The Mesmerist's Victim

The adept of the Order looked at the envelope and the seal, and seeing that both were intact, he manifested his joy, and disappeared in the shadows.

“What a pity I could not keep such an autograph,” sighed the magician “and what a pity it cannot be placed by sure hands before the King.”

“Who is there?” he asked of Fritz who appeared.

“A young and pretty lady with an old gentleman whom I do not know as they have never called before.”

“Where are they?”

“In the parlor.”

Balsamo walked into the room where the countess had concealed her face completely in her cloak hood; she looked like a woman of the lower middle class. The marshal, more shrinking than she, was garbed in grey like an upper servant in a good house.

“My lord count,” began Dubarry, “do you know me?”

“Perfectly, my lady the countess. Will you please take a seat, and also your companion.”

“My steward,” said the lady.

“You are in error,” said the host bowing; “this is the Duke of Richelieu, whom I readily recognize and who would be very ungrateful if he did not recall one who saved his life – I might say drew him back from among the dead.”

“Oh, do you hear that, duke?” exclaimed the lady laughing.

“You, saved my life, count?” questioned Richelieu, in consternation.

“Yes, in Vienna, in 1725, when your grace was Ambassador there.”

“You were not born at that date!”

“I must have been, my lord,” replied Balsamo smiling, “for I met you dying, say dead, on a handbarrow with a fine swordthrust right through your midriff. By the same token, I dropped a little of my elixir on the gash – there, at the very place where you wear lace rather too rich for a steward!”

“But you are scarce over thirty, count,” expostulated the duke.

“But you must see that you are facing a wizard,” said the countess bursting into laughter.

“I am stupefied. In that case you would be – ”

“Oh, we wizards change our names for every generation, my lord. In 1725, the fashion for us was to end in us, os or as, and there is no ground for astonishment that I should have worn a name either in Greek or Latin. But, Althotas or Balsamo, or Fenix, I am at your orders, countess – and at yours, duke.”

“Count, the marshal and I have come to consult you.”

“It is doing me much honor, but it is natural that you should apply to me.”

“Most naturally, for your prediction that I should become a queen is always trotting in my brain: still I doubt its coming true.”

“Never doubt what science says, lady.”

“But the kingdom is in a sore way – it would want more than three drops of the elixir which sets a duellist on his legs.”

“Ay, but three words may knock a minister off his!” retorted the magician. “There, have I hit it? Speak!”

“Perfectly,” replied the fair visitress trembling. “Truly, my lord duke, what do you say to all this?”

“Oh, do not be wonderstricken for so little,” observed Balsamo, who could divine what troubled so the favorite and the court conspirator without any witchcraft.

“The fact is I shall think highly of you if you suggest the remedy we want,” went on the marshal.

“You wish to be cured of the attacks of Choiseul?”

“Yes, great soothsayer, yes.”

“Do not leave us in the plight, my lord; your honor is at stake,” added the lovely woman.

“I am ready to serve you to my utmost; but I should like to hear if the duke had not some settled plan in calling.”

“I grant it, my lord count – Faith! it is nice to have a man of title for wizard, it does not take us out of our class.”

“Come, be frank,” said the host smiling. “You want to consult me?”

“But I can only whisper it in the strictest privacy to the count because you would beat me if you overheard, countess.”

“The duke is not accustomed to being beaten,” remarked Balsamo, which delighted the old warrior.

“The long and the short of it is that the King is dying of tedium.”

“He is no longer amusable, as Lady Maintenon used to say.”

“Nothing in that hurts my feelings, duke,” said Lady Dubarry.

“So much the better, which puts me at my ease. Well, we want an elixir to make the King merry.”

“Pooh, any quack at the corner will provide such a philter.”

“But we want the virtue to be attributed to this lady,” resumed the duke.

“My lord, you are making the lady blush,” said Balsamo. “But as we were saying just now, no philter will deliver you of Choiseul. Were the King to love this lady ten times more than at present – which is impossible – the minister would still preserve over his mind the hold which the lady has over his heart?”

“That is true,” said the duke. “But it was our sole resource.”

“I could easily find another.”

“Easily? do you hear that, countess? These magicians doubt nothing.”

“Why should I doubt when the simple matter is to prove to the King that the Duke of Choiseul betrays him – from the King’s point of view, for of course the duke does not think he is betraying him, in what he does.”

“And what is he doing?”

“You know as well as I, countess, that he is upholding Parliamentary opposition against the royal authority.”