The Mesmerist's Victim. Alexandre Dumas

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СКАЧАТЬ seeking for some time, and so know a good many places. Where do they lie thickest?”

      “In the great ditch more than fifty are heaped up.”

      “So many victims during a festival?”

      “So many?—I have looked upon a thousand dead—and have not yet come upon my sister.”

      “Your sister?”

      “She was lost in that direction. I have found the bench where we were parted. But of her not a trace. I began to search at the bastion. The mob moved towards the new buildings in Madeleine Street. There I hunted, but there were great fluctuations. The stream rushed thither, but a poor girl would wander anywhere, with her crazed head, seeking flight in any direction.”

      “I can hardly think that she would have stemmed the current. We two may find her together at the corner of the streets.”

      “But who are you after—your son?” questioned Philip.

      “No, an adopted youth, only eighteen, who was master of his actions and would come to the festival. Besides, one was so far from imagining this horrid catastrophe. Your candle is going out—come with me and I will light you.”

      “Thanks, you are very kind, but I shall obstruct you.”

      “Fear nothing, for I must be seeking, too. Usually the lad comes home punctually,” continued the old man, “but I had a forerunner last evening. I was sitting up for him at eleven when my wife had the rumor from the neighbors of the miseries of this rejoicing. I waited a couple of hours in hopes that he would return, but then I felt it would be cowardly to go to sleep without news.”

      “So we will hunt over by the houses,” said the nobleman.

      “Yes, as you say the crowd went there and would certainly have carried him along. He is from the country and knows no more the way than the streets. This may be the first time he came to this place.”

      “My sister is country-bred also.”

      “Shocking sight,” said the old man, before a mound of the suffocated.

      “Still we must search,” said the chevalier, resolutely holding out the lantern to the corpses. “Oh, here we are by the Wardrobe Stores—ha! white rags—my sister wore a white dress. Lend me your light, I entreat you, sir.”

      “It is a piece of a white dress,” he continued, “but held in a young man’s hand. It is like that she wore. Oh, Andrea!” he sobbed as if it tore up his heart.

      The old man came nearer.

      “It is he,” he exclaimed, “Gilbert!”

      “Gilbert? do you know our farmer’s son, Gilbert, and were you seeking him?”

      The old man took the youth’s hand, it was icy cold. Philip opened his waistcoat and found that his heart was quiet. But the next instant he cried: “No, he breathes—he lives, I tell you.”

      “Help! this way, to the surgeon,” said the old man.

      “Nay, let us do what we can for him for I was refused help when I spoke to him just now.”

      “He must take care of my dear boy,” said the old man.

      And taking Gilbert between him and Taverney, they carried him towards the surgeon, who was still croaking:

      “The poor first—bring in the poor, first.”

      This maxim was sure to be hailed with admiration from a group of lookers-on.

      “I bring a man of the people,” retorted the old man hotly, feeling a little piqued at this exclusiveness.

      “And the women next, as men can bear their hurt better,” proceeded the character.

      “The boy only wants bleeding,” said Gilbert’s friend.

      “Ho, ho, so it is you, my lord, again?” sneered the surgeon, perceiving Taverney.

      The old gentleman thought that the speech was addressed to him and he took it up warmly.

      “I am not a lord—I am a man of the multitude—I am Jean Jacques Rousseau.”

      The surgeon uttered an exclamation of surprise and said as he waved the crowd back imperiously:

      “Way for the Man of Nature—the Emancipator of Humanity—the Citizen of Geneva! Has any harm befallen you?”

      “No, but to this poor lad.”

      “Ah, like me, you represent the cause of mankind,” said the surgeon.

      Startled by this unexpected eulogy, the author of the “Social contract” could only stammer some unintelligible words, while Philip Taverney, seized with stupefaction at being in face of the famous philosopher, stepped aside.

      Rousseau was helped in placing Gilbert on the table.

      Then Rousseau gave a glance to the surgeon whose succor he invoked. He was a youth of the patient’s own age, but no feature spoke of youth. His yellow skin was wrinkled like an old man’s, his flaccid eyelid covered a serpent’s glance, and his mouth was drawn one side like one in a fit. With his sleeves tucked up to the elbow and his arms smeared with blood, surrounded by the results of the operation he seemed rather an enthusiastic executioner than a physician fulfilling his sad and holy mission.

      But the name of Rousseau seemed to influence him into laying aside his ordinary brutality. He softly opened Gilbert’s sleeve, compressed the arm with a linen ligature and pricked the vein.

      “We shall pull him through,” he said, “but great care must be taken with him for his chest was crushed in.”

      “I have to thank you,” said Rousseau, “and praise you—not for the exclusion you make on behalf of the poor, but for your devotion to the afflicted. All men are brothers.”

      “Even the rich, the noble, the lofty?” queried the surgeon, with a kindling look in his sharp eye under the drooping lid.

      “Even they, when they are in suffering.”

      “Excuse me, but I am like you a Switzer, having been born at Neuchatel; and so I am rather democratic.”

      “My fellow-countryman? I should like to know your name.”

      “An obscure one, a modest man who devotes his life to study until like yourself he can employ it for the common-weal. I am Jean Paul Marat.”

      “I thank you, Marat,” said Rousseau, “but in enlightening the masses on their rights, do not excite their revengeful feelings. If ever they move in that direction, you might be amazed at the reprisals.”

      “Ah,” said Marat with a ghastly smile, “if it should come in my time—should I see that day—— ”

      Frightened at the accent, as a traveler by the mutterings of a coming storm, Rousseau СКАЧАТЬ