What Althotas Wanted to Complete His Elixir.
THE DAY SUBSEQUENT to this conversation, about four o’clock in the afternoon. Balsamo was seated in his cabinet, in the Rue Saint Claude, occupied in reading a letter which Fritz had just brought him. The letter was without signature. He turned it over and over in his hands.
“I know this writing,” said he; “large, irregular, slightly tremulous, and full of faults in orthography.”
And he read it once more. It ran as follows:
“MY LORD COUNT — A person who consulted you some time before the fall of the late ministry, and who had consulted you a long time previously, will wait upon you to-day, in order to have another consultation. Will your numerous occupations permit you to grant this person a quarter of an hour between four and five this evening?”
After reading this for the second or third time. Balsamo fell back into his train of reflection.
“It is not worth while to consult Lorenza for such a trifle,” said he; “besides, can I no longer guess myself? The writing is large — a sign of aristocracy; irregular and trembling — a sign of age; full of faults in orthography — it must be a courtier. — Ah! stupid creature that I am! it is the Duke de Richelieu! Most certainly I shall have a half hour at your service, my lord duke — an hour did I say? — a day! Make my time your own. Are you not, without knowing it, one of my mysterious agents, one of my familiar demons? Do we not both pursue the same task? Do we not both shake the monarchy at the same time — you by making yourself its presiding genius, I by declaring myself its enemy? Come, then, duke, I am ready!”
And Balsamo consulted his watch to see how long he must yet wait for the duke. At that moment a bell sounded in the cornice of the ceiling.
“What can be the matter?” said Balsamo, starting; “Lorenza calls me — she wishes to see me. Can anything unpleasant have happened to her? or is it a return of those fits of passion which I have so often witnessed, and of which I have been at times the victim? Yesterday she was thoughtful, gentle, resigned; she was as I loved to see her. Poor child! I must go to her.”
He arranged his dress, glanced at the mirror to see if his hair was not too much in disorder, and proceeded toward the stairs, after having replied to Lorenza’s request by a ring similar to her own.
But, according to his invariable custom, Balsamo paused in the apartment adjoining that occupied by the young girl, and turning, with his arms crossed, toward the direction where he supposed her to be, he commanded her to sleep, with that powerful will which recognized no obstacles. Then, as if doubting his own power, or as if he thought it necessary to redouble his precautions, he looked into the apartment through an almost imperceptible crevice in the wood-work.
Lorenza was sleeping upon a couch, to which she had, no doubt, tottered under the influence of her master’s will, and had sought a support for her sinking limbs. A painter could not have suggested a more poetic attitude. Panting and subdued beneath the power of the subtle fluid which Balsamo had poured upon her, Lorenza seemed like one of those beautiful Ariadnes of Vanloo, with heaving breasts and features expressive of fatigue or despair.
Balsamo entered by his usual passage, and stopped for a moment before her to contemplate her sleeping countenance. He then awoke her.
As she opened her eyes, a piercing glance escaped from between the half-closed lids; then, as if to collect her scattered thoughts, she smoothed back her long hair with her hands, dried her lips, moist with slumber, and seemed to reflect anxiously.
Balsamo looked at her with some anxiety. He had been long accustomed to the sudden transition from winning love to outbursts of anger and hatred; but this appearance, to which he was entirely unused — the calmness with which Lorenza on this occasion received him, instead of giving way to a burst of hatred — announced something more serious, perhaps, than be had yet witnessed.
Lorenza sat up on the couch, and fixing her deep soft eyes upon Balsamo, she said:
“Pray be good enough to take a seat beside me.” Balsamo started at the sound of her voice, expressing as it did such unusual mildness.
“Beside you!” said he. “You know, my Lorenza, that I have but one wish — to pass my life at your feet.”
“Sir,” replied Lorenza, in the same tone, “I pray you to be seated, although, indeed, I have not much to say to you; but, short as it is, I shall say it better. I think, if you are seated.”
“Now, as ever, my beloved Lorenza, I shall do as you wish.”
And he took a chair near Lorenza, who was still seated upon the couch.
“Sir,” said she, fixing her heavenly eyes upon Balsamo, “I have summoned you to request from you a favor.”
“Oh! my Lorenza,” exclaimed Balsamo, more and more delighted, “anything you wish! speak — you shall have everything!”
“I wish for only one; but I warn you that I wish for this one most ardently.”
“Speak, Lorenza, speak! — should it cost my fortune, or half my life.”
“It will cost you nothing, sir, but a moment of your time,” replied the young girl.
Balsamo, enchanted with the turn the conversation was taking, was already tasking his fertile imagination to supply a list of those wishes which Lorenza was likely to form, and, above all, those which he could satisfy. “She will perhaps,” thought he, “ask for a servant or a companion. Well! even this immense sacrifice — for it would compromise my secret and my friends — I will make, for the poor child is in truth very unhappy in her solitude.”
“Speak quickly, my Lorenza,” said he aloud, with a smile full of love.
“Sir,” said she, “you are aware that I am pining away with melancholy and weariness.”
Balsamo sighed, and bent his head in token of assent.
“My youth,” continued Lorenza, “is wasted; my days are one long sigh — my nights a continual terror. I am growing old in solitude and anguish.”
“Your life is what you have made it, Lorenza.” said Balsamo; “it is not my fault that this life which you have made so sad is not one to make a queen envious.”
“Be it so. Therefore it is I, you see, who have recourse to you in my distress.”
“Thanks, Lorenza.”
“You are a good Christian, you have sometimes told me, although—”
“Although you think me lost to heaven, you would say. I complete your thought, Lorenza.”
“Suppose nothing except what I tell you, sir; and pray do not conjecture thus groundlessly.”
“Proceed, then.”
“Well! instead of leaving me plunged in this despair and wrath, grant me, since I am of no service to you —
She stopped to glance at Balsamo, but he had regained his command over himself, and she only saw a cold look and contracted brow bent upon her.
She became animated as she met his almost threatening eye.
“Grant me,” continued she, “not liberty — for I know that some mysterious secret, or rather your will, which seems all-powerful to me, condemns me to perpetual captivity — but at least to see human faces, to hear other voices than yours — permit me, in short, to go out, to walk, to take exercise.”
“I had foreseen this request, Lorenza,” said Balsamo, taking her hand; “and you know that long since your wish has been also my own.”
“Well, then!” exclaimed Lorenza.
“But,” resumed Balsamo, “you have yourself prevented it. Like a madman that I was — and every man who loves is such — I allowed you to penetrate into some of my secrets, both of science and politics. You know that Althotas has discovered the philosopher’s stone, and seeks the elixir of life. You know that I and my companions conspire against the monarchies of this world. The first of these secrets would cause me to be burned as a sorcerer — the other would be sufficient to condemn me to be broken on the wheel for high treason. Besides, you have threatened me. Lorenza — you have told me that you would try every means to regain your liberty; and, this liberty once regained, that the first use you would make of it would be to denounce me to M. de Sartines. Did you not say so?”
“What can you expect? At times I lash myself to fury, and then I am half mad.”
“Are you calm and sensible now, Lorenza? — and can we converse quietly together?”
“I hope so.”
“If I grant you the liberty you desire, shall I find in you a devoted and submissive wife — a faithful and gentle companion? You know, Lorenza, this is my most ardent wish.”
The young girl was silent.
“In one word — will you love me?” asked Balsamo, with a sigh.
“I am unwilling to promise what I cannot perform,” said Lorenza; “neither love nor hatred depends upon ourselves. I hope that God, in return for your good actions, will permit my hatred toward you to take flight, and love to return.”
“Unfortunately, Lorenza, such a promise is not a sufficient guarantee that I may trust you. I require a positive, sacred oath, to break which would be a sacrilege — an oath which binds you in this world as in the next — which would bring with it your death in this world and your damnation in that which is to come.”
Lorenza was silent.
“Will you take this oath?”
Lorenza hid her face in her hands, and her breast heaved under the influence of contending emotions.
“Take this oath, Lorenza, as I shall dictate it in the solemn terms in which I shall clothe it, and you shall be free.”
“What must I swear, sir?”
“Swear that you will never, under any pretext, betray what has come to your knowledge relative to the secrets of Althotas.”
“Yes, I will swear it.”
“Swear that you will never divulge what you know of our political meetings.”
“I will swear that also.”
“With the oath and in the form which I shall dictate?”
“Yes. Is that all?”
“No; swear — and this is the principal one, Lorenza; for the other matters would only endanger my life, while upon the one I am about to name depends my entire happiness — swear that you will never, either at the instigation of another’s will or in obedience to your own, leave me, Lorenza. Swear this, and you are free.”
The young girl started as if cold steel had pierced her heart.
“And in what form must the oath be taken?”
“We will enter a church together, and communicate at the same altar. You will swear on the host never to betray anything relating to Althotas or my companions. You will swear never to leave me. We will then divide the host in two, and each will take the half, you swearing before God that you will never betray me, and I that I will ever do my utmost to make you happy.”
“No!” said Lorenza; “such an oath is a sacrilege.”
“An oath, Lorenza, is never a sacrilege,” replied Balsamo sadly, “but when you make it with the intention of not keeping it.”
“I will not take this oath,” said Lorenza; “I should fear to peril my soul.”
“It is not — I repeat it — in taking an oath that you peril your soul; it is in breaking it.”
“I cannot do it.”
“Then learn patience, Lorenza,” said Balsamo, without anger, but with the deepest sadness.
Lorenza’s brow darkened like an overshadowed plain when a cloud passes between it and the sun.
“Ah! you refuse?” said she.
“Not so, Lorenza; it is you who refuse.”
A nervous movement indicated all the impatience the young girl felt at these words.
“Listen, Lorenza!” said Balsamo. “This is what I will do for you, and, believe me, it is much.”
“Speak!” said the young girl, with a bitter smile. “Let me see how far your generosity will extend.”
“God, chance, or fate — call it what you will, Lorenza, has united us in an indissoluble bond; do not attempt to break this bond in this life, for death alone can accomplish that.”
“Proceed; I know that,” said Lorenza impatiently.
“Well, in one week, Lorenza — whatever it may cost me, and however great the sacrifice I make — in eight days you shall have a companion.”
“Where?” asked she.
“Here.”
“Here!” she exclaimed, “behind these bars — behind these inexorable doors, these iron doors — a fellow-prisoner! Oh, you cannot mean it, sir; that is not what I ask.”
“Lorenza, it is all that I can grant.”
The young girl made a more vehement gesture of impatience.
“My sweetest girl,” resumed Balsamo mildly, “reflect a little; with a companion you will more easily support the weight of this necessary misfortune.”
“You mistake, sir. Until now I have grieved only for myself, not for others. This trial only was wanting, and I see that you wish to make me undergo it. Yes, you will immure beside me a victim like myself; I shall see her grow thinner and paler, and pine away with grief, even as I do. I shall see her dash herself, as I do, against these walls — that hateful door — which I examine twenty times each day to see where it opens to give you egress; and when my companion, your victim, has, like me, wounded her hands against the marble blocks in her endeavors to disjoin them; when, like me, she has worn out her eyelids with her tears; when she is dead as I am, in soul and mind, and you have two corpses in place of one, you will say, in your hateful benevolence; ‘These two young creatures amuse themselves — they keep each other company — they are happy!’ Oh! no, no, no! — a thousand times no!”
And she passionately stamped her foot upon the ground, while Balsamo endeavored in vain to calm her.
“Come. Lorenza,” said he, “I entreat you to show a little more mildness and calmness. Let us reason on the matter.”
“He asks me to be calm, to be gentle, to reason! The executioner tells the victim whom he is torturing to be gentle, and the innocent martyr to be calm!”
“Yes, Lorenza; I ask you to be gentle and calm, for your anger cannot change our destiny; it only embitters it. Accept what I offer you, Lorenza; I will give you a companion who will hug her chains, since they have procured for her your friendship. You shall not see a sad and tearful face, such as you fear, but smiles and gayety which will smooth your brow. Come, dearest Lorenza, accept what I offer; for I swear to you that I cannot offer you more.”
“That means that you will place near me a hireling, to whom you will say; ‘I give you in charge of a poor insane creature, who imagines herself ill and about to die; soothe her, share her confinement, attend to her comforts, and I will recompense you when she is no more.’
“Oh, Lorenza! Lorenza!”
“No, that is not it; I am mistaken,” continued Lorenza, with bitter irony; “I guess badly. But what can you expect? I am so ignorant, I know so little of the world. You will say to the woman; ‘Watch over the madwoman, she is dangerous; report all her actions, all her thoughts, to me. Watch over her waking and sleeping.’ And you will give her as much gold as she requires, for gold costs you nothing — you make it!”
“Lorenza, you wander; in the name of Heaven, Lorenza, read my heart better! In giving you a companion, my beloved, I compromise such mighty interests that you would tremble for me if you did not hate me. In giving you a companion, I endanger my safety, my liberty, my very life, and, notwithstanding, I risk all to save you a little weariness.”
“Weariness!” exclaimed Lorenza, with a wild and frantic laugh which made Balsamo shudder. “He calls it weariness!”
“Well! suffering. Yes, you are right. Lorenza; they are poignant sufferings. I repeat, Lorenza, have patience; a day will come when all your sufferings will cease — a day will come when you shall be free and happy.”
“Will you permit me to retire to a convent and take the vows!”
“To a convent?”
“I will pray — first for you and then for myself. I shall be closely confined indeed, but I shall at least have a garden, air, space. I shall have a cemetery to walk in, and can seek beforehand among the tombs for the place of my repose. I shall have companions who grieve for their own sorrows, and not for mine. Permit me to retire to a convent, and I will take any vows you wish. A convent, Balsamo! I implore you on my knees to grant this request.”
“Lorenza! Lorenza! we cannot part. Mark me well — we are indissolubly connected in this world! Ask for nothing which exceeds the limits of this house.”
Balsamo pronounced these last words in so calm and determined a tone, that Lorenza did not even repeat the request.
“Then you refuse me?” said she, dejectedly.
“I cannot grant it.”
“Is what you say irrevocable?”
“It is.”
“Well, I have something else then to ask,” said she, with a smile.
“Oh! my good Lorenza, ever smile thus — only smile upon me, and you will compel me to do all you wish!”
“Oh, yes. I shall make you do all that I wish, provided I do everything that pleases you. Well! be it so; I will be as reasonable as possible.”
“Speak, Lorenza, speak!”
“Just now you said; ‘One day, Lorenza, your sufferings shall cease — one day you shall be free and happy.’”
“Oh, yes, I said so, and I swear before Heaven that I await that day as impatiently as yourself.”
“Well, this day may arrive immediately, Balsamo,” said the young Italian, with a caressing smile, which her husband had hitherto only seen in her sleep. “I am weary, very weary — you can understand my feelings; I am so young, and have already suffered so much! Well, my friend — for you say you are my friend — listen to me; grant me this happy day immediately.”
“I hear you,” said Balsamo, inexpressibly agitated.
“I end my appeal by the request I should have made at the commencement. Acharat.”
The young girl shuddered. “Speak, my beloved!”
“Well! I have often remarked, when you made experiments on some unfortunate animal, and when you told me that these experiments were necessary to the cause of humanity — I have often remarked that you possessed the secret of inflicting death, sometimes by a drop of poison, sometimes by an opened vein; that this death was calm, rapid as lightning, and that these unfortunate and innocent creatures, condemned as I am to the miseries of captivity, were instantly liberated by death, the first blessing they had received since their birth. Well — She stopped and turned pale.
“Well, my Lorenza?” repeated Balsamo.
“Well, what you sometimes do to these unfortunate animals for the interest of science, do now to me in the name of humanity. Do it for a friend, who will bless you with her whole heart, who will kiss your hands with the deepest gratitude, if you grant her what she asks. Do it, Balsamo, for me, who kneel here at your feet, who promise you with my last sigh more love and happiness than you caused me during my whole life! — for me, Balsamo, who promise you a frank and beaming smile as I quit this earth. By the soul of your mother! by the sufferings of our blessed Lord! by all that is holy and solemn and sacred in the world of the living and of the dead! I implore you, kill me! kill me!”
“Lorenza!” exclaimed Balsamo, taking her in his arms as she rose after uttering these last words; “Lorenza, you are delirious. Kill you! You I my love! my life!”
Lorenza disengaged herself by a violent effort from Balsamo’s grasp, and fell on her knees.
“I will never rise,” said she, “until you have granted my request. Kill me without a shock, without violence, without pain; grant me this favor, since you say you love me — send me to sleep as you have often done — only take away the awaking — it is despair!”
“Lorenza, my beloved!” said Balsamo. “Oh, God! do you not see how you torture my heart? What! you are really so unhappy, then? Come, my Lorenza, rise; do not give way to despair. Alas! do you hate me then so very much?”’
“I hate slavery, constraint, solitude; and as you make me a slave, unhappy and solitary — well, yes! I hate you!”
“But I love you too dearly to see you die, Lorenza. You shall not die, therefore; I will effect the most difficult cure I have yet undertaken, my Lorenza — I will make you love life.”
“No, no, that is impossible; you have made me long for death.”
“Lorenza, for pity’s sake! — I promise that soon—”
“ Life or death!” exclaimed the young woman, becoming more and more excited. “This is the decisive day — will you give me life, that is to say liberty? — will you give me death, that is to say repose?”
“Life, my Lorenza! life!”
“Then that is liberty.”
Balsamo was silent.
“If not, death — a gentle death — by a draught, a needle’s point — death during sleep! Repose! repose! repose!”
“Life and patience, Lorenza!”
Lorenza burst into a terrible laugh, and making a spring backward, drew from her bosom a knife, with a blade so fine and sharp that it glittered in her hand like a flash of lightning.
Balsamo uttered a cry, but it was too late. When he rushed forward and reached the hand, the weapon had already fulfilled its task, and had fallen on Lorenza’s bleeding breast. Balsamo had been dazzled by the flash —— he was blinded by the sight of blood.
In his turn he uttered a terrible cry, and seized Lorenza round the waist, meeting in midway her arm raised to deal a second blow, and receiving the weapon in his undefended hand. Lorenza with a mighty effort drew the weapon away, and the sharp blade elided through Balsamo’s fingers. The blood streamed from his mutilated hand.
Then, instead of continuing the struggle. Balsamo extended his bleeding hand toward the young woman, and said with a voice of irresistible command; “Sleep, Lorenza, sleep! — I will it.”
But on this occasion the irritation was such that the obedience was not as prompt as usual.
“No, no,” murmured Lorenza, tottering and attempting to strike again. “No, I will not sleep.”
“Sleep, I tell you!” said Balsamo a second time, advancing a step toward her; “sleep, I command it!”
This time the power of Balsamo’s will was so great that all resistance was in vain. Lorenza heaved a sigh, let the knife fall from her hand, and sank back upon the cushions.
Her eyes still remained open, but their threatening glare gradually died away, and finally they closed; her stiffened neck drooped; her head fell upon her shoulder like that of a wounded bird; a nervous shudder passed through her frame — Lorenza was asleep.
Balsamo hastily opened her robe, and examined the wound, which seemed slight, although the blood flowed from it in abundance.
He then pressed the lion’s eye, the spring started, and the back of the fireplace opened; then, unfastening the counter-poise which made the trap-door of Althotas’s chamber descend, he leaped upon it and mounted to the old man’s laboratory.
“Ah! it is you, Acharat,” said the latter, who was still seated in his armchair; “you are aware that in a week I shall be a hundred years old. You are aware that before that time I must have the blood of a child or of an unmarried female.”
But Balsamo heard him not. He hastened to the cupboard in which the magic balsams were kept, seized one of the phials of which he had often proved the efficacy, again mounted upon the trap, stamped his foot, and descended to the lower apartment.
Althotas rolled his armchair to the mouth of the trap with the intention of seizing him by his dress.
“Do you hear, wretch?” said he; “do you hear? If in a week I have not a child or an unmarried woman to complete my elixir, I am a dead man!”
Balsamo turned; the old man’s eyes seemed to glare in the midst of his unearthly and motionless features, as if they alone were alive.
“Yes, yes,” replied Balsamo; “yes, be calm; you shall have what you want.”
Then, letting go the spring, the trap mounted again, fitting like an ornament in the ceiling of the room.
After which he rushed into Lorenza’s apartment, which he had just reached when Fritz’s bell rang.
“M. do Richelieu!” muttered Balsamo; “oh! duke and peer as he is, he must wait.”