CHAPTER IV.
FATALITY.
Gilbert followed his guide half-way up the slope where stood a handsomehouse. The foregoer pulled out a key and opened a side door intended forthe master to go in or come out without the servants knowing when he didso. He left the door ajar to signify that the companion of the journeywas to use it. Gilbert entered and shut the door gently but it silentlyclosed itself tightly with a pneumatic arrangement at the hinges whichseemed the work of magic. Such an appliance would have been the delightof Master Gamain.
Through luxuriously fitted passages Gilbert finally came into a drawingroom, hung with Indian satin tapestry; a fantastic Oriental bird heldthe lustre in its beak and it emitted a light which Gilbert knew waselectricity, though its application thus would have been a puzzle toothers than this specialist in advanced science. The lights representedlily-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 secretdoor behind him from a dressing room.
An instant had sufficed for him to wash off the stain and thepencillings and to give his black hair, without any grey, a stylishturn. He had also changed his clothes. Instead of the workman was anelegant nobleman. His embroidered coat and his hands glittering withrings in the Italian style, strongly contrasted with Gilbert's Americanblack coat and his plain gold ring, a keepsake from General Washington.
Count Cagliostro advanced with a smiling open face and held out his handto 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 atall events, that you are the master at present and I not fit to undoyour shoestrings."
"I thank you for the compliment," responded the doctor, "but how do youknow I have made such progress, granting I have progressed?"
"Do you believe you are one of those men whose movement is not markedalthough not seen? Since eight years I have not set eyes on you but Ihave had a daily report of what you did. Do you doubt I havedouble-sight?"
"You know I am a mathematician."
"You mean, incredulous? Let me show you, then. In the first place youreturned to France on family matters; they do not concern me, andconsequently----"
"Nay, dear master, go on," interposed the other.
"Well, you came to have your son Sebastian educated in a boarding schoolnot far from Paris in quiet, and to settle business affairs with yourfarmer, an honest fellow whom you are now retaining in town against hiswishes. 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 Francebecause political questions drew you, like many others; besides you hadpublished 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 theapproval of the King than perhaps you would be of that of my predecessorin 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 thedescendant of St. Louis, Henry Fourth and Louis XIV. Unfortunately alittle matter has kept alive which you did not bear in mind, as a sequelto 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 littleaffair concerned Mdlle. Andrea Taverney, become Countess Charny, whichshe deserves, to save the Queen's reputation, compromised by the Kingcoming upon her and Count Charny by surprise.
"As the Queen could refuse nothing to this saver, she got a blankwarrant and committal to prison for you, so that you were arrested onthe road out of Havre and taken to the Bastile. There you would be tothis day, dear doctor, if the people, prepared for a rising by a personwhom you may divine, had not in a day knocked the old building lowerthan the gutter. I was not sorry, for I had a taste of the fare myselfbefore I was banished the Kingdom. This morning early, you contributedto the rescue of the Royal Family, by running to arouse Lafayette, whowas 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 whoseemed threatened--though, between ourselves, she detests you. Is thisright? Have I forgotten anything of note, such as a hypnotic seancebefore the King when Countess Charny was made to disclose how she hadled to your imprisonment and how she obtained a certain casket of yourpapers by one Wolfstep, a police agent? Tell me and if I have omittedany point, I am ready to do penance for it."
Gilbert stood stupefied before this extraordinary man, who knew so wellto prepare his march that his hearer was inclined to attribute to himthe faculty of comprising heavenly as well as mundane things, and toread in the heart of man.
"Yes, it is thus and you are still the magician, the fortune-teller, thethaumaturgist, Cagliostro!"
The wonder-worker smiled with satisfaction, for it was evident that hewas proud of having worked on Gilbert such an impression as the latter'svisage revealed.
"And now," continued Gilbert, "as I love you as much as you do me, dearmaster, and my desire to learn what you have been doing is equal toyours and how I have fared, will you kindly tell me, if I am notintruding too far, in what part of the globe you have exhibited yourgenius and practiced your power?"
"Oh, I?" said Cagliostro, smiling, "like yourself I have been rubbingshoulders with kings, but with another aim. You go up to them to upholdthem; I to knock them over. You try to manufacture a constitutionalmonarch and will not succeed; I, to make emperors, kings and princesdemocratic, 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 byVoltaire, Alembert and Diderot, admirable Mecaenases, sublime contemnersof the gods, and also by the example of Frederick the Great, whom wehave the misfortune to lose. But you know we are all mortal, except theCount of St. Germain and myself.
"So long as the Queen is fair, my dear Gilbert, and she can recruitsoldiers to fight among themselves, kings who fret to push over throneshave 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 oftheir cells, and sends his sister prince of nuns trying on the latestfashions in hats and monks having their hair curled. We have the King ofDenmark, who began by killing his doctor Struensee, and who, atseventeen, the precocious philosopher, said: 'Voltaire made a man of mefor he taught me to think.' We have the Empress Catherine, who made suchgiant strides in philosophy that--while she dismembered Poland, Voltairewrote to her: 'Diderot, Alembert and myself are raising altars to you.We have the Queen of Sweden and many princes in the Empire andthroughout Germany.'"
"You have nothing left you but to convert the Pope, my dear master, andI hope you will, as nothing is beyond you."
"That will be a hard task. I have just slipped out of his claws. I waslocked 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, beeasy: it will come in its day: the Papacy will have its revolutionarydays, and Versailles and the Vatican can shake hands in equality at thatera."
"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 theTiber like a new Icarus?"
"It would be the more difficult as I was lodged for the farther securityin 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--we
ll, theArchitect of the Universe granted that he should die on the morrow ofhis refusing to open the prison doors. He died very suddenly! and he hadto be replaced."
"The new hand was not unbribable?"
"The day of his taking up his office, as he brought me the soup, hesaid: 'Eat heartily and get your strength, for we have to do some stifftraveling this night.' By George, the good fellow told no lie. That samenight 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 Ileft behind; and a pistol was fired in his face; it was laid by his sideand the statement was given out that in despair at having no escape andwith the useless weapon which I had procured none could tell how, I hadblown out my brains. It follows that I am officially pronounced dead andburied; the jailer being interred in my name. It will be useless, mydear Gilbert, my saying that I am alive, for the certificate of my deathand burial will be produced to prove that I am no more. But they willnot have to do anything of the sort as it suits me to be thought passedaway at this date. I have made a dive into the sombre river, as thepoets 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 thesort of Cardinal Prince Rohan's, you know. But I am not lending moneymerely 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 aworkman? do not trouble about that; it is merely one of my disguises;you know my ideas about life being one long masquerade where all aremore 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 theInvisibles is in St. Claude Street--come to me at any hour, whether I amat home or not--I showed you the little, side door; push this springso--" he showed him the trick--"and you will find about a millionready."
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 toknow that with twenty thousand a-year, I am richer than the King. But doyou not fear being disquieted in Paris?"
"On account of the matter of the Queen's Necklace for which I was forbidthe realm? Go to! they dare not. In the present ferment of minds I haveonly to speak one word to evoke a riot: you forget that I am friendlywith 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--founda republic."
"France has not a republican turn of mind," said the other, shaking hishead.
"We shall teach her that way, that is all. It has taken fifteen hundredyears to rule with a monarchy; in one hundred the Republic will befounded to endure--why not as long?"
"The King will resist; the nobility fly to arms; and then what will youdo?"
"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 willstay you."
"You are mad, Gilbert; you do not understand the mission of France inEurope. It is the brain of the Old World, and must think freely so thatthe world will be the happier for its thought. Do you know whatoverthrew 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 Bastileand it stood. But the mad idea struck an insane monarch one day to lockup thought--the spirit which must be free, and requires space untoimmensity, and crack! it burst the walls and the mob surged in at thebreach."
"True enough," mused the younger man.
"Twenty-six years ago, Voltaire wrote to Chauvelin: 'All that I see issowing Revolution round us, and it will inevitably come though I shallnot have the bliss to see the harvest. The French are sometimes slow tocome into the battle but they get there before the fight is over. Lightis so spread from one to another, that it will burst forth in a masssoon, and then there will be a fine explosion. The young men are happyfor they will behold splendors. What do you say about the flare-ups ofyesterday 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 ofmedicine 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 forquitting life, he is inventing a very ingenious machine which he reckonsto present to his fellow countrymen, to put fifty or eighty persons todeath in an hour. Well, my dear Gilbert, do you believe that so human aphilanthropist, so distinguished a physician as Dr. Louis Guillotin,would busy himself about such an instrument unless he felt the want ofit?
"I know that this is not so much a novelty as a machine forgotten, as aproof of which I showed it as an image in a glass of water to MarieAntoinette. She was then espoused to the Dauphin of France, now itssovereign, and it was down at Taverney where you were a dependent. Theold 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 amazingresemblance by the bye, is the Queen of France. Well I repeat that thefuture Queen was shown by me this instrument to which I shall suggest noname, 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. Itwas in limbo at the era, but you shall see it at work presently if it besuccessful; and then you must be blind if you do not spy the hand ofheaven in it all, it being foreseen that the time would come when theheadsman would have his hands too full and that a new method must bedevised."
"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 whorose and here in society which falls. In our Old World, all marchtowards the grave, nobility and royalty, and this grave is a bottomlesspit."
"Oh, I abandon the nobility to you, count, or rather it threw itselfaway in the night of the fourth of August; but the royalty must be savedas the national palladium."
"Big words, my dear Gilbert: but did the palladium save Troy? Do youbelieve 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 inand out till they are rundown."
"My dear sorcerer," said Gilbert, rising and taking up his hat, "youfrighten 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 ifI am not the man to expose myself to a hundred sorrows to aid you toavoid one--well, take this piece of advice: let the King depart, quitFrance, while it is yet time. In a year, in six months, in three, itwill be too late."
"Count, do you counsel a soldier to leave his post because there isdanger in his staying?"
"If the soldier were so surrounded, engirt, and disarmed that he couldnot defend himself: if, above
all, his life exposed meant that of half amillion 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 toolate. Do not wait till the morrow but tell him to-day. Do not wait tillthe 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 inFrance, and I shall stay by him. Farewell, count: we shall meet in theaction: perhaps we shall sleep side by side on the battlefield."
"Come, come, it is written that man shall not elude his doom howeverkeen-witted he may be," muttered the magician: "I sought you out to tellyou what I said, and you have heard it. Like Cassandra's prediction itis useless, but remember that Cassandra was correct. Fare thee well!"
"Speak frankly, count," said Gilbert, stopping on the threshold to gazefixedly at the speaker, "do you here, as in America, pretend to makefolk believe that you can read the future?"
"As surely, Gilbert," returned the self-asserted undying one, "as youcan read the pathway of the stars, though the mass of mankind believethey 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 heartwhich he could not repress, albeit he whispered to himself that it wasabsurd to take this quackering as serious.
The door opened. A man of lofty carriage, tall in stature, and withstrong-will impressed on his lineaments, appeared on the sill and cast aswift 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 onthe doctor, "this is one of my friends, Dr. Gilbert. Gilbert, you seeMarquis Favras, one of my clients. Marquis, will you kindly step into mysitting-room," continued he as the two saluted each other, "and wait fora few seconds when I shall be with you."
"Well?" queried Gilbert as the marquis bowed again and went into theparlor.
"You wished to know in what way this gentleman would die?" saidCagliostro 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 theMarquis of Favras is executed." He conducted his visitor to the streetdoor, and said: "When you wish to call on me without being seen and tosee 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 tolive."
He left Gilbert astounded by his assurance, which staggered him butcould not vanquish his incredulity.
The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty Page 4