The Mesmerist's Victim

“To Luciennes,” ordered Lady Dubarry, comforted.

CHAPTER XXVII

LOVE VERSUS SCIENCE

IN five minutes Balsamo was in his vestibule, looking at Fritz and asking with anxiety:

“Has she returned?”

“She has gone up into the room of the arms and the furs, very wornout, from having run so rapidly that I was hardly in time to open the door after I caught sight of her. I was frightened; for she rushed in like a tempest. She ran up the stairs without taking breath, and fell on the great black lion’s-skin on entering the room. There you will find her.”

Balsamo went up precipitately and found her as said. He took her up in his arms and carried her into the inner house where the secret door closed behind them.

He was going to awake her to vent the reproaches on her which were nursed in his wrath, when three knocks on the ceiling notified him that the sage called Althotas, in the upper room, was aware of his arrival and asked speech of him.

Fearing that he would come down, as sometimes happened, or that Lorenza would learn something else detrimental to the Order, he charged her with a fresh supply of the magnetic fluid, and went up by a kind of elevator to Althota’ laboratory.

In the midst of a wilderness of chemical and surgical instruments, phials and plants, this very aged man was a terrible figure at this moment.

Such part of his face as seemed yet to retain life was empurpled with angry fire: his knotted hands like those of a skeleton, trembled and cracked – his deepset eyes seemed to shake loose in the sockets and in a language unknown even to his pupil he poured invectives upon him.

Having left his padded armchair to go to the trap by which Balsamo came up through the floor, he seemed to move solely by his long spider-like arms. It must be extraordinary excitement to make him leave the seat where he conducted his alchemical work and enter into our worldly life.

Balsamo was astonished and uneasy.

“So you come, you sluggard, you coward, to abandon your master,” said Althotas.

As was his habit, the other summoned up all his patience to reply to his master.

“I thought you had only just called me, my friend,” he meekly said.

“Your friend, you vile human creature,” cried the alchemist, “I think you talk to me as if I were one of your sort. Friend? I should think I were more than that: more than your father, for I have reared you, instructed you and enriched you. But you are no friend to me, oh, no! for you have left me, you let me starve, and you will be my death.”

“You have a bilious attack, master, and you will make yourself ill by going on thus.”

“Illness – rubbish! Have I ever been ill save when you made me feel the petty miseries of your mean human life? I, ill, who you know am the physician to others.”

“At all events, master, here I am,” coldly observed Balsamo. “Let us not waste time.”

“You are a nice one to remind me of that. You force me to dole out what ought to be unmeasured to all human creatures. Yes, I am wasting time: my time, like others, is falling drop by drop into eternity when it ought to be itself eternity.”

“Come, master, let us know what is to be done?” asked the other, working the spring which closed the trap in the floor. “You said you were starved. How so, when you know you were doing your fortnight’s absolute fast?”

“Yes; the work of regeneration was commenced thirty-two days ago.”

“What are you complaining about in that case – I see yet two or three decanters of rainwater, the only thing you take.”

“Of course: but do you think I am a silkworm to perform alone the great task of transformation and rejuvenation? Can I without any strength alone compose my draft of life? Do you think I shall have my ability when I am lying down with no support but refreshing drink, if you do not help me? abandoned to my own resources, and the minute labor of my regeneration – you know you ought to help and succor, if a friend?”

“I am here,” responded Balsamo, taking the old man and placing him in his chair as one might a disagreeable child, “what do you want? You have plenty of distilled water: your loaves of barley and sesame are there; and I have myself given you the white drops you prescribed.”

“Yes; but the elixir is not composed. The last time I was fifty, I had your father to help me, your faithful father. I got it ready a month beforehand. For the blood of a virgin which I had to have, I bought a child of a trader at Mount Ararat where I retired. I bled it according to the rites; I took three drops of arterial blood and in an hour my mixture, only wanting that ingredient, was composed. Therefore my regeneration came off passing well: my hair and teeth fell during the spasms caused by the draft, but they came again – the teeth badly, I admit, for I had neglected to use a golden tube for decanting the liquor. But my hair and nails came as if I were fifteen again. But here I am once more old; and the elixir is not concocted. If it is not soon in this bottle, with all care given to compounding it, the science of a century will be lost in me, and this admirable and sublime secret which I hold will be lost for man, who would thus through me be linked with divinity. Oh, if I go wrong, if I fail, you, Acharat, will have been the cause, and my wrath will be dreadful!”

As these final words made a spark flash from his dying eye, the hideous old man fell back in a convulsion succeeded by violent coughing. Balsamo at once gave him the most eager care. The old doctor came to his senses; his pallor was worse; this slight shaking had so exhausted him that he seemed about to die.

“Tell me what you want, master, and you shall have it, if possible.”

“Possible?” sneered the other, “You know that all is possible with time and science. I have the science; but time is only about to be conquered by me. My dose has succeeded; the white drops have almost eradicated most of my old nature. My strength has nearly disappeared. Youth is mounting and casting off the old bark, so to say. You will remark, Acharat, that the symptoms are excellent; my voice is faint; my sight weakened by three parts; I feel my senses wander at times; the transitions from heat to cold are insensible to me. So it is urgent that I get my draft made so that on the proper day of my fifteenth year, I shall pass from a hundred years to twenty without hesitation. The ingredients are gathered, the gold tube for the decanting is ready; I only lack the three drops of pure blood which I told you of.”

Balsamo made a start in repugnance.

“Oh, well, let us give up the idea of a child,” sneered Althotas, “since you dream of nothing but your wife with whom you shut yourself up instead of coming to aid me.”

“My wife,” repeated Balsamo, sadly: “a wife but in name. I have had to sacrifice all to her, love, desire, all, I repeat, in order to preserve her pure that I may use her spirit as a seer’s to pierce the almost impenetrable. Instead of making me happy, she makes the world so.”

“Poor fool,” said Althotas, “I believe you gabble still of your amelioration of society when I talk to you of eternal youth and life for man.”

“To be acquired at the price of a horrid crime! and even then – ”

“You doubt – he doubts!”

“But you said you renounced that want: what can you substitute?”

“Oh, the blood of the first virgin creature which I find – or you supply within a week.”

“I will attend to it, master,” said Balsamo.

Another spark of ire kindled the old man’s eye.

“You will see about it!” he said, “that is your reply, is it? However, I expected it, and I am not astonished. Since when, you insignificant worm, does the creature speak thus to its creator? Ah, you see me feeble, solicitating you and you fancy I am at your mercy! Do you think I am fool enough to rely on your mercy? Yes or no, Acharat – and I can read in your heart whether you deceive me or not – ay, read in your heart – for I will judge you and pursue you.”

“Master, have a care! your anger will injure you. I speak nothing but the truth to my master. I will see if I can procure you what you want without its bringing harm, nay, ruin upon us both. I will seek the wretch who will sell you what you wish but I shall not take the crime upon me. That is all I can say.”

“You are very dainty. Then, you would expose me to death, scoundrel; you would save the three drops of the blood of some paltry thing in order to let the wondrous being that I am fall into the eternal abysm. Acharat, mark me,” continued the weird old man, with a frightful smile, “I no longer ask you for anything. I want absolutely nothing of you. I shall wait: but if you do not obey me, I shall take for myself; if you abandon me I shall help myself. You hear? away!”

Without answering the threat in any way, Balsamo prepared all things for the old man’s wants; like a good servant or a pious son attending to his father. Absorbed in quite another thought than that torturing Althotas, he went down through the trap-hole without noticing the old sage’s ironical glance following him. He smiled like an evil genius when he saw the mesmerist beside Lorenza, still asleep.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ULTIMATE TEST

BEFORE the Italian beauty, Balsamo stopped, with his heart full of painful but no longer violent thoughts.

“Here I stand,” he mused, “sad but resolute, and plainly seeing my situation. Lorenza hates me and betrayed me as she vowed she would do. My secret is no longer mine but in the hands of this woman who casts it to the winds. I resemble the fox caught in the trap, who gnaws off his leg to get away, but the hunter coming on the morrow and seeing this token can say: ‘He has escaped but I shall know him when I catch him again.’

“Althotas could not understand this misfortune, which is why I have not told him; it breaks all my hope of fortune in this country and consequently in the Old World, of which France is the heart – it is due to this lovely woman, this fair statue with the sweet smile. To this accursed angel I owe captivity, exile or death, with ruin and dishonor meanwhile.

“Hence,” he continued, animating, “the sum of pleasure is surpassed by that of harm, and Lorenza is a noxious thing to me. Oh, serpent with the graceful folds, they stifle: your golden throat is full of venom; sleep on, for I shall be obliged to kill you when you wake.”