The Hero of the People. Alexandre Dumas

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СКАЧАТЬ was to turn her gaze in the forbidden direction and she uttered a scream of fright. But, all of a sudden, as she tore her sight from this horrible spectacle as if they were Gorgon heads, they became fixed as though they met another view even more awful, from which she could not detach it.

      This Medusa’s head was the stranger’s who had been drinking and chatting with Locksmith Gamain in the wine-store: with folded arms, he was leaning against a tree.

      The Queen’s hand left the window cushion, and resting on Gilbert’s shoulder, he felt her clench her nails into its flesh. He turned to see her pale, with fixed eyes and quivering, blanched lips.

      He would have ascribed the emotion to the two death’s heads but for her not looking at either. The gaze was in another direction, traveling visually in which he descried the object and he emitted a cry of amaze.

      “Cagliostro!” both uttered at the same time.

      The man at the tree clearly saw the Queen, but all he did was beckon for Gilbert to come to him.

      At this point of time the carriages started on once more. By a natural and mechanical impulse the Queen gave Gilbert an outward push to prevent his being run over by the wheel. It looked as though she urged him towards the summoner. Anyhow, he was not sufficiently master of himself not to obey the mandate. Motionless, he let the party proceed; then, following the mock gunsmith who merely looked back to be sure he was followed, he entered behind him a little lane going uphill to Bellevue, where they disappeared behind a wall at the same time as the procession went out of sight in a declivity of the hills, as though plunging into an abyss.

CHAPTER IV.

       FATALITY.

       Table of Contents

      GILBERT followed his guide half-way up the slope where stood a handsome house. The foregoer pulled out a key and opened a side door intended for the master to go in or come out without the servants knowing when he did so. He left the door ajar to signify that the companion of the journey was to use it. Gilbert entered and shut the door gently but it silently closed itself tightly with a pneumatic arrangement at the hinges which seemed the work of magic. Such an appliance would have been the delight of Master Gamain.

      Through luxuriously fitted passages Gilbert finally came into a drawing room, hung with Indian satin tapestry; a fantastic Oriental bird held the lustre in its beak and it emitted a light which Gilbert knew was electricity, though its application thus would have been a puzzle to others than this specialist in advanced science. The lights represented lily-blooms, which again was an anticipation of modern illuminators.

      One picture alone adorned this room but it was Raphael’s Madonna.

      Gilbert was admiring this masterpiece when the host entered by a secret door behind him from a dressing room.

      An instant had sufficed for him to wash off the stain and the pencillings and to give his black hair, without any grey, a stylish turn. He had also changed his clothes. Instead of the workman was an elegant nobleman. His embroidered coat and his hands glittering with rings in the Italian style, strongly contrasted with Gilbert’s American black coat and his plain gold ring, a keepsake from General Washington.

      Count Cagliostro advanced with a smiling open face and held out his hand to Gilbert.

      “Dear Master,” cried the latter rushing to him.

      “Stop a bit,” interrupted the other, laughing: “since we have parted, my dear Gilbert, you have made such progress in revolutionary methods at all events, that you are the master at present and I not fit to undo your shoestrings.”

      “I thank you for the compliment,” responded the doctor, “but how do you know I have made such progress, granting I have progressed?”

      “Do you believe you are one of those men whose movement is not marked although not seen? Since eight years I have not set eyes on you but I have had a daily report of what you did. Do you doubt I have double-sight?”

      “You know I am a mathematician.”

      “You mean, incredulous? Let me show you, then. In the first place you returned to France on family matters; they do not concern me, and consequently——“

      “Nay, dear master, go on,” interposed the other.

      “Well, you came to have your son Sebastian educated in a boarding school not far from Paris in quiet, and to settle business affairs with your farmer, an honest fellow whom you are now retaining in town against his wishes. For a thousand reasons he wants to be home beside his wife.”

      “Really, master, you are prodigious!”

      “Wait for something stronger. The second time you returned to France because political questions drew you, like many others; besides you had published several political treatises which you sent to King Louis XVI., and as there is much of the Old Man in you—you are prouder for the approval of the King than perhaps you would be of that of my predecessor in your training, Rousseau—who would be higher than a king this day, had he lived—you yearn to learn what is thought of Dr. Gilbert by the descendant of St. Louis, Henry Fourth and Louis XIV. Unfortunately a little matter has kept alive which you did not bear in mind, as a sequel to which I picked you up in a cave in the Azores, where my yacht put in. I restored you from the effects of a bullet in your breast. This little affair concerned Mdlle. Andrea Taverney, become Countess Charny, which she deserves, to save the Queen’s reputation, compromised by the King coming upon her and Count Charny by surprise.

      “As the Queen could refuse nothing to this saver, she got a blank warrant and committal to prison for you, so that you were arrested on the road out of Havre and taken to the Bastile. There you would be to this day, dear doctor, if the people, prepared for a rising by a person whom you may divine, had not in a day knocked the old building lower than the gutter. I was not sorry, for I had a taste of the fare myself before I was banished the Kingdom. This morning early, you contributed to the rescue of the Royal Family, by running to arouse Lafayette, who was sleeping the sleep of the virtuous; and just now, when you saw me, you were about to make a breastwork of your body for the Queen who seemed threatened—though, between ourselves, she detests you. Is this right? Have I forgotten anything of note, such as a hypnotic seance before the King when Countess Charny was made to disclose how she had led to your imprisonment and how she obtained a certain casket of your papers by one Wolfstep, a police agent? Tell me and if I have omitted any point, I am ready to do penance for it.”

      Gilbert stood stupefied before this extraordinary man, who knew so well to prepare his march that his hearer was inclined to attribute to him the faculty of comprising heavenly as well as mundane things, and to read in the heart of man.

      “Yes, it is thus and you are still the magician, the fortune-teller, the thaumaturgist, Cagliostro!”

      The wonder-worker smiled with satisfaction, for it was evident that he was proud of having worked on Gilbert such an impression as the latter’s visage revealed.

      “And now,” continued Gilbert, “as I love you as much as you do me, dear master, and my desire to learn what you have been doing is equal to yours and how I have fared, will you kindly tell me, if I am not intruding too far, in what part of the globe you have exhibited your genius and practiced your power?”

      “Oh, I?” said Cagliostro, СКАЧАТЬ