The Hero of the People 4 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 4Fatality
18
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 4
Fatality
WilliamsEnglish
Gilbert followed his guide half-way up the slope where stood a handsome house. The foregoer pulled out a key and opened a side door intended for the master to go in or come out without the servants knowing when he did so. He left the door ajar to signify that the companion of the journey was to use it. Gilbert entered and shut the door gently but it silently closed itself tightly with a pneumatic arrangement at the hinges which seemed the work of magic. Such an appliance would have been the delight of Master Gamain.
Through luxuriously fitted passages Gilbert finally came into a drawing room, hung with Indian satin tapestry; a fantastic Oriental bird held the lustre in its beak and it emitted a light which Gilbert knew was electricity, though its application thus would have been a puzzle to others than this specialist in advanced science. The lights represented lily-blooms, which again was an anticipation of modern illuminators.
One picture alone adorned this room but it was Raphael’s Madonna.
Gilbert was admiring this masterpiece when the host entered by a secret door behind him from a dressing room.
An instant had sufficed for him to wash off the stain and the pencillings and to give his black hair, without any grey, a stylish turn. He had also changed his clothes. Instead of the workman was an elegant nobleman. His embroidered coat and his hands glittering with rings in the Italian style, strongly contrasted with Gilbert’s American black coat and his plain gold ring, a keepsake from General Washington.
Count Cagliostro advanced with a smiling open face and held out his hand to Gilbert.
“Dear Master,” cried the latter rushing to him.
“Stop a bit,” interrupted the other, laughing: “since we have parted, my dear Gilbert, you have made such progress in revolutionary methods at all events, that you are the master at present and I not fit to undo your shoestrings.”
“I thank you for the compliment,” responded the doctor, “but how do you know I have made such progress, granting I have progressed?”
“Do you believe you are one of those men whose movement is not marked although not seen? Since eight years I have not set eyes on you but I have had a daily report of what you did. Do you doubt I have double-sight?”
“You know I am a mathematician.”
“You mean, incredulous? Let me show you, then. In the first place you returned to France on family matters; they do not concern me, and consequently----“
“Nay, dear master, go on,” interposed the other.
“Well, you came to have your son Sebastian educated in a boarding school not far from Paris in quiet, and to settle business affairs with your farmer, an honest fellow whom you are now retaining in town against his wishes. For a thousand reasons he wants to be home beside his wife.”
“Really, master, you are prodigious!”
“Wait for something stronger. The second time you returned to France because political questions drew you, like many others; besides you had published several political treatises which you sent to King Louis XVI., and as there is much of the Old Man in you--you are prouder for the approval of the King than perhaps you would be of that of my predecessor in your training, Rousseau--who would be higher than a king this day, had he lived--you yearn to learn what is thought of Dr. Gilbert by the descendant of St. Louis, Henry Fourth and Louis XIV. Unfortunately a little matter has kept alive which you did not bear in mind, as a sequel to which I picked you up in a cave in the Azores, where my yacht put in. I restored you from the effects of a bullet in your breast. This little affair concerned Mdlle. Andrea Taverney, become Countess Charny, which she deserves, to save the Queen’s reputation, compromised by the King coming upon her and Count Charny by surprise.
“As the Queen could refuse nothing to this saver, she got a blank warrant and committal to prison for you, so that you were arrested on the road out of Havre and taken to the Bastile. There you would be to this day, dear doctor, if the people, prepared for a rising by a person whom you may divine, had not in a day knocked the old building lower than the gutter. I was not sorry, for I had a taste of the fare myself before I was banished the Kingdom. This morning early, you contributed to the rescue of the Royal Family, by running to arouse Lafayette, who was sleeping the sleep of the virtuous; and just now, when you saw me, you were about to make a breastwork of your body for the Queen who seemed threatened--though, between ourselves, she detests you. Is this right? Have I forgotten anything of note, such as a hypnotic seance before the King when Countess Charny was made to disclose how she had led to your imprisonment and how she obtained a certain casket of your papers by one Wolfstep, a police agent? Tell me and if I have omitted any point, I am ready to do penance for it.”
Gilbert stood stupefied before this extraordinary man, who knew so well to prepare his march that his hearer was inclined to attribute to him the faculty of comprising heavenly as well as mundane things, and to read in the heart of man.
“Yes, it is thus and you are still the magician, the fortune-teller, the thaumaturgist, Cagliostro!”
The wonder-worker smiled with satisfaction, for it was evident that he was proud of having worked on Gilbert such an impression as the latter’s visage revealed.
“And now,” continued Gilbert, “as I love you as much as you do me, dear master, and my desire to learn what you have been doing is equal to yours and how I have fared, will you kindly tell me, if I am not intruding too far, in what part of the globe you have exhibited your genius and practiced your power?”
“Oh, I?” said Cagliostro, smiling, “like yourself I have been rubbing shoulders with kings, but with another aim. You go up to them to uphold them; I to knock them over. You try to manufacture a constitutional monarch and will not succeed; I, to make emperors, kings and princes democratic, and I am coming on.”
“Are you really?” queried Gilbert with an air of doubt.
“Decidedly. It must be allowed that they were prepared for me by Voltaire, Alembert and Diderot, admirable Mecaenases, sublime contemners of the gods, and also by the example of Frederick the Great, whom we have the misfortune to lose. But you know we are all mortal, except the Count of St. Germain and myself.
“So long as the Queen is fair, my dear Gilbert, and she can recruit soldiers to fight among themselves, kings who fret to push over thrones have never thought of hurling over the altar. But we have her brother, Kaiser Joseph II. who suppresses three-fourths of the monasteries, seizes ecclesiastical property, drives even the Camelite nuns out of their cells, and sends his sister prince of nuns trying on the latest fashions in hats and monks having their hair curled. We have the King of Denmark, who began by killing his doctor Struensee, and who, at seventeen, the precocious philosopher, said: ‘Voltaire made a man of me for he taught me to think.’ We have the Empress Catherine, who made such giant strides in philosophy that--while she dismembered Poland, Voltaire wrote to her: ‘Diderot, Alembert and myself are raising altars to you. We have the Queen of Sweden and many princes in the Empire and throughout Germany.'”
“You have nothing left you but to convert the Pope, my dear master, and I hope you will, as nothing is beyond you.”
“That will be a hard task. I have just slipped out of his claws. I was locked up in Castle Sanangelo as you were in the Bastile.”
“You don’t say so? did the Romans upset the castle as the people of St. Antoine Ward overthrew the Bastile?”
“No, my dear doctor, the Romans are a century behind that point. But, be easy: it will come in its day: the Papacy will have its revolutionary days, and Versailles and the Vatican can shake hands in equality at that era.”
“I thought that nobody came alive out of Castle Sanangelo?”
“Pooh! what about Benvenuto Cellini, the sculptor?”
“You had not wings such as he made, had you, and did you flit over the Tiber like a new Icarus?”
“It would be the more difficult as I was lodged for the farther security in the blackest dungeon of the keep. But I did get out, as you see.”
“Bribed the jailor with gold?”
“I was out of luck, for my turnkey was incorruptible. But, fortunately, he was not immortal. Chance--the believers say, Providence--well, the Architect of the Universe granted that he should die on the morrow of his refusing to open the prison doors. He died very suddenly! and he had to be replaced.”
“The new hand was not unbribable?”
“The day of his taking up his office, as he brought me the soup, he said: ‘Eat heartily and get your strength, for we have to do some stiff traveling this night.’ By George, the good fellow told no lie. That same night we rode three horses out dead, and covered a hundred miles.”
“What did the government say when your disappearance was known?”
“Nothing. The dead and still-warm other jailer was clad in the clothes I left behind; and a pistol was fired in his face; it was laid by his side and the statement was given out that in despair at having no escape and with the useless weapon which I had procured none could tell how, I had blown out my brains. It follows that I am officially pronounced dead and buried; the jailer being interred in my name. It will be useless, my dear Gilbert, my saying that I am alive, for the certificate of my death and burial will be produced to prove that I am no more. But they will not have to do anything of the sort as it suits me to be thought passed away at this date. I have made a dive into the sombre river, as the poets say, but I have come up under another name. I am now Baron Zanone, a Genoese banker. I discount the paper of princes--good paper in the sort of Cardinal Prince Rohan’s, you know. But I am not lending money merely for the interest. By the way, if you need cash, my dear Gilbert, say so? You know that my purse, like my heart, is always at your call.”
“I thank you.”
“Ah, you think to incommode me, because you met me in my dress as a workman? do not trouble about that; it is merely one of my disguises; you know my ideas about life being one long masquerade where all are more or less masked. In any case, my dear boy, if ever you want money, out of my private cash box here--for the grand cash box of the Invisibles is in St. Claude Street--come to me at any hour, whether I am at home or not--I showed you the little, side door; push this spring so--“ he showed him the trick--“and you will find about a million ready.”
The round top of the desk opened of itself on the spring being pressed, and displayed a heap of gold coin and bundles of banknotes.
“You are in truth a wonderful man!” exclaimed Gilbert; “but you ought to know that with twenty thousand a-year, I am richer than the King. But do you not fear being disquieted in Paris?”
“On account of the matter of the Queen’s Necklace for which I was forbid the realm? Go to! they dare not. In the present ferment of minds I have only to speak one word to evoke a riot: you forget that I am friendly with all the popular leaders--Lafayette, Necker, Mirabeau and yourself.”
“What have you come to do at Paris?”
“Who knows? perhaps what you went over to the United States to do--found a republic.”
“France has not a republican turn of mind,” said the other, shaking his head.
“We shall teach her that way, that is all. It has taken fifteen hundred years to rule with a monarchy; in one hundred the Republic will be founded to endure--why not as long?”
“The King will resist; the nobility fly to arms; and then what will you do?”
“We will make a revolution before we have the Republic.”
“It will be awful to do that, Joseph,” said Gilbert, hanging his head.
“Awful indeed, if we meet many such as you on the road.”
“I am not strong, but honest,” said the doctor.
“That is worse: so I want to bring you over.”
“I am convinced--not that I shall prevent you in your work, but will stay you.”
“You are mad, Gilbert; you do not understand the mission of France in Europe. It is the brain of the Old World, and must think freely so that the world will be the happier for its thought. Do you know what overthrew the Bastile?”
“The people.”
“No: public opinion. You are taking the effect for the cause.”
“For five hundred years they have been imprisoning nobles in the Bastile and it stood. But the mad idea struck an insane monarch one day to lock up thought--the spirit which must be free, and requires space unto immensity, and crack! it burst the walls and the mob surged in at the breach.”
“True enough,” mused the younger man.
“Twenty-six years ago, Voltaire wrote to Chauvelin: ‘All that I see is sowing Revolution round us, and it will inevitably come though I shall not have the bliss to see the harvest. The French are sometimes slow to come into the battle but they get there before the fight is over. Light is so spread from one to another, that it will burst forth in a mass soon, and then there will be a fine explosion. The young men are happy for they will behold splendors. What do you say about the flare-ups of yesterday and what is going on to-day?'”
“Terrible!”
“And what you have beheld in the way of events?”
“Dreadful!”
“We are only at the beginning.”
“Prophet of evil!”
“For instance, I was at the house of a man of merit, a doctor of medicine and a philanthropist: what do you think he was busy over?”
“Seeking the remedy for some great disease.”
“You have it. He is trying to cure, not death, but life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Leaving epigrams aside, I mean that there not being means enough for quitting life, he is inventing a very ingenious machine which he reckons to present to his fellow countrymen, to put fifty or eighty persons to death in an hour. Well, my dear Gilbert, do you believe that so human a philanthropist, so distinguished a physician as Dr. Louis Guillotin, would busy himself about such an instrument unless he felt the want of it?
“I know that this is not so much a novelty as a machine forgotten, as a proof of which I showed it as an image in a glass of water to Marie Antoinette. She was then espoused to the Dauphin of France, now its sovereign, and it was down at Taverney where you were a dependent. The old baron was alive then, and the lady of the manor was Mdlle. Andrea.”
“Ah,” sighed Gilbert at this reminder of his boyhood.
“But at the first you had eyes only for the servant-maid, Nicole, afterwards Olive Legay, as the Dauphiness, to whom she bore an amazing resemblance by the bye, is the Queen of France. Well I repeat that the future Queen was shown by me this instrument to which I shall suggest no name, though the olden ones are the Maiden, the Widow and the Mannaya in my country. The thing so alarmed her that she swooned dead away. It was in limbo at the era, but you shall see it at work presently if it be successful; and then you must be blind if you do not spy the hand of heaven in it all, it being foreseen that the time would come when the headsman would have his hands too full and that a new method must be devised.”
“Count, your remarks were more consoling when we were in America.”
“I should rather think they were! I was in the midst of a people who rose and here in society which falls. In our Old World, all march towards the grave, nobility and royalty, and this grave is a bottomless pit.”
“Oh, I abandon the nobility to you, count, or rather it threw itself away in the night of the fourth of August; but the royalty must be saved as the national palladium.”
“Big words, my dear Gilbert: but did the palladium save Troy? Do you believe it will be easy to save the realm with such a king?”
“But in short he is the descendant of a grand race.”
“Eagles that have degenerated into parrots. They have been marrying in and out till they are rundown.”
“My dear sorcerer,” said Gilbert, rising and taking up his hat, “you frighten me so that I must haste and take my place by the King.”
Cagliostro stopped him in making some steps towards the door.
“Mark me, Gilbert,” he said, “you know whether I love you or not and if I am not the man to expose myself to a hundred sorrows to aid you to avoid one--well, take this piece of advice: let the King depart, quit France, while it is yet time. In a year, in six months, in three, it will be too late.”
“Count, do you counsel a soldier to leave his post because there is danger in his staying?”
“If the soldier were so surrounded, engirt, and disarmed that he could not defend himself: if, above all, his life exposed meant that of half a million of men--yes, I should bid him flee. And you yourself, Gilbert, you shall tell him so. The King will listen to you unless it is all too late. Do not wait till the morrow but tell him to-day. Do not wait till the afternoon but tell him in an hour.”
“Count, you know that I am of the fatalist school. Come what come may! so long as I shall have any hold on the King it will be to retain him in France, and I shall stay by him. Farewell, count: we shall meet in the action: perhaps we shall sleep side by side on the battlefield.”
“Come, come, it is written that man shall not elude his doom however keen-witted he may be,” muttered the magician: “I sought you out to tell you what I said, and you have heard it. Like Cassandra’s prediction it is useless, but remember that Cassandra was correct. Fare thee well!”
“Speak frankly, count,” said Gilbert, stopping on the threshold to gaze fixedly at the speaker, “do you here, as in America, pretend to make folk believe that you can read the future?”
“As surely, Gilbert,” returned the self-asserted undying one, “as you can read the pathway of the stars, though the mass of mankind believe they are fixed or wandering at hazard.”
“Well, then--someone knocks at your door.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me his fate: when he shall die and how?”
“Be it so,” rejoined the sorcerer, “let us go and open the door to him.”
Gilbert proceed towards the corridor end, with a beating of the heart which he could not repress, albeit he whispered to himself that it was absurd to take this quackering as serious.
The door opened. A man of lofty carriage, tall in stature, and with strong-will impressed on his lineaments, appeared on the sill and cast a swift glance on Dr. Gilbert not exempt from uneasiness.
“Good day, marquis,” said Cagliostro.
“How do you do, baron?” responded the other.
“Marquis,” went on the host as he saw the caller’s gaze still settled on the doctor, “this is one of my friends, Dr. Gilbert. Gilbert, you see Marquis Favras, one of my clients. Marquis, will you kindly step into my sitting-room,” continued he as the two saluted each other, “and wait for a few seconds when I shall be with you.”
“Well?” queried Gilbert as the marquis bowed again and went into the parlor.
“You wished to know in what way this gentleman would die?” said Cagliostro with an odd smile; “have you ever seen a nobleman hanged?”
“Noblemen are privileged not to die by hanging.”
“Then it will be the more curious sight; be on the Strand when the Marquis of Favras is executed.” He conducted his visitor to the street door, and said: “When you wish to call on me without being seen and to see none but me, push this knob up and to the left, so--now, farewell--excuse me--I must not make those wait who have not long to live.”
He left Gilbert astounded by his assurance, which staggered him but could not vanquish his incredulity.
