The Mesmerist's Victim

With a movement as swift as lightning, he slid the corpse out of his arms, and rolled it to the feet of the judges. The dark hair and inert hands struck them with all their profound horror while by the lamplight the wound glared with its ominous red, deeply yawning in the midst of the swan-white neck.

“Utter your sentence, now,” said Balsamo.

Aghast, the judges uttered a terror-stricken cry, and fled dizzily in confusion inexpressible. The horses of their carriage and escort were heard neighing in the yard and trampling; the carriage-gate groaned on its hinges and then solemn silence sat once more on the abode of death and despair.

CHAPTER XXXII

MAN AND GOD

NOTHING had meanwhile changed in the other part of the house. But the old wizard had seen Balsamo enter his study and carry away the remains of Lorenza, which had recalled him to life.

Shrieks of “Fire!” from the old man reached Balsamo, when, rid of his dread visitors, he had carried Lorenza back to the sofa where only two hours previously she had been reposing before the old sage broke in.

Suddenly he appeared to Althota’ eyes.

“At last,” said the latter, drunk with joy; “I knew you would have fear! see how I can revenge myself! It was well you came, for I was going to set fire to the place.”

His pupil looked at him contemptuously without deigning a word.

“I am thirsty. Give me some water out of that bottle,” he said wildly.

His features were breaking up fast; no steady fire was in his eyes, only frightful gleams, sinister and infernal; under his skin was no more blood. His long arms in which he had carried Lorenza as though she were a child, now dangled like cuttlefish’s suckers. In anger had been consumed the strength momentarily restored him by desperation.

“You won’t give me to drink? You want to kill me with thirst. You covet my books and manuscripts and lore, my treasures! Ah, you think you will enjoy them – wait a bit. Wait, wait!”

Making a supreme effort, he drew from under the cushion on which he was huddled up a bottle which he uncorked. At the contact of air, a flame spouted up from the glass and Althotas, like a magic creature, shook this flame around him.

Instantly, the writings piled up around the old man, the scattered books, the rolls of papyrus extracted with so many hardships from the pyramids of Egypt and the libraries of Herculaneum, caught fire with the quickness of gunpowder. The marble flour was turned into a sheet of fire, and seemed to Balsamo one of those fiery rings described by Dante.

No doubt the old man thought that his disciple would rush among the flames to save him, but he was wrong. He merely drew himself away calmly out of the scope of the fire.

It enveloped the incendiary himself; but instead of frightening him it seemed as if he were in his element. The flame caressed him as if he were a salamander, instead of scorching him.

Though as he sat, it devoured the lower part of his frame, he did not seem to feel it.

On the contrary, the contact appeared salutary, for the dying one’s muscles relaxed, and a new serenity covered his features like a mask. Isolated at this ultimate hour, the spirit forgot the matter, and the old prophet, on his fiery car, seemed about to ascend to heaven.

Calm and resigned, analysing his sensations, listening to his own pangs as the last voices of earth, the old Magus let his farewell sullenly escape to life, hope and power.

“I die with no regret,” he said; “I have enjoyed all earthly boons; I have known everything; I have held all given to the creature to possess – and I am going into immortality.”

Balsamo sent forth a gloomy laugh which attracted the old man’s attention.

Althotas darted on him a look through the veiling flames, which was impressed with ferocious majesty.

“Yea, you are right: I had not foreseen one Thing – God!”

As if this mighty word had snatched the soul out of him, he dwindled up in the chair: his last breath had gone up to the Giver whom he had thought to deprive of it.

Balsamo heaved a sigh, and without trying to save a thing from the pyre of this modern Zoroaster dying, he went down to Lorenza, having set the trap so that it closed in all the fire as in an immense kiln.

All through the night the volcano blazed over Balsamo with the roaring of a whirlwind, but he neither sought to extinguish it or to flee. After having burnt up all that was combustible, and left the study bare to the sky, the fire went out, and Balsamo heard its last roar die away like Althota’ in a sigh.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE FAINTING FITS

ANDREA was in her room, giving a final touch to her rebellious curls when she heard the step of her father, who appeared as she crossed the sill of the antechamber with a book under her arm.

“Good morning, Andrea,” said the baron; “going out, I see.”

“I am going to the Dauphiness who expects me.”

“Alone?”

“Since Nicole ran away, I have no attendant.”

“But you cannot dress yourself alone; no lady ever does it: I advised you quite another course.”

“Excuse me, but the Dauphiness awaits – ”

“My child, you will get yourself ridiculed if you go on like this and ridicule is fatal at court.”

“I will attend to it, father: but at present the Dauphiness will overlook the want of an elaborate attire for the haste I show to join her.”

“Be back soon for I have something serious to say. But you are never going out without a touch of red on the cheeks. They look quite hollow and your eyes are circled with large rings. You will frighten people thus.”

“I have no time to do anything more, father.”

“This is odious, upon my word,” said Taverney, shrugging his shoulders: “there is only one woman in the world who does not think anything of herself and I am cursed with her for my daughter. What atrociously bad luck! Andrea!”

But she was already at the foot of the stairs. She turned.

“At least, say you are not well,” he suggested. “That will make you interesting at all events.”

“There will be no telling lies there, father, for I feel really very ill at present.”

“That is the last straw,” grumbled the baron. “A sick girl on my hands, with the favor of the King lost and Richelieu cutting me dead! Plague take the nun!” he mumbled.

He entered his daughter’s room to ferret about for some confirmation of his suspicions.

During this time Andrea had been fighting with an unknown indisposition as she made her way through the shrubbery to the Little Trianon. Standing on the threshold, Lady Noailles made her understand that she was late and that she was looking out for her.

The titular reader to the Dauphiness, an abbe, was reciting the news, above all desonating on the rumor that a riot had been caused by the scarcity of corn and that five of the ringleaders had been arrested and sent to jail.

Andrea entered. The Dauphiness was in one of her wayward periods and this time preferred the gossip to the book; she regarded Andrea as a spoilsport. So she remarked that she ought not to have missed her time and that things good in themselves were not always good out of season.

Abashed by the reproach and particularly its injustice, the vice-reader replied nothing, though she might have said her father detained her and that her not feeling well had retarded her walk. Oppressed and dazed, she hung her head, and closing her eyes as if about to die, she would have fallen only for the Duchess of Noailles catching her.