The Double Existence. Waking.
AS SOON AS Lorenza had recovered her natural powers of sight, she cast a hurried glance around her. Her eyes roamed over all the splendid trifles which surrounded her on every side, without exhibiting any appearance of the pleasure which such things usually give to women.
At length they rested with a shudder on Balsamo, who was seated at a short distance, and was watching her attentively.
“You again!” said she, recoiling; and all the symptoms of horror appeared in her countenance. Her lips turned deadly pale, and the perspiration stood in large drops on her forehead. Balsamo did not reply.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“You know whence you come, madame,” said Balsamo; “and that should naturally enable you to guess where you are.”
“Yes; you are right to remind me of that; — I remember now. I know that I have been persecuted by you, pursued by you, torn by you from the arms of the royal lady whom I had chosen to protect me.”
“Then you must know also, that this princess, all-powerful though she be, could not defend you?”
“Yes; you have conquered her by some work of magic!” cried Lorenza, clasping her hands. “Oh, Heaven, deliver me from this demon!”
“In what way do I resemble a demon, madame?” said Balsamo, shrugging his shoulders. “Once for all, abandon, I beg of you, this farrago of childish prejudices which you brought with you from Rome; have done with all those absurd superstitions which you learned in your convent, and which have formed your constant traveling companions since you left it.”
“Oh, my convent! Who will restore me my convent?” cried Lorenza, bursting into tears.
“In fact,” said Balsamo, ironically, “a convent is a place very much to be regretted!”
Lorenza darted toward one of the windows, drew aside the curtains, and, opening it, stretched out her hand. It struck against a thick bar supporting an iron grating, which, although hidden by flowers, was not the less efficacious in retaining a prisoner.
“Prison for prison,” said she; “Hike that better which conducts toward heaven than that which sends to hell.”
And she dashed her delicate hands against the iron bars.
“If you were more reasonable, Lorenza, without you would find only the flowers, the bars, at your windows.”
“Was I not reasonable when you shut me up in that other moving prison, with that vampire whom you called Althotas? And yet you kept me a prisoner, you watched me like a lynx, and, whenever you left me, you breathed into me that spirit which takes possession of me, and which I cannot overcome. Where is he, that horrible old man, whose sight freezes me with terror? In some corner here, is he not? Let us keep silent, and we shall hear his unearthly voice issue from the depths of the earth.”
“You really give way to your imagination like a child, madame. Althotas, my teacher, my friend, my second father, is an inoffensive old man, who has never seen or approached you; or, if he has seen you, has never paid the least attention to you, immersed as he is in his task.”
“His task?” murmured Lorenza. “And what is his task, pray?”
“He is trying to discover the elixir of life — what all the greatest minds have been in search of for the last six thousand years.”
“And you — what are you trying to discover?”
“The means of human perfectibility.”
“Oh, demons! demons!” said Lorenza raising her hands to heaven.
“Ah!” said Balsamo, rising, “now your fit is coming on again.”
“My fit?”
“Yes; your fit. There is one thing, Lorenza, which you are not aware of; it is, that your life is divided into two equal periods. During one you are gentle, good, and reasonable; during the other you are mad.”
“And it is under this false pretext of madness that you shut me up?”
“Alas! I am obliged to do so.”
“Oh, be cruel, barbarous, pitiless, if you will — shut me up, kill me — but do not play the hypocrite; do not pretend to compassionate while you destroy me!”
“But only reflect a moment,” said Balsamo, without anger, and even with a caressing smile; “is it torture to live in an elegant, commodious apartment like this?”
“Grated windows — iron bars on all sides — no air — no air.”
“The bars are for the safety of your life, I repeat. Lorenza.”
“Oh!” cried she, “he destroys me piecemeal, and tells me he cares for my life!”
Balsamo approached the young girl, and, with a friendly gesture, endeavored to take her hand; but, recoiling as if from the touch of a serpent:
“Oh! do not touch me!” said she.
“Do you hate me, then, Lorenza?”
“Ask the sufferer if he hates his executioner.”
“Lorenza! Lorenza! it is because I do not wish to be your executioner that I deprive you of a little of your liberty. If you could go and come as you liked, who knows what you might do in the moments of your madness?”
“What I might do? Oh, let me once be free, and you shall see what I would do!”
“Lorenza, you treat the husband whom you have chosen in the sight of heaven very strangely.”
“I chose you? Never! never!”
“You are my wife, notwithstanding.”
“Yes; that indeed must have been the work of the demon.”
“Poor insensate!” said Balsamo, with a tender look.
“But I am a Roman woman.” murmured Lorenza; “and one day I shall be revenged.”
Balsamo shook his head gently.
“You only say that to frighten me, Lorenza, do you not?” said he, smiling.
“No, no; I shall do what I say.”
“Woman!” exclaimed Balsamo, with a commanding voice, “you pretend to be a Christian; does not your religion teach you to render good for evil? What hypocrisy is yours, calling yourself a follower of that religion, and vowing to yourself to render evil for good?”
Lorenza appeared for an instant struck by these words. “Oh!” said she, “it is not vengeance to denounce to society its enemies; it is a duty.”
“If you denounce me as a necromancer, as a sorcerer, it is not society whom I offend, but God; but if I be such, the Deity by a sign can destroy me. He does not do so. Does He leave my punishment weak to men, subject to error like myself?”
“He bears with you,” murmured the young girl; “He Avails for you to reform.”
Balsamo smiled.
“And in the meantime,” said he, “He counsels yon to betray your friend, your benefactor, your husband?”
“My husband? Ah! thank Heaven — your hand has never touched mine that I have not blushed or shuddered at its contact.”
“O mystery! Impenetrable mystery!” murmured Balsamo to himself, replying rather to his own thoughts than to Lorenza’s words.
“Once for all,” said Lorenza, “why do you deprive me of my liberty?”
“Why, after having given yourself voluntarily to me, do you now wish for liberty? Why do you flee from him who protects you? Why do you ask a stranger for protection against him who loves you? Why do you threaten him who has never yet threatened you; and say you will reveal secrets which are not yours, and of which you do not comprehend the import?”
“Oh!” said Lorenza, without replying to his questions, “the prisoner who has firmly determined to be free, will be so, sooner or later, and your bars of iron shall not keep me, any more than your moving cage kept me!”
“Fortunately for you, Lorenza, the bars are strong,” answered Balsamo with a threatening calmness.
“God will send me some storm like that of Lorraine — some thunderbolt which will break them.”
“Trust me, you had better pray to Heaven to avert such an occurrence. Do not give way, I advise you, to the fancies of your overheated brain. Lorenza. I speak to you as a friend.”
There was such an expression of concentrated anger in Balsamo’s voice, such a gloomy and threatening fire darted from his eyes, such a strange and nervous movement in his white and muscular hand, as he pronounced each word slowly and solemnly, that Lorenza, subdued in the very height of her rebellion, listened to him in spite of herself.
“You see, my child,” continued he, in the same calm and threatening tone, “I have endeavored to make this prison a habitation fit for a queen. Were you a queen, you could here want for nothing. Calm, then, this wild excitement. Live here as you would have lived in your convent. Accustom yourself to my presence; love me as a friend, as a brother. I have heavy sorrows; I shall confide them to you; I am often and deeply deceived; a smile from you will console me. The more I see you kind, attentive, patient, the more I shall lighten the rigor of your imprisonment. Who knows but that in a year, nay, in six months perhaps, you may be as free as I am, always supposing that you no longer entertain the wish to steal your freedom.”
“No, no!” cried Lorenza, who could not comprehend that so terrible a resolve should be expressed in a voice so gentle; “no! More promises! More falsehoods! You have carried me off, and by violent means. I belong to myself, and to myself alone; restore me therefore to the house of God, at least, if you will not grant me my full liberty. I have until now submitted to your tyranny, because I remembered that you once saved me from robbers; but my gratitude is already weakened. A few days more of this insulting imprisonment, and it will expire; and then — take care! — I may begin to suspect that you had some secret connection with those robbers!”
“You do me the honor, then, to take me for a captain of banditti?” said Balsamo, ironically.
“I know not what you are, but I have perceived signs; I have heard strange words.”
“You have perceived signs and words?” exclaimed Balsamo, turning pale.
“Yes, yes; I have intercepted them; I know them; I remember them.”
“But you will never tell them to any living soul? You will shut them up in the depths of your heart?”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Lorenza, full of delight, in her anger, that she had found the vulnerable point of her antagonist, “I shall treasure them up religiously in my memory; I shall murmur them over to myself, and on the first opportunity shall say them aloud to others. I have already told them.”
“To whom?”
“To the princess.”
“Well, Lorenza, listen!” said Balsamo, clenching; his hands till the nails entered the flesh. “If you have told them once, you shall never tell them again; never shall the words you have spoken again cross your lips, for I shall keep every door closely shut; I shall sharpen the points on those bars, and raise the walls around this house, if need be, as high as those of Babel.”
“I have already told you, Balsamo,” exclaimed Lorenza, “that no prison can hold a captive forever, especially when the love of liberty is aided by hatred of the tyrant.”
“Very well, leave your prison, then; but mark me, you have only twice to do so. The first time I shall chastise you so cruelly that your eyes will have no more tears to shed, the second time that your veins shall have no more blood to pour out.”
“Great heavens! He will murder me!” screamed the young girl, in the highest paroxysm of fury, tearing her hair and writhing on the carpet.
He looked at her for an instant with a mixture of anger and compassion. At length compassion seemed to prevail.
“Come. Lorenza,” said he, “be calm; some future day you will be well rewarded for all you surfer now, or think you suffer.”
“Imprisoned! imprisoned!” cried Lorenza, without listening to him.
“Be patient.”
“Struck!”
“It is a period of probation.”
“Mad! mad!”
“You shall be cured.”
“Oh, put me in a madhouse at once! Shut me up at once in a real prison!”
“No; you have too well prepared me for what you would do in such a case.”
“Death! then.” screamed Lorenza, “instant death!” And bounding up with the suppleness and rapidity of some wild animal, she rushed forward to dash her head against the wall.
Balsamo had only to extend his hand toward her and to pronounce, by his will rather than his lips, one single word, to arrest her progress; Lorenza, checked in her wild career, staggered and fell into Balsamo’s arms. — She was asleep.
The strange enchanter, who seemed to have subdued in this woman all that belonged to her physical existence, without having been able to triumph over the moral life, raised her, and carried her to her couch; then, having laid her on it, he imprinted a long kiss on her forehead, drew the curtains, and retired.
A soft and soothing sleep wrapped her in its embrace, as the mantle of a kind mother wraps the froward child after it has long suffered and wept.