THE LIQUOR OF BEAUTY.
The beautiful favorite of Louis XV. had been shown into the parlor where
she impatiently waited for Balsamo while turning over the leaves of
Holbein’s Dance of Death, which caught her attention on the table. She
had just arrived at the picture of the Beauty powdering her cheek before
a mirror, when the host opened the door and bowed to her with a smile of
joy over his face.
“I am sorry to have made you wait,” he said, “but I was a little out in
my calculation about the speed of your horses.”
“Gracious, did you know that I was coming?”
“Certainly; at least you gave the orders for your sister to transmit
them for your departure, while lounging in your blue boudoir.”
“Wizard that you are, if you can see all that goes on there, you must
apprise me.”
“I only look in where doors are open.”
“But you saw my intention as regards you?”
“I saw that it was good.”
“So are all mine to you, count. But you merit more than mere intentions
for it seems to me that you are too good and useful to me in taking the
part of tutor the most difficult to play that I know.”
“You make me very happy; what can I do for you?”
“Have you not, to begin with, some of the seed which makes one
invisible: for on the way it seemed to me that one of Richelieu’s men
was riding after me.”
“The Duke of Richelieu cannot be dangerous to you in any meeting,” said
the mesmerist.
“But he was, my lord, before this last scheme failed.”
Balsamo comprehended that here was a plot of which Lorenza had not
informed him. So he smiled without venturing on the unknown ground.
“I nearly fell a victim to the scheme, in which you had a share.”
“I, in a scheme against you? never.”
“Did you not give Richelieu a philter to make the drinker fail madly in
love?”
“Oh, no, my lady: he composes those things himself; I did give him a
simple narcotic--a sleeping draft. He called for it on the eve of the
day when I sent you the note by my man Fritz to meet me at Sartines.”
“That is it--the very time when the King went to little Taverney’s
rooms. It is all clear now, for the narcotic saved us.”
“I am happy to have served your ladyship, though unawares,” he said
without knowing the matter.
“Yes; the King must have seen the girl under the influence of this
soporific, for he was seen to stagger out of the chapel corridor during
the storm, crying ‘She is dead!’ Nothing frightens the King more than
the dead, or next to it those in a death-like sleep. Finding Mdlle. de
Taverney in a sleep, he took it for death.”
“Yes, like death, with all the appearances,” said the other, remembering
that he had fled without reviving Andrea. “Go on, my lady!”
“The King woke with a touch of fever and was only better at noon. He
came over to see me in the evening, where I discovered that Richelieu is
almost as great a conjurer as your lordship.”
The countess’s triumphant face, and her gesture of coquetry and grace
completed her thought, and perfectly encouraged the Italian about her
sway over the King.
“So you are satisfied with me?” he asked.
She held out in token of thanks her white, soft and scented hand, only
it was not fresh like Lorenza’s.
“Now, count, if you preserved me from a great danger, I believe I have
saved you from one not to be despised.”
“I had no need to be grateful to you,” said Balsamo, hiding his emotion,
“but I should like to know---- ”
“That casket really contained cipher correspondence which Sartines had
his experts write out plain: That is what he brought to Versailles this
morning, with blank warrants to imprison parties named in the documents:
one was filled with your name, but I would not let him slip that under
the royal hand for the signature. Since Damiens stuck him with the
penknife, he can be frightened into anything by the bogey of
assassination. Sartines persisted and so did I, but the King said with a
smile and looking at me in a style which I know:
“‘Let her alone, Sartines: I can refuse her nothing to-day.’
“As I was by, Sartines did not like to vex me by accusing you direct but
he talked of the King of Prussia bolstering up the philosophers of a
numerous and powerful sect formed of courageous, resolute and skillful
adepts, working away underhandedly against his Royal Majesty. He said
they spread evil reports, as for instance that the King was in the
scheme to starve the people. To which Louis replied: ‘Let anybody come
forward, saying so and I will give him the lie by furnishing him with
board and lodging for nothing. I will feed him in the Bastile.’”
Balsamo felt a shiver run through him, but he stood firm.
“And the end?”
“It was the day after the sleeping potion, you understand,” he preferred
my company to Sartines; and turned to me.
“‘Drive away this ugly man,’ I said, ‘he smells of the prison.’
“‘You had better go, Sartines,’ said the King.
“Seeing he was in a scrape, he came to me and kissing my hand humbly, he
said: ‘Lady, let us say no more on this head--(your head, count)--but
you will ruin the realm. Since you so strongly wish it, my men shall
protect your protegé.’”
The conspirator was buried in thought.
“So you see you must thank me for not having been clapped into the
Bastile,” concluded the countess: “not unjust, perhaps, but
disagreeable.”
Without replying Balsamo took from his pocket a phial containing a fluid
of blood color.
“For the liberty you give me,” he said, “I give you twenty years more
youthfulness.”
She slipped the bottle into her corsage and went off, joyous and
triumphant.
“They might have been saved but for the coquetry of this woman,” he
murmured. “It is the little foot of this courtesan which spurns them
into the abyss. Beyond doubt, God is on our side!”