The Mesmerist's Victim. Alexandre DumasЧитать онлайн книгу.
sun, artificial light, glows on the assemblies of society. You would be happy according to your tastes and make me happy in my own way. Why will you not partake of this pleasure, Lorenza, when you have beauty to make all women jealous?”
“Because you horrify me—you are not religious, and you work your will by the black art!” replied the woman haughtily.
“Then live as you condemn yourself,” he replied with a look of anger and pity; “and do not complain at what your pride earns you.”
“I should not complain if you would only leave me alone and not force me to speak to you. Let me die in my cage, for I will not sing to you.”
“You are mad,” said Balsamo with an effort and trying to smile; “for you know that you shall not die while I am at hand to guard and heal you.”
“You will not heal me on the day when you find me hanging at my window bars,” she screamed.
He shuddered.
“Or stabbed to the heart by this dagger.”
Pale and perspiring icily, Balsamo looked at the exasperated female, and replied in a threatening voice:
“You are right; I should not cure you, but I would revive you!”
The Italian woman uttered a shriek of terror for knowing there was no bounds to the magician’s powers—she believed this—and he was saved.
A bell rang three times and at equal intervals.
“My man Fritz,” said Balsamo, “notifying me that a messenger is here—in haste—— ”
“Good, at last you are going to leave me,” said Lorenza spitefully.
“Once again,” he responded, taking her cold hand, “but for the last time. Let us dwell in pleasant union; for as fate has joined us, let us make fate our friend, not an executioner.”
She answered not a word; her dead and fixed eyes seemed to seek in vacancy some thought which constantly escaped her because she had too long sought it, as the sun blinds those who wish to see the very origin of the light. He kissed her hand without her giving any token of life. As then he walked over to the fireplace, she awoke from her torper and let her gaze fall greedily upon him.
“Ha, ha,” he said, “you want to know how I leave these issueless rooms so that you may escape some day and do me harm, and my brothers of the Masonic Order by revelations. That is why you are so wide awake.”
But extending his hands, with painful constraint on himself, he made a pass while darting the magnetic fluid from palm and eye upon her eyes and breast, saying imperatively:
“Sleep!”
Scarcely was the word pronounced before Lorenza bent like a lily on its stalk; her swinging head inclined and leaned on the sofa cushions; her dead white hands slid down by her sides, rustling her silky dress.
Seeing how beautiful she was, Balsamo went up to her and placed a kiss on her brow.
Thereupon her whole countenance brightened up, as if the breath from Love’s own lips had dispelled the cloud; her mouth tremulously parted, her eyes swam in voluptuous tears, and she sighed like those angels may have sighed for the sons of man, when the world was young.
For an instant the mesmerist contemplated her as one unable to break off his ecstasy but as the bell rang again, he sprang to the fireplace, touched a spring to make the black plate swing aside like a door and so entered the house in Saint Claude Street.
In a parlor was a German servant confronting a man in courier’s attire and in horseman’s boots armed with large spurs. The vulgar visage announced one lowly born and yet his eyes were kindled with a spark of the holy fire which one superior’s mind may light.
His left hand leaned on a clubhandled whip while with his right he made signs which Balsamo understood, for he tapped his forehead with his forefinger to imply the same. The postilion’s hand then flew to his breast where he made a new sign which the uninitiated would have taken for undoing a button. To this the count responded by showing a ring on his finger.
“The Grand Master,” muttered the envoy, bending the knee to this redoubtable token.
“Whence come you?” asked Balsamo.
“From Rouen last. I am courier to the Duchess of Grammont, in whose service the Great Copt placed me with the order to have no secrets from the Master.”
“Whither go you?”
“To Versailles with a letter for the First Minister.”
“Hand it to me.”
The messenger gave Balsamo a letter from a leather bag strapped to his back.
“Wait, Fritz!” The German who had withdrawn, came to take “Sebastian” to the servant’ hall, and he went away, amazed that the Chief knew his name.
“He knows all,” remarked the servant.
Remaining alone Balsamo looked at the clear impression of the seal on the wax which the courier’s glance had seemed to beg him to respect. Slowly and thoughtfully, he went upstairs to the room where he had left Lorenza in the mesmeric slumber. She had not stirred, but she was fatigued and unnerved by the inaction. She grasped his hand convulsively when offered. He took her by the hand which squeezed his convulsively and on her heart laid the letter.
“Do you see—what do I hold in my hand—can you read this letter?”
With her eyes closed, her bosom heaving, Lorenza recited the following words which the mesmerist wrote down by this wonderful dictation.
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