Blood.
THE DOOR had no sooner closed upon Madame Dubarry than Balsamo ascended the secret staircase and entered the chamber of furs. This conversation with the countess had been long, and his impatience had two causes.
The first was the desire to see Lorenza; the second the fear that she might be fatigued, for in the new life he had given her there was no room for weariness of mind. She might be fatigued, inasmuch as she might pass, as she sometimes did, from the magnetic sleep to ecstasy; and to this ecstatic state always succeeded those nervous crises which prostrated Lorenza’s strength, if the intervention of the restoring fluid did not restore the necessary equilibrium between the various functions of her being.
Balsamo, therefore, having entered and closed the door, immediately glanced at the couch where he had left Lorenza.
She was no longer there!
Only the fine shawl of cashmere embroidered with golden flowers, which had enveloped her like a scarf, was still lying upon the cushions, as an evidence that she had been in the room and had been reclining on them.
Balsamo stood motionless, gazing at the empty sofa. Perhaps Lorenza had felt herself incommoded by a strange odor which seemed to have filled the room since he left it; perhaps, by a mechanical movement, she had usurped some of the functions of actual life, and instinctively changed her place.
Balsamo’s first idea was that Lorenza had returned to the laboratory, whither she had accompanied him a short lime previously.
He entered the laboratory. At the first glance it seemed empty; but in the shadow of the gigantic furnace, or behind the Oriental tapestry, a woman could easily conceal herself.
He raised the tapestry, therefore — he made the circuit of the furnace; nowhere could he discover even a trace of Lorenza.
There remained only the young girl’s chamber, to which she had no doubt, returned; for this chamber was a prison to her only in her waking state.
He hastened to the chamber, and found the secret door closed. This was no proof that Lorenza had not entered. Nothing was more probable, in fact, than that Lorenza, in her lucid sleep, had remembered the mechanism, and, remembering it, had obeyed the hallucination of a dream barely effaced from her mind. Balsamo pressed the spring.
The chamber was empty, like the laboratory; it did not appear as if Lorenza had even entered it.
Then a heart-rending thought — a thought which, it will be remembered, had already stung his heart — chased away all the suppositions, all the hopes of the happy lover.
Lorenza had been playing a part; she must have feigned to sleep in order to banish all distrust, all uneasiness, all watchfulness from her husband’s mind; and at the first opportunity had fled again, this time with surer precautions, warned as she had been by a first, or rather by two former experiences.
At this idea Balsamo started up and rang for Fritz.
Then, as Fritz, to his impatient mind, seemed to delay, he hastened to meet him, and found him on the secret staircase.
“The signora?” said he.
“Well, master?” said Fritz, seeing by Balsamo’s agitation that something extraordinary had taken place.
“Have you seen her?”
“No, master.”
“She has not gone?”
“From where?”
“From this house, to be sure!”
“No one has left the house but the countess, behind whom I have just closed the gate.”
Balsamo rushed up the stairs again like a madman. Then he fancied that the giddy young creature, so different in her sleep from what she was when waking, had concealed herself in a moment of childish playfulness; that from the corner where she was hid she was now reading his heart, and amusing herself by terrifying him, in order to reassure him afterward. Then he recommenced a minute search.
Not a nook was omitted, not a cupboard forgotten, not a screen left in its proper place. There was something in this search of Balsamo’s like the frantic efforts of a man blinded by passion, alternating with the feeble and tottering gait of a drunkard. He could then only stretch out his arms and cry, “Lorenza. Lorenza!” hoping that the adored creature would rush forth suddenly, and throw herself into his arms with an exclamation of joy.
But silence alone, a gloomy and uninterrupted silence, replied to his extravagant thoughts and mad appeals.
In running wildly about, dashing aside the furniture, shouting to the naked walls, calling Lorenza, staring without seeing any object or forming a single coherent thought, Balsamo passed three minutes — that is to say, three centuries — of agony.
He recovered by degrees from this half insane hallucination, dipped his hand in a vase of iced water, moistened his temples, and pressing one hand in the other, as if to force himself to be cool, he chased back by his iron will the blood which was beating wildly against his brain, with that fatal, incessant, monotonous movement which indicates life when there is merely motion and silence, but which is a sign of death or madness when it becomes tumultuous and perceptible.
“Come!”’ said he, “let me reason. Lorenza is not here — no more false pretenses with myself. Lorenza is not here; she must be gone — yes, gone, quite gone!”
And he looked around once more, and once more shouted her name.
“Gone!” continued he. “In vain Fritz asserts that he has not seen her. She is gone — gone!”
“Two cases present themselves:
“Either he has not seen Lorenza — and, after all, that is possible, for man is liable to error — or he has seen her, and has been bribed by her.
“Fritz bribed!
“Why not? In vain does his past fidelity plead against this supposition. If Lorenza, if love, if science, could so deeply deceive and lie, why should the frail nature of a fallible human being not deceive also?
“Oh, I will know all — I will know all! Is there not Mademoiselle de Taverney left? Yes, through her I shall know if Fritz has betrayed me, if Lorenza is false! And this time — oh! this time, as love has proved false, as science has proved an error, as fidelity has become a snare — oh! this time Balsamo will punish without pity, without sparing, like a strong man who revenges himself, who chases pity from his heart, and keeps only pride.
“Let me see; the first step is to leave this as quickly as possible, not to let Fritz suspect anything, and to fly to Trianon!”
And Balsamo, seizing his hat, which had rolled on the ground, rushed toward the door.
But all at once he stopped.
“Oh!” said he, “before anything else — my God! poor old man, I had forgotten him — I must see Althotas. During my delirium, during this spasm of forced and unnatural love, I have neglected the unfortunate old man, I have been ungrateful and inhuman!”
And, with the feverishness which now animated all his movements, Balsamo approached the spring which put in motion the trap in the ceiling, and the movable scaffold quickly descended.
Balsamo placed himself upon it, and, aided by the counterpoise, mounted again, still overwhelmed by the anguish of his mind and heart, and without thinking of anything but Lorenza. Scarcely had he attained the level of the floor, when the voice of Althotas struck upon his ear, and roused him from his gloomy reverie.
But, to Balsamo’s great astonishment, the old man’s first words were not reproaches, as he had expected; he was received with an outburst of simple and natural gayety.
The pupil looked with an astonished gaze upon his master.
The old man was reclining upon his spring-chair. He breathed noisily and with delight, as if at each inspiration he added a day to his life; his eyes, full of a gloomy fire, but the expression of which was enlivened by the smile upon his lips, were fixed eagerly upon his visitor.
Balsamo summoned up all his strength and collected his ideas, in order to conceal his grief from his master, who had so little indulgence for human weaknesses.
During this moment of reflection, Balsamo felt a strange oppression weigh upon his breast. No doubt the air was vitiated by being too constantly breathed, for a heavy, dull, close, nauseous odor, like the one he had already felt below, but there in a slighter degree, floated in the air, and, like the vapors which rise from lakes and marshes in autumn at sunrise and sunset, had taken a shape and rested on the windows.
In this dense and acrid atmosphere Balsamo’s heart throbbed, his head felt confused, a vertigo seized upon him, and he felt that respiration and strength were fast failing him.
“Master,” said he, seeking some object on which to support himself, and endeavoring to dilate his lungs; “master, you cannot live here; there is no air.”
“You think so?”
“Oh!”
“Nevertheless, I breathe very well in it,” replied Althotas gayly, “and I live, as you see!”
“Master, master,” replied Balsamo, growing more and more giddy, “let me open a window! See! it rises from the floor like an exhalation of blood!”
“Of blood! Ah! you think so? Of blood?” cried Althotas, bursting into a laugh.
“Oh, yes, yes; I feel the miasma which is exhaled from a newly-killed body. I could weigh it, so heavily does it press upon my brain and heart.”
“That is it,” said Althotas, with his sardonic laugh; “that is it; I also perceived it. You have a tender heart and a weak brain, Acharat.”
“Master,” said Balsamo, pointing with his finger at the old man, “master, you have blood upon your hands; master, there is blood upon this table; there is blood everywhere, even in your eyes, which shine like two torches; master, the smell which I breathe, and which makes me giddy, which is suffocating me, is the smell of blood!”
“Well, what then?” said Althotas, quickly; “is this the first time in your life that you have smelled it?”
“No.”“
“Have you never seen me make experiments? Have you never made any yourself?”
“But human blood!” said Balsamo, pressing his hand upon his burning forehead.
“Ah! you have a subtle sense of smell,” said Althotas. “Well, I did not think human blood could be distinguished from that of any other animal.”
“Human blood!” muttered Balsamo.
And as he reeled backward and felt for some projecting point to support him, he perceived with horror a vast copper basin, the shining sides of which reflected the purple color of the freshly-spilled blood.
The enormous vase was half filled.
Balsamo started back, terrified.
“Oh, this blood!” exclaimed he; “from whence comes this blood?”
Althotas made no reply, but his watchful glance lost none of the feverish fluctuations and wild terror of Balsamo. Suddenly the latter uttered a fearful groan.
Then, stooping like some wild beast darting upon its prey, he rushed to a corner of the room and picked up from the floor a silken ribbon embroidered with silver, to which was hanging a long tress of black hair.
After this wild, mournful, terrible cry, a deathlike silence reigned for a moment in the old man’s apartment. Balsamo slowly raised the ribbon, shuddered as he examined the tresses which a golden pin fastened to the silk at one end, while, cut off sharply at the other, they seemed like a fringe the extremity of which had been dipped in a wave of blood, the red and sparkling drops of which were still apparent on the margin.
In proportion as Balsamo raised his hand, it trembled still more.
As he looked more intently at the ribbon, his cheeks grew a deeper livid.
“From whence does this come?” murmured he in a hollow voice, loud enough, however, for another to hear and to reply to his question.
“That?” asked Althotas.
“Yes, that.”
“Well! it is a silken ribbon tying some hair.”
“But the hair — in what is it steeped?”
“You can see — in blood.”
“In what blood?”
“Parbleu! in the blood I wanted for my elixir — in the blood which you refused me, and which, therefore, I was forced to procure for myself.”
“But this hair, these tresses, this ribbon — from whom did you take them? This is not a child’s hair.”
“And who told you it was a child I had killed?” asked Althotas, quietly.
“Did you not want the blood of a child for your elixir?” said Balsamo. “Did you not tell me so?”
“Or of an unmarried female, Acharat — or of an unmarried female.”
And Althotas stretched his long bony hand from the chair, and took a phial, the contents of which he tasted with delight.
Then, in his most natural tone and with his most affectionate smile:
“I have to thank you, Acharat,” said he; “you were wise and farsighted in placing that woman beneath my trap, almost within reach of my hand. Humanity has no cause for complaint. The law has nothing to lay hold upon. He! He! — it was not you who gave me the young creature without whom I should have perished. No! I took her. He! He! — thanks, my dear pupil! thanks, my dear Acharat!”
And he once more put the phial to his lips.
Balsamo let fall the tress of hair which he held; a dreadful light flashed across his mind.
Opposite to him was the old man’s table — a large marble slab always heaped with plants, books, and phials. This table was covered with a long cloth of white damask with dark flowers, on which the lamp of Althotas shed a reddish light, and which displayed an ominous outline which Balsamo had not before remarked.
He seized a corner of the cloth and hastily pulled it away.
But instantly his hair stood on end — his gaping mouth could not utter the horrible cry which almost suffocated him.
Under this shroud he had perceived Lorenza’s corpse stretched upon this table, her face livid and yet smiling, and her head hanging backward as if dragged down by the weight of her long hair.
A large wound gaped underneath the collar-bone, from which not a single drop of blood escaped. Her hands were rigid, and her eyes closed beneath their purple eyelids.
“Yes, blood! — the last three drops of an unmarried woman’s blood; that is what I wanted,” said the old man, putting the phial to his lips for the third time.
“Wretch!” thundered Balsamo, whose cry of despair at last burst from each pore, “die, then! for she was my wife — my wedded wife! You have murdered her in vain!. Die in your sin!”
The eyes of Althotas quivered at these words as if an electric shock had made them dance in their orbits; his pupils were fearfully dilated, his toothless gums chattered, the phial fell from his hand upon the floor and broke into a thousand pieces, while he — stupefied, annihilated, struck at once in heart and brain — fell back heavily upon his chair.
Balsamo bent with a sob over Lorenza’s body, and pressing his lips to her bloodstained hair, sank senseless on the ground.