THE COUNTESS OF CHARNY.
Gilbert had retired into a window recess, while the King paced the
Bulls-eye Hall, called on account of a round window in the wall,
thinking now of public matters, then of his visitor's persistence
though nothing but news from Paris ought to have enchained him.
Suddenly the door opened and the lady entered, dressed in the extreme
of the showy and fantastic fashion of Marie Antoinette and her court.
She was lovely, this Countess Charny, with a peerless figure and her
hand was aristocratic to the utmost with which she played with a small
cane.
"She, Andrea Taverney!" muttered Gilbert, involuntarily shrinking
behind the curtains.
"My lady, I ask your presence for a little information," began the
monarch, seeing nothing of Gilbert's emotion.
"I am ready to satisfy your Majesty." The voice attracted the doctor
who came a little forward.
"A week ago, or so, a blank letter under the royal seal was delivered
to Minister Necker," went on the King, "for the arrest----"
Gilbert had his eye on the lady, who was pale, feverish and fretful as
if bent under the weight of a secret.
"This warrant was applied for by your ladyship and countersigned by the
Queen. I say this to refresh your memory. Why do you not say something,
countess?"
"It is true, your Majesty," she faltered, in a feverish abstraction,
"I wrote for the letter, filled up the blanks, and the Queen backed it."
"Will you please tell me what crime the person committed for whom the
measure was taken?" demanded Louis.
"Sire, I may not do that, but I shall say the crime was great."
"Then you should do so to the object," continued the King; "what you
refuse the King Louis XVI., you cannot Doctor Gilbert."
He stepped aside to discover the doctor, who opened the curtains and
appeared as pale as the staggering lady. She tossed her head backwards
as if going to swoon, and only kept her footing by aid of a table. She
leaned on it in dull despair, like one whom a snake bite was filling
with poison.
"My lady, let me put the question to you which the King addressed,"
said Gilbert.
Andrea's lips moved but no sound struggled forth.
"What did I do to you, lady, that your order threw me into a hideous
dungeon?"
The voice made her leap as if it tore the very soul in her.
Suddenly lowering her cold gaze on him, she replied:
"Sir, I do not know you."
But while she was speaking the mesmerist stared at her with so much
fixedness and his glance was so charged with invincible boldness that
her own lost lustre under his.
"Countess, you see what this abuse of the royal signature leads
to," gently reproved the monarch; "you confess you do not know this
gentleman, who is a renowned physician, a learned man, whom you can
blame in no way,----"
Andrea darted a withering glance at Gilbert, who bore it calmly and
proudly.
"I am saying that it is wicked to visit on the innocent the faults of
another. I know you have not a bad heart," he hastened to add, for he
was trembling lest he offended his wife's favorite, "and that you would
not pursue anybody in your hatred unless he merited it: but you will
understand that such mistakes must not be made in the future. Doctor,"
he went on, turning to the other hearer, "these things are the fault
of our period rather than of persons. We are born in corruption and we
shall die in it. But we are going to try to make matters better, in
which work I expect you to join us, dear doctor."
He stopped, thinking he had said enough to please both parties. If
he had spoken thus at a Parliamentary session, he would have been
applauded; but his audience of two personal enemies little heeded his
conciliatory philosophy.
"But," recommenced Gilbert, "while not knowing me, you knew another
Gilbert, whose crime weighs upon his Namesake. It is not my place to
question the lady; will your Majesty deign to inquire of her ladyship
what this infamous man did?"
"Countess, you cannot refuse so just a request."
"The Queen must know, since she authorized the arrest," said Andrea
evasively.
"But it is not enough that the Queen should be convinced," said the
sovereign, "it is necessary that the King also should know. The Queen
is what she is, but I am the King."
"Sire, the Gilbert for whom the warrant was intended committed a
horrible crime sixteen years ago."
"Will your Majesty please inquire what age this Gilbert is to-day?"
"He may be thirty-two," replied Andrea.
"Sire, then the crime was done by a boy, not a man, and does he not
deserve some indulgence who has for sixteen years deplored his boyish
crime?"
"You seem to know him? has he committed no other crime than this sin of
youth?" demanded the King.
"I am less indulgent to him than others, but I can say that he
reproaches himself with none other."
"Only with having dipped his pen in poison and written odious libels!"
"Sire, please ask my lady if the real cause of the arrest and committal
of this Gilbert was not to enable his enemies--particularly one
enemy--to get possession of a certain casket containing papers possibly
compromising a great lady of the court?"
Andrea shuddered from head to foot.
"Countess, what casket is this?" inquired the King, who noticed the
plain pallor and agitation of the lady.
"No more shifting and subterfuges," cried Gilbert, feeling that he was
master of the situation. "Enough falsehoods on both sides. I am Gilbert
of the crime, the libels, the casket, and you the real great lady of
the court. I take the King as the judge. Accept him and we will tell
our judge, under heaven and the King will decide."
"Tell his Majesty what you please, but I shall say nothing more--for I
do not know you," responded the haughty lady.
"And the casket? you do not know about that?"
"No more than of you."
But she shook with the effort to make this denial, like a statue
rocking at the base.
"Beware," said the doctor, "you cannot have forgotten that I am the
pupil of Balsamo-Cagliostro the Magician, who has transmitted to me
the power he had over you. Once only, will you answer the question? My
casket?" then, lifting his hand, full of threatening, he thundered:
"Nature of steel, heart of adamant, bend, melt, shatter under the
irresistible pressure of my will! You shall speak, Andrea, and none,
King or any powers less than heaven's, shall subtract you from my sway.
You shall unfold your mind to the august witness and he shall read what
you hid in the black recesses of your soul. Sire, you shall know all
through her who refuses to speak. Sleep, Andrea Taverney, Countess of
Charny, sleep and speak, for I will it."
Hardly were the words uttered before the woman, stopped short in
beginning a scream, held out her arms for support as if struck by
blindness. Finding none, she fell into the King's arms and he placed
her in a chair.
"Ha!" exclaimed he, trembling like herself, "I have heard about
hypnotism but never saw an exhibition. Is not this magnetic sleep to
which you oblige her to succumb, doctor?"
"Yes, my lord. Take her hand, and ask her why she had me arrested."
Astounded by the scene, Louis receded but, interested, he did as
directed. As Andrea resisted, the magnetizer touched the crown of her
head with his palm, saying:
"Speak, I will it."
She sighed and her arms fell; her head sank back and she wept.
"Ugh, I hate you," she hissed.
"Hate away, but speak."
"So, countess," said the King, "you wanted to arrest and imprison the
doctor?"
"Yes."
"And the casket?"
"How could I leave that in his hands?" muttered the lady, in a hollow
voice.
"Tell me about that," said the King forgetting etiquet and kneeling
beside the countess.
"I learnt that Gilbert, who had in sixteen years been twice back in
France, purposed another voyage, to settle here. Chief of Police Crosne
informed me that he had on a previous return bought an estate at
Villers Cotterets: that his farmer enjoyed his trust, and I suspected
that the casket with his papers was at his house."
"How could you suspect that?"
"I--I went to Mesmer's and had myself put into a trance, when, my own
medium, I wrote down the revelations I wanted."
"Wonderful," exclaimed the Sovereign.
"I went to Chief Crosne and he lent me his best man, one Wolfstep, who
brought me the casket."
"Where is it?" cried Gilbert. "No lying--where is my casket?"
"In my rooms at Versailles," said Andrea, trembling nervously and
bursting into tears. "Wolfstep is waiting for me here by appointment
since eleven."
Twelve was striking.
"Where is he?"
"Standing in the waiting room, leaning on the mantleshelf. The casket
is on the table before him. Oh, haste! Count Charny, who was not to
return before to-morrow, will be back to-night on account of the
events. He is at Sevres now. Get Wolfstep away for fear my lord will
see him."
"Your Majesty hears? This casket belongs to me. Will the King please
order it to be returned to me?"
"Instantly."
Placing a screen before the countess, Louis called the officer on duty
and gave him orders what to do.
This curiosity of a monarch whose throne was being undermined to a
purely physical problem, would make those smile who expected him to be
engrossed with politics.
But he concentrated himself on this private speculation and returned to
see the mesmerizer and the medium.
In the mesmeric slumber Andrea's wondrous beauty was displayed in its
entire splendor. She who had in her youth enthralled Louis XV. now
enchanted his successor.
Gilbert turned his head away, sighing: he could not resist the
prompting to give his adored this degree of supernal beauty; and now
more unhappy than Pygmalion, for he knew how insensible was the lovely
statue, he was frightened by his own work.
Gilbert knew how to own his ignorance, like all superior men. He knew
what he could do, but not the wherefore.
"Where did you study the art? under Mesmer?" asked the King.
"I saw the most astonishing phenomena ten years before that German came
into France. My master was a more amazing man, superior to any you can
name, for I have seen him execute surgical operations of incredible
daring. No science was unknown to him. But I ought not to utter his
name before your Majesty."
"I should like to hear it, though it was Satan's itself."
"My lord, you honor me almost with a friend's confidence in speaking
thus. My master was Baron Balsamo, afterwards Count Cagliostro."
"That charlatan!" exclaimed Louis, blushing, for he could not help
remembering the plot of the Diamond's Necklace, in which Cagliostro had
figured as friend of Cardinal Rohan and consequently enemy of Marie
Antoinette. The King believed his wife but the world thought that she
had participated in the fraud on the court jewelers. We have related
the story according to our lights in the volume of this series entitled
"The Queen's Necklace."
"Charlatan?" repeated Gilbert warmly. "You are right. The name comes
from the Italian word meaning to patter, to talk freely--and no one
was more ready than Cagliostro to talk instructively where the seed
would fall on fruitful ground."
"This Cagliostro whom you praise was a great enemy of kings," observed
Louis.
"Rather say of queen's," retorted Gilbert.
"In the trial of Prince Rohan, his conduct was equivocal."
"Sire, then as ever he fulfilled his mission to mankind. He may
have acted mistakenly then. But I studied under the physician and
philosopher, not under the politician."
"Well, well," said the King, suffering under the wound to his person
and his pride; "we are forgetting the countess who is in pain."
"I will awaken her presently, for here is the casket coming."
In fact the messenger was arriving with the small box which he handed
to the King. He nodded his satisfaction and the officer went out.
"Sire, it is my casket: but I would remark that it contains papers
damning to the countess and----"
"Carry it away unopened, sir," said the monarch coldly. "Do not awaken
the lady here, I detest shrieks, groans, noise."
"She will awaken wherever you suggest her removal."
"In the Queen's apartments will be best."
"How long will it take?"
"Ten minutes."
"Awaken in fifteen minutes," ordered the mesmerizer to the lady.
Two guardsmen entered and carried out the countess, seated on the chair.
"My lady fainted here," said the King to the officer, "bear her to the
Queen."
"What can I do for you, Dr. Gilbert?" he asked when they were alone.
"I wish to be honorary house physician to your Majesty. It is a
position which will do nobody umbrage and is more of trust than
emolument and lustre."
"Granted! Good-by, Dr. Gilbert. Remind me affectionately to Necker.
Bring me supper," he added, for nothing could make the King forget a
meal.