The Mesmerist's Victim

He fired on Gilbert, who fell in the smoke as if by lightning. Philip felt the sand at his feet fall in from being wet with blood. He lost his reason and rushed from the grotto.

When he ran upon the strand the last boat was waiting. He made its tally right, and no one questioned him.

It was not till the subsequent day that Paul Jones noticed that a passenger was missing.

CHAPTER XLIII

THE LAST ABSOLUTE KING

AT eight at night, on the ninth day of May, 1774, Versailles presented the most curious and interesting of sights.

Since the first day of the month, Louis XV., stricken with a sickness of which the physicians dared not at the outset reveal the gravity, had kept his bed, and began look around him for truth or hope.

Two head physicians sided with the Dauphin and Dubarry severally; one said that the truth would kill the patient, and the other that he ought to know so as to make a Christian end.

But to call in Religion was to expel the favorite. When the Church comes in at one door, Satan must fly out of the other.

While all the parties were wrangling, the disease easily rooted itself in the old, debauched body and so strengthened itself that medicine was not to put it to rout.

At the first, the King was seen between his two daughters, the favorite and the courtiers most liked. They laughed and made light of the affair.

Suddenly appeared at Versailles the stern and austere countenance of the eldest daughter, the Princess Louise, Lady Superior of St. Denis, come to console her father.

She stalked in, pale and cold as a statue of Fate. Long since she had ceased to be a daughter to her father and sister to his children. She resembled the prophets of woe who come in calamities to scatter ashes on the gold and jewels. She happened in at Versailles on a day when Louis was kissing the hands of Countess Dubarry and using them as soft brushes for his inflamed cheeks and aching head.

On seeing her, all fled. Her trembling sisters ran to their rooms; Lady Dubarry dropped a courtsey and hastened to her apartments; the privileged courtiers stole into the outer rooms; the two chief physicians alone stayed by the fireplace.

“My daughter,” muttered the monarch, opening his eyes which pain and fever had closed.

“Your daughter,” said the Lady Louise, “who comes from God, whom you have forgotten, to remind you. Pursuant to etiquette, your malady is one of the mortal ones which compels the Royal Family to gather around your bedside. When one of us has the small pox, he must have the Holy Sacrament at once administered.”

“Mortal?” echoed the King. “Doctors, is this true?”

The two medical attendants bowed.

“Break with the past,” continued the abbess, taking up his hand which she daringly covered with kisses. “And set the people an example. Had no one warned you, you ran the risk of being lost for eternity. Now, promise to live a Christian if you live: or die one, if die you must.”

She kissed the royal hand once more as she finished and stalked forth slowly.

That evening Lady Dubarry had to retire from the Town and suburbs.

This is why on the night in question, Versailles was in tribulation. Would the King mend and bring back Lady Dubarry, or would he die and his successor send her farther than where she paused?

On a stone bench at the corner of the street opposite the palace an old man was seated, leaning on his cane, with his eyes bent on the place. He was so buried in his contemplation among the crowds in groups, that he did not perceive a young man who crossed so as to stand by him.

This young man had a bald forehead, a hook nose, with a twist to it, high cheekbones and a sardonic smile.

“Taking the air?” he said as he gave a squint.

The old man looked up.

“Ah, my clever surgeon,” he said.

“Yes, illustrious master,” and he sat by his side. “It appears that the King is getting better? only the small pox, that so many people have. Besides, he has skillful doctors by him. I wager that Louis the Well-Beloved will scratch through; only, people will not cram the churches this time to sing Oh, be joyful! over his recov – ”

“Hush,” said the old man, starting: “Silence, for you are jesting at a man on whom the finger of God is even now laid.”

Surprised at this language, the younger man looked at the Palace.

“Do you see that window in which burns a shaded lamp? That represents the life of the King. A friend of mine, Dr. Jussieu, will put it out when the life goes out. His successor is watching that signal, behind a curtain. This signal, warning the ambitious when their era commences, tells the poor philosopher like me when the breath of heaven blasts an age and a monarchy. Look at this night, young man, how full of storms. No doubt I shall see the dawn, for I am not so old as not to see the morrow. But you are more likely to see the end of this new reign than I.”

“Ah!” cried the young man, as he pointed to the window shrouded in darkness.

“The King is dead!” said the old man, rising in dread.

Both were silent for a few instants.

Suddenly, a coach drawn by eight horses gallopped out of the palace courtyard, with two outriders carrying torches. In the vehicle sat the Dauphin, Marie Antoinette and the King’s sister, Lady Elizabeth. The torchlight flared ominously on their faces.

The equipage passed close to the two spectators.

“Long live King Louis the Sixteenth – Long live his Queen!” yelled the young man in a shrill voice as if he were insulting the new rulers rather than greeting them.

The Dauphin bowed, the new Queen showed a sad, stern face, and the coach disappeared.

“My dear Rousseau, Lady Dubarry is a widow,” jeeringly said the young man.

“She will be exiled to-morrow,” added the other. “Farewell, Dr. Marat.”

How Marat, chief among the Paris revolutionists, fared, we have to tell in following pages. His career will be traced, as well as those of Andrea, of Gilbert and their son, while we are to behold under another phase the remarkable figure of the arch-conspirator, Balsamo, carrying on his gigantic mission of overturning the throne of the Bourbons. The work is entitled: “THE QUEEN’S NECKLACE.”

THE END