this ghost though it avoids me and seems sometimes to repulse me. Do not expel it: I should else be all alone when you are on your travels or return to America."
"I hope we shall not part," he said to his boy whom he embraced: "for I want to take you on my journeys."
"Was my mother fair?" inquired the youth.
"Very," was answered in the doctor's stifled voice.
"And did she love you as much as I do?" continued the child.
"Sebastian, never speak her name to me!" cried the physician, kissing him a last time and bounding out of the garden.
Instead of following him, the boy dropped on a bench, disconsolate.
In the yard Gilbert found Billet and Pitou, refreshed by the feast of the principal, to whom the doctor recommended special care of his son, and the three men got into the hack again.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE PHYSICIAN FOR THE STATE
On the way back to Paris, Gilbert stopped at St. Ouen to see Necker's daughter. He had a suspicion that the financier had not gone to Brussels as everybody was led to think. Indeed, it was at Madam de Stael's country house that he was concealed, awaiting events. He made no difficulty in supplying his friend with a letter of introduction to the King.
Armed with this, the doctor, leaving Billet and Pitou in a pretty hotel of Paris where the farmer usually stayed, hurried to Versailles.
It was half past ten but Versailles could not sleep now. It was agitated about how the King would take the insult of the Bastile being captured. It was not a slap in the face like Mirabeau's refusal to obey the order of the King to vacate the Assembly-rooms, but a death-blow.
The palace and surrounding sites were packed with troops, but Gilbert managed to reach the Bulls-eye Chamber where Necker's letter passed him into the royal presence.
The doctor examined in silence the pilot given to France in stormy weather, whom he had not seen for many long years.
For the physiognomist who had studied under Lavater, the magnetiser who had read the future with Balsamo, the philosopher who had meditated with Rousseau, the traveler who had reviewed many peoples, all in this short, stout man signified degeneracy, impotence and ruin.
When Louis had read the introduction he dismissed all attendants with a wave of the hand not devoid of majesty.
"Is it true," said he, "that you are the author of the Memoirs on Administration and Politics, which much struck me? you are young for such a work?"
"I am thirty-two, but study and misfortune age a man; treat me as an old one."
"Why are you so slow to present yourself to me?"
"Because I had no need to speak to your Majesty what I could freely and easily write."
"But you ought to have been informed that I was kindly towards you," observed the monarch, suspiciously.
"Your Majesty alludes to my audacity in requesting him, in token of having read my work with gratification, to show a light in his own study window? I saw that, and was gladdened, but your Majesty offered a reward, and I want none."
"Any way you come like a true soldier when the action is on. But I am not used to meet those who do not haste when recompense is offered."
"I deserve none. Born a Frenchman, loving my land, jealous of its prosperity, confounding my individuality with that of its thirty millions of men, I work for them in toiling for myself. A selfish man deserves no recompense."
"Excuse me, you had another reason. You thought the state of events serious and held back – "
"For a more serious one? Your Majesty guesses correctly."
"I like frankness," said the King, reddening, for he was nervous. "So, you predicted ruin for the sovereign and you wanted to be out of the reach of the flying splinters."
"No, Sire, since I hasten towards the danger."
"You come fresh from Necker and you naturally speak like him. Where is he?"
"Ready at hand to obey your orders."
"All for the best, for I shall require him," returned Louis with a sigh. "In politics, nobody should sulk. A plan may be good and fail from accidents."
"Sire, your Majesty reasons admirably," said Gilbert, coming to his aid; "but the main thing now is to see into the future clearly; as a physician, I speak bluntly at crises."
"Do you attach much importance to the riot of yesterday?"
"It is not riot, but revolution."
"And would you have me treat with rebels and murderers? Their taking the Bastile by force was an act of rebellion; their slaying of Launay, Losme and Flesselles, murder."
"They should be held apart; those who stormed the Bastile were heroes; those who murdered those gentlemen, butchers."
"You are right, sir," said the King, his lips blanching after a transient blush and perspiration appearing on his brow. "You are indeed a physician, or rather a surgeon for you cut into the tender flesh. But let us return to the subject. You are Dr. Gilbert, who wrote those articles?"
"Sire, I consider it is a great happiness that my name is retained in your memory. It must not have sounded new when spoken a week ago in your hearing. I mean that when I was arrested and put in the Bastile. I always understood that no arrest is made of any importance without the King being advised."
"You in the Bastile?" cried the astonished King.
"Here is the order to lock me up. Put in prison six days ago by the royal order, I was released by the grace of the people at three o'clock this day. Did not your Majesty hear the cannon? they broke the doors down to let me out."
"Ah, I should be glad if I might say the cannon was not fired on royalty at the same time as the Bastile." Thus the King muttered.
"Oh, Sire, do not take a prison as the emblem of the monarchy. Say on the contrary that you are glad the Bastile is taken; for, I trust, no such injustice as I was the victim of will be henceforth committed in the name of the ruler who is kept ignorant of it."
"But there must be some cause for your arrest."
"None that I am aware of, Sire; I was arrested as soon as I landed and imprisoned – that is all there is in it."
"Really, sir," said the monarch mildly, "is there not selfishness in your dilating on your troubles when I want my own dealt with?"
"I only need a word: did your Majesty have anything to do with my arrest?"
"I was unaware of your return to this kingdom."
"I am happy for this reply. I may loudly say that your Majesty is defamed when evil is attributed to you, and cite myself as example."
"You put balm on the wound, Doctor," said the other, smiling.
"Oh, Sire, I will liberally anoint it; and I will cure it, I promise. But you must strongly wish the healing done. But, before pledging yourself too deeply, I should like you to notice the note on the prison record."
The King frowned to read: "At the Queen's request."
"Have you incurred the Queen's disfavor?" he inquired.
"Sire, I am sure that her Majesty knows me less than yourself."
"But you must have committed some misdeed, for people are not put in the Bastile for nothing."
"Humph, several in this situation, have come out."
"If you run over your life – "
"I will do so, out aloud: but do not be uneasy, it will not take long. Since sixteen I have toiled without repose. The pupil of Rousseau, the companion of Joseph Balsamo, the friend of Lafayette and Washington, since I quitted France, I have not a fault to reproach myself with, not a wrongful deed. Since heaven gave me the charge of bodies, I have shed my blood for mankind and staunched its flow in others. Thousands live to bless my labors."
"In America you worked with the innovators and propagate their principles by your writings."
"Yes, Sire, I forgot this claim on the gratitude of monarchs and peoples."
This silenced the King.
"Sire, you know my life now; I have offended and injured nobody, queen or beggar; and I humbly ask your Majesty why I was imprisoned."
"I will speak to the Queen about it. Do you believe that the warrant to arrest and imprison came directly from her Majesty?"
"I do not believe this; I rather presume that her Majesty countersigned it. But when a queen approves, she commands."
"Countess of Charny," read the King on the record sheet; "is it she who wanted you imprisoned? why, what have you done to poor Charny?"
"Before this morning I never heard of any lady of that title."
"Charny," muttered the King, musing, "virtue, goodness, chastity in person!"
"You see, they have put me in prison in the name of the Christian Graces," remarked Gilbert, laughing.
"Oh, I will have this cleared up," said the King, and ringing the bell he bade the servant bring the Countess of Charny into his presence.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE COUNTESS OF CHARNY
Gilbert had retired into a window recess, while the King paced the Bulls-eye Hall, called on account of a round window in the wall, thinking now of public matters, then of his visitor's persistence though nothing but news from Paris ought to have enchained him.
Suddenly the door opened and the lady entered, dressed in the extreme of the showy and fantastic fashion of Marie Antoinette and her court.
She was lovely, this Countess Charny, with a peerless figure and her hand was aristocratic to the utmost with which she played with a small cane.
"She, Andrea Taverney!" muttered Gilbert, involuntarily shrinking behind the curtains.
"My lady, I ask your presence for a little information," began the monarch, seeing nothing of Gilbert's emotion.
"I am ready to satisfy your Majesty." The voice attracted the doctor who came a little forward.
"A week ago, or so, a blank letter under the royal seal was delivered to Minister Necker," went on the King, "for the arrest – "
Gilbert had his eye on the lady, who was pale, feverish and fretful as if bent under the weight of a secret.
"This warrant was applied for by your ladyship and countersigned by the Queen. I say this to refresh your memory. Why do you not say something, countess?"
"It is true, your Majesty," she faltered, in a feverish abstraction, "I wrote for the letter, filled up the blanks, and the Queen backed it."
"Will you please tell me what crime the person committed for whom the measure was taken?" demanded Louis.
"Sire, I may not do that, but I shall say the crime was great."
"Then you should do so to the object," continued the King; "what you refuse the King Louis XVI., you cannot Doctor Gilbert."
He stepped aside to discover the doctor, who opened the curtains and appeared as pale as the staggering lady. She tossed her head backwards as if going to swoon, and only kept her footing by aid of a table. She leaned on it in dull despair, like one whom a snake bite was filling with poison.
"My lady, let me put the question to you which the King addressed," said Gilbert.
Andrea's lips moved but no sound struggled forth.
"What did I do to you, lady, that your order threw me into a hideous dungeon?"
The voice made her leap as if it tore the very soul in her.
Suddenly lowering her cold gaze on him, she replied:
"Sir, I do not know you."
But while she was speaking the mesmerist stared at her with so much fixedness and his glance was so charged with invincible boldness that her own lost lustre under his.
"Countess, you see what this abuse of the royal signature leads to," gently reproved the monarch; "you confess you do not know this gentleman, who is a renowned physician, a learned man, whom you can blame in no way, – "
Andrea darted a withering glance at Gilbert, who bore it calmly and proudly.
"I am saying that it is wicked to visit on the innocent the faults of another. I know you have not a bad heart," he hastened to add, for he was trembling lest he offended his wife's favorite, "and that you would not pursue anybody in your hatred unless he merited it: but you will understand that such mistakes must not be made in the future. Doctor," he went on, turning to the other hearer, "these things are the fault of our period rather than of persons. We are born in corruption and we shall die in it. But we are going to try to make matters better, in which work I expect you to join us, dear doctor."
He stopped, thinking he had said enough to please both parties. If he had spoken thus at a Parliamentary session, he would have been applauded; but his audience of two personal enemies little heeded his conciliatory philosophy.
"But," recommenced Gilbert, "while not knowing me, you knew another Gilbert, whose crime weighs upon his Namesake. It is not my place to question the lady; will your Majesty deign to inquire of her ladyship what this infamous man did?"
"Countess, you cannot refuse so just a request."
"The Queen must know, since she authorized the arrest," said Andrea evasively.
"But it is not enough that the Queen should be convinced," said the sovereign, "it is necessary that the King also should know. The Queen is what she is, but I am the King."
"Sire, the Gilbert for whom the warrant was intended committed a horrible crime sixteen years ago."
"Will your Majesty please inquire what age this Gilbert is to-day?"
"He may be thirty-two," replied Andrea.
"Sire, then the crime was done by a boy, not a man, and does he not deserve some indulgence who has for sixteen years deplored his boyish crime?"
"You seem to know him? has he committed no other crime than this sin of youth?" demanded the King.
"I am less indulgent to him than others, but I can say that he reproaches himself with none other."
"Only with having dipped his pen in poison and written odious libels!"
"Sire, please ask my lady if the real cause of the arrest and committal of this Gilbert was not to enable his enemies – particularly one enemy – to get possession of a certain casket containing papers possibly compromising a great lady of the court?"
Andrea shuddered from head to foot.
"Countess, what casket is this?" inquired the King, who noticed the plain pallor and agitation of the lady.
"No more shifting and subterfuges," cried Gilbert, feeling that he was master of the situation. "Enough falsehoods on both sides. I am Gilbert of the crime, the libels, the casket, and you the real great lady of the court. I take the King as the judge. Accept him and we will tell our judge, under heaven and the King will decide."
"Tell his Majesty what you please, but I shall say nothing more – for I do not know you," responded the haughty lady.
"And the casket? you do not know about that?"
"No more than of you."
But she shook with the effort to make this denial, like a statue rocking at the base.
"Beware," said the doctor, "you cannot have forgotten that I am the pupil of Balsamo-Cagliostro the Magician, who has transmitted to me the power he had over you. Once only, will you answer the question? My casket?" then, lifting his hand, full of threatening, he thundered: "Nature of steel, heart of adamant, bend, melt, shatter under the irresistible pressure of my will! You shall speak, Andrea, and none, King or any powers less than heaven's, shall subtract you from my sway. You shall unfold your mind to the august witness and he shall read what you hid in the black recesses of your soul. Sire, you shall know all through her who refuses to speak. Sleep, Andrea Taverney, Countess of Charny, sleep and speak, for I will it."
Hardly were the words uttered before the woman, stopped short in beginning a scream, held out her arms for support as if struck by blindness. Finding none, she fell into the King's arms and he placed her in a chair.
"Ha!" exclaimed he, trembling like herself, "I have heard about hypnotism but never saw an exhibition. Is not this magnetic sleep to which you oblige her to succumb, doctor?"
"Yes, my lord. Take her hand, and ask her why she had me arrested."
Astounded by the scene, Louis receded but, interested, he did as directed. As Andrea resisted, the magnetizer touched the crown of her head with his palm, saying;
"Speak, I will it."
She sighed and her arms fell; her head sank back and she wept.
"Ugh, I hate you," she hissed.
"Hate away, but speak."
"So, countess," said the King, "you wanted to arrest and imprison the doctor?"
"Yes."
"And the casket?"
"How could I leave that in his hands?" muttered the lady, in a hollow voice.
"Tell me about that," said the King forgetting etiquette and kneeling beside the countess.
"I learnt that Gilbert, who had in sixteen years been twice back in France, purposed another voyage, to settle here. Chief of Police Crosne informed me that he had on a previous return bought an estate at Villers Cotterets: that his farmer enjoyed his trust, and I suspected that the casket with his papers was at his house."
"How could you suspect that?"
"I – I went to Mesmer's and had myself put into a trance, when, my own medium, I wrote down the revelations I wanted."
"Wonderful," exclaimed the Sovereign.
"I went to Chief Crosne and he lent me his best man, one Wolfstep, who brought me the casket."
"Where is it?" cried Gilbert. "No lying – where is my casket?"
"In my rooms at Versailles," said Andrea, trembling nervously and bursting into tears. "Wolfstep is waiting for me here by appointment since eleven."
Twelve was striking.
"Where is he?"
"Standing in the waiting room, leaning on the mantleshelf. The casket is on the table before him. Oh, haste! Count Charny, who was not to return before to-morrow, will be back to-night on account of the events. He is at Sevres now. Get Wolfstep away for fear my lord will see him."
"Your Majesty hears? This casket belongs to me. Will the King please order it to be returned to me?"
"Instantly."
Placing a screen before the countess, Louis called the officer on duty and gave him orders what to do.
This curiosity of a monarch whose throne was being undermined to a purely physical problem, would make those smile who expected him to be engrossed with politics.
But he concentrated himself on this private speculation and returned to see the mesmerizer and the medium.
In the mesmeric slumber Andrea's wondrous beauty was displayed in its entire splendor. She who had in her youth enthralled Louis XV. now enchanted his successor.
Gilbert turned his head away, sighing: he could not resist the prompting to give his adored this degree of supernal beauty; and now more unhappy than Pygmalion, for he knew how insensible was the lovely statue, he was frightened by his own work.
Gilbert knew how to own his ignorance, like all superior men. He knew what he could do, but not the wherefore.
"Where did you study the art? under Mesmer?" asked the King.
"I saw the most astonishing phenomena ten years before that German came into France. My master was a more amazing man, superior to any you can name, for I have seen him execute surgical operations of incredible daring. No science was unknown to him. But I ought not to utter his name before your Majesty."
"I should like to hear it, though it was Satan's itself."
"My lord, you honor me almost with a friend's confidence in speaking thus. My master was Baron Balsamo, afterwards Count Cagliostro."
"That charlatan!" exclaimed Louis, blushing, for he could not help remembering the plot of the Diamond's Necklace, in which Cagliostro had figured as friend of Cardinal Rohan and consequently enemy of Marie Antoinette. The King believed his wife but the world thought that she had participated in the fraud on the court jewelers. We have related the story according to our lights in the volume of this series entitled "The Queen's Necklace."
"Charlatan?" repeated Gilbert warmly. "You are right. The name comes from the Italian word meaning to patter, to talk freely – and no one was more ready than Cagliostro to talk instructively where the seed would fall on fruitful ground."
"This Cagliostro whom you praise was a great enemy of kings," observed Louis.
"Rather say of queen's," retorted Gilbert.
"In the trial of Prince Rohan, his conduct was equivocal."
"Sire, then as ever he fulfilled his mission to mankind. He may have acted mistakenly then. But I studied under the physician and philosopher, not under the politician."
"Well, well," said the King, suffering under the wound to his person and his pride; "we are forgetting the countess who is in pain."
"I will awaken her presently, for here is the casket coming."
In fact the messenger was arriving with the small box which he handed to the King. He nodded his satisfaction and the officer went out.
"Sire, it is my casket: but I would remark that it contains papers damning to the countess and – "
"Carry it away unopened, sir," said the monarch coldly. "Do not awaken the lady here, I detest shrieks, groans, noise."
"She will awaken wherever you suggest her removal."
"In the Queen's apartments will be best."
"How long will it take?"
"Ten minutes."
"Awaken in fifteen minutes," ordered the mesmerizer to the lady.
Two guardsmen entered and carried out the countess, seated on the chair.
"My lady fainted here," said the King to the officer, "bear her to the Queen."
"What can I do for you, Dr. Gilbert?" he asked when they were alone.
"I wish to be honorary house physician to your Majesty. It is a position which will do nobody umbrage and is more of trust than emolument and lustre."
"Granted! Good-by, Dr. Gilbert. Remind me affectionately to Necker. Bring me supper," he added, for nothing could make the King forget a meal.
