THE MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN (Complete Edition: Volumes 1-5). Alexandre DumasЧитать онлайн книгу.
not?"
"And can you tell me whether this is not a mad passion, as I have thought, and must think until I have a proof to the opposite?"
"You ask too much, my lord. I cannot say anything until I am in contact with some portion of the love-inspirer's self—for instance, a tress of her golden hair, however scanty."
"Verily you are a deep man! You truly say you can read into hearts as I in my prayer-book."
"Almost the very words your ancestor used—I mean Chevalier Louis Rohan, when I bade farewell to him, on the execution-stage in the Bastille, which he had ascended so courageously."
"He said that you were deep?"
"And that I read hearts. For I had forewarned him that Chevalier Preault would betray him. He would not believe me, and he was betrayed."
"What a singular connection you make between my ancestor and me," said the cardinal, turning pale against his wish.
"Only to show that you ought to be wary, in procuring the lock to be cut from under a crown."
"No matter whence it comes, you shall have it."
"Very well. Here is your gold; I hope you no longer doubt that it is gold?"
"Give me pen and paper to write the receipt for this generous loan."
"What do I want a receipt from your lordship for?"
"My dear count, I often borrow, but I never fail to write a receipt," rejoined the prince.
"Have it your own way, my lord."
The cardinal took a quill and scrawled in large and illegible writing a signature under a line or two which a schoolboy would be ashamed of at present.
"Will that do?" he inquired, handing it to Balsamo, who put it in his pocket without looking at it.
"Perfectly," he said.
"You have not read it."
"I have the word of a Rohan, and that is better than a bond."
"Count Fenix, you are truly a noble man, and I cannot make you beholden to me. I am glad to be your debtor."
Balsamo bowed, and rang a bell, to which Fritz responded.
Saying a few words in German to him, the servant wrapped up the ingots of gold in their wads of ropeyarn, and took them all up as a boy might as many oranges in a handkerchief, a little strained but not hampered or bent under the weight.
"Have we Hercules here?" questioned the cardinal.
"He is rather lusty, my lord," answered the necromancer, "but I must own that, since he has been in my employment, I make him drink three drops every morning of an elixir which my learned friend Dr. Althotas compounded. It is beginning to do him good. In a year he will be able to carry a hundredweight on each finger."
"Marvelous! incomprehensible!" declared the prince-priest. "Oh, I cannot resist the temptation to tell everybody about this."
"Do so, my lord," replied the host, laughing. "But do not forget that it is tantamount to pledging yourself to put out the match when they start the fire going to burn me in public."
Having escorted his illustrious caller to the outer door, he took his leave with a respectful bow.
"But I do not see your man," said the visitor.
"He went to carry the gold to your carriage, at the fourth tree on the right round the corner on the main street. That is what I told him in German, my lord."
The cardinal lifted his hands in wonder and disappeared in the shadows.
Balsamo waited until Fritz returned, when he went back to the private inner house, fastening all the doors.
Chapter XLI.
The Water Of Life.
He went to listen at Lorenza's door, where she was sleeping evenly and sweetly.
He opened a panel and looked in upon her, for some while in affectionate reverie. Closing the wicket, he stole away to his laboratory, where he put out the fire, by opening a register plate which sent most of the heat up the chimney, and ran in water from a tank without.
In a pocket-book, he carefully fastened up the receipt of Cardinal Rohan, saying:
"The parole of a Rohan is all very well, but only for me, and the brothers will want to know yonder how I employ their money."
These words were dying on his lips when three sharp raps on the ceiling made him lift his head.
"Althotas wants me, and in a hurry. That is a good sign."
With a long iron rod he rapped in answer. He put away the tools, and by means of an iron ring in a trap overhead, which was the floor of a dumb-waiter, as then they called elevators, he pulled this down to his feet. Placing himself in the center of it, he was carried gently, by no spring but a simple hydraulic machine, worked by the reservoir which had extinguished the fire, up into the study reserved for the old alchemist.
This new dwelling was eight feet by nine in height, and sixteen in length; all the light came from a skylight, as the four walls were without inlet. It was, relatively to the house on wheels, a palace.
The old man was sitting in his easy-chair on casters, at the middle of a horseshoe-shaped table in iron, with a marble top, laden with a quantity of plants, books, tools, bottles, and papers traced with cabalistic signs—a chaos.
He was so wrapt in thought that he was not disturbed by the entrance.
A globe of crystal hung over his yellow and bald pate; in this a sort of serpent, fine and coiled like a spring, seemed to curl, and it sent forth a bright and unvarying light, without other apparent source of luminous supply than the chain supporting the globe might contain to transmit.
He was "candling" a phial of ground glass in his fingers as a good wife tries eggs.
"Well, anything new?" said Balsamo, after having silently watched him for a while.
"Yes, yes; I am delighted, Acharat, for I have found what I sought."
"Gold—diamonds?"
"Pooh! They are pretty discoveries for my soul to rejoice over."
"I suppose you mean your elixir, in that case."
"Yes, my boy, my elixir—life everlasting."
"Oh, so you are still harping on that string," said the younger sage sadly, for he thought his senior was following an idle dream.
But without listening Althotas was lovingly peering into his phial.
"The proportions are found at last," he mumbled. "Elixir of Aristæus, twenty grams; balm of mercury, fifteen; precipitate of gold, fifteen; essence of Lebanon cedar, twenty-five grams."
"But it seems to me, bar the Aristæan elixir, this is about what you last mixed up."
"That is so, but there was lacking the binding ingredient, without which the rest are no good."
"Can one procure it?"
"Certainly; it is three drops of a child's arterial blood."
"And have you the child?" gasped Balsamo, horrified.
"No, I expect you to find one for me."
"Master, you are mad."
"In what respect?" asked the emotionless old man, licking with his tongue the stopper of the phial, from which a little of the nectar had oozed.
"The child would be killed."
"What of it—the finer the child, the better the heart's blood."
"It cannot