The Mesmerist's Victim

“So it was not a vain threat of hers. What does she do?”

“Having the address, she retraces her steps to cross a large square – ”

“Royale Place – it is the right road. Read her intention.”

“Run, run quick! she is going to denounce you – if she arrives at Criminal Lieutenant Sartine’ before you, you are lost!”

Balsamo uttered a terrible yell, sprang into the hedges, burst a small door, and got upon the open ground. There an Arab horse was waiting, on which he leaped at a bound. It started off like an arrow towards Paris.

Andrea stood mute, pale, and cold. But as though the magnetiser carried life away with him, she collapsed and fell. In his eagerness to overtake Lorenza, Balsamo had forgotten to arouse Andrea from the mesmeric sleep.

She had barely touched the ground before Gilbert leaped out with the vigor and agility of the tiger. He seized her in his arms and without feeling what a burden he had undertaken, he carried her back to the room which she had left on the call of Balsamo.

All the doors had been left open by the girl, and the candle was still burning.

As he stumbled against the sofa when he blundered in, he naturally placed her upon it. All became enfevered in him, though the lifeless body was cold. His nerves shivered and his blood burned.

Yet his first idea was pure and chaste: it was to restore consciousness to this beautiful statue. He sprinkled her face with water from the decanter.

But at this period, as his trembling hand was encircling the narrow neck of the crystal bottle, he heard a firm but light step make the stairs of wood and brick squeak on the way to the chamber.

It could not be Nicole who was on the way with Beausire or Balsamo who was galloping to Paris.

Whoever it was, Gilbert would be caught and expelled from the palace.

He fully comprehended that he was out of his place here. He blew out the candle and dashed into Nicole’s room, timing his movement as the thunder boomed in the heavens.

Through its glazed door he could see into the room he quitted and the anteroom.

In this latter burnt a night-light on a small table. Gilbert would have put that out also if he had time, but the steps creaked now on the landing. A man appeared on the sill, timidly glided through the antechamber, and shut the door which he bolted.

Gilbert held his breath, glued his face to the glass and listened with all his might.

The storm growled solemnly in the skies, large raindrops spattered on the windows, and in the corridor, an unfastened shutter banged sinisterly against the wall from time to time.

But the tumult of nature, these exterior sounds, however alarming, were nothing to Gilbert: all his thought, mind and being were concentrated in his gaze, fastened on this man.

Passing within two paces, this intruder walked into the other room. Gilbert saw him grope his way up to the bed, and make a gesture of surprise at finding it untenanted. He almost knocked the candle off the table with his elbow; but it fell on the table where the glass save-all jingled on the marble top.

“Nicole,” the stranger called twice, in a guarded voice.

“Why, Nicole?” muttered Gilbert. “Why does this man call on Nicole when he ought to address her mistress?”

No voice replying, the man picked up the candle and went on tiptoe to light it at the night-lamp.

Then it was that Gilbert’s attention was so concentrated on this strange night visitor that his eyes would have pierced a wall.

Suddenly he started and drew back a step although he was in concealment.

By the light of the two flames he had recognized in the man holding the candle – the King! All was clear to him: the flight of Nicole, the money counted down between her and Beausire, and all the dark plot of Richelieu and Taverney of which Andrea was the object.

He understood why the King should call upon Nicole, the complaisant female Judas who had sold her mistress.

At the thought of what the royal villain had come to commit in this room, the blood rushing to the young man’s head blinded him.

He meant to call out; but the reflection that this was the Lord’s anointed, the being still full of awe as the King of France – that froze the tongue of Gilbert to his mouth-roof.

Meanwhile, Louis XV. entered the room once more, bearing the light. He perceived Andrea, in the white muslin wrapper, with her head thrown back on the sofa pillow, with one foot on another cushion and the other, cold and stiff, out of the slipper, on the carpet.

At this sight the King smiled. The candle lit up this evil smile; but almost instantly a smile as sinister lighted up Andrea’s face.

Louis uttered some words, probably of love; and placing the light on the table, he cast a glance out at the enflamed sky, before kneeling to the girl, whose hand he kissed.

This was so chilly that he took it between both his to warm it, and with his other arm enclasping the soft and so beautiful body, he bent over to murmur some of the loving nonsense fitted for sleeping maids. His face was so close to hers that it touched it.

Gilbert felt in his pocket for a knife with a long blade which he used in pruning trees.

The face was as cold as the hand, which made the royal lover rise; his eyes wandered to the Cinderella foot, which he took hold of – it was as cold as the hand and the cheek. He shuddered for all seemed a marble statue.

Gilbert gritted his teeth and opened the knife, as he beheld so much beauty and regarded the royal threat as a robbery intended on him.

But the King dropped the foot as he had the hand. Surprised at the sleep which he had thought to be feigned in prudery by a coquet, he prepared to learn the nature of this insensibility.

Gilbert crept half way out of the doorway, with set teeth, glittering eye and the knife bared in his grip to stab the King.

Suddenly a frightful flash of lightning lit up Andrea’s face with a vivid glare of violet and sulphur light while the thunder made every article of furniture dance in the room. Frightened by her pallor, immobility and silence, Louis XV. recoiled, muttering:

“Truly the girl is dead!”

The idea of having wooed a corpse sent a shudder through his veins. He took up the candle and looked at Andrea by its flickering flame. Seeing the brown-circled eyes, the violet lips, the disheveled tresses, the throat which no breath raised, he uttered a shriek, let the candlestick fall, and staggered out through the antechamber like a drunken man, knocking against the wainscotting in his alarm.

Knife still in hand, Gilbert came out of his covert. He advanced to the room door and for a space contemplated the lovely young maid still in the profound sleep.

The candle smouldering on the floor lit up the delicate foot and the pure lines above it of the adorable creature.

Gilbert trod on the wick and in sudden obscurity was blotted out the dreadful smile which was curling his lips.

“Andrea,” he muttered, “I swore that you should not escape me the third time that you fell into my hands as you did the other two. Andrea, a terrible end was needed to the romance which you mocked at me for composing!”

With extended arms he walked towards the sofa where the girl was still cold, motionless and deprived of all feeling.

CHAPTER XXVI

SARTINES BELIEVES BALSAMO IS A MAGICIAN

THE mesmerist had galloped on the barb through Versailles in a few seconds and a league on the road to Paris when an idea came as comfort in the midst of his misery at the fear that all he did would be too late. He saw his brothers of the secret society at the mercy of his foes, and the woman who caused all this, through his infatuation for her, going free.

“Oh, if ever she returns into my power – ”