The Mesmerist's Victim

“Ha, you have visitors?” he exclaimed.

“It is my Lady Bearn,” said the other lady.

“Sire, I crave for justice,” squeaked the old dame, making a low courtsey. “Against the Parliament, which will do no acts of justice. Your Majesty, I beg for a special tribunal.”

“A royal special court?” said the monarch. “Why, this is almost a revolution, my lady.”

“It is the means to curb these rebels of whom you are the master. Your Majesty knows that they have no right to reply if you say ‘I will do this.’”

“The idea is grand,” said Lady Dubarry.

“Grand, yes; but not good,” responded the King.

“It would be a splendid ceremony – the King going in state to open the special court royal, with all the peers and ladies in the train, and he so glorious in the ermine-lined mantle, the royal diamonds in the crown, and the gold sceptre carried before him – all the lustre beseeming your Majesty’s handsome and august countenance.”

“Do you think so?” asked the King, wavering. “It is a fact that such a sight has not been seen for a long time,” he added with affected unconcern. “I will see about it next time the Parliaments do anything vexatious.”

“They have done it, Sire,” interposed La Dubarry. “The pests have determined to hold no more law courts until your Majesty lets them have their own way.”

“Mere rumors.”

“Please your Majesty, my proctor returned me the brief and papers in my case because there would be no trial for ever so long.”

“Mere scarecrows, I tell you.”

Zamore scratched at the door, that being the way to knock when royalty is in a room, and brought a letter.

Lord High Chancellor Maupeou, hearing where the King was, solicited an interview through the countess’s good graces.

“You may stay,” said the King to Lady Bearn. “Good morning, my lord – what is the news?”

“Sire, the Parliament which annoyed your Majesty is no more. The members wish to resign and have handed in their applications to be relieved all together.”

“I told you this was a serious dilemma,” whispered the young countess to her royal lover.

“Very serious,” said Louis, with impatience. “Exile the pack, Maupeou!”

“But they will hold no law courts in exile, Sire.”

“Chancellor,” observed the ruler, gravely; “Law must be dealt out and I see no means but the efficacious if solemn one: I will hold a royal and special tribunal. Those gentry shall tremble for once.”

“Sire, you are the greatest King in the whole world!”

“Yes, indeed,” cried the chancellor, Chon and her fortunate sister like an echo.

“That is more than the whole world says, though,” muttered the King.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SECRET SOCIETY LODGE

THE famous royal special court, the “Bed of Justice,” (which is the French equivalent for the “Star Chamber,”) was held with all the ceremonial which royal pride required on one hand and the intriguers who urged their master to this exercise of royal claims, on the other.

The King pretended to be serene, but he was not at ease: yet his magnificent costume was admired and nothing cloaks a man’s defects like majesty. The Dauphiness wore a plaintive look through all the affair. Lady Dubarry was brave, with the confidence given by youth and beauty. She seemed a ray of lustre from the King whose left-hand queen she was.

Aiguillon walked among the peers firmly, so that none could have guessed that it was across him the King and Parliament were exchanging blows. He was pointed at by the crowd and the Parliamentarists scowled at him; but that was all.

Besides, the multitude, kept at a distance by the soldiers, betrayed its presence only by a humming, not yet a hooting.

The King’s speech began in honey but ended in a dash of vitriol so sharp that the nobles smiled. But Parliament, with the admirable unanimity of constitutional bodies, kept a tranquil and indifferent aspect which highly displeased the King and the aristocratic spectators on the stands.

The Dauphiness turned pale with wrath, from thus for the first time measuring popular resistance, and calculating the weight of its power.

After the King’s speech was read by the Chancellor, the King, to the amazement of everybody made a sign that he was going to speak.

Attention became stupor.

How many ages were in that second!

“You hear what my chancellor informs you of my will,” he said in a firm voice: “Think only to carry it out, for I shall never change.”

The whole assembly was literally thunderstricken. The Dauphiness thanked the speaker with a glance of her fine eyes. Lady Dubarry, electrified, could not refrain from rising, and she would have clapped her hands but for the fear that the mob would stone her to death on going out, or to receive next day satirical songs each worse than the other.

“Do you hear?” she said to the Duke of Richelieu, who had bowed lowly to his triumphing nephew. “The King will never change, he says.”

“They are terrible words, indeed,” he replied, “but those poor Parliamentists did not notice that in saying he would never change, the King had his eyes on you.”

She was a woman and no politician. She only saw a compliment where Aiguillon perceived the epigram and the threat.

The effect of the royal ultimatum was immediately favorable to the royal cause. But often a heavy blow only stuns and the blood circulates the more purely and richly for the shock.

This was the reflection made by three men in the crowd, as they looked on from the corner. Chance had united them here, and they appeared to watch the impression of the throng.

“This ripens the passions,” observed one of them, an old man with brilliant eyes in a soft and honest face. “A Bed of Justice is a great work.”

“Aye, but you may make a bed and not get Justice to go to sleep on it,” sneered a young man.

“I seem to know you – we have met before?” queried the old man.

“The night of the accident through the fireworks; you are not wrong, M. Rousseau.”

“Oh, you are my fellow-countryman, the young surgeon, Marat?”

“Yes, at your service.”

The third man did not speak. He was young and had a noble face; during the ceremony he had done nothing but study the crowd. The surgeon was the first to depart, plunging onto the thick of the mob, which had forgotten him, being less grateful than Rousseau, but he intended to remind them some day.

Waiting till he had gone, the other young man addressed the philosopher, saying: