Memoirs of a Physician (54 page)

” Lorenza, you wander ; in the name of Heaven, Lorenza, read my heart better ! In giving you a companion, my beloved, I compromise such mighty interests that you would tremble for me if you did not hate me. , In giving you a companion, I endanger my safety, my liberty, my very life, and notwithstanding, I risk all to save you a little weariness.”

” Weariness ! ” exclaimed Lorenza, with a wild and frantic laugh which made Balsamo shudder. “He calls it weariness ! “

“Well ! suffering. Yes, you are right, Lorenza, they are poignant sufferings, I repeat, Lorenza, have patience ; a day will come when all your sufferings will cease a day will come when you shall be free and happy.”

” Will you permit me to retire to a convent and take the vows ? “

” To a convent ? “

” I will pray first for you and then for myself. I shall be closely confined indeed, but I shall at least have a garden, air, space. I shall have a cemetery to walk in, and can seek beforehand among the tombs for the place of my re-pose. I shall have companions who grieve for their own sorrows and not for mine. Permit me to retire to a convent, and I will take any vows you wish. A convent, Balsamo ! I implore you on my knees to grant this request.”

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” Lorenza ! Lorenza ! we cannot part. Mark me well we are indissolubly connected in this world ! Ask for nothing which exceeds the limits of this house. “

” Balsamo pronounced these last words in so calm and determined a tone, that Lorenza did not even repeat the request.

” Then you refuse me ? ” said she, dejectedly.

” I cannot grant it.”

” Is what you say irrevocable ? “

“It is.”

“Well, I have something else then to ask ‘ said she, with a smile.

” Oh, my good Lorenza ! ever smile thus only smile upon me, and you will compel me to do all you wish ! “

” Oh, yes, I shall make you do all that I wish, provided I do everything that pleases you. Well, be it so ; I will be as reasonable as possible.”

” Speak, Lorenza, speak ! “

” Just now you said, ‘ One day, Lorenza, your sufferings shall cease one day you shall be free and happy.’”

” Oh, yes, I said so, and I swear before Heaven that I await that day as impatiently as yourself.”

” Well, this day may arrive immediately, Balsamo,” said the young Italian, with a caressing smile, which her husband had hitherto only seen in her sleep. ” I am weary, very weary you can understand my feelings ; I am so young, and have already suffered so much ! Well, my friend for you say you are my friend listen to me ; grant me this happy day immediately.”

” I hear you,” said Balsamo, inexpressibly agitated.

“I end my appeal by the request I should have made at the commencement, Acharat.”

The young girl shuddered.

” Speak, my beloved ! “

” Well ! I have often remarked, when you made experiments on some unfortunate animal, and when you told me that these experiments were necessary to the cause of humanity I have often remarked that you possessed the secret of inflicting death, sometimes by a drop of poison,

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sometimes by an opened vein ; that this death was calm, rapid as lightning, and that these unfortunate and innocent creatures, condemned as I am to the miseries of captivity, were instantly liberated by death, the first blessing they had received since their birth. Well “

She stopped and turned pale.

” Well, my Lorenza ? ” repeated Balsamo.

” Well, what you sometimes do to those unfortunate animals for the interest of science, do now to me in the name of humanity. Do it for a friend, who will bless you with” her whole heart, who will kiss your hand with the deepest gratitude, if you grant her what she asks. Do it, Balsamo, for me, who kneel here at your feet, who promise you with my last sigh more love and happiness than you caused me during my whole life ! for me, Balsamo, who promise you a frank and beaming smile as I quit this earth. By the soul of your mother ! by the sufferings of our blessed Lord ! by all that is holy and solemn and sacred in the world of the living and of the dead ! I implore you, kill me ! kill me ! “

” Lorenza ! ” exclaimed Balsamo, taking her in his arms as she rose after uttering these last words ” Lorenza, you are delirious. Kill you ! You, my love ! my life ! “

Lorenza disengaged herself by a violent effort from Balsamo’s grasp, and fell on her knees.

” I will never rise ‘ said she, “until you have granted my request. Kill me without a shock, without violence, without pain ; grant me this favor since you say you love me send me to sleep as you have often done only take away the awaking it is despair ! “

” Lorenza, my beloved ! ” said Balsamo. ” Oh, God ! do you not see how you torture my heart ? What ! you are really so unhappy, then ? Come, my Lorenza, rise ; do not give way to despair. Alas ! do you hate me then so very much ?”

” I hate slavery, constraint, solitude ; and as yon make me a slave, unhappy, and solitary well, yes ! I hate you ! “

” But I love you too dearly to see you die, Lorenza.

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You shall not die, therefore ; I will effect the most difficult cure I have yet undertaken, my Lorenza I will make you love life.”

“No, no, that is impossible ; yon have made me long for death.”

” Lorenza, for pity’s sake ! I promise that soon “

” Life or death ! ” exclaimed the young woman, becoming more and more excited. ” This is the decisive day will you give me life, that is to say, liberty ? will you give me death, that is to say, repose ? “

” Life, my Lorenza, life ! “

” Then that is liberty.”

Balsarno was silent.

“If not, death a gen tie death by a draught, a needle’s point death during sleep ! Kepose ! repose ! repose ! “

” Life and patience, Lorenza !”

Lorenza burst into a terrible laugh, and making a spring backward, drew from her bosom a knife, with a blade so fine and sharp that it glittered in her hand like a flash of lightning.

Balsamo uttered a cry, but it was too late. When he rushed forward and reached the hand, the weapon had already fulfilled its task, and had fallen on Lorenza’s bleeding breast. Balsamo had been dazzled by the flash he was blinded by the sight of blood.

In his turn he uttered a terrible cry, and seized Lorenza round the waist, meeting in midway her arm raised to deal a second blow, and receiving the weapon in his undefended hand. Lorenza with a mighty effort drew the weapon away, and the sharp blade glided through Balsamo’s fingers. The blood streamed from his mutilated hand.

Then, instead of continuing the struggle, Balsamo extended his bleeding hand toward the young woman, and said with a voice of irresistible command :

” Sleep, Lorenza, sleep ! I will it.”

But on this occasion the irritation was ‘such tltat the obedience was not as prompt as usual.

” No, no,” murmured Lorenza, tottering and attempting to strike again. ” No, I will not sleep ! “

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” Sleep, I tell you ! ” said Balsamo, for the second time, advancing a step toward her “sleep ! I command it !”

This time, the power of Balsamo’s will was so great that all resistance was in vain. Lorenza heaved a sigh, let the knife fall from her hand, and sunk upon the cushions.

Her eyes still remained open, but their threatening glare died away, and finally they closed ; her stiffened neck drooped ; her head fell upon her shoulder like that of a wounded bird ; a nervous shudder passed through her frame Lorenza was asleep. ‘

Balsamo hastily opened her robe, and examined the wound, which seemed slight, although the blood flowed from it in abundance.

He then pressed the lion’s eye, the spring started, and the back of the fireplace opened ; then, unfastening the counterpoise which made the trap-door of Althotas’s chamber descend, he leaped upon it and mounted to the old man’s laboratory.

” Ah ! it is you, Acharat,” said the latter, who was still seated in his armchair, “you are aware that in a week I shall be a hundred years old. You are aware that before that time I must have the blood of A child or of an unmarried female. “

But Balsamo heard him not. He hastened to the cupboard in which the magic balsams were kept, seized one of the vials of which he had often proved the efficacy, again mounted upon the trap, stamped his foot, and descended to the lower apartment.

Althotas rolled his armchair to the mouth of the trap with the intention of seizing him by his dress.

” Do you hear, wretch ?” said he ; ” do you hear ? If in a week I have not a child or an unmarried woman to complete my elixir, I am a dead man ! “

Balsamo turned ; the old man’s eyes seemed to glare in the midst of his unearthly and motionless features, as if they alone were alive.

” Yes, yes,” replied Balsamo ; ” yes, be calm, you shall have what you want.”

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Then, letting go the spring, the trap mounted again, fitting like an ornament in the ceiling of the room.

After which he rushed into Loreuza’s apartment, which he had just reached when Fritz’s bell rang.

” Monsieur de Richelieu ! ” muttered Balsamo ; “oh ! duke and peer as he is, he must wait.”

CHAPTER LI. M. DE RICHELIEU’S TWO DROPS OF WATER.

M. DE RICHELIEU left the house in the Rue St. Claude at half-past four. What his errand with Balsamo was will explain itself in the sequel.

M. de Taverney had dined with his daughter, as the dauphiness had given her leave to absent herself on this day in order that she might receive her father.

They were at dessert, when M. de Richelieu, ever the bearer of good news, made his appearance to announce to his friend that the king would not give merely a company to Philip, but a regiment. Taverney was exuber-ant in his expression of joy, and Andre warmly thanked the marshal.

The conversation took a turn which may be easily imagined after what had passed ; Richelieu spoke of nothing but the king, Andre of nothing but her brother, and Taverney of nothing but Andre. The latter announced, in the course of conversation, that she was set at liberty from her attendance on the dauphiness ; that her royal highness was receiving a visit from two German princes, her Relations ; and that in order to pass a few hours of liberty with them, which might remind her of the court of Vienna, Marie Antoinette had dismissed all her attendants, even her lady of honor, which had so deeply shocked
Mme.
de Noailles that she had gone to lay her grievances at the king’s feet.

Taverney was, he said, delighted at this, since he had thus an opportunity of conversing with Andre aboui many things relating to their fortune and name. This

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observation made Kichelieu propose to retire, in order to leave the father and daughter quite alone ; but Mile, de Taverney would not permit it, so he remained.

Kichelieu was in a vein of moralizing ; he painted most eloquently the degradation into which the French nobility had fallen, forced as they were to submit to the igno-minious yoke of these favorites of chance, these contraband queens, instead of the favorites of the olden times, who were almost as noble as their august lovers women who reigned over the sovereign by their beauty and their love, and over his subjects by their birth, their strength of mind, and their loyal and pure patriotism. ” Andre was surprised at the close analogy between Eichelieu’s words and those she had heard from the Baron de Taverney a few days previously.

Kichelieu then launched into a theory of virtue so spiritual, so pagan, so French, that Andre was obliged to confess that she was not at all virtuous, according to M. de Richelieu’s theories, and that true virtue, as the marshal understood it, was the virtue of
Mme.
Chateauroux, Mile, de Lavillier, and
Mme.
Fousseuse.

From argument to argument, from proof to proof, Richelieu at last became so clear that Andre no longer understood a word of what he said. On this footing the conversation continued until about seven o’clock in the evening, when the marshal rose, being obliged, as he said, to pay his court to the king at Versailles.

In passing through the apartment to take his hat, he met Nicole, who had always something to do wherever M. de Richelieu was.

” My girl ‘ said he, tapping her on the shoulder, “you shall see me out. I want you to carry a bouquet which Madame de Noailles cut for me in her garden, and which she commissioned me to present to the Countess d’Egmont.”

Nicole courtesied like the peasant girls in M. Rousseau’s comic operas, whereupon the marshal took leave of father and daughter, exchanged a significant glance with Taverney, made a youthful bow to Aiidree, and retired.

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With the reader’s permission, we will leave the baron and Aiidree conversing about the fresh mark of favor conferred on Philip, and follow the marshal. By this means we shall know what was his errand at the Eue St. Claude, where he arrived at such a fearful moment.

Eichelieu descended the stairs resting on Nicole’s shoulder, and as soon as they were in the garden he stopped, and looking in her face, said :

” Ah, little one ! so we have a lover ? “

“I, my lord marshal?” exclaimed Nicole, blushing crimson and retreating a step backward.

” Oh ! perhaps you are not called Nicole Legay ?”

” Yes, my lord marshal.”

” Well, Nicole Legay has a lover.”

“Oh, indeed?”

” Yes, faith ; a certain well-looking rascal, whom she used to meet in the Eue Coq Heron, and who has followed her to Versailles.”

” My lord duke, I swear :

” A sort of exempt, called Shall I tell you child, how Mademoiselle Legay’s lover is called ? “

Nicole’s last hope was that the marshal was ignorant of the name of the happy mortal.

” Oh, yes, my lord marshal ! tell me, since you have made a beginning.”

” Who is called Monsieur de Beausire,” repeated the marshal, “and who, in truth, does not belie his name.”

Nicole clasped her hands with an affectation of prudery which did not in the least impose on Eichelieu.