The Will.
WE HAVE seen Balsamo depart. Djerid bore him on with the speed of lightning, while the rider, pale with terror and impatience, bent forward over the flowing mane, breathing with half-opened lips the air which the crest of the noble steed cleft as the rapid prow of the vessel cuts the waves.
Behind him, houses and trees disappeared like fantastic visions. He scarcely perceived, as he passed, the clumsy wagon groaning on its axle-tree, while its five huge horses started with affright at the approach of this living meteor, which they could not imagine to belong to the same race as themselves.
Balsamo proceeded at this rate for a league, with whirling brain, sparkling eyes, and panting breath. Horse and rider had traversed Versailles in a few seconds. The startled inhabitants who happened to be in the streets had seen a long train of sparks flash past them — nothing more. A second league was passed in like manner. Djerid had accomplished the distance in little more than a quarter of an hour, and yet this quarter of an hour had seemed to his rider a century. All at once a thought darted through his brain. He pulled up suddenly, throwing the noble courser back upon his haunches, while his fore-feet plowed the ground.
Horse and rider breathed for a moment. Drawing a long breath, Balsamo raised his head. Then, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, while his nostrils dilated in the breeze of night, he murmured:
“Oh! madman that you are, neither the rapidity of your steed nor the ardor of your desire will ever equal the instantaneous effect of thunder or the rapidity of the electric flash, and yet it is that which you require to avert the danger impending over you! You require the rapid effect, the instantaneous, the all-powerful shock, which will paralyze the feet whose activity you fear, the tongue whose speech destroys you. You require, at this distance, the victorious sleep which restores to you the possession of the slave who has broken her chain. Oh! if she should ever again be in my power!”
And Balsamo ground his teeth with a despairing gesture.
“Oh! you do well to wish, Balsamo, you do well to fly!” exclaimed he; “Lorenza has already arrived, she is about to speak — she has perhaps already spoken. Oh! wretched woman! no punishment can be terrible enough for you.
“Let me try,” continued Balsamo, frowning, his eyes fixed, and his chin resting on his hand, “let me try. Either science is a dream or a fact — it is either impotent or powerful; let me try. ‘Lorenza! Lorenza! it is my will that you sleep, wheresoever you may be, Lorenza, sleep — sleep, it is my will! I reckon upon your obedience!’”
“Oh! no, no!” murmured he, despairingly; “no, I utter a falsehood; I do not believe — I dare not reckon upon it — and yet the will is all. Oh! I will it with my whole soul, with all the strength of my being. Cleave the air, my potent will; traverse all the current of opposing or indifferent wills; pass through walls in thy course like a bullet from a gun; follow her wherever she is; go — strike — destroy! Lorenza! Lorenza! it is my will that you sleep! — be dumb at my command.”
And for some moments he concentrated his thoughts upon this aim, imprinting it on his brain as if to lend it more speed in its flight toward Paris. Then after this mysterious operation — to which doubtless all the divine atoms animated by God, the master and lord of all things, assisted — Balsamo, once more setting his teeth hard and clenching his hands, gave the reins to Djerid, but this time without using either the knee or the spurs. It seemed as if Balsamo wished to convince himself.
The noble steed paced gently onward in obedience to the tacit permission of his master, placing his hoof gentry upon the pavement with that light and noiseless step peculiar to his race. During this brief interval, which to a superficial observer would have seemed entirely lost. Balsamo was arranging a complete plan of defense. He concluded it just as Djerid entered the streets of Sevres. Arrived opposite the park gates, he stopped and looked round as if expecting some one. Almost immediately a man emerged from beneath a carriage entrance and advanced toward him.
“Is that you, Fritz?” asked Balsamo.
“Yes, master.”
“Have you made inquiries?”
“Yes.”
“Is Madame Dubarry in Paris or at Luciennes?”
“She is in Paris.”
Balsamo raised his eyes to heaven with a triumphant look.
“How did you come?”
“On Sultan.”
“Where is he?”
“In the courtyard of this inn.”
“Ready saddled?”
“Quite ready.”
“Very well, be prepared to follow me.”
Fritz hastened to bring out Sultan. He was a horse of that strong, willing German race, who grumble a little at forced marches, but who, nevertheless, go as long as they have breath in their lungs, or while there is a spur at their master’s heel. Fritz returned to Balsamo, who was writing by the light of a street lantern.
“Return to Paris,” said he, “and manage by some means to give this note to Madame Dubarry in person. You have half an hour for this purpose. After which you will return to the Rue Saint Claude, where you will wait for Madame Lorenza, who cannot fail to return soon. You will let her pass without any observation and without offering any opposition. Go, and remember, above all, that in half an hour your commission must be executed.”
“It is well,” said Fritz, “it shall be done.”
As he gave this confident reply to Balsamo, he attacked Sultan with whip and spur, and the good steed started off, astonished at this unusual aggression, and neighing piteously.
Balsamo by degrees resumed his composure, and took the road to Paris, which he entered three-quarters of an hour afterward, his features almost unruffled and his look calm but pensive.
Balsamo was right. However swift Djerid, the neighing son of the desert, might be, his speed was powerless, and thought alone could hope to overtake Lorenza in her flight from prison.
From the Rue Saint Claude she had gained the boulevard, and turning to the right, she soon saw the walls of the Bastille rise before her. But Lorenza, constantly a prisoner, was entirely ignorant of Paris. Moreover, her first aim was to escape from that accursed house in which she saw only a dungeon; vengeance was a secondary consideration.
She had just entered the Faubourg Saint Antoine, hastening onward with bewildered steps, when she was accosted by a young man who had been following her for some moments with astonishment.
In fact, Lorenza, an Italian girl from the neighborhood of Rome, having almost always lived a secluded life, far from all knowledge of the fashions and customs of the age, was dressed more like an Oriental than a European lady; that is, in flowing and sumptuous robes, very unlike the charming dolls of that time, confined, like wasps, in long tight waists, rustling with silk and muslin, under which it was almost useless to seek a body, their utmost ambition being to appear immaterial.
Lorenza had only adopted, from the French costume of that period, the shoes with heels two inches high — that strange-looking invention which stiffened the foot, displayed the beauty of the ankle, and which rendered it impossible for the Arethusas of that rather mythological age to fly from the pursuit of their Alpheuses.
The Alpheus who pursued our Arethusa easily overtook her, therefore. He had seen her lovely ankles peeping from beneath her petticoats of satin and lace, her unpowdered hair, and her dark eyes sparkling with a strange fire from under a mantilla thrown over her head and neck, and he imagined he saw in Lorenza a lady disguised for a masquerade, or for a rendezvous, and proceeding on foot, for want of a coach, to some little house of the faubourg.
He approached her, therefore, and walking beside her, hat in hand:
“Good heavens! madame,” said he, “you cannot go far in this costume, and with these shoes which retard your progress. Will you accept my arm until we find a coach, and allow me the honor of accompanying you to your destination?”
Lorenza turned her head abruptly, gazed with her dark expressive eyes at the man who thus made her an offer which to many ladies would have appeared an impertinent one, and, stopping:
“Yes,” said she, “most willingly.”
The young man gallantly offered his arm.
“Whither are you going, madame?” asked he.
“To the hotel of the lieutenant of police.”
The young man started.
“To M. de Sartines?” he inquired.
“I do not know if his name be M. de Sartines or not; I wish to speak to whoever is lieutenant of police.”
The young man began to reflect. A young and handsome woman wandering alone in the streets of Paris at eight o’clock in the evening, in a strange costume, holding a box under her arm, and inquiring for the hotel of the lieutenant of police, while she was going in the contrary direction, seemed suspicious.
“Ah! diable,” said he, “the hotel of the lieutenant of police is not in this direction at all.”
“Where is it, then?”
“In the Faubourg St. Germain.”
“And how must I go to the Faubourg St. Germain?”
“This way, madame,” replied the young man, calm but always polite; “and if you wish, we can take the first coach we meet—”
“Oh, yes, a coach; you are right.”
The young man conducted Lorenza back to the boulevard, and having met a hackney-coach, he hailed it. The coachman answered his summons.
“Where to, madame?” asked he.
“To the hotel of M. de Sartines,” said the young man.
And with a last effort of politeness, or rather of astonishment, having opened the coach-door, he bowed to Lorenza, and, after assisting her to get in, gazed at her departing form as we do in a dream or vision.
The coachman, full of respect for the dreadful name, gave his horse the whip and drove rapidly in the direction indicated.
It was while Lorenza was thus crossing the Place Royale that Andree in her magnetic sleep had seen and heard her, and denounced her to Balsamo. In twenty minutes Lorenza was at the door of the hotel.
“Must I wait for you, my fair lady?” asked the coachman.
“Yes,” replied Lorenza, mechanically.
And stepping lightly from the coach, she disappeared beneath the portal of the splendid hotel.