THE LIVING-WAGON IN THE STORM.
A week after the events depicted, a living-wagon drawn by four horses
and conducted by two postboys, left Pont-a-Mousson, a pretty town
between Nancy and Metz. Nothing like this caravan, as show people
style the kind, had ever crossed the bridge, though the good folks see
theatrical carts of queer aspect.
The body was large and painted blue, with a baron's insignia,
surmounting a J. and a B., artistically interlaced. This box was
lighted by two windows, curtained with muslin, but they were in the
front, where a sort of driver's cab hid them from the vulgar eye. By
these apertures the inmate of the coach could talk with outsiders.
Ventilation was given this case by a glazed skylight in the "dickey,"
or hind box of the vehicle, where grooms usually sit. Another orifice
completed the oddity of the affair by presenting a stovepipe, which
belched smoke, to fade away in the wake as the whole rushed on.
In our times one would have simply imagined that it was a steam
conveyance and applauded the mechanician who had done away with horses.
The machine was followed by a led horse of Arab extraction, ready
saddled, indicating that one of the passengers sometimes gave himself
the pleasure and change of riding alongside the vehicle.
At St. Mihiel the mountain ascent was reached. Forced to go at a walk,
the quarter of a league took half an hour.
Toward evening the weather turned from mild and clear to tempestuous. A
cloud spread over the skies with frightful rapidity and intercepted the
setting sunbeams. All of a sudden the cloud was stripped by a lightning
flash, and the startled eye could plunge into the immensity of the
firmament, blazing like the infernal regions. The vehicle was on the
mountain side when a second clap of thunder flung the rain out of the
cloud; after falling in large drops, it poured hard.
The postboys pulled up. "Hello!" demanded a man's voice from inside the
conveyance, "what are you stopping for?"
"We are asking one another if we ought to go on," answered one
postillion with the deference to a master who had paid handsomely.
"It seems to me that I ought to be asked about that. Go ahead!"
But the rain had already made the road downward slippery.
"Please, sir, the horses won't go," said the elder postillion.
"What have you got spurs for?"
"They might be plunged rowels deep without making the balky creatures
budge; may heaven exterminate me if----"
The blasphemy was not finished, as a dreadful lightning stroke cut him
short. The coach was started and ran upon the horses, which had to
race to save themselves from being crushed. The equipage flew down the
sloping road like an arrow, skimming the precipice.
Instead of the traveler's voice coming from the vehicle, it was his
head.
"You clumsy fellows will kill us all!" he said. "Bear to the left,
deuce take ye!"
"Oh, Joseph," screamed a woman's voice inside, "help! Holy Madonna,
help us!"
It was time to invoke the Queen of Heaven, for the heavy carriage was
skirting the abysm; one wheel seemed to be in the air and a horse was
nearly over when the traveler, springing out on the pole, grasped the
postboy nearest by the collar and slack of the breeches. He raised him
out of his boots as if he were a child, flung him a dozen feet clear,
and taking his place in the saddle, gathered up the reins, and said in
a terrifying voice to the second rider:
"Keep to the left, rascal, or I shall blow out your brains!"
The order had a magical effect. The foremost rider, haunted by the
shriek of his luckless comrade, followed the substitute impulse and
bore the horses toward the firm land.
"Gallop!" shouted the traveler. "If you falter, I shall run right over
you and your horses."
The chariot seemed an infernal machine drawn by nightmares and pursued
by a whirlwind.
But they had eluded one danger only to fall into another.
As they reached the foot of the declivity, the cloud split with an
awful roar in which was blended the flame and the thunder.
A fire enwrapped the leaders, and the wheelers and the leaders were
brought to their haunches as if the ground gave way under them. But
the fore pair, rising quickly and feeling that the traces had snapped,
carried away their man in the darkness. The vehicle, rolling on a few
paces, stopped on the dead body of the stricken horse.
The whole event had been accompanied by the screams of the woman.
For a moment of confusion, none knew who was living or dead.
The traveler was safe and sound, on feeling himself; but the lady had
swooned. Although he guessed this was the case, it was elsewhere that
he ran to aid--to the rear of the vehicle.
The led horse was rearing with bristling mane, and shaking the door, to
the handle of which his halter was hitched.
"Hang the confounded beast again!" muttered a broken voice within; "a
curse on him for shaking the wall of my laboratory." Becoming louder,
the same voice added in Arabic: "I bid you keep quiet, devil!"
"Do not wax angry with Djerid, master," said the traveler, untying the
steed and fastening it to the hind wheel; "he is frightened, and for
sound reasons."
So saying, he opened a door, let down the steps, and stepped inside the
vehicle, closing the door behind him.
He faced a very aged man, with hooked nose, gray eyes, and shaking yet
active hands. Sunken in a huge armchair, he was following the lines of
a manuscript book on vellum, entitled "The Secret Key to the Cabinet of
Magic," while holding a silver skimmer in his other hand.
The three walls--for this old man had called the sides of the
living-wagon "walls"--held bookcases, with shelves of bottles, jars and
brass-bound boxes, set in wooden cases like utensils on shipboard so as
to stand up without upsetting. The old man could reach these articles
by rolling the easy chair to them; a crank enabled him to screw up the
seat to the level of the highest. The compartment was, in feet, eight
by six and six in height. Facing the door was a furnace with hood and
bellows. It was now boiling a crucible at a white heat, whence issued
the smoke by the pipe overhead exciting the mystery of the villagers
wherever the wagon went through.
The whole emitted an odor which in a less grotesque laboratory would
have been called a perfume.
The occupant seemed to be in bad humor, for he grumbled:
"The cursed animal is frightened: but what has he got to disturb him,
I want to know? He has shaken my door, cracked my furnace, and spilt a
quarter of my elixir in the fire. Acharat, in heaven's name, drop the
beast in the first desert we cross."
"In the first place, master," returned the other smiling, "we are not
crossing deserts, for we are in France; and next, I would not abandon
a horse worth a thousand louis, or rather priceless, as he is of the
breed of Al Borach."
"I will give you a thousand over and over again. He has lost me more
than a million, to say nothing of the days he has robbed me of. The
liquor would have boiled up without loss of a drop, in a little longer,
which neither Zoroaster nor Paracelsus stated, but it is positively
advised by Borri."
"Never mind, it will soon be boiling again."
"But that is not all--something is dropping down my chimney."
"Merely water--it is raining."
"Water? Then my elixir is spoilt. I must renew the work--as if I had
any time to spare!"
"It is pure water from above. It was pouring, as you might have
noticed."
"Do I notice anything when busy? On my poor soul, Acharat, this is
exasperating. For six months I have been begging for a cowl to my
chimney--I mean this year. You never think of it, though you are young
and have lots of leisure. What will your negligence bring about? The
rain to-day or the wind to-morrow confound my calculations and ruin
all my operations. Yet I must hurry, by Jove! for my hundredth year
commences on the fifteenth of July, at eleven at night precisely,
and if my elixir of life is not then ready, good-night to the Sage
Althotas."
"But you are getting on well with it, my dear master, I think."
"Yes, by my tests by absorption, I have restored vitality to my
paralyzed arm. I only want the plant mentioned by Pliny, which we have
perhaps passed a hundred times or crushed under the wheels. By the way,
what rumbling is that? Are we still going?"
"No; that is thunder. The lightning has been playing the mischief with
us, but I was safe enough, being clothed in silk."
"Lightning? Pooh! wait till I renew my life and can attend to other
matters. I will put a steel bridle on your electric fluid and make it
light this study and cook my meals. I wish I were as sure of making my
elixir perfect----"
"And our great work--how comes it on?"
"Making diamonds? That is done. Look there in the glass dish."
Joseph Balsamo greedily caught up the crystal saucer, and saw a small
brilliant amid some dust.
"Small, and with flaws," he said, disappointed.
"Because the fire was put out, Acharat, from there being no cowl to the
chimney."
"You shall have it; but do take some food."
"I took some elixir a couple of hours ago."
"Nay, that was at six this morning, and it is now the afternoon."
"Another day gone, fled and lost," moaned the alchemist, wringing
his hands; "are they not growing shorter? Have they less than
four-and-twenty hours?"
"If you will not eat, at least take a nap."
"When I sleep, I am afraid I shall never wake. If I lie down for two
hours, you will come and call me, Acharat," said the old man in a
coaxing voice.
"I swear I will, master."
At this point they heard the gallop of a horse and a scream of
astonishment and disquiet.
"What does that mean?" questioned the traveler, quickly opening the
door, and leaping out on the road without using the steps.