The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

Cagliostro motioned for Gilbert to alight first and as he descended, he said to the jarvey:

“Any news?”

“Yes, Master,” said the knight of the whip, “and I should have made my report this evening if I had not the luck to meet you.”

“Speak.”

“My news is not for outsiders.”

“Oh, the bystander is not an outsider,” returned Cagliostro, smiling.

But Gilbert moved off a little, though he could not help glancing and listening partially. He saw a smile on the hearers’s face as the man told his story. He caught the name of Favras and Count Provence, before the report was over, when the magician took out a goldpiece and offered it.

“The Master knows that it is forbidden to receive pay for giving information,” he objected.

“I am not paying for your report, it is plain, but for your bringing us,” said the conspirator.

“That I can accept. Thank you,” he said, taking the coin, “I need not work any more to-day.”

He drove away, leaving Gilbert amazed at what he had witnessed, and he crossed the threshold reeling like a tipsy man.

He knew this house from having traversed it years ago under impressive circumstances; little was changed in it, even to the same servant Fritz, only he had aged sixteen years.

Ushered into a sitting room, the count bade his guest take a seat.

“I am entirely yours, doctor,” said he.

The younger man forgot his present curiosity in the memories evoked by this room. Cagliostro looked at him like Mephistopheles regarding Faust in his brown studies.

“This room seems to set you thinking, doctor,” he said audibly.

“It does, of the obligations I am under to you.”

“Pooh, bubbles!”

“Really, you are a strange man,” said Gilbert, speaking as much to himself as to the other, “and if reason allowed me to put faith in what we learn from legends, I should be inclined to take you for a magician.”

“This am I for the world, Gilbert: but not for you. I have never tried to dazzle you with jugglery. You know I have always let you see the bottom of the well and if you have seen Truth come up not so scantily clothed as the painters represent her, it is because I am a Sicilian and cannot help decorating my lady-love.”

“It was here, count, that you gave me a large sum of money that I might be rich in offering my hand to Andrea de Taverney, with the same ease as I might give a penny to a beggar.”

“You forget the most extraordinary part of it: the beggar brought back the sum, except for a couple of coins which he spent for clothes.”

“He was honest but you were generous.”

“Who tells you that it was not more easy for him who handled millions to give a hundred thousand crowns than for him who was penniless to bring back so large a sum as that was to him? Besides, all depends on the man’s state of mind. I was under the blow of the loss of the only woman I ever loved – my darling wife was murdered, and I believe you might have had my life for the asking.”

“Do you feel grief, and experience it like other men,” inquired Gilbert, eyeing him with marked astonishment.

“You speak of memories this room gives you,” sighed the other. “Were I to tell you – your hair would whiten – but let it pass; leave those events in their grave. Let us speak of time present, and of that to-come if you like.”

“Count, you returned to realism just now; again you turn to pretence, for you speak of the future with the voice of a conjurer asserting the power to read indecipherable hieroglyphics.”

“You forget that having more means at my beck and call than other men, I see more clearly and farther than they. You shall see that the pretence is but a veil – solid are the facts beneath. Come, doctor, how is your Fusion Cabinet getting on? the Mirabeau-Lafayette Ministry?”

“It is in the skies; you are trying to learn the facts by pretending to know more than the rumors.”

“I see that you are doubt incarnate, or wish not to see what you do not doubt. After telling you of things you do know I must tell of those beyond your ken. Well, you have recommended Mirabeau to the King as the only man who can save the monarchy. He will fail – all will fail, for the monarchy is doomed. You know that I will not have it saved. You have achieved your end; the two rulers will welcome your advocate: and you flatter yourself that the royal conversion is due to your irrefutable logic and irresistible arguments.”

Gilbert could not help biting his lip on hearing this ironical tone.

“Have you invented a stethoscope by which you can read the heart of kings? pass the wonderful instrument on to me, count: only an enemy of mankind would want to keep it to himself alone.”

“I told you I keep nothing back from you, dear doctor. You shall have my telescope and may look as you please through the small end which diminishes or the other which magnifies. The Queen gave way for two reasons: first, she met a great sorrow the night before and she must have some mental distraction; next, she is a woman and having heard Mirabeau spoken of as a tiger, she wants to see him and try to tame him. She thinks: ‘It will be fine revenge to bring him to lick my feet: if some good follows for France and the crown, so much the better.’ But you understand, this idea is quite secondary.”

“You are building on hypothesis and I want facts.”

“I see you refuse my glass and I must come back to material things: such as can be seen with the naked eye, Mirabeau’s debts, for instance.”

“What a chance you have to exhibit your generosity, by paying his debts as you once did Cardinal Rohan’s.”

“Do not reproach me with that speculation, it was one of my greatest successes. The Queen’s Necklace was a pretty affair, I think, and ruined the Queen in the general eye. At the same price I would pay Mirabeau’s debts. But you know that he is not looking to me for that, but to the future Generalissimo, Lafayette, who will make him caper for a beggarly fifty thousand francs, which he will not get any more than the dog gets the cake for which he has danced.

“Poor Mirabeau, how all these fools and conceited dunces make your genius pay for the follies of your youth! Yet all this is providential and heaven is obliged to proceed by human methods. All these politicians and wirepullers blame him for some virtue which is not theirs, and yet, if he dies to-morrow, the masses will award him an apotheosis, and all these pigmies, over whom he stands head and shoulders, will follow as mourners and howl: ‘Woe to France which has lost her greatest orator – woe to royalty which has lost its supporter!'”

“Are you going to foretell the death of Mirabeau?” cried Gilbert, almost frightened.

“Frankly, doctor, do you see any length of life for a man whose blood stews him, whose heart swells to suffocate him and whose genius eats him up? do you believe that even such powers will not be worn out in stemming the tide of mediocrity? his enterprise is the rock of Sisyphus. For two years they have been holding him down with the cry of Immorality. As if God moulded all men in the same form, and as if the circle enlarged for a great mind should not enclose greater vices. Mirabeau will not be Premier because he owes a hundred thousand francs debt, which would be settled were he a rich contractor’s son, and because he is condemned to death for having run away with an old imbecile’s wife – who smothered herself in charcoal fumes for the love of a strapping military captain! What a farce the tragedy of human life is! How I should weep over it if I had not made up my mind to laugh!”

“But your prediction?” cried Gilbert.

“I tell you,” said the diviner, in the prophet’s tone which was his alone, and allowed no reply, “Mirabeau will wear out his life without becoming Prime Minister. So great a bar is mediocrity. Go to the Assembly to-morrow and see. Meanwhile, come with me to the Jacobins Club, for these night-birds will hold their session in an hour. Do you belong?”

“No: Danton and Desmoulins entered me at the Cordeliers. We will go after dinner.”

Two hours subsequently, two man in gentlemanly black suits were set down from a plain private carriage at the door of St. Roch’s church, where the throng was great. They were Dr. Gilbert and Baron Zannone, as Cagliostro chose to call himself at this epoch.

“Will you come into the nave or sit in the gallery?” asked the magician.

“I thought the nave was kept for the members?” said the other.

“Just so, but am I not a member of all societies?” returned the Arch-master laughing. “Besides, this club is but the seat of the Invisibles, and you can enter as one of the Rosicrucians. We are sixty thousand strong in France alone in three months since foundation as Jacobins, and will be four hundred thousand in a year.”

“Though I am a Rose-Croix, I prefer to be in the gallery where I can see over the crowd and you can better tell me of the persons whom I descry.”

The seats were roughly knocked up in tiers and a wooden staircase led up them. Cagliostro made a sign and spoke a word to two who were sitting in the already filled seats and they got up to give them their places as if they had been sent before to keep them.

The place was ill lighted in the growing gloom but it was clear that these were the best sort of the revolutionists, while the uniforms of officers of the army and navy abounded. For the common brothers held their meetings in the crypt. Here the literati and artists were in the majority.