THE DOUBLE EXISTENCE.
But he recoiled swiftly, and the arms came together ere falling folded
on her bosom.
"Would you like to speak with your friend?" he asked.
"Yes, speak to me often. I like to hear your voice."
"You have often told me, dearest, that you would be very happy if we
could dwell together afar from the world."
"That would indeed be bliss."
"Well, I have realized your wish, darling. We are by ourselves in this
parlor, where none can hear and none intrude."
"I am glad to hear it."
"Tell me how you like the place."
"Order me to see it."
"Does it please you?" asked the count, after a pause.
"Yes; here are my favorite flowers. Thank you, my kind Joseph. How good
you are!"
"I do all I can to please you."
"Oh, you are a hundred times kinder to me than I deserve."
"You confess that you have been wicked?"
"Very badly so, but you will overlook that?"
"After you explain the enigma which I have struggled against ever since
I knew you."
"Hearken, Balsamo. In me are two Lorenzas, quite distinct. One loves
you and the other detests you, as if I lived two existences. One during
which I enjoy the delights of paradise, the other when I suffer the
opposite."
"These two existences are your waking mood and your magnetic sleep?"
"Yes."
"Why do you hate me when in your waking senses and love me when in the
charmed sleep?"
"Because Lorenza is the superstitious Italian girl who believes that
science is a crime and love a sin. Then she is afraid of the sage
Balsamo and the loving Joseph. She has been told that to love would
destroy her soul; and so she flees from the lover to the confines of
the earth."
"But when Lorenza sleeps?"
"It is another matter. She is no longer a Roman girl and superstitious,
but a woman. She sees that the genius of Balsamo dreams of sublime
themes. She understands how petty an object she is compared with him.
She longs to live by him and die at his side, in order that the future
shall breathe her name while it trumpets the glory of--Cagliostro."
"Is that the name I am to be celebrated under?"
"The name."
"Dear Lorenza! so you like our new home?"
"It is richer than any you have found for me; but that is not why I
like it more--but because you say you will be oftener with me here."
"So, when you sleep, you know how fondly I adore you?"
"Yes," she said with a faint smile, "I see that passion, then, and yet
there is something you love above Lorenza," she sighed. "Your dream."
"Rather say, my task."
"Well, your ambition!"
"Say, my glory."
"Oh, heaven!" and her heart was laboring; her closed lids allowed tears
to struggle out.
"What is it you see?" inquired Balsamo, astounded at the lucidity which
frightened even him.
"I see phantoms gliding about among the shadows. Some hold in their own
hands their severed crowned heads, like St. Denis in that Abbey; and
you stand in the heart of the battle like a general in command. You
seem to rule, and you are obeyed."
"Does that not make you proud of me?" inquired the other joyfully.
"You are good enough not to care to be great. Besides, in looking for
myself in this scene, I see nothing of me. Oh, I shall not be there,"
she sighed. "I shall be in the grave."
"You dead, my dearest Lorenza!" said Balsamo, frowning. "No, we shall
live and love together."
"No, you love me no more, or not enough," crowding upon his forehead,
held between her hands, a multitude of glowing kisses. "I have to
reproach you for your coldness. Look now how you draw away from me as
though you fled my fondlings. Oh, restore to me my maiden quietude, in
my nunnery of Subiaco--when the night was so calm in my cell. Return me
those kisses which you sent on the wings of the wind coming to me in
my solitude like golden-pinioned sylph, which melted on me in delight.
Do not retreat from me. Give me your hand, that I may press it; let me
kiss your dear eyes--let me be your wife, in short."
"Lorenza, sweetest, you are my well-beloved wife."
"Yet you pass by the chaste and solitary flower and scorn the perfume?
I am sure that I am nothing to you."
"On the contrary, you are everything--my Lorenza. For it is you who
give me strength, power and genius--without you I should be nothing.
Cease, then, to love me with this insensate fever which wrecks the
nights of your people, and love me as I love you. Thus I am happy."
"You call that happiness?" scornfully said the Italian.
"Yes, for to be great is happiness."
She heaved a long sigh.
"Oh, if you only knew the gladness in being able to read the hearts
of man and manipulate them with the strings of their own dominant
passions."
"Yes, I know that in this I serve your purpose."
"It is not all. Your eyes read the sealed book of the future. You,
sweet dove, pure and guideless, you have taught me what I could not
ascertain in twenty years' application. You enlighten my steps, before
which my enemies multiply traps and snares; on my mind depend my life,
fortune and liberty--you dilate it like the lynx's eye which sees
in the dark. As your lovely orbs close on this world, they open in
superhuman clarity. They watch for me. It is you who make me rich, free
and powerful."
"And in return, you make me unhappy," replied Lorenza, wrapped up in
her frenzy.
More fiery than ever, she enfolded him in her arms, so that he was
impregnated with a flame which he feebly resisted. But he made such an
effort that he broke the living bondage.
"Have pity, Lorenza!" he sued.
"Was it to pity you that I left my native land, my name, my family, my
faith!" she said, almost threatening with her lovely arms, rising white
and yet muscular amid the waves of her long black tresses coming down.
"Why have you laid on me this absolute empire, so that if I am your
slave and have to give you my life and breath? Was it to mock me ever
with the name of the virgin Lorenza?"
Balsamo sighed, himself crushed by the weight of her immense despair.
"Alas, is it your fault, or that of the Creator. Why were you made
the angel with the infallible gaze, by whose aid I should make the
universe submit? Why is it that you are the one to read a soul through
its bodily envelope as one may read a book through a glass! Because
you are an angel of purity, Lorenza, and nothing throws a shadow upon
your soul. In your radiant and immaculate bosom the divine spark may be
enshrined, a place without sullying where it may fitly nestle. You are
a seer because you are blameless, Lorenza; as a woman, you would be but
so much substance."
"And you prefer this to my love," continued the Italian, clapping
her hands with such rage that they became impurpled; "you set my love
beneath these whims that you pursue and fables that you invent? You
snatch me out of the cold cloister, but, in the bustling, ardent world
you condemn me to the conventional chastity? Joseph, you commit a
crime, I tell you."
"Do not blaspheme," said Balsamo, "for I suffer, too. Read in my heart,
and never again say that I love you not. I resist you because I want to
raise you on the throne of the world."
"Ugh, your ambition!" sneered the young Roman; "will your ambition ever
give you what you might have in my love?"
He yielded to her and his head rested in her arms.
"Ah, yes," she cried, "I see at last that you love me more than your
ambition, than power, than your aspiration! Oh, you love me as I love
you!"
But at the touch of their lips, reason came to him who would be master
of Europe. With his hands he beat aside the air charged with magnetic
vapor.
"Lorenza, awake, I bid you!"
Thereupon the chain which he could not break was relaxed, and the
opening arms were dropped, while the kiss died away on the paling lips
of Lorenza, languishing in her last sigh. Her closed eyes parted their
lids; the dilated pupils resumed their normal size. She shook herself
with an effort, and sank in lassitude, but awake, on the sofa.
Seated three paces from her, the mesmerist sighed deeply.
"Good-bye to the dream!" he said; "good-bye to happiness!"