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PRICE, 25 CENTS. No. 77.
THE SUNSET SERIES.
By Subscription, per Year, Nine Dollars. January 25, 1894.
Entered at the New York Post Office as second-class matter.
Copyright 1892, by J. S. OGILVIE.
THE
MESMERIST’S VICTIM.
BY
ALEX. DUMAS.
NEW YORK:
J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
57 ROSE STREET.
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THE MESMERIST’S VICTIM;
OR,
ANDREA DE TAVERNEY.
A HISTORICAL ROMANCE
BY ALEX. DUMAS.
Author of “Monte Cristo,” “The Three Musketeers _Series_,” “Chicot
the Jester _Series_,” etc.
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATEST PARIS EDITION.
BY
HENRY LLEWELLYN WILLIAMS.
NEW YORK:
J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
57 ROSE STREET.
_Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1892, by A. E. Smith &
Co, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington._
THE MESMERIST’S VICTIM;
OR,
ANDREA DE TAVERNEY.
CHAPTER I.
THE DESPERATE RESCUE.
On the thirteenth of May, 1770, Paris celebrated the wedding of the
Dauphin or Prince Royal Louis Aguste, grandson of Louis XV. still
reigning, with Marie-Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria.
The entire population flocked towards Louis XV. Place, where fireworks
were to be let off. A pyrotechnical display was the finish to all grand
public ceremonies, and the Parisians were fond of them although they
might make fun.
The ground was happily chosen, as it would hold six thousand spectators.
Around the equestrian statue of the King, stands were built circularly
to give a view of the fireworks, to be set off at ten or twelve feet
elevation.
The townsfolk began to assemble long before seven o’clock when the City
Guard arrived to keep order. This duty rather belonged to the French
Guards, but the Municipal government had refused the extra pay their
Commander, Colonel, the Marshal Duke Biron, demanded, and these warriors
in a huff were scattered in the mob, vexed and quarrelsome. They sneered
loudly at the tumult, which they boasted they would have quelled with
the pike-stock or the musket-butt if they had the ruling of the
gathering.
The shrieks of the women, squeezed in the press, the wailing of the
children, the swearing of the troopers, the grumbling of the fat
citizens, the protests of the cake and candy merchants whose goods were
stolen, all prepared a petty uproar preceding the deafening one which
six hundred thousand souls were sure to create when collected. At eight
at evening, they produced a vast picture, like one after Teniers, but
with French faces.
About half past eight nearly all eyes were fastened on the scaffold
where the famous Ruggieri and his assistants were putting the final
touches to the matches and fuses of the old pieces. Many large
compositions were on the frames. The grand bouquet, or shower of stars,
girandoles and squibs, with which such shows always conclude, was to go
off from a rampart, near the Seine River, on a raised bank.
As the men carried their lanterns to the places where the pieces would
be fired, a lively sensation was raised in the throng, and some of the
timid drew back, which made the whole waver in line.
Carriages with the better class still arrived but they could not reach
the stand to deposit their passengers. The mob hemmed them in and some
persons objected to having the horses lay their heads on their shoulder.
Behind the horses and vehicles the crowd continued to increase, so that
the conveyances could not move one way or another. Then were seen with
the audacity of the city-bred, the boys and the rougher men climb upon
the wheels and finally swarm upon the footman’s board and the coachman’s
box.
The illumination of the main streets threw a red glare on the sea of
faces, and flashed from the bayonets of the city guardsmen, as
conspicuous as a blade of wheat in a reaped field.
About nine o’clock one of these coaches came up, but three rows of
carriages were before the stand, all wedged in and covered with the
sightseers. Hanging onto the springs was a young man, who kicked away
those who tried to share with him the use of this locomotive to cleave a
path in the concourse. When it stopped, however, he dropped down but
without letting go of the friendly spring with one hand. Thus he was
able to hear the excited talk of the passengers.
Out of the window was thrust the head of a young and beautiful girl,
wearing white and having lace on her sunny head.
“Come, come, Andrea,” said a testy voice of an elderly man within to
her, “do not lean out so, or you will have some rough fellow snatch a
kiss. Do you not see that our coach is stuck in this mass like a boat in
a mudflat? we are in the water, and dirty water at that; do not let us
be fouled.”
“We can’t see anything, father,” said the girl, drawing in her head: “if
the horse turned half round we could have a look through the window, and
would see as well as in the places reserved for us at the governor’s.”
“Turn a bit, coachman,” said the man.
“Can’t be did, my lord baron,” said the driver; “it would crush a dozen
people.”
“Go on and crush them, then!”
“Oh, sir,” said Andrea.
“No, no, father,” said a young gentleman beside the old baron inside.
“Hello, what baron is this who wants to crush the poor?” cried several
threatening voices.
“The Baron of Taverney Redcastle--I,” replied the old noble, leaning out
and showing that he wore a red sash crosswise.
Such emblems of the royal and knightly orders were still respected, and
though there was grumbling it was on a lessening tone.
“Wait, father,” said the young gentleman, “I will step out and see if
there is some way of getting on.”
“Look out, Philip,” said the girl, “you will get hurt. Only hear the
horses neighing as they lash out.”
Philip Taverney, Knight of Redcastle, was a charming cavalier and,
though he did not resemble his sister, he was as handsome for a man as
she for her sex.
“Bid those fellows get out of our way,” said the baron, “so we can
pass.”
Philip was a man of the time and like many of the young nobility had
learnt ideas which his father of the old school was incapable of
appreciating.
“Oh, you do not know the present Paris, father,” he returned. “These
high-handed acts of the masters were all very well formerly; but they
will hardly go down now, and you would not like to waste your dignity,
of course.”
“But since these rascals know who I am---- ”
“Were you a royal prince,” replied the young man smiling, “they would
not budge for you, I am afraid; at this moment, too, when the fireworks
are going off.”
“And we shall not see them,” pouted Andrea.
“Your fault, by Jove--you spent more than two hours over your attire,”
snarled the baron.
“Could you not take me through the mob to a good spot on your arm,
brother?” asked she.
“Yes, yes, come out, little lady,” cried several voices; for the men
were struck by Mdlle. Taverney’s beauty: “you are not stout, and we will
make room for you.”
Andrea sprang lightly out of the vehicle without touching the steps.
“I think little of the crackers and rockets, and I will stay here,”
growled the baron.
“We are not going far, father,” responded Philip.
Always respectful to the queen called Beauty, the mob opened before the
Taverneys, and a good citizen made his wife and daughter give way on a
bench where they stood, for the young lady. Philip stood by his sister,
who rested a hand on his shoulder. The young man who had “cut behind”
the carriage, had followed them and he looked with fond eyes on the
girl.
“Are you comfortable, Andrea?” said the chevalier; “see what a help good
looks are!”
“Good looks,” sighed the strange young man; “why, she is lovely, very
lovely. She is lovelier here, in Parisian costume, than when I used to
see her on their country place, where I was but Gilbert the humble
retainer on my lord Baron’s lands.’”
Andrea heard the compliment; but she thought it came not from an
acquaintance so far as a dependent could be the acquaintance of a young
lady of title, and she believed it was a common person who spoke.
Infinitely proud, she heeded it no more than an East Indian idol
troubles itself about the adorer who places his tribute at its feet.
Hardly were the two young Taverneys established on and by the bench than
the first rockets serpentined towards the clouds, and a loud “Oh!” was
roared by the multitude henceforth absorbed in the sight.
Andrea did not try to conceal her impressions in her astonishment at the
unequalled sight of a population cheering with delight before a palace
of fire. Only a yard from her, the youth who had named himself as
Gilbert, gazed on her rather than at the show, except because it charmed
her. Every time a gush of flame shone on her beautiful countenance, he
thrilled; he could fancy that the general admiration sprang from the
adoration which this divine creature inspired in him who idolized her.
Suddenly, a vivid glare burst and spread, slanting from the river: it
was a bomshell exploding fiercely, but Andrea merely admired the
gorgeous play of light.
“How splendid,” she murmured.
“Goodness,” said her brother, disquieted, “that shot was badly aimed for
it shoots almost on the level instead of taking an upward curve. Oh,
God, it is an accident! Come away--it is a mishap which I dreaded. A
stray cracker has set fire to the powder on the bastion. The people are
trampling on each other over there to get away. Do you not hear those
screams--not cheers but shrieks of distress. Quick, quick, to the coach!
Gentlemen, gentlemen, please let us through.”
He put his arms around his sister’s slender waist, to drag her in the
direction of her father. Also made uneasy by the clamor, the danger
being evident though not distinguished yet by him, he put his head out
of the window to look for his dear ones.
It was too late!
The final display of fifteen thousand rockets-burst, darting off in all
directions, and chasing the spectators like those squibs exploded in the
bull-fighting ring to stir up the bull.
At first surprised but soon frightened, the people drew back without
reflection. Before this invincible retreat of a hundred thousand,
another mass as numerous gave the same movement when squeezed to the
rear. The wooden work at the bastion took fire; children cried, women
tossed their arms; the city guardsmen struck out to quiet the brawlers
and re-establish order by violence.
All these causes combined to drive the crowd like a waterspout to the
corner where Philip of Taverney stood. Instead of reaching the baron’s
carriage as he reckoned, he was swept on by the resistless tide, of
which no description can give an idea. Individual force, already doubled
by fear and pain, was increased a hundredfold by the junction of the
general power.
As Philip dragged Andrea away, Gilbert was also carried off by the human
current: but at the corner of Madeline Street, a band of fugitives
lifted him up and tore him away from Andrea, in spite of his struggles
and yelling.
Upon the Taverneys charged a team of runaway horses. Philip saw the
crowd part; the smoking heads of the animals appeared and they rose on
their haunches for a leap. He leaped, too, and being a cavalry officer,
captain in the Dauphiness’s Dragoons, knew how to deal with them. He
caught the bit of one and was lifted with it.
Andrea saw him flung and fall; she screamed, threw up her arms, was
buffeted, reeled, and in an instant was tossed hence alone, like a
feather, without the strength to offer resistance.
Deafening calmor, more dreadful than shouts of battle, the horses
neighing, the clatter of the vehicles on the pavement cumbered with the
crippled, and livid glare of the burning stands, the sinister flashing
of swords which some of the soldiers had drawn, in their fury and above
the bloody chaos, the bronze statue gleaming with the light as it
presided over the carnage--here was enough to drive the girl mad.
She uttered a despairing cry; for a soldier in cutting a way for himself
in the crowd had waved the dripping blade over her head. She clasped her
hands like a shipwrecked sailor as the last breaker swamps him, and
gasping “God have mercy” fell.
Yet to fall here was to die.
One had heard this final, supreme appeal. It was Gilbert who had been
snaking his way up to her. Though the same rush bent him down, he rose,
seized the soldier by the throat and upset him.
Where he felled him, lay the white-robed form: he lifted it up with a
giant’s strength.
When he felt this beautiful body on his heart, though it might be a
corpse, a ray of pride illuminated his face.
The sublime situation made him the sublimation of strength and courage
extreme; he dashed with his burden into the torrent of men. This would
have broken a hole through a wall. It sustained him and carried them
both. He just touched the ground with his feet, but her weight began to
tell on him. Her heart beat against his.
“She is saved,” he said, “and I have saved her,” he added, as the mass
brought up against the Royal Wardrobe Building, and he was sheltered in
the angle of masonry.
But looking towards the bridge over the Seine, he did not see the twenty
thousand wretches on his right, mutilated, welded together, having
broken through the barrier of the carriages and mixed up with them as
the drivers and horses were seized with the same vertigo.
Instinctively they tried to get to the wall against which the closest
were mashed.
This new deluge threatened to grind those who had taken refuge here by
the Wardrobe building, with the belief they had escaped. Maimed bodies
and dead ones piled up by Gilbert. He had to back into the recess of the
gateway, where the weight made the walls crack.
The stifled youth felt like yielding; but collecting all his powers by a
mighty effort, he enclasped Andrea with his arms, applying his face to
her dress as if he meant to strangle her whom he wished to protect.
“Farewell,” he gasped as he bit her robe in kissing it.
His eyes glancing about in an ultimate call to heaven, were offered a
singular vision.
A man was standing on a horseblock, clinging by his right hand to an
iron ring sealed in the wall: while with his left he seemed to beckon an
army in flight to rally.
He was a tall dark man of thirty, with a figure muscular but elegant.
His features had the mobility of Southerners’, strangely blending power
and subtlety. His eyes were piercing and commanding.
As the mad ocean of human beings poured beneath him he cast out a word
or a cabalistic token. On these, some individual in the throng was seen
to stop, fight clear and make his way towards the beckoner to fall in at
his rear. Others, called likewise, seemed to recognize brothers in each
other, and all lent their hands to catch still more of the swimmers in
this tide of life. Soon this knot of men were formed into the head of a
breakwater, which divided the fugitives and served to stay and stem the
rush.
At every instant new recruits seemed to spring out of the earth at these
odd words and weird gestures, to form the backers of this wondrous man.
Gilbert nerved himself. He felt that here alone was safety, for here was
calm and power.
A last flicker of the burning staging, irradiated this man’s visage and
Gilbert uttered an outcry of surprise.
“I know who that is,” he said, “he visited my master down at Taverney.
It is Baron Balsamo. Oh, I care not if I die provided she lives. This
man has the power to save her.”
In perfect self-sacrifice, he raised the girl up in both hands and
shouted:
“Baron Balsamo, save Andrea de Taverney!”
Balsamo heard this voice from the depths; he saw the white figure lifted
above the matted beings; he used the phalanx he had collected to cover
his charge to the spot. Seizing the girl, still sustained by Gilbert
though his arms were weakening, he snatched her away, and let the crowd
carry them both afar.
He had not time to turn his head.
Gilbert had not the breath to utter a word. Perhaps, after having Andrea
aided, he would have supplicated assistance for himself; but all he
could do was clutch with a hand which tore a scrap of the dress of the
girl. After this grasp, a last farewell, the young man tried no longer
to struggle, as though he were willing to die. He closed his eyes and
fell on a heap of the dead.