The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty. Dumas Alexandre

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СКАЧАТЬ day to lock up thought – the spirit which must be free, and requires space unto immensity, and crack! it burst the walls and the mob surged in at the breach.”

      “True enough,” mused the younger man.

      “Twenty-six years ago, Voltaire wrote to Chauvelin: ‘All that I see is sowing Revolution round us, and it will inevitably come though I shall not have the bliss to see the harvest. The French are sometimes slow to come into the battle but they get there before the fight is over. Light is so spread from one to another, that it will burst forth in a mass soon, and then there will be a fine explosion. The young men are happy for they will behold splendors. What do you say about the flare-ups of yesterday and what is going on to-day?'”

      “Terrible!”

      “And what you have beheld in the way of events?”

      “Dreadful!”

      “We are only at the beginning.”

      “Prophet of evil!”

      “For instance, I was at the house of a man of merit, a doctor of medicine and a philanthropist: what do you think he was busy over?”

      “Seeking the remedy for some great disease.”

      “You have it. He is trying to cure, not death, but life.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Leaving epigrams aside, I mean that there not being means enough for quitting life, he is inventing a very ingenious machine which he reckons to present to his fellow countrymen, to put fifty or eighty persons to death in an hour. Well, my dear Gilbert, do you believe that so human a philanthropist, so distinguished a physician as Dr. Louis Guillotin, would busy himself about such an instrument unless he felt the want of it?

      “I know that this is not so much a novelty as a machine forgotten, as a proof of which I showed it as an image in a glass of water to Marie Antoinette. She was then espoused to the Dauphin of France, now its sovereign, and it was down at Taverney where you were a dependent. The old baron was alive then, and the lady of the manor was Mdlle. Andrea.”

      “Ah,” sighed Gilbert at this reminder of his boyhood.

      “But at the first you had eyes only for the servant-maid, Nicole, afterwards Olive Legay, as the Dauphiness, to whom she bore an amazing resemblance by the bye, is the Queen of France. Well I repeat that the future Queen was shown by me this instrument to which I shall suggest no name, though the olden ones are the Maiden, the Widow and the Mannaya in my country. The thing so alarmed her that she swooned dead away. It was in limbo at the era, but you shall see it at work presently if it be successful; and then you must be blind if you do not spy the hand of heaven in it all, it being foreseen that the time would come when the headsman would have his hands too full and that a new method must be devised.”

      “Count, your remarks were more consoling when we were in America.”

      “I should rather think they were! I was in the midst of a people who rose and here in society which falls. In our Old World, all march towards the grave, nobility and royalty, and this grave is a bottomless pit.”

      “Oh, I abandon the nobility to you, count, or rather it threw itself away in the night of the fourth of August; but the royalty must be saved as the national palladium.”

      “Big words, my dear Gilbert: but did the palladium save Troy? Do you believe it will be easy to save the realm with such a king?”

      “But in short he is the descendant of a grand race.”

      “Eagles that have degenerated into parrots. They have been marrying in and out till they are rundown.”

      “My dear sorcerer,” said Gilbert, rising and taking up his hat, “you frighten me so that I must haste and take my place by the King.”

      Cagliostro stopped him in making some steps towards the door.

      “Mark me, Gilbert,” he said, “you know whether I love you or not and if I am not the man to expose myself to a hundred sorrows to aid you to avoid one – well, take this piece of advice: let the King depart, quit France, while it is yet time. In a year, in six months, in three, it will be too late.”

      “Count, do you counsel a soldier to leave his post because there is danger in his staying?”

      “If the soldier were so surrounded, engirt, and disarmed that he could not defend himself: if, above all, his life exposed meant that of half a million of men – yes, I should bid him flee. And you yourself, Gilbert, you shall tell him so. The King will listen to you unless it is all too late. Do not wait till the morrow but tell him to-day. Do not wait till the afternoon but tell him in an hour.”

      “Count, you know that I am of the fatalist school. Come what come may! so long as I shall have any hold on the King it will be to retain him in France, and I shall stay by him. Farewell, count: we shall meet in the action: perhaps we shall sleep side by side on the battlefield.”

      “Come, come, it is written that man shall not elude his doom however keen-witted he may be,” muttered the magician: “I sought you out to tell you what I said, and you have heard it. Like Cassandra’s prediction it is useless, but remember that Cassandra was correct. Fare thee well!”

      “Speak frankly, count,” said Gilbert, stopping on the threshold to gaze fixedly at the speaker, “do you here, as in America, pretend to make folk believe that you can read the future?”

      “As surely, Gilbert,” returned the self-asserted undying one, “as you can read the pathway of the stars, though the mass of mankind believe they are fixed or wandering at hazard.”

      “Well, then – someone knocks at your door.”

      “Yes.”

      “Tell me his fate: when he shall die and how?”

      “Be it so,” rejoined the sorcerer, “let us go and open the door to him.”

      Gilbert proceed towards the corridor end, with a beating of the heart which he could not repress, albeit he whispered to himself that it was absurd to take this quackering as serious.

      The door opened. A man of lofty carriage, tall in stature, and with strong-will impressed on his lineaments, appeared on the sill and cast a swift glance on Dr. Gilbert not exempt from uneasiness.

      “Good day, marquis,” said Cagliostro.

      “How do you do, baron?” responded the other.

      “Marquis,” went on the host as he saw the caller’s gaze still settled on the doctor, “this is one of my friends, Dr. Gilbert. Gilbert, you see Marquis Favras, one of my clients. Marquis, will you kindly step into my sitting-room,” continued he as the two saluted each other, “and wait for a few seconds when I shall be with you.”

      “Well?” queried Gilbert as the marquis bowed again and went into the parlor.

      “You wished to know in what way this gentleman would die?” said Cagliostro with an odd smile; “have you ever seen a nobleman hanged?”

      “Noblemen are privileged not to die by hanging.”

      “Then it will be the more curious sight; be on the Strand when the Marquis of Favras is executed.” He conducted his visitor to the street door, СКАЧАТЬ