The Mesmerist's Victim

“Are you not going?”

“I am too old to risk myself in that crush.”

“In that case,” said the young man, lowering his voice, “we shall meet to-night in Plastriere Street – Do not fail, Brother Rousseau!”

The author started as though a phantom had risen in face of him. His usually pale tint became livid. He meant to reply to the other but he had vanished.

After these singular words from the stranger, trembling and unhappy, Rousseau meandered among the groups without remembering that he was old and feared the press. Soon he got out upon Notre Dame Bridge, and he crossed in musing and self-questioning, the Grêve Ward next his own.

“So, the secret which every one initiated is sworn to guard at the peril of his life, is in the grip of the first comer. This is the result of the secret societies being made too popular. A man knows me, that I am his associate – perhaps his accomplice! Such a state of things is absurd and intolerable. I wanted to learn the bottom of the plan for human regeneration framed by those chosen spirits called the Illuminati: I was mad enough to believe that good ideas could come from Germany, that land of mental mist and beer. I have entangled myself with some idiots or knaves who used it as cloak to conceal their folly. But no, this shall not be. A lightning flash has shown me the abyss, and I am not going to throw myself into it with lightness of heart.”

Leaning on his cane, he stopped in the street for an instant.

“Yet it was a lovely dream,” he meditated. “Liberty in bondage, the future conquered without noise and shocks, and the net mysteriously spun and laid over the tyrants while they slumbered. It was altogether too lovely and I was a dupe to believe it. I do not want any of these fears, doubts and shadows which are unworthy of a free mind and independent body.”

At this, he caught sight of some police officers, and they so frightened the free mind and impelled the independent body, that he hastened to seek the darkest shade under the pillars where he was strolling.

It was not far to his house, where he took refuge from his thoughts and his wife, the spitfire of this modern Socrates.

He now began to think that there might be danger in not keeping the appointment at the secret lodge of which the stranger in the mob had spoken.

“If they have penalties against turncoats, they must have them for the lukewarm and the negligent,” he reasoned. “I have always noticed that black threats and great danger amount to little; one must be on guard against petty stings, paltry revenge; hoaxes and annoyances of small calibre. The application of wild justice by capital sentences is extremely rare. Some day my brother Freemasons will even up matters with me by stretching a rope across my staircase so that I shall break a limb or knock out the half-dozen teeth still my own. Or a brick may stave in my skull as I go under a scaffolding. Better than that, they may have some pamphleteer, living near me, in the league, who will watch what I do. That can be done as the meetings are held in my own street. This quill-driver will publish details of how my wife scolds, which will make me the laughing-stock of all the town. Have I not enemies all around me?”

Then his thoughts changed.

“Pah, where is courage, and where honor?” he said. “Am I afraid of myself? Shall I see a rogue or a poltroon when I look in the glass? No, this shall not be. I will keep the tryst though the entire universe coalesces to work my misery – though the cellars in the street broke down to swallow me up. Pretty reasonings fear lead a man into. Since that man spoke to me, I have been swinging round in a circle of nonsense. I am doubting everything – myself included. This is not logical. I know that I am not an enthusiast and I would not believe this association could work wonders unless it would do so. What says that I am not going to be the regenerator of humanity, – I, who have searched, and whom the mysterious agents of this limitless power sought out on the strength of my writings? Am I to recede from following up my theory and putting it into action?”

He became animated.

“What is finer? Ages on the march – the people issuing from the state of brutes; step following step in the gloom and a hand beckoning out of the darkness. The immense pyramid arising on the tip of which future ages will set the crown – the bust of Rousseau, citizen of Geneva, who risked his life and his liberty to be true to his motto: ‘Truth is more than life.’”

Night came and he passed out of his house.

He peeped around to make sure.

No vehicles were about. The street was full of loungers, who stared at one another, as usual, or halted at the store-windows to ogle the girls. A man the more would not be perceived in the scuffle. Rousseau dived into it, and he had no long road to travel.

Before the door where Rousseau was to meet the brothers, a street singer with a shrill fiddle was stationed. Nothing was more favorable to a jam in the thoroughfare than the crowd caused by the amateurs of this rude music. Everybody had to go one side or another of the group. Rousseau remarked that many of those who chose to take the inside and go along by the houses, became lost on the road as though they fell down some trapdoor. He concluded that they came on the same errand as himself and meant to follow their example.

Passing behind the group round the musician, he watched the first person passing this who went up the alley of the house. He was more timid than him, and his friends, for he waited till ten had disappeared. Then, too, when a cab came along and called all eyes toward the street, he dived into the passage.

It was black, but he soon spied a light ahead, under which was seated a man, placidly reading as a tradesman is in the custom to do after business hours. At Rousseau’s steps, he lifted his head, and plainly laid his finger on his breast, lit up by the lamp. The philosopher replied to the sign by laying a finger on his lips.

Thereupon the guard rose and opening a door so artistically cut in the panelling so as to be unseen, he showed Rousseau a flight of stairs. It went steeply down into the ground.

On the visitor entering, the door closed noiselessly but rapidly.

Groping with his cane, Rousseau went down the steps, thinking it a poor joke for his colleagues to try to break his neck and limbs so soon on the threshold.

But the stairs were not so long as steep. He had counted seventeen steps when a puff of the warm air from a collection of men smote his face.

It was a cellar, hung with canvas painted with workmen’s tools, more symbolical than accurate. A solitary lamp swung from the ceiling and cast a sinister glimmer on faces honest enough in themselves. The men were whispering to each other on benches. Instead of carpet or even planks, reeds had been strewn to deaden sound.

Nobody appeared to pay any heed to Rousseau. Five minutes before, he had wished for nothing so much as this entrance; now he was sorry that he had slipped in so smoothly.

He saw one place empty on one of the rear benches and he went and sat there modestly. He counted thirty-three heads in the gathering. A desk on a raised stage waited for the chairman of the club.

He remarked that the conversation was very brief and guarded. Many did not move their lips; only three or four couples really chatted.

Those who were silent strove to hide their faces, an easy matter from the lamp throwing masses of shadow. The refuge of these timid folk seemed to be behind the chairman’s stage.

But two or three, to make up for this shrinking, bustled about to identify their colleagues. They went to and fro, spoke together, and often disappeared through a doorway masked by a curtain painted with red flames on a black ground.

Presently a bell rang.

Plainly and simply a man left the bench where he had been mixed up with the others and took his place at the desk. After having made some signs with fingers and hands which the assemblaged repeated, and sealed all with a more explicit gesture, he declared the lodge open.

He was a complete stranger to Rousseau; under the appearance of a superior craftsman, he hid much presence of mind and he spoke with eloquence as fluent as a trained orator. His speech was clear and short, signifying that the lodge was held for the reception of a new member.

“You must not be surprised at the meeting taking place where the usual initiation ceremonies cannot be performed. Such tests are considered useless by the chiefs. The brother to be received is one of the torches of contemporaneous philosophy, a deep spirit devoted to us by conviction, not fear. He who has plumbed all the mysteries of nature and the human heart would not feel the same impression as the ordinary mortal who seeks our assistance in will, strength and means. To win his co-operation it will be ample to be content with the pledge and acquiescence of this distinguished mind and honest and energetic character.”

The orator looked round to see the effect of his plea. It was magical on Rousseau. He knew what were the preliminary proceedings of secret societies; he viewed them with the repugnance natural in superior minds. The absurd concessions but useful ones, required to simulate fear in the novices when there was nothing to fear appeared to him the culmination of puerility and idle superstition.

Moreover, the timid philosopher, the enemy of personal display, reckoned himself unfortunate if compelled to be a sight even though the attacks upon him would be in earnest. To be thus dispensed from the trial was more than satisfaction. He knew the rigor of Equality in the masonic rites; this exception in his favor was therefore a triumph.

“Still,” said the chairman, “as the new brother loves Equality like myself, I will ask him to explain himself on the question which I put solely for form’s sake: ‘What do you seek in our society?’”

Rousseau took two steps forward, and answered, as his dreamy and melancholy eye wandered over the meeting:

“I seek here what I have not found elsewhere. Truths, not sophisms. If I have agreed to come here, after having been entreated – (he emphasized the word) – it is from my belief that I might be useful. It is I who am conferring the obligation. Alas! we all may have passed away before you can supply me with the means of defense, or help me to freedom with your hands if I should be imprisoned, or give me bread and comfort if afflicted – for the light cometh slowly, progress has a halting step, and where the light is quenched, none of us may be able to revive it – ”

“Illustrious brother, you are wrong,” said the soft and penetrative voice of one who charmed the philosopher, “more than you imagine lies in the scope of this society: it is the future of the world. The future is hope – science – heaven, the Chief Architect who hath promised to illuminate His great building, the earth. The Architect does not lie.”

Startled by this lofty language, Rousseau looked and recognized the young man who had reminded him of the meeting at the street corner. It was Baron Balsamo. Clad in black with marked richness and great style, he was leaning on the side rail of the platform, and his face, softly lighted up, shone with all its beauty, grace and natural expressiveness.

“Science?” repeated the author, “a bottomless pit. Do you prate to me of science – comfort, future and promise where another tells of material things, rigor and violence – which am I to believe?” And he glanced at Marat whose hideous face did not harmonize with Balsamo’s. “Are there in the lodge meeting wolves just as in the world above – wolf and lamb! Let me tell you what my faith is, if you have not read it in my books.”

“Books,” interrupted Marat, “granted that they are sublime; but they are utopias; you are useful in the sense of the old prosers being useful. You point out the boon, but you make it a bubble, beautiful with the sunshine playing in a rainbow on it, but it bursts and leaves a nasty taste on the lips.”

“Have you seen the great acts of nature accomplished without preparation?” retorted Rousseau. “You want to regenerate the world by deeds? this is not regeneration but revolution.”

“Then,” sharply replied the surgeon, “you do not care for independence, or liberty?”

“Yes, I do,” returned the other, “for independence is my idol – liberty my goddess. But I want the mild and radiant liberty which warms and vivifies. The equality which brings men together by friendship, not fear. I wish the education and instruction of each element of the social body, as the joiner wishes neat joints and the mechanician harmony. I retract what I have written – progress, concord and devotion!”

Marat smiled with disdain.

“Rivers of milk and honey – the dreams of the poets which philosophers want to realise.”