The Mesmerist's Victim

“One obstacle stood in the way – a man, not merely the First Minister but the foremost man in the realm. It was Choiseul whom I have removed. This important work was undertaken by many intriguers and much hatred during ten years, but I accomplished it in a few months, by means which it is useless to describe. By a secret, which is one of my strong means, the greater as it must remain hidden from all eyes and never be manifested save by its effect, I have overturned and driven away Choiseul. Look at the fruit of the toil: all France is crying for Choiseul and rising to bring him back as orphans appeal to heaven to restore their father. Parliament uses its only right, inertia. But if it does not go on, there will be no work and the wage-earners will earn no money. No money for the workers – no rent, no tax paying – gold, the blood of a realm, will be wanting.

“They will try to make the poor pay – and there will be a struggle. But who will struggle against the masses? not the army, which is recruited from the people, eating the black bread of the farm hand, and drinking the sour wine of the vineyard laborer. The King has his household troops, the foreign regiments, five or six thousand men at the most – what will this squad of pigmies do against an army of giants?”

“Bid them rise!” exclaimed the chiefs.

“Yes, yes, let us set to work,” said Marat.

“Young man, your advice is not asked,” coldly said Balsamo. “Yet you may speak.”

“I will be brief,” said Marat; “mild attempts rock the people to sleep when they do not discourage them. Mere chipping at the stone is the theory of the Rousseaus, who are always bidding us to wait. We have been waiting seven centuries! This poor and feeble opposition has not advanced humanity by a single step. Have we seen one abuse redressed in three hundred years? Enough of these poets and theorists! let us have work and deeds. For three hundred years we have been physicking France and it is high time that the surgeons were called in, with scalpel and lancet. Society is gangrened and we must cut away and apply the redhot iron. A revolt, though it be put down, enlightens slaves more on their power than a thousand years of precepts and examples. It may not be enough, but it is much!”

A flattering murmur rose from several hearers.

“Where are our enemies,” continued the young man; “on the steps of the throne, guarding it as their palladium. We cannot reach royalty but over the bodies of those insolent, gold-coated guards. Well, let us fell them, as we read has been done to the body-guards of tyrants before now. Thus will we get near enough to the gilded idol to hurl it down. Count these privileged heads. Scarce two hundred thousand. Let us walk through the lovely garden, which is France, as Tarquin did in his, and cut off the heads of these flaunting poppies, and all will be done. When dwarfs aim to slay a colossus they attack its feet; when men want to fell the oak they chop at the root. Woodmen, take the ax, let us hack at the base of the tree and it will fall in the dust.”

“And crush you, pigmies,” commented the Supreme Chief in a voice of thunder. “You declaim against poets and you spout fustian. Brother, you have picked up these phrases in some novel you concoct in your garret.”

Marat blushed.

“Do you know what a revolution is?” said the Grand Copt. “I have seen two hundred, and they have tended to nothing because the revolutionists were in too great a haste. You talk of chopping down giant trees. This tree is not an oak but one of those immense redwoods of the far western American forests which I have seen. If they were felled, a horseman starting from the base to avoid the high-up branches would be overtaken and smashed. You cannot wish this. You cannot obtain the warrant from me.”

“I have lived some forty generations of man.”

“Being long-lived, I can be patient. I carry your fate – ay, that of the world in the hollow of my hand. I will not open it to let out the lightnings till I see fit. Let us come down from these sublime hights and walk on the earth.

“Gentlemen, I say with simplicity and full belief, it is not yet time. The King now reigning is the last reflection of the glory of the Great Louis who dazzles still enough to pale your ineffectual fires. A King, he will die royally: of an insolent race but pure-bred. Slay him and that will happen which befel Charles First of England: his executioners will bow to him and courtiers will kiss the ax which lops off his head. You know that England was in too much of a hurry. It is true that Charles Stuart died on the scaffold but the block was a stepping-stone for his son to reach the throne and he died on it.”

“Wait, wait, brothers, for the times are becoming propitious.

“We are sworn to destroy the lilies but we must root them up – not a stalk must be left. But the breath of fate is going to shrivel royalty up to nothing. Draw nearer and hear this – the Dauphiness, though a year wedded – ”

“Well?” asked the chiefs with anxiety.

“She is still as when she came from her mother’s land.”

An ominous murmur, so full of hatred and revengeful triumph as to make all Kings flee, escaped like a blast of hell from the lips of this narrow circle of six heads almost touching, but towered over by Balsamo’s bending down from the stage.

“In this state of things,” he pursued, “two suppositions are presented. The race will die out and our friends will have no difficulties, combats or troubles. As happens every time three Kings succeed, the Dauphin, Provence and Artois will reign but die without posterity – it is the law of destiny.

“The other hypothesis is that the Dauphiness will yet bear children. That is the trap into which our enemies will rush in the belief that we will fall into it. We will rejoice when she is a mother, just like them; for we possess a dread secret, comprising crimes which no power, prestige or efforts can counteract. We can easily make out that the heir which she gives the throne is illegitimate and the more fecund she may be, the worse will appear her conduct.

“This is why, my brothers, that I wait; judging it useless as yet to unchain popular passions to be employed efficaciously when the right time comes.

“Now, brothers, you know how I have employed this year. You see the extent of my mines. Be persuaded that we shall succeed, but with the genius and courage of some, who are the eyes and the brain; with the labor and perseverance of others, who represent the arms; and with the faith and devotedness of others still, who are the heart.

“Be penetrated with the necessity of blind obedience which makes the Grand Copt himself stand ready to be immolated to the will of the Order’s statutes when the day comes.

“There is a good act yet to do, and an evil to point out.

“The great author who came to us this evening and would have joined us but for the stormy behavior of one of our brothers who alarmed the sensitive spirit – he was right as against us and I am sorry one of the profane was in the right before a majority of our society, who know the ritual badly and our aims not at all. Triumphing with the sophisms of his works over our Order’s truths, he represents a vice which I shall extirpate with fire and sword, unless it can be done with persuasion, as I hope. The self-conceit of one of our brothers showed itself vilely. He placed us secondary in the argument. I trust that no such fault will again be committed or else I shall have recourse to discipline.

“Now, brothers, propagate the faith with mildness and persuasion. Insinuate rather than impose, and do not try to make truths enter with hammer and ax blows like the torturers who use wedge and sledge. Remember that we shall be acknowledged great only after having proved that we have done good, and that will only happen when we shall appear better than those round us. Remember, too, that the good are nothing without science, art and faith; nothing beside those whom the Divine Architect has stamped with a peculiar seal to command men and rule an empire.

“Brothers, the meeting adjourns.”

He put on his hat and wrapped himself in his mantle. Each freemason went out in his turn, alone and silent so as not to awaken suspicion. The last with the Supreme Master was the Surgeon Marat.

Very pale, he humbly approached him for he knew the terrible speaker’s power was unlimited.

“Master, did I commit a fault?” he inquired.

“A great one, and all the worse as you are not conscious that you did so,” replied the man of mystery.

“I confess it; not only ignorant, but I thought I spoke becomingly.”

“Pride – destructive demon! men hunt for fever in the veins and search for the cancer in the vitals, but they let pride shoot up such roots deeply in their heart as never to be able to wrench them out.”

“You have a very poor opinion of me, master,” returned Marat. “Am I so paltry a fellow that I am not to be counted among my equals? Have I culled the fruit of the tree of knowledge so clumsily that I am incapable of saying a word without being taxed with ignorance? Am I so lukewarm a member that my conviction is suspected? Were this all so, still I exist by reason of my devotion to the masses.”

“Brother, it is because the spirit of evil contends in you with that of good and seems to me to promise to overpower it one day, that I undertake to correct you. If I succeed it will be in one hour, unless pride has the upperhand of all your other passions.”

“Master, make an appointment which I will keep.”

“I will call on you.”

“Mind what you promise. I am living in a garret in Cordelier’ Street. A garret, mark you, while you – ” he emphasized the word with an affectation of proud simplicity.

“While I – ”

“While, so they say, you live in a palace.”

The master shrugged his shoulders as a giant might do when jeered at by a dwarf.

“I will call upon you in your garret in the morning.”

“I go to the dissection hall at daybreak and then to the hospital.”

“That will suit me very well; I should have suggested it if you had not said it.”

“You understand – early – I do not sleep much.”

“And I never sleep at peep of day,” said Balsamo.

Upon this they separated, as they had reached the street door, dark and lonely on their going forth as it had been noisy and lively when they went in.

CHAPTER XIX

BODY AND SOUL