The Mesmerist's Victim

“What, the name under which you were announced?”

“My own.”

“Then you would be this Acharat, Balsamo, and Company?”

“It is I,” answered the other simply.

It took Sartines a minute to recover from the amazement which this impudence had caused him.

“You see I guessed,” he said; “I knew that Fenix and Balsamo were one and the same.”

“I confess it. You are a great minister.”

“And you are a great fool,” said the magistrate, stretching out his hand towards his bell.

“How so?”

“Because I am going to have you arrested.”

“Nonsense, a man like me is never arrested,” said Balsamo, stepping between the magistrate and the bell.

“Death of my life, who will prevent it? I want to know.”

“As you want to know, my dear Lieutenant of Police, I will tell you – I shall blow out your brains – and with the more facility and the less injury to myself as this weapon is charged with a noiseless explosive which, for its quality of silence, is not the less deadly.”

Whipping out of his pocket, a pistol, with a barrel of steel as exquisitely carved as though Cellini had chiselled it, he tranquilly leveled it at the eye of Sartines, who lost color and his footing, falling back into his armchair.

“There,” said the other, drawing another chair up to the first and sitting down in it; “now that we are comfortably seated, let us have a chat.”

It was an instant before Lord Sartines was master of himself after so sharp an alarm. He almost looked into the muzzle of the firearm, and felt the ring of its cold iron on his forehead.

“My lord,” he said at last. “I have the advantage over you of knowing the kind of man I coped with and I did not take the cautionary measures I should with an ordinary malefactor.”

“You are irritated and you use harsh words,” replied Balsamo. “But you do not see how unjust you are to one who comes to do you a service. And yet you mistake my intentions. You speak of conspirators, just when I come to speak to you about a conspiracy.”

But the round phrase was all to no purpose as Sartines was not paying great attention to his words: so that the word Conspiracy, which would have made him jump at another time, scarcely caused him to pick up his ears.

“Since you know so well who I am,” he proceeded, “you must know my mission in France. Sent by the Great Frederick – that is as an ambassador, more or less secret of his Prussian Majesty. Who says ambassador, says ‘inquisitor;’ and as I inquire, I am not ignorant of what is going on; and one of the things I have learnt most about is the forestalling of grain.”

Simply as Balsamo uttered the last words they had more power over the Chief of Police than all the others for they made him attentive. He slowly raised his head.

“What is this forestalling of the grain?” he said, affecting as much ease as Balsamo had shown at the opening of the interview. “Will you kindly enlighten me?”

“Willingly, my lord. Skillful speculators have persuaded his Majesty, the King of France, that he ought to build grainaries to save up the grain for the people in case of dearth. So the stores were built. While they were about it they made them on a large scale, sparing no stone or timber. The next thing was to fill them, as empty grainarers are useless. So they filled them. You will reckon on a large quantity of corn being wanted to fill them? Much breadstuffs drawn out of the markets is a means of making the people hungry. For, mark this well, any goods withdrawn from circulation are equivalent to a lack of production. A thousand sacks of corn in the store are the same as a thousand less in the market. Multiply these thousands by a ten only and up goes the price of grain.”

Sartines coughed with irritation. Balsamo stopped quietly till he was done.

“Hence, you see the speculator in the storehouses enriched by the increase in value. Is this clear?”

“Perfectly clear,” replied the other. “But it seems to me that you are bold enough to promise to denounce a crime or a plot of which his Majesty is the author.”

“You understand it plainly,” said Balsamo.

“This is bold, indeed, and I should be curious to know how the King will take the charge. I am afraid that the result will be precisely the same as that I conceived when I looked through your papers; take care, my lord, you will get into the Bastile all the same.”

“How poorly you judge me and how wrong you are in still taking me for a fool. Do you imagine that I, an ambassador, a mere curious investigator, would attack the King in person? That would be the act of a blockhead. Pray hear me out.”

Sartines nodded to the man with the pistol.

“Those who discovered this plot against the French people – pardon the precious time I am consuming, but you will see presently that it is not lost time – they are economists, who, very minute and painstaking, by applying their microscopic lenses to this rigging of the market, have remarked that the King is not working the game alone. They know that his Majesty keeps an exact register of the market rate of grain in the different markets: that he rubs his hands when the rise wins him eight or ten thousand crowns; but they also know that another man is filling his own alongside of his Majesty’s – an official, you will guess – who uses the royal figures for his own behalf. The economists, therefore, not being idiots, will not attack the King, but the man, the public officer, the agent who gambles for his sovereign.”

Sartines tried to shake his wig into the upright but it was no use.

“I am coming to the point, now,” said Balsamo. “In the same way as you know I am the Count of Fenix through your police, I know you are Lord Sartines through mine.”

“What follows?” said the embarrassed magistrate; “a fine discovery that I am Lord Sartines!”

“And that he is the man of the market-notebooks, the gambling, the ring, who, with or without the knowledge of the King, traffics on the appetites of the thirty millions of French whom his functions prescribe him to feed on the lowest possible terms. Now, just imagine the effect in a slight degree of this discovery! You are little loved by the people; the King is not an affectionate man. As soon as the cries of the hungry are heard, yelling for your head, the King, to avoid all suspicion of connivance with you, if any there be, or to do justice if there is no complicity, will hasten to have you strung upon a gibbet like that on which dangled Enguerrand de Marigny, which you may remember?”

“Imperfectly,” stammered Sartines, very pale, “and you show very poor taste to talk of the gibbet to a nobleman of my degree!”

“I could not help bringing him in,” replied Balsamo, “as I seemed to see him again – poor Enguerrand! I swear to you he was a perfect gentleman out of Normandy, of very ancient family and most noble house. He was Lord High Chamberlain and Captain of the Louvre Palace, and eke Count of Longueville, a much more important county than yours of Alby. But still I saw him hooked up on the very gibbet at Montfaucon which was built under his orders, although it was not for the lack of my telling him:

“Enguerrand, my dear friend, have a care! you take a bigger slice out of the cake of finance than Charles of Valois will like. Alas, if you only knew how many chiefs of police, from Pontius Pilate down to your predecessor, who have come to grief!”

Sartines rose, trying in vain to dissimulate the agitation to which he was a prey.

“Well, accuse me if you like,” he said: “what does the testimony of a man like you amount to?”

“Take care, my lord,” Balsamo said: “men of no account were very often the very ones who bring others to account. When I write the particulars of the Great Grain Speculation to my correspondent, or Frederick who is a philosopher, as you are aware, he will be eager to transcribe it with comments for his friend, Voltaire, who knows how to swing his pen: to Alembert, that admirable geometrician, who will calculate how far these stolen grains, laid in a line side by side, will extend; in short when all the lampoon writers, pamphleteers and caricaturists get wind of this subject, you, my lord of Alby, will be a great deal worse off than my poor Marigny, – for he was innocent, or said so, and I would hardly believe that of your lordship.”

With no longer respect for decorum, Sartines took off his wig and wiped his skull.

“Have it so,” he said, “ruin me if you will. But I have your casket as you have your proofs.”

“Another profound error into which you have fallen, my lord,” said Balsamo: “You are not going to keep this casket.”

“True,” sneered the other; “I forgot that Count Fenix is a knight of the road who robs men by armed force. I did not see your pistol which you have put away. Excuse me, my lord the ambassador.”

“The pistol is no longer wanted, my lord. You surely do not think that I would fight for the casket over your body here where a shout would rouse the house full of servants and police agents? – No, when I say that you will not keep my casket, I mean that you will restore it to me of your own free will.”

“I?” said the magistrate, laying his fist on the box with so much force that he almost shattered it. “You may laugh, but you shall not take this box but at the cost of my life. Have I not risked it a thousand times – ought I not pour out the last drop of my blood in his Majesty’s service? Kill me, as you are the master; but I shall have enough voice left to denounce you for your crimes. Restore you this,” he repeated, with a bitter laugh, “hell itself might claim it and not make me surrender.”

“I am not going to require the intervention of subterranean powers; merely that of the person who is even now knocking at your street door.”

Three loud knocks thundered at the door.

“And whose carriage is even now entering the yard,” added the mesmerist.