WOMEN AND FLOWERS.
Some months after recorded events, about the end of March, 1791, Dr.
Gilbert was hurriedly called to his friend Mirabeau, by the latter's
faithful servant Deutsch, who had been alarmed.
Mirabeau had spoken in the House on the question of Mines, the interests
of owners and of the State not being very clearly defined. To celebrate
his victory, he gave a supper to some friends and was prostrated by
internal pains.
Gilbert was too skillful a physician not to see how grave the invalid
was. He bled him and the black blood relieved the sufferer.
"You are a downright great man," said he.
"And you a great blockhead to risk a life so precious to your friends
for a few hours of fictitious pleasure," retorted his deliverer.
The orator smiled almost ironically, in melancholy.
"I think you exaggerate and that my friends and France do not hold me so
dear."
"Upon my honor," replied Gilbert laughing, "great men complain of
ingratitude and they are really the ungrateful ones. If it were a most
serious malady of yours, all Paris would flock under your window; were
you to die, all France would come to your obsequies."
"What you say is very consoling, let me tell you," said the other,
merrily.
"It is just because you can see one without risking the other that I
say it, and indeed, you need a great public demonstration to restore
your morale. Let me take you to Paris within a couple of hours, my dear
count; let me tell the first man on the street corner that you are
ailing and you will see the excitement."
"I would go if you put off the departure till this evening, and let me
meet you at my house in Paris at eleven."
Gilbert looked at his patient and the latter saw that he was seen
through.
"My dear count, I noticed flowers on the Dining-room table," said he:
"it was not merely a supper to friends."
"You know that I cannot do without flowers; they are my craze."
"But they were not alone."
"If they are a necessity I must suffer from the consequences they
entail."
"Count, the consequences will kill you."
"Confess, doctor, that it will be a delightful kind of suicide."
"I will not leave you this day."
"Doctor, I have pledged my word and you would not make me fail in that."
"I shall see you this night, though?"
"Yes, really I feel better."
"You mean you drive me away?"
"The idea of such a thing."
"I shall be in town; I am on duty at the palace."
"Then you will see the Queen," said Mirabeau, becoming gloomy once more.
"Probably; have you any message for her?"
Mirabeau smiled bitterly.
"I should not take such a liberty, doctor; do not even say that you have
seen me: for she will ask if I have saved the monarchy, as I promised,
and you will be obliged to answer No! It is true," he added with a
nervous laugh, "that the fault is as much hers as mine."
"You do not want me to tell her that your excess of exertions in the
tribune is killing you."
"Nay, you may tell her that," he replied after brief meditation: "you
may make me out as worse than I am, to test her feelings."
"I promise you that, and to repeat her own words."
"It is well: I thank you, doctor--adieu!"
"What are you prescribing?"
"Warm drinks, soothing, strict diet and--no nurse-woman less than
fifty----"
"Rather than infringe the regulation I would take two of twenty-five!"
At the door Gilbert met Deutsch, who was in tears.
"All this through a woman--just because she looks like the Queen," said
the man; "how stupid of a genius, as they say he is."
He let out Gilbert who stepped into his carriage, muttering:
"What does he mean by a woman like the Queen?"
He thought of asking Deutsch, but it was the count's secret, and he
ordered his coachman to drive to town.
On the way he met Camille Desmoulins, the living newspaper of the day,
to whom he told the truth of the illness because it was the truth.
When he announced the news to the King, the latter inquired if the count
had lost his appetite.
"Yes, Sire," was the doctor's reply.
"Then it is a bad case," sighed the monarch, shifting the subject.
When the same words were repeated to the daughter of Maria Theresa, her
forehead darkened.
"Why was he not so stricken on the day of his panegyric on the tricolor
flag?" she sneered. "Never mind," she went on, as if repenting the
expression of her hatred before a Frenchman, "it would be very
unfortunate for France if this malady makes progress. Doctor, I rely on
your keeping me informed about it."
At the appointed hour, Gilbert called on his patient at his town house.
His eyes caught sight of a lady's scarf on a chair.
"Glad to see you," said Mirabeau, quickly as though to divert his
attention from it, "I have learnt that you kept half your promise.
Deutsch has been busy answering friendly inquiries from our arrival. Are
you true to the second part? have you been to the palace and seen the
King and Queen?"
"Yes; and told them you were unwell. The King sincerely condoled when he
heard that you had lost your appetite. The Queen was sorry and bade me
keep her informed."
"But I want the words she used."
"Well, she said that it was a pity you were not ill when you praised the
new flag of the country."
He wished to judge of the Queen's influence over the orator.
He started on the easy chair as if receiving the discharge of a galvanic
battery.
"Ingratitude of monarchs," he muttered. "That speech of mine blotted
out remembrance of the rich Civil List and the dower I obtained for
her. This Queen must be ignorant that I was compelled to regain the
popularity I lost for her sake; but she no more remembers it than my
proposing the adjournment of the annexation of Avignon to France in
order to please the King's religious scruples. But these and other
faults of mine I have dearly paid for," continued Mirabeau. "Not that
these faults will ruin them, but there are times when ruin must come,
whether faults help them forward or not. The Queen does not wish to be
saved but to be revenged; hence she relishes no reasonable ideas.
"I have tried to save liberty and royalty at the same time; but I am
not fighting against men, or tigers, but an element--it is submerging
me like the sea: yesterday up to the knee, today up to the waist,
to-morrow I shall be struggling with it up to my neck. I must be open
with you, doctor; I felt chagrin first, then disgust. I dreamt of being
the arbiter between the Revolution and monarchy. I believed I should
have an ascendancy over the Queen as a man, and some day when she was
going under the flood, I meant to leap in and rescue her. But, no! they
would not honestly take me; they try to destroy my popularity, ruin me,
annihilate me, and make me powerless to do either good or evil. So,
now that I have done my best, I tell you, doctor, that the best thing
I can do is die in the nick of time; fall artistically like the Dying
Gladiator, and offer my throat to be cut with gracefulness; yield up the
ghost with decency."
He sank back on the reclining chair and bit the pillow savagely. Gilbert
knew what he sought, on what Mirabeau's life depended.
"What will you say if the King or the Queen should send to inquire after
your health?" he asked.
"The Queen will not do it--she will not stoop so low."
"I do not believe, but I suppose, I presume----"
"I will wait till to-morrow night."
"And then?"
"If she sends a confidential man I will say you are right and I wrong.
But if on the contrary none come, then it will be the other way."
"Keep tranquil till then. But this scarf?"
"I shall not see her, on my honor," he said, smiling.
"Good, try to get a good quiet night, and I will answer for you," said
Gilbert, going out.
"Your master is better, my honest Deutsch," said he to the attendant at
the door.
The old valet shook his head sadly.
"Do you doubt my word?"
"I doubt everything since his bad angel will be beside him."
He sighed as he left the doctor on the gloomy stairs. At the landing
corner Gilbert saw a veiled shadow which seemed waiting: on perceiving
him, it uttered a low scream and disappeared so quickly by a partly
opened door that it resembled a flight.
"Who is that woman?" questioned the doctor.
"The one who looks like the Queen," responded Deutsch.
For the second time Gilbert was struck by the same idea on hearing this
phrase: he took a couple of steps as though to chase the phantom, but he
checked himself, saying,
"It cannot be."
He continued his way, leaving the old domestic in despair that this
learned man could not conjure away the demon whom he believed the agent
of the Inferno.
Next day all Paris called to inquire after the invalid orator. The crowd
in the street would not believe Deutsch's encouraging report but forced
all vehicles to turn into the side streets so that their idol should not
be disturbed by their noise.
Mirabeau got up and went to the window to wave a greeting to these
worshipers, who shouted their wishes for his long life.
But he was thinking of the haughty woman who did not trouble her head
about him, and his eyes wandered over the mob to see if any servants in
the royal blue livery were not trying to make their way through the
mass. By evening his impatience changed into gloomy bitterness.
Still he waited for the almost promised token of interest, and still it
did not come.
At eleven, Gilbert came; he had written his best wishes during the day:
he came in smiling, but he was daunted by the expression on Mirabeau's
face, faithful mirror of his soul's perturbations.
"Nobody has come," said he. "Will you tell me what you have done this
day?"
"Why, the same as usual----"
"No, doctor and I saw what happened and will tell you the same as though
present. You called on the Queen and told her how ill I was: she said
she would send to ask the latest news, and you went away, happy and
satisfied, relying on the royal word. She was left laughing, bitter and
haughty, ignorant that a royal word must not be broken--mocking at your
credulity."
"Truly, had you been there, you could not have seen and heard more
clearly," said Gilbert.
"What numbskulls they are," exclaimed Mirabeau. "I told you they never
did a thing at the right time. Men in the royal livery coming to my door
would have wrung shouts of 'Long live the King!' from the multitude and
given them popularity for a year."
He shook his head with grief.
"What is the matter, count?" asked Gilbert.
"Nothing."
"Have you had anything to eat?"
"Not since two o'clock."
"Then take a bath and have a meal."
"A capital idea!"
Mirabeau listened in the bath until he heard the street door close after
the doctor.
Then he rang for his servant, not Deutsch but another, to have the table
in his room decked with flowers, and "Madam Oliva" invited to sup with
him.
He closed all the doors of the supper-room except that to the rooms of
the strange woman whom the old German called his bad angel.
At about four in the morning, Deutsch who sat up, heard a violent ring
of the room bell. He and another servant rushed to the supper-room, but
all the doors were fastened so that they had to go round by the strange
lady's rooms. There they found her in the arms of their master, who had
tried to prevent her giving the alarm. She had rung the table-bell from
inability to get at the bell pull.
She was screaming as much for her own relief as her lover's, as he was
suffocating her in his convulsive embrace.
It seemed to be Death trying to drag her into the grave.
Jean ran to rouse Dr. Gilbert while Deutsch got his master to a couch.
In ten minutes the doctor drove up.
"What is it now?" he asked of Deutsch, in the hall.
"That woman again and the cursed flowers! Come and see."
At this moment something like a sob was heard; Gilbert, ran up the
stairs at the top step of which a door opened, and a woman in a white
wrapper ran out suddenly and fell at the doctor's feet.
"Oh, Gilbert," she screamed, "save him!"
"Nicole Legay," cried the doctor; "was it you, wretch, who have killed
him?" A dreadful thought overwhelmed him. "I saw her bully Beausire
selling broadsides against Mirabeau, and she became his mistress. He is
undoubtedly lost, for Cagliostro set himself against him."
He turned back into his patient's room, fully aware that no time was
to be lost. Indeed, he was too versed in secrets of his craft still to
hope, far less to preserve any doubt. In the body before his eyes, it
was impossible to see the living Mirabeau. From that time, his face
assumed the solemn cast of great men dying.
Meanwhile the news had spread that there was a relapse and that the doom
impended. Then could it be judged what a gigantic place one man may fill
among his fellows. The entire city was stirred as on great calamities.
The door was besieged by persons of all opinions as though everybody
knew they had something to lose by his loss.
He caused the window to be opened that he might be soothed by the hum of
the multitude beneath.
"Oh, good people," he murmured: "slandered, despised and insulted like
me, it is right that those Royals should forget me and the Plebes bear
me in mind."
Night drew near.
"My dear doctor," he said to him who would not leave him, "this is my
dying day. At this point nothing is to be done but embalm my corpse and
strew flowers roundabout."
Scarcely had Jean, to whom everybody rushed at the door for news, said
he wanted flowers for his master, than all the windows opened, and
flowers were offered from conservatories and gardens of the rarest
sorts. By nine in the morning the room was transformed into a bower of
bloom.
"My dear doctor, I beg a quarter of an hour to say good-bye to a person
who ought to quit the house before I go. I ask you to protect her in
case they hoot her."
"I leave you alone," said Gilbert, understanding.
"Before going, kindly hand me the little casket in the secretary."
Gilbert did as requested; the money-box was heavy enough to be full of
gold.
At the end of half an hour, spent by Gilbert in giving news to the
inquirers, Jean ushered a veiled lady out to a hackney-carriage at the
door.
Gilbert ran to his patient.
"Put the casket back," said he in a faint voice. "Odd, is it not?" he
continued, seeing how astonished the doctor looked at its being as heavy
as before, "but where the deuce will disinterestedness next have a
nest?"
Near the bed, Gilbert picked up a lace handkerchief wet with tears.
"Ah, she would take nothing away--but she left something," remarked
Mirabeau.
Feeling it was damp he pressed it to his forehead.
"Tears? is she the only one who has a heart?" he murmured.
He fell back on the bed, with closed eyes; he might have been believed
dead or swooning but for the death-rattle in his breast.
How came it that this man of athletic, herculean build should die?
Was it not because he had held out his hand to stay the tumbling throne
from toppling over? Was it not because he had offered his arm to that
woman of misfortune known as Marie Antoinette?
Had not Cagliostro predicted some such fate to Gilbert for Mirabeau? and
the two strange creatures--one, Beausire, blasting the reputation, the
other, Nicole, blasting the health of the great orator who had become
the supporter of the monarchy--were they not for him, Gilbert, a proof
that all things which were obstacles to this man--or rather the idea he
stood for--must go down before him as the Bastile had done?
Nevertheless he was going to try upon him the elixir of life which he
owed to Cagliostro; it was irony to save his victim with his own remedy.
The patient had opened his eyes.
"Nay," said he, "a few drops will be vain. You must give me the whole
phial. I had the stuff analyzed and found it was Indian hemp; I had some
compounded for myself and I have been taking it copiously not to live
but to dream."
"Unhappy man that I am," sighed Gilbert; "he has led to my dealing out
poison to my friend."
"A sweet poison, by which I have lengthened out the last moments of my
life a hundredfold. In my dream I have enjoyed what has really escaped
me, riches, power, and love. I do not know whether I ought to thank God
for my life, but I thank you, doctor, for your drug. Fill up the glass
and let me have it."
Gilbert presented the extract which the patient absorbed with gusto.
"Ah, doctor," he said after a short pause, as if the veil of the future
were raised at the approach of eternity; "blessed are those who die
in this year, 1791! for they will have seen the sunny side of the
Revolution. Never has a great one cost so little bloodshed up to now,
because it is the mind that was conquered: but on the morrow the war
will be upon facts and in things. Perhaps you believe that the tenants
of the Tuileries will mourn for me? not at all. My death rids them of
an engagement. With me, they had to rule in a certain way: I was less
support than hindrance. _She_ excused herself for leaning on me, to her
brother: 'Mirabeau believes that he is advising me--I am only amusing
myself with him.' That is why I wished that woman, her likeness, to be
my mistress, and not my Queen.
"What a fine part he shall play in History who undertook to sustain the
young nation with one hand and the old monarchy in the other, forcing
them to tread the same goal--the happiness of the governed and the
respect of the governors. It might have been possible and might be but
a dream; but I am convinced that I alone could have realized the dream.
My sorrow is not in dying, but in dying with work unfinished. Who will
glorify my idea left mangled, an abortion? What will be known of me will
be the part that should be buried in oblivion--my wild, reckless, rakish
life and my obscene writings.
"I shall be blamed for having made a bond with the court out of which
comes gain for no man; I shall be judged, dying at forty-two, like one
who lived man's full age. They will take me to task as if instead of
trying to walk on the waters in a storm, I had trodden a broad way paved
with laws, statutes, and regulations. To whom shall I league my memory
to be cleansed and be an honor to my country?
"But I could do nothing without her, and she would not take my helping
hand. I pledged myself like a fool, while she remained unfettered. But
it is so--all is for the best; and if you will promise one thing, no
regret will trouble my last breath."
"Good God, what would I not promise?"
"If my passing from life is tedious, make it easy? I ask the aid not
only of the doctor but of the man and the philosopher--promise to aid
me. I do not wish to die dead,--but living, and the last step will not
be hard to take."
The doctor bent his head towards the speaker.
"I promised not to leave you, my friend; if heaven hath condemned
you--though I hope we have not come to that point--leave to my affection
at the supreme instant the care of accomplishing what I ought to do. If
death comes, I shall be at hand also."
"Thanks," said the dying one as if this were all he awaited.
The abundant dose of cannabis indicus had restored speech to the doomed
one: but this vitality of the mind vanished and for three hours the cold
hand remained in the doctor's without a throb. Suddenly he felt a start:
the awakening had come.
"It will be a dreadful struggle," he thought.
Such was the agony in which the strong frame wrestled that Gilbert
forgot that he had promised to second death, not to oppose it. But,
reminded of his pledge, he seized the pen to write a prescription for
an opiate. Scarcely had he written the last words than Mirabeau rose on
the pillow and asked for the pen. With his hand clenched by death he
scrawled:
"Flee, flee, flee!"
He tried to sign but could only trace four letters of his name.
"For her," he gasped, holding out his convulsed arm towards his
companion.
He fell back without breath, movement or look--he was dead.
Gilbert turned to the spectators of this scene and said:
"Mirabeau is no more."
Taking the paper whose destination he alone might divine, he rapidly
departed from the death chamber.
Some seconds after the doctor's going, a great clamor arose in the
street and was prolonged throughout Paris.
The grief was intense and wide. The Assembly voted a public funeral, and
the Pantheon, formerly Church of St. Genevieve, was selected for the
great man's resting-place. Three years subsequently the Convention sent
the coffin to the Clamart Cemetery to be bundled among the corpses of
the publicly executed.
Petion claimed to have discovered a contra-revolutionary plot written in
the hand of Mirabeau, and Congress reversed its previous judgment and
declared that genius could not condone corruption.