THE ULTIMATE TEST.
Before the Italian beauty, Balsamo stopped, with his heart full of
painful but no longer violent thoughts.
“Here I stand,” he mused, “sad but resolute, and plainly seeing my
situation. Lorenza hates me and betrayed me as she vowed she would do.
My secret is no longer mine but in the hands of this woman who casts it
to the winds. I resemble the fox caught in the trap, who gnaws off his
leg to get away, but the hunter coming on the morrow and seeing this
token can say: ‘He has escaped but I shall know him when I catch him
again.’
“Althotas could not understand this misfortune, which is why I have not
told him; it breaks all my hope of fortune in this country and
consequently in the Old World, of which France is the heart--it is due
to this lovely woman, this fair statue with the sweet smile. To this
accursed angel I owe captivity, exile or death, with ruin and dishonor
meanwhile.
“Hence,” he continued, animating, “the sum of pleasure is surpassed by
that of harm, and Lorenza is a noxious thing to me. Oh, serpent with the
graceful folds, they stifle: your golden throat is full of venom; sleep
on, for I shall be obliged to kill you when you wake.”
With an ominous smile he approached the girl, whose eyes turned to his
like the sunflower follows the sun.
“Alas, in slaying her who hates me, I shall slay her who loves.”
His heart was filled with profound grief strangely blended with a vague
desire.
“If she might live, harmless?” he muttered. “No, awake, she will renew
the struggle--she will kill herself or me, or force me to kill her.
Lorenza, your fate is written in letters of fire: to love and to die. In
my hands I hold your life and your love.”
The enchantress, who seemed to read his thoughts in an open book, rose,
fell at the mesmerist’s feet, and taking one of his hands which she laid
on her heart, she said with her lips, moist as coral and as glossy:
“Dead be it, but loved.”
Balsamo could resist no longer; a whirl of flames enveloped him.
“As long as a human being could contend have I struggled,” he sighed;
“demon or angel of the future, you ought to be satisfied. I have long
enough sacrificed pride and egotism to all the generous passions
seething in my heart. No, no, I have not the right to revolt against the
only human feeling fermenting in me. I love this woman, and such
passionate love will do more against her than the keenest hate. What,
when I appear before the Supreme Architect, will not I, the deceiver,
the charlatan, the false prophet, have one well cut stone to show for my
craftsmanship--not one generous deed to avow, not a single happiness
whose memory would comfort me amid eternal sufferings? Oh, no, no,
Lorenza, I know that I lose the future by loving you; I know that my
revealing angel mounts to heaven while this woman comes down to my
arms--but I wish Lorenza!”
“My beloved,” she gasped.
“Will you accept this life instead of the real one?”
“I beg for it, for it is love and bliss.”
“Never will you accuse me before man or heaven of having deceived your
heart?”
“Never, never! before heaven and men, I shall thank you for having given
me love, the only boon, the only jewel of price in this world.”
Balsamo ran his hand over his forehead.
“Be it so,” he said. “Besides, have I absolutely need of her--is she the
only medium? No; while this one makes me happy, the other shall make me
rich and mighty. Andrea is predestined and is as clairvoyante as she.
Andrea is young, and pure, and I do not love Andrea. Nevertheless, in
her mesmeric sleep, she is submissive as you are. In Andrea I have a
victim ready to replace you, one to be the _corpus vili_ of the
physician to be employed for experiments. She can fly as far, perhaps
farther, in the shades of the Unknown as you. Andrea, I take you for my
kingdom. Lorenza, come to my arms for my darling and my wife. With
Andrea I am powerful; with Lorenza I am happy! Henceforth, my life is
complete, and I realise the dream of Althotas, without the immortality,
and become the peer of the gods!”
And lifting up the Italian beauty, he opened his arms from off his
heaving breast on which Lorenza enclasped herself as the ivy girdles the
oak.
Another life commenced for the magician, unknown to him previously in
his active, multiple, perplexed existence. For three days he felt no
more anger, apprehension or jealousy; he heard nothing of plots,
politics or conspiracies. Beside Lorenza he forgot the whole world. This
strange love threw him into felicity composed of stupor and delirium,
soaring over humanity, as it were, full of misery and intoxication, a
phantom love--for he knew he could at a sign or a word change the sweet
mistress into an implacable enemy.
Singularly, she remained of astonishing lucidity as far as regarded
himself; but he wanted to learn if this were not sheer sympathy; if she
became dark outside of the circle traced by his love--if the eyes of
this new Eve clearly seeing in Eden, would not be this blind when
expelled from Paradise.
He dared not make a decisive test, but he hoped, and hope was the starry
crown to his happiness.
With gentle melancholy Lorenza said to him:
“Acharat, you are thinking of another woman than me, a woman of the
North, with fair hair and blue eyes--Acharat, this woman walks beside
you and me in your mind. Shall I tell you her name?”
“Yes,” he said in wonderment.
“Wait--it is Andrea.”
“Right. Yes, you can read my mind; one last fear troubles me. Can you
still see through space though blocked by material obstacles?”
“Try me.”
He took her hand, and in his mind went away from that place, taking her
soul with him.
“What do you see?”
“A vast valley with woods on one side, a town on the other, while a
river separates them and is lost in the distance after bathing the walls
of a palace.”
“It is so, Lorenza. The wood is Vesinet, the town St. Germain; the
palace Maisons. Let us go into the summerhouse behind us. What do you
see?”
“A young negro, eating candies.”
“It is Zamore, Countess Dubarry’s blackmoor. Go on.”
“An empty drawing-room, splendidly furnished, with the panels painted
with goddesses and Cupids.”
“Next?”
“We are in a lovely boudoir hung with blue satin worked with flowers in
their natural colors. A woman is reclining on a sofa. I have seen her
before--it is Countess Dubarry. She is thinking of you---- ”
“Thinking of me? Lorenza, you will drive me mad.”
“You made her the promise to give her the water of beauty which Venus
gave to Phaon to be revenged on Sappho.”
“That is so; go on.”
“She makes up her mind to a step, for she rings a bell. A woman
comes--it is like her---- ”
“Her sister, Chon?”
“Her sister. She wants the horses put to the carriage! in two hours she
will be here.”
Balsamo dropped on his knees.
“Oh heaven, if she should be here in that time, I shall have no more to
beg of you for you will have had pity on my happiness.”
“Poor dear,” said she, “why do you fear? Love which completes the
physical existence, enlarges the moral one. Like all good passions, love
emanates from heaven whence cometh all light.”
“Lorenza, you make me wild with joy.”
Still he waited for this last test; the arrival of Lady Dubarry.
Two strokes of the bell, the signal of an important visitor, from Fritz
told him that the vision was realised.
He led Lorenza into the room hung with fur and armor.
“You will not go away from here?” asked the mesmerist.
“Order me to stay and you will find me here on your return. Besides, the
Lorenza who loves you is not the one who dreads you.”
“Be it so, my beloved Lorenza; sleep and await me.”
Still struggling with the spell, she laid a last kiss on her husband’s
lips, and tottered to sink upon a lounge, murmuring.
“Soon again, my Balsamo, soon?”
He waved his hand: she was already reposing.
As he closed the door he thought he heard a sound: but no, Lorenza was
sound asleep. He went through the parlor without fear or any
foreshadowing, carrying paradise in his heart.
Lorenza dreamed: it seemed to her that the ceiling opened and that a
kind of aged Caliban descended with a regular movement. The air seemed
to fail her as two long fleshless arms like living grapnels clutched her
white dress, raised her off the divan, and carried her to the trap. This
movable platform began to rise, with the grinding of metal and a shrill,
hideous laugh issued from the mouth of this human-faced monster who bore
her upwards without any shock.