Ange Pitou (Volume 1)

by Alexandre Dumas

  "By this you mean to imply, that the second or third time you could tell me not only from what I am suffering, but also what are my thoughts?"

  "Perhaps so, Madame," coldly replied Gilbert.

  The queen appeared to tremble with anger: her words seemed to be hanging on her lips, ready to burst forth in burning torrents.

  She, however, restrained herself.

  "I must believe you," said she,—"you who are a learned man."

  And she emphasized these last words with so much contempt, that the eye of Gilbert appeared to kindle, in its turn, with the fire of anger.

  But a struggle of a few seconds' duration sufficed to this man to give him a complete victory.

  Accordingly, with a calm brow and an unembarrassed expression he almost immediately rejoined:—

  "It is too kind of your Majesty to give me the title of a learned man without having received any proofs of my knowledge."

  The queen bit her lip.

  "You must understand that I do not know if you are a scientific man," she replied; "but I have heard it said, and I repeat what everybody says."

  "Well, then," said Gilbert, respectfully, and bowing still lower than he had done hitherto, "a superior mind, like that of your Majesty, must not blindly repeat what is said by the vulgar."

  "Do you mean the people?" said the queen, insolently.

  "The vulgar, Madame," repeated Gilbert, with a firmness which made the blood thrill in the queen's veins, and gave rise to emotions which were as painful to her as they had hitherto been unknown.

  "In fine," answered she, "let us not discuss that point. You are said to be learned; that is all that is essential. Where have you studied?"

  "Everywhere, Madame."

  "That is not an answer."

  "Nowhere, then."

  "I prefer that answer. Have you studied nowhere?"

  As it may please you, Madame," replied the doctor, bowing, "and yet it is less exact than to say everywhere."

  "Come, answer me, then!" exclaimed the queen, becoming exasperated; "and above all, for Heaven's sake, Monsieur Gilbert, spare me such phrases."

  Then, as if speaking to herself:—

  "Everywhere! everywhere! what does that mean It is the language of a charlatan, a quack, of a physician who practises in the public squares! Do you mean to overawe me by your sonorous syllables?"

  She stepped forward with ardent eyes and quivering lips.

  "Everywhere! Mention some place; come, explain your meaning, Monsieur Gilbert."

  "I said everywhere," answered Gilbert, coldly, "because in fact I have studied everywhere, Madame,—in the hut and in the palace, in cities and in the desert, upon our own species and upon animals, upon myself and upon others, in a manner suitable to one who loves knowledge, and studies it where it is to be found, that is to say, everywhere."

  The queen, overcome, cast a terrible glance at Gilbert, while he, on his part, was eying her with terrible perseverance. She became convulsively agitated, and turning round, upset a small stand, upon which her chocolate had been served in a cup of Sèvres porcelain. Gilbert saw the table fall, saw the broken cup, but did not move a finger.

  The color mounted to the cheeks of Marie Antoinette; she raised her cold, moist hand to her burning temples, but did not dare to raise her eyes again to look at Gilbert.

  But her features assumed a more contemptuous, more insolent expression than before.

  "Then, under what great master did you study?" continued the queen, again taking up the conversation at the point where she had left it off.

  "I hardly know how to answer your Majesty, without running the risk of again wounding you."

  The queen perceived the advantage that Gilbert had given her, and threw herself upon it like a lioness upon her prey.

  "Wound me—you wound me—you!" exclaimed she. "Oh, sir, what are you saying there? You wound a queen! You are mistaken, sir, I can affirm to you. Ah, Doctor Gilbert, you have not studied the French language in as good schools as you have studied medicine. People of my station are not to be wounded, Doctor Gilbert. You may weary them, that is all."

  Gilbert bowed, and made a step towards the door; but it was not possible for the queen to discover in his countenance the least show of anger, the least sign of impatience.

  The queen, on the contrary, was stamping her feet with rage; she sprang towards Gilbert, as if to prevent him from leaving the room.

  He understood her.

  "Pardon me, Madame," said he. "It is true I committed the unpardonable error to forget that, as a physician, I was called to see a patient. Forgive me, Madame; hereafter I shall remember it."

  He reflected for a moment.

  "Your Majesty," continued he, "is rapidly approaching a nervous crisis. I will venture to ask you not to give way to it; for in a short time it would be beyond your power to control it. At this moment your pulse must be imperceptible, the blood is rushing to the heart; your Majesty is suffering, your Majesty is almost suffocating, and perhaps it would be prudent for you to summon one of your ladies-in-waiting."

  The queen took a turn round the room, and seating herself:—

  "Is your name Gilbert?" asked she.

  "Yes, Gilbert, Madame."

  "Strange! I remember an incident of my youth, the strange nature of which would doubtless wound you much, were I to relate it to you. But it matters not; for if hurt, you will soon cure yourself,—you, who are no less a philosopher than a learned physician."

  And the queen smiled ironically.

  "Precisely so, Madame," said Gilbert; "you may smile, and little by little subdue your nervousness by irony. It is one of the most beautiful prerogatives of the intelligent will to be able thus to control itself. Subdue it, Madame, subdue it; but, however, without making a too violent effort."

  This prescription of the physician was given with so much suavity and such natural good-humor, that the queen, while feeling the bitter irony contained in his words, could not take offence at what Gilbert bad said to her.

  She merely returned to the charge, recommencing her attack where she had discontinued it.

  "This incident of which I spoke," continued she, "is the following."

  Gilbert bowed, as a sign that he was listening.

  The queen made an effort, and fixed her gaze upon him.

  "I was the dauphiness at that time, and I inhabited Trianon. There was in the gardens a little dark-looking, dirty boy, covered with mud, a crabbed boy, a sort of sour Jean Jacques, who weeded, dug, and picked off the caterpillars with his little crooked fingers. His name was Gilbert."

  "It was myself, Madame," said Gilbert, phlegmatically.

  "You!" said Marie Antoinette, with an expression of hatred. "I was, then, right! but you are not, then, a learned man?"

  "I think that, as your Majesty's memory is so good, you must also remember dates," rejoined Gilbert. "It was in 1772, if I am not mistaken, that the little gardener's boy, of whom your Majesty speaks, weeded the flower-beds, of Trianon to earn his bread. We are now in 1789. It is therefore seventeen years, Madame, since the events to which you allude took place. It is more time than is necessary to metamorphose a savage into a learned man; the soul and the mind operate quickly in certain positions, like plants and flowers, which grow rapidly in hothouses. Revolutions, Madame, are the hotbeds of the mind. Your Majesty looks at me, and, notwithstanding the perspicacity of your scrutiny, you do not perceive that the boy of sixteen has become a man of thirty-three; you are therefore wrong to wonder that the ignorant, the ingenuous little Gilbert, should, after having witnessed these revolutions, have become a learned man and a philosopher."

  "Ignorant! be it so; but ingenuous,—ingenuous, did you say" furiously cried the queen. "I think you called that little Gilbert ingenuous."

  "If I am mistaken, Madame, or if I praised this little boy for a quality which he did not possess, I do not know how your Majesty can have ascertained more correctly than myself that he had the opposite defect."

&nbs
p; "Oh, that is quite another matter!" said the queen, gloomily; "perhaps we shall speak of that some other time; but, in the mean time, let me speak of the learned man, of the man brought to perfection, of the perfect man I see before me."

  Gilbert did not take up the word "perfect." He understood but too well that it was a new insult.

  "Let us return to our subject, Madame," replied Gilbert. "Tell me for what purpose did your Majesty order me to come to your apartment?"

  "You propose to become the king's physician," said she. "Now, you must understand, sir, that I attach too much importance to the health of my husband to trust it in the hands of a man whom I do not know perfectly."

  "I offered myself to the king, Madame," said Gilbert, "and I was accepted without your Majesty having any just cause to conceive the least suspicion as to my capacity or want of zeal. I am, above all, a political physician, Madame, recommended by Monsieur Necker. As for the rest, if the king is ever in want of my science, I shall prove myself a good physical doctor, so far as human science can be of use to the Creator's works. But what I shall be to the king more particularly, besides being a good adviser and a good physician, is a good friend."

  "A good friend!" exclaimed the queen, with a fresh outburst of contempt. "You, sir, a friend of the king!"

  "Certainly," replied Gilbert, quietly; "why not, Madame?"

  "Oh yes! all in virtue of your secret power, by the assistance of your occult science," murmured she; "who can tell? We have already seen the Jacqueses and the Maillotins; perhaps we shall go back to the dark ages! You have resuscitated philters and charms. You will soon govern France by magic; you will be a Faust or a Nicholas Flamel!"

  "I have no such pretensions, Madame."

  "And why have you not, sir?' How many monsters more cruel than those of the gardens of Armida, more cruel than Cerberus himself, would you not put to sleep on the threshold of our hell!"

  When she had pronounced the words, "would you not put to sleep," the queen cast a scrutinizing look on the doctor.

  This time Gilbert blushed in spite of himself.

  It was a source of indescribable joy to Marie Antoinette; she felt that this time the blow she had struck had inflicted a real wound.

  "For you have the power of causing sleep; you, who have studied everything and everywhere, you doubtless have studied magnetic science with the magnetizers of our century, who make sleep a treacherous instrument, and who read their secrets in the sleep of others."

  "In fact, Madame, I have often, and for a long time, studied under the learned Cagliostro."

  "Yes; he who practised and made his followers practise that moral theft of which I was just speaking; the same who, by the aid of that magic sleep which I call infamous, robbed some of their souls, and others of their bodies!"

  Gilbert again understood her meaning, but this time he turned pale, instead of reddening. The queen trembled with joy, to the very depths of her heart.

  "Ah, wretch" murmured she to herself: "I have wounded you, and I can see the blood."

  But the profoundest emotions were never visible for any length of time on the countenance of Gilbert. Approaching the queen, therefore, who, quite joyful on account of her victory, was imprudently looking at him:—

  "Madame," said he, "your Majesty would be wrong to deny the learned men of whom you have been speaking the most beautiful appendage to their science, which is the power of throwing, not victims, but subjects, into a magnetic sleep; you would be wrong, in particular, to contest the right they have to follow up, by all possible means, a discovery of which the laws, once recognized and regulated, are perhaps intended to revolutionize the world."

  And while approaching the queen, Gilbert had looked at her, in his turn, with that power of will to which the nervous Andrée had succumbed.

  The queen felt a chill run through her veins as he drew nearer to her.

  "Infamy," said she, "be the reward of those men who make an abuse of certain dark and mysterious arts to ruin both the soul and body. May infamy rest upon the head of Cagliostro!"

  "Ah!" replied Gilbert, with the accent of conviction, "beware, Madame, of judging the faults committed by human beings with so much severity."

  "Sir—"

  "Every one is liable to err, Madame; all human beings commit injuries on their fellow-creatures, and were it not for individual egotism, which is the foundation of general safety, the world would become but one great battle-field. Those are the best who are good; that is all. Others will tell you that those are best who are the least faulty. Indulgence must be the greater, Madame, in proportion to the elevated rank of the judge. Seated as you are on so exalted a throne, you have less right than any other person to be severe towards the faults of others. On your worldly throne, you should be supremely indulgent, like God, who upon his heavenly throne is supremely merciful."

  "Sir," said the queen, "I view my rights in a different light from you, and especially my duties. I am on the throne to punish or reward."

  "I do not think so, Madame. In my opinion, on the contrary, you are seated on the throne,—you, a woman and a queen, to conciliate and to forgive."

  "I suppose you are not moralizing, sir."

  "You are right, Madame, and I was only replying to your Majesty. This Cagliostro, for instance, Madame, of whom you were speaking a few moments since, and whose science you were contesting, I remember,—and this is a remembrance of something anterior to your recollections of Trianon,—I remember that in the gardens of the Chateau de Taverney he had occasion to give the dauphiness of France a proof of his science; I know not what it was, Madame, but you must recollect it well, for that proof made a profound impression upon her, even so much as to cause her to faint."

  Gilbert was now striking blows in his turn; it is true that he was dealing them at random, but he was favored by chance, and they hit the mark so truly, that the queen became pale.

  "Yes," said she, in a hoarse voice, "yes, he made me see, as in a dream, a hideous machine; but I know not that, up to the present time, such a machine has ever really existed."

  "I know not what he made you see, Madame," rejoined Gilbert, who felt satisfied with the effect he had produced; "but I do know that it is impossible to dispute the appellation of 'learned' to a man who wields such a power as that over his fellow-creatures."

  "His fellow-creatures," murmured the queen, disdainfully.

  "Be it so,—I am mistaken," replied Gilbert; "and his power is so much the more wonderful, that it reduces to a level with himself, under the yoke of fear, the heads of monarchs and princes of the earth."

  "Infamy, infamy, I say again, upon those who take advantage of the weakness or the credulity of others!"

  "Infamous! did you call infamous those who make use of science?"

  "Their science is nothing but chimeras, lies, and cowardice."

  "What mean you by that, Madame?" asked Gilbert, calmly.

  "My meaning is, that this Cagliostro is a cowardly mountebank, and that his pretended magnetic sleep is a crime."

  "A crime!"

  "Yes, a crime," continued the queen; "for it is the result of some potion, some philter, some poison; and human justice, which I represent, will be able to discover the mystery, and punish the inventor."

  "Madame, Madame," rejoined Gilbert, with the same patience as before, "a little indulgence, I beg, for those who have erred."

  "Ah! you confess their guilt, then?"

  The queen was mistaken, and thought from the mild tone of Gilbert's voice, that he was supplicating pardon for himself.

  She was in error, and Gilbert did not allow the advantage she had thus given him to escape.

  "What?" said he, dilating his flashing eyes, before the gaze of which Marie Antoinette was compelled to lower hers, as if suddenly dazzled by the rays of the sun.

  The queen remained confounded for a moment, and then, making an effort to speak:—

  "A queen can no more be questioned than she can be wounded," said she: "learn to know
that also, you who have but so newly arrived at court. But you were speaking, it seems to me, of those who have erred, and you asked me to be indulgent towards them."

  "Alas! Madame," said Gilbert, "where is the human creature who is not liable to reproach? Is it he who has ensconced himself so closely within the deep shell of his conscience that the look of others cannot penetrate it? It is this which is often denominated virtue. Be indulgent, Madame."

  "But according to this opinion, then," replied the queen, imprudently, "there is no virtuous being in your estimation, sir,—you, who are the pupil of those men whose prying eyes seek the truth, even in the deepest recesses of the human conscience."

  "It is true, Madame."

  She laughed, and without seeking to conceal the contempt which her laughter expressed.

  "Oh, pray, sir," exclaimed she, "do remember that you are not now speaking on a public square, to idiots, to peasants, or to patriots."

  "I am aware to whom I am speaking; Madame; of this you may be fully persuaded," replied Gilbert.

  "Show more respect then, sir, or more adroitness; consider your past life; search the depths of that conscience which men who have studied everywhere must possess in common with the rest of mankind, notwithstanding their genius and their wisdom; recall to your mind all that you may have conceived that was vile, hurtful, and criminal,—all the cruelties, the deeds, the crimes even, you have committed. Do not interrupt me; and when you have summed up all your misdeeds, learned doctor, you will bow down your head, and become more humble. Do not approach the dwelling of kings with such insolent pride, who, until there is a new order of things, were established by Heaven to penetrate the souls of criminals, to examine the folds of the human conscience, and to inflict chastisement upon the guilty, without pity and without appeal.

  "That, sir," continued the queen, "is what you ought to do. You will be thought the better of, on, account of your repentance. Believe me, the best mode of healing a soul so diseased as yours, would be to live in solitude, far from the grandeurs which give men false ideas of their own worth. I would advise you, therefore, not to approach the court, and to abandon the idea of attending the king during sickness. You have a cure to accomplish, for which God will esteem you more than for any other,—the cure of yourself. Antiquity had a proverb, which expressed the following maxim, sir: Medice, cura teipsum."