The Double Existence. Sleep.
RETURNING to Lorenza, Balsamo said, “Will you converse with your friend now?”
“Oh, yes!” she replied. “But speak yourself the most — I love so to hear your voice.”
“Lorenza, you have often said that you would be happy if you could live with me, shut out from all the world.”
“Yes; that would be happiness indeed!”
““Well, your wish is realized. No one can follow us to this chamber — no one can enter here; we are alone, quite alone.”
“Ah, so much the better.”
“Tell me, is this apartment to your taste?”
“Order me to see it, then!”
“I order you.”
“Oh, what a charming room!”
“You are pleased with it, then?” asked the count, tenderly.
“Oh, yes! There are my favorite flowers — my vanilla heliotropes, my crimson roses, my Chinese jessamines! — Thanks, my sweet Joseph; how kind and good you are!”
“I do all I can to please you, Lorenza.”
“Oh! you do a hundred times more than I deserve.”
“You think so!”
“Yes.”
“Then you confess that you have been very ill-natured.”
“Very ill-natured? — Oh, yes. But you forgive me, do you not?”
“I shall forgive you when you explain to me the strange mystery which I have sought to fathom ever since I knew you.”
“It is this, Balsamo. There are in me two Lorenzas, quite distinct from each other; one that loves and one that hates you. So there are in me two lives; in one I taste all the joys of paradise, in the other experience all the torments of hell.”
“And those two lives are sleep and waking?”
“Yes.”
“You love me when you sleep, and you hate me when you are awake?”
“Yes.”
“But why so?”
“I do not know.”
“You must know.”
“No.”
“Search carefully; look within yourself; sound your own heart.”
“Yes, I see the cause now.”
“What is it?”
“When Lorenza awakes, she is the Roman girl, the superstitious daughter of Italy; she thinks science a crime, and love a sin. Her confessor told her that they were so. She is then afraid of you, and would flee from you to the confines of the earth.”
“And when Lorenza sleeps?”
“Ah! then she is no longer the Roman, no longer superstitious; she is a woman. Then she reads Balsamo’s heart and mind; she sees that his heart loves her, that his genius contemplates sublime things. Then she feels her littleness compared with him. Then she would live and die beside him, that the future might whisper softly the name of Lorenza, when it trumpets forth that of Cagliostro!”
“It is by that name then that I shall become celebrated?”
“Yes, by that name.”
“Dear Lorenza! Then you will love this new abode, will you not?”
“It is much more splendid than any of those you have already given me, but it is not on that account that I shall love it.”
“For what, then?”
“I shall love it because you have promised to live in it with me.”
“Then, when you sleep, you see clearly that I love you; ardently love you?”
The young girl smiled faintly. “Yes,” said she, “I do see that you love me, and yet,” added she, with a sigh, “there is something which you love better than Lorenza.”
“What is it?” asked Balsamo, starting.
“Your dream.”
“Say, my task.”
“Your ambition.”
“Say, my glory.”
“Ah, heaven! Ah, heaven!” and the young girl’s breast heaved, while the tears forced their way through her closed eyelids.
“What do you see?” asked Balsamo, with alarm; for there were moments when her powers of seeing the unseen startled even him.
“Oh, I see darkness, and phantoms gliding through it; some of them hold in their hands their crowned heads, and you — you are among them, like a general in the thick of the battle! You command, and they obey.”
“Well,” said Balsamo, joyfully, “and does that not make you proud of me?”
“Oh, no, for I seek my own figure amid the throng which surrounds you, and I cannot see myself! — I shall not be there,” murmured she sadly. “I shall not be there!”
“Where will you be then?”
“I shall be dead.”
Balsamo shuddered.
“Dead? my Lorenza!” cried he, “dead? — no, no! — we shall live long together to love one another.”
“You love me not.”
“Oh, yes!”
“Ah,” continued she, “I feel that I am nothing to you!”
“You, my Lorenza, nothing? — You are my all, my strength, my power, my genius! Without you I should be nothing. You possess my whole soul — is not that enough to make you happy?”
“Happy?” repeated she, contemptuously, “do you call this life of ours happy?”
“Yes; for in my mind to be happy is to be great.”
She sighed deeply.
“Oh, could you but know, dearest Lorenza, how I love to read the uncovered hearts of men, and govern them within their own passions!”
“Yes, I serve you in that, I know.”
“That is not all. Your eyes read for me the hidden book of the future. What I could not learn with twenty years of toil and suffering, you, my gentle dove, innocent and pure, you teach me when you wish. Foes dog my steps, and lay snares for me — you inform me of every danger. On my understanding depend my life, my fortune, my freedom — you give that understanding the eye of the lynx, which dilates and sees clearly in the darkness. Your lovely eyes, closing to the light of this outward world, open to supernatural splendors which they watch for me. It is you who make me free, rich, powerful.”
“And you in return make me wretched,” she exclaimed, in a tone of despair, “for all that is not love.”
“Yes, it is,” he replied, “a holy and pure love.”
“And what happiness attends it? Why did you force me from my country, my name, my family — why obtain this power over me — why make me your slave, if I am never to be yours in reality?”
“Alas! why, rather,” asked he, “are you like an angel, infallible in penetration, by whose help I can subject the universe? Why are you able to read all hearts within their corporeal dwelling, as others read a book behind a pane of glass? It is because you are an angel of purity, Lorenza — because your spirit, different from those of the vulgar, sordid beings who surround you, pierces through every obstacle.”
“And thus you regard my love less than the vain chimeras of your brain? Oh! Joseph, Joseph,” added she passionately, “you wrong me, cruelly!”
“Not so, for I love you; but I would raise you with myself to the throne of the world.”
“Oh! Balsamo,” murmured she, “will your ambition ever make you happy as my love would?”
As she spoke she threw her arms around him. He struggled to release himself, beat back the air loaded with the magnetic fluid, and at length exclaimed. “Lorenza, awake! — Awake! — It is my will.”
At once her arms released their hold, the smile which had played on her lips died away, and she sighed heavily. At length her closed eyes opened; the dilated pupils assumed their natural size; she stretched out her arms, appeared overcome with weariness, and fell back at full length, but awake, on the sofa.
Balsamo, seated at a little distance from her, heaved a deep sigh. “Adieu, my dream!” murmured he to himself. “Farewell happiness!”