Memoirs of a Physician (53 page)

After reading this for the second or third time, Balsamo fell back into his train of reflection.

“It is not worth while to consult Lorenza for such a trifle,” said he ; ” besides, can I no longer guess myself ? The writing is large a sign of aristocracy ; irregular and trembling a sign of age ; full of faults in orthography

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it must be a courtier. Ah ! stupid creature that I am ! it is the Duke de Eichelieu ! Most certainly I shall have a half-hour at your service, my lord duke an hour, did I say ? a day ! Make my time your own. Are you not, without knowing it, oue of my mysterious agents, one of my familiar demons ? Do we not both pursue the same task ? Do we not both shake the monarchy at the same time yon by making yourself its presiding genius, I by declaring myself its enemy ? Come then, duke, I am ready ! “

And Balsamo consulted his watch to see how long he must yet wait for the duke. At that moment a bell sounded in the cornice of the ceiling.

” What can be the matter ? ” said Balsamo, starting ; ” Lorenza calls me she wishes to see me. Can anything unpleasant have happened to her ; or is it a return of those fits of passion which I have so often witnessed, and of which I have been at times the victim ? Yesterday she was thoughtful, gentle, resigned ; she was as I love to see her. Poor child ! I must go to her.”

He arranged his dress, glanced at the mirror to see if his hair was not too much in disorder, and proceeded to-ward the stairs, after having replied to Lorenza’s request by a ring similar to her own.

But, according to his invariable custom, Balsamo paused in the apartment adjoining that occupied by the young girl, and turning, with his arms crossed, toward the direction where he supposed her to be, he commanded her to sleep, .with that powerful will which recognized no obstacles. Then, as if doubting his own power, or as if he thought it necessary to redouble his precautions, he looked into the apartment through an almost imperceptible crevice in the woodwork.

Lorenza was sleeping upon a couch, to which she had, no doubt, tottered under the influence of her master’s will, and had sought a support for her sinking limbs. A painter could not have suggested a more poetic attitude. Panting and subdued beneath the power of the subtle fluid which Bulsamo had poured upon her, Lorenza seemed

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like one of those beautiful Ariadnes of Vanloo, with hearing breasts and features expressive of fatigue or despair.

Balsamo entered by his usual passage, and stopped for a monuent. before her to contemplate her sleeping countenance. He then awoke her.

As she opened her eyes, a piercing glance escaped from vbetween her half-closed lids ; then, as if to collect her scattered thoughts, she smoothed back her long hair with her hands, dried her lips, moist with slumber, and seemed to reflect anxiously.

Balsamo looked at her with some anxiety. He had been long accustomed to the sudden transition from winning love to outbursts of anger and hatred ; but this appearance, to which he was entirely unused the calmness with which Lorenza on this occasion received him, instead of giving way to a burst of hatred announced something more serious, perhaps, than he had yet witnessed.

Lorenza sat up on the conch, and fixing her deep soft eyes upon Balsamo, she said :

” Pray be good enough to take a seat beside me.”

Balsamo started at the sound of her voice, expressing as it did such unusual mildness.

” Beside you ! ” said he. ” You know, my Lorenza, that I have but one wish to pass my life at your feet.”

“Sir,” replied Lorenza, in the same tone, “I pray you to be seated, although, indeed I have not much to say to you ; but, short as it is, I shall say it better, I think, if you are seated.”

” Now, as ever, my beloved Lorenza. I shall do as you wish.”

And he took a chair near Lorenza, who was still seated upon the couch.

” Sir,” said she, fixing her heavenly eyes upon Balsamo, “I have summoned you to request from you a favor.”

” Oh, my Lorenza ! ” exclaimed Balsamo, more and more delighted, ” anything you wish ! speak you shall have everything ! “

” I wish for only one ; but I warn you that I wish for this one most ardently.”

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” Speak, Lorenza, speak should it cost my fortune, or half my life ! “

” It will cost you nothing, sir, but a moment of your time,” replied the young girl.

Balsamo, enchanted with the turn the conversation was taking, was already tasking his fertile imagination to supply a list of those wishes which Lorenza was likely to form, and, above all, those which he could satisfy. ” She will, perhaps,” thought he, ” ask for a servant and a companion. Well ! even this immense sacrifice for it Avould compromise my secret and my friends I will make for the poor child is in truth very unhappy in her solitude.”

” Speak quickly, my Lorenza,” said he aloud, with a smile full of love.

” Sir,” said she, ” you are aware that I am pining away with melancholy and weariness.”

Balsamo sighed, and bent his head in token of assent.

” My youth,” continued Lorenza, ” is wasted ; my days are one long sigh my nights a continual terror. I am growing old in solitude and anguish.”

” Your life is what you have made it, Loreiiza,” said Balsamo ; ” it is not my fault that this life which you have made so sad is not one to make a queen envious.”

“Be it so. Therefore, it is I, you see, who have recourse to you in my distress.”

” Thanks, Lorenza.”

” You are a good Christian, you have sometimes told me, although “

” Although you think me lost to heaven, you would say. I complete your thought, Lorenza.”

” Suppose nothing, except what I tell you, sir ; and pray do not conjecture thus groundlessly.”

” Proceed, then.”

” Well, instead of leaving me plunged in this despair and wrath, grant me, since I am of no service to you “

She stopped to glance at Balsamo, but he had regained his command over himself, and she only saw a cold look and contracted brow bent upon her.

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She became animated as she met his almost threatening eye.

” Grant me,” continued she ” not liberty for I know that some mysterious secret, or rather your will, :vhich seems all-powerful to me, condemns me to perpetual captivity but at least to see human faces, to hear other voices than yours permit me, in short, to go out, to walk, to take exercise ‘

” I had foreseen this request, Lorenza,” said Balsamo, taking her hand ; ” and you know that long since your wish has been also my own.”

” Well, then ! ” exclaimed Lorenza.

” But,” resumed Balsamo, ” you have yourself prevented it. Like a madman that I was and every man who loves is such I allowed you to penetrate into some of my secrets, both of science and politics. You know that Althotas has discovered the philosopher’s stone, and seeks the elixir of life. You know that I and my companions conspire against the monarchies of this world. The first of these secrets would cause me to be burned as a sorcerer the other would be sufficient to condemn me to be” broken on the wheel for high treason. Besides, you have threatened me, Lorenza you have told me that you Avould try every means to regain your liberty, and, this liberty once regained, that the first use you would make of it would be to denounce me to Monsieur Sartines. Did you not say so ? “

” What can you expect ? At times I lash myself to fury, and then I am half mad.”

” Are you calm and sensible now, Lorenza ? and can we converse quietly together ? “

” I hope so.”

” If I grant you the liberty yon desire, shall I find in you a devoted and submissive wife a faithful and gentle companion ? You know, Lorenza, this is my most ardent wish.”

The young girl was silent.

” In one word will you love me ? ” asked Balsamo with a sigh.

‘lam unwilling to promise what I cannot perform,”

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said Lorenza ; ” neither love nor hatred depends upon ourselves. I hope that God, in return for your good actions, will permit my hatred toward you to take flight, and love to return ‘

” Unfortunately, Lorenza, such a promise is not a sufficient guarantee that I may trust you. I require a positive, sacred oath, to break which would be a sacrilege an oath which binds you in this world as in the next which would bring with it your death in this world and your damnation in that which is to come.”

Lorenza was silent.

” Will you take this oath ? “

Lorenza hid her face in her hands, and her breast heaved under the influence of contending emotions.

” Take this oath, Loreuza, as I shall dictate it, in the solemn terms in which I shall clothe it, and you shall be free.”

” What must I swear, sir ?”

” Swear that you will never, under any pretext, betray what has come to your knowledge relative to the secrets of Althotas.”

Yes I will swear it.”

” Swear that you will never divulge what you know of our political meetings. “

“I will swear that also.”

” With the oath and in the form which I shall dictate ? “

” Yes. Is that all ? “

” No ; swear and this is the principal one, Lorenza ; for the other matters would only endanger my life, while upon the one I am about to name depends my entire happiness swear that you will never, either at the instigation of another’s will or in obedience to your own, leave me, Lorenza. Swear this and you are free.”

The young girl started as if cold steel had pierced her heart.

” And in what form must the oath be taken ?”

” We will enter a church together, and communicate at the same altar. You will swear on the host never to betray anything relating to Althotas or my companions.

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You will swear never to leave me. “We will then divide the host in two, and each will take the half, you swearing before Grod that you will never betray me, and I that I will ever do my utmost to make you happy.”

” No ! ” said Lorenza ; ‘ ‘ such an oath is a sacrilege.”

” An oath, Lorenza, is never a sacrilege,” replied Balsamo, sadly, “but when you make it with the intention of not keeping it.”

” I will not take this oath ‘ said Lorenza; “I should fear to peril my soul.”

” It is not I repeat it in taking an oath that you peril your soul it is i*i breaking it.”

” I cannot do it.”

” Then learn patience, Lorenza, ” said Balsamo, without anger, but with the deepest sadness.

Lorenza’s brow darkened like an overshadowed plain when a cloud passes between it and the sun.

“Ah ! you refuse ?” said she.

” Not so, Lorenza ; it is you who refuse.”

A nervous movement indicated all the impatience the young girl felt at these words.

“Listen, Lorenza!” said Balsamo. “This is what I will do .for you, and believe me it is much.”

” Speak ! ” said the young girl, with a bitter smile. “Let me see how far your generosity will extend.”

” God, chance, or fate call it what you will Lorenza, has united us in an indissoluble bond ; do not attempt to break this bond thus in life, for death alone can accomplish that.”

” Proceed ; I know that,” said Lorenza, impatiently.

” “Well, in one week, Lorenza whatever it may cost me, and however great the sacrifice I make in eight days you shall have a companion.”

” Where ? ” asked she.

“Here.”

” Here ! ” she exclaimed ” behind these bars behind these inexorable doors, these iron doors a fellow-prisoner ! Oh, you cannot mean it, sir ; that is not what I ask.”

” Loreuza, it is all that I can grant.”

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The young girl made a more vehement gesture of impatience.

” My sweetest girl,” resumed Balsamo, mildly, ” reflect a little ; with a companion yon will more easily support the weight of this necessary misfortune.

” You mistake, sir. Until now I have grieved only for myself, not for others. This trial only was wanting; and I see that you wish to make me undergo it. Yes, you will immure beside me a victim like myself ; I shall see her grow thinner and paler, and pine away with grief even as I do. I shall see her dash herself, as I do, against these walls that hateful door which I examine twenty times each day to see where it opens to give you egress ; and when my companion, your victim, has, like me, wounded her hands against the marble blocks in her endeavors to disjoin them ; when, like me, she has worn out her eyelids with her iears ; when she is dead, as I am, in soul and mind, and you have two corpses in place of one, you will say in your hateful benevolence ‘ These two young creatures amuse themselves they keep each other company they are happy ! ‘ Oh ! no, no, no ! a thousand times, no “

And she passionately stamped her foot upon the ground, while Balsamo endeavored in vain to calm her.

” Come, Lorenza,” said he, “I entreat you to show a little more mildness and calmness. Let us reason on the matter.”

” He asks me to be calm to be gentle to reason ! The executioner tells the victim whom he is torturing, to be gentle, and the innocent martyr to be calm ! “

” Yes, Lorenza, I ask you to be gentle and calm, for your anger cannot change our destiny ; it only imbitters it. Accept what I offer you, Lorenza ; I will give you a companion who will hug her chains, since they have procured for her your friendship. Yon shall not see a sad and tear-ful face such as you fear, but smiles and gayety which will smooth your brow. Come, dearest Lorenza, accept what I offer, for I swear to you that I cannot offer you more.”

” That means that you will place me near a hireling, to

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whom you will say : ‘ I give you in charge a poor insane creature, who imagines herself ill and about to die ; soothe her, share her confinement, attend to her comforts, and I will recompense you when she is no more.’”

” Oh, Lorenza ! Lorenza ! “

” No, that is not it ; I am mistaken,” continued Lorenza, with bitter irony: “I guess badly. But what can you expect ? I am so ignorant, I know so little of the world. You will say to the woman : ‘ Watch over the madwoman, she is dangerous ; report all her actions, all her thoughts to me. Watch over her waking and sleeping.’ And you will give lier as much gold as she requires, for gold cost you nothing you make it ! “