The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty
likewise.
Two other cases were on the docket.
Both the accused prisoners were on the court side, the contractor
Augeard and Inspector General Pierre Victor Benzenval, of the Swiss
Guards.
Augeard was suspected of supplying the funds for the Queen’s
_camerailla_ to pay the troops gathered in July to fight the Parisians:
the contractor was not much known and the people bore him no grudge so
that he was acquitted without protest.
It was not so with Benzenval, who was notorious. He had commanded the
Swiss regiments during the riots and the week of the attack on the
Bastile. It was remembered that he had charged the crowds, who wanted to
pay him out.
But the most precious orders had been sent out by the King and the
court; under no pretext must Benzenval be punished. It took at least
this two-fold protection to save him. He had acknowledged himself guilty
by taking to flight after the Bastile fell: caught half way to the
frontier, he had been brought back to the capital.
Nevertheless he was acquitted.
Amid the hooting, angry crowd, leaving the court, was a man, dressed
like a plain storekeeper who familiarly laid his hand on the shoulder of
a gentleman dressed better than he, and said:
“Well, what does Dr. Gilbert think of these acquittals?”
The other started, but recognized the speaker by sight as well as by the
voice, and replied:
“The Master!--you ought to be asked that, not me, for you know all,
present, past and future!”
“Well, I should say: The third prisoner will catch it severely, even
though he be innocent.”
“Why should the innocent, if coming next, be wrongfully punished?”
inquired the doctor.
“For the simple reason that in this world the good pay for the bad,”
returned the Chief of the Invisibles with the irony natural to him.
“Good-bye, Master,” said Gilbert, offering his hand; “for I have
business.”
“With whom? Mirabeau, Lafayette or the Queen?”
Gilbert stopped and eyed Cagliostro uneasily.
“Let me tell you that you ofttimes frighten me,” he said.
“On the contrary, I want to encourage you,” said the magician. “Am I not
your friend? You may be sure of that: I will afford you a proof if you
will come with me home. I will give you such hidden particulars of this
negociation which you believe secret, that you who fancy you are
managing it, will confess ignorance of it.”
“Listen,” said Gilbert; “perhaps you are jesting with me by one of those
marvellous funds of information familiar to you; but no matter!
circumstances amid which we are treading are so grave that I would
accept enlightenment though from Old Harry himself. I am following you
therefore whithersoever you lead me.”
“Be easy, it will not be far and to a place not unknown to you; only let
me hail this passing hack; the dress I came out in did not allow me to
use my carriage and horses.”
They got into the hackneycoach which came on at a sign.
“Where am I to drive you, master?” inquired the Jehu, to Cagliostro as
though, somehow, he saw that he was the leader of the pair, though the
more plainly dressed.
“Where you know,” answered the Chief, making a masonic sign, “The
Temple.”
The driver looked at the Grand Copt with amazement.
“Excuse me, Thou Supreme, I did not know you,” he said, replying with
another sign.
“It is not thus with me,” replied Cagliostro, with a firm and lofty
voice, “innumerable as are those whom the uninitiated eyes see not, I
know all from the topmost to the lowest of those who bring the bricks
and hew the stones.”
The coachman shut the door, got upon the box, and took the carriage at a
gallop to St. Claude Street. The carriage was stopped and the door
opened with a zeal which testified to the man’s respect.
Cagliostro motioned for Gilbert to alight first and as he descended, he
said to the jarvey:
“Any news?”
“Yes, Master,” said the knight of the whip, “and I should have made my
report this evening if I had not the luck to meet you.”
“Speak.”
“My news is not for outsiders.”
“Oh, the bystander is not an outsider,” returned Cagliostro, smiling.
But Gilbert moved off a little, though he could not help glancing and
listening partially. He saw a smile on the hearers’s face as the man
told his story. He caught the name of Favras and Count Provence, before
the report was over, when the magician took out a goldpiece and offered
it.
“The Master knows that it is forbidden to receive pay for giving
information,” he objected.
“I am not paying for your report, it is plain, but for your bringing
us,” said the conspirator.
“That I can accept. Thank you,” he said, taking the coin, “I need not
work any more to-day.”
He drove away, leaving Gilbert amazed at what he had witnessed, and he
crossed the threshold reeling like a tipsy man.
He knew this house from having traversed it years ago under impressive
circumstances; little was changed in it, even to the same servant Fritz,
only he had aged sixteen years.
Ushered into a sitting room, the count bade his guest take a seat.
“I am entirely yours, doctor,” said he.
The younger man forgot his present curiosity in the memories evoked by
this room. Cagliostro looked at him like Mephistopheles regarding Faust
in his brown studies.
“This room seems to set you thinking, doctor,” he said audibly.
“It does, of the obligations I am under to you.”
“Pooh, bubbles!”
“Really, you are a strange man,” said Gilbert, speaking as much to
himself as to the other, “and if reason allowed me to put faith in what
we learn from legends, I should be inclined to take you for a magician.”
“This am I for the world, Gilbert: but not for you. I have never tried
to dazzle you with jugglery. You know I have always let you see the
bottom of the well and if you have seen Truth come up not so scantily
clothed as the painters represent her, it is because I am a Sicilian and
cannot help decorating my lady-love.”
“It was here, count, that you gave me a large sum of money that I might
be rich in offering my hand to Andrea de Taverney, with the same ease as
I might give a penny to a beggar.”
“You forget the most extraordinary part of it: the beggar brought back
the sum, except for a couple of coins which he spent for clothes.”
“He was honest but you were generous.”
“Who tells you that it was not more easy for him who handled millions to
give a hundred thousand crowns than for him who was penniless to bring
back so large a sum as that was to him? Besides, all depends on the
man’s state of mind. I was under the blow of the loss of the only woman
I ever loved--my darling wife was murdered, and I believe you might have
had my life for the asking.”
“Do you feel grief, and experience it like other men,” inquired Gilbert,
eyeing him with marked astonishment.
“You speak of memories this room gives you,” sighed the other. “Were I
to tell you--your hair would whiten--but let it pass; leave those events
in their grave. Let us speak of time present, and of that to-come if you
like.”
“Count, you returned to realism just now; again you turn to pretence,
for you speak of the future with the voice of a conjurer asserting the
power to read indecipherable hieroglyphics.”
“You forget that having more means at my beck and call than other men, I
see more clearly and farther than they. You shall see that the pretence
is but a veil--solid are the facts beneath. Come, doctor, how is your
Fusion Cabinet getting on? the Mirabeau-Lafayette Ministry?”
“It is in the skies; you are trying to learn the facts by pretending to
know more than the rumors.”
“I see that you are doubt incarnate, or wish not to see what you do not
doubt. After telling you of things you do know I must tell of those
beyond your ken. Well, you have recommended Mirabeau to the King as the
only man who can save the monarchy. He will fail--all will fail, for the
monarchy is doomed. You know that I will not have it saved. You have
achieved your end; the two rulers will welcome your advocate: and you
flatter yourself that the royal conversion is due to your irrefutable
logic and irresistible arguments.”
Gilbert could not help biting his lip on hearing this ironical tone.
“Have you invented a stethoscope by which you can read the heart of
kings? pass the wonderful instrument on to me, count: only an enemy of
mankind would want to keep it to himself alone.”
“I told you I keep nothing back from you, dear doctor. You shall have my
telescope and may look as you please through the small end which
diminishes or the other which magnifies. The Queen gave way for two
reasons: first, she met a great sorrow the night before and she must
have some mental distraction; next, she is a woman and having heard
Mirabeau spoken of as a tiger, she wants to see him and try to tame him.
She thinks: ‘It will be fine revenge to bring him to lick my feet: if
some good follows for France and the crown, so much the better.’ But you
understand, this idea is quite secondary.”
“You are building on hypothesis and I want facts.”
“I see you refuse my glass and I must come back to material things: such
as can be seen with the naked eye, Mirabeau’s debts, for instance.”
“What a chance you have to exhibit your generosity, by paying his debts
as you once did Cardinal Rohan’s.”
“Do not reproach me with that speculation, it was one of my greatest
successes. The Queen’s Necklace was a pretty affair, I think, and ruined
the Queen in the general eye. At the same price I would pay Mirabeau’s
debts. But you know that he is not looking to me for that, but to the
future Generalissimo, Lafayette, who will make him caper for a beggarly
fifty thousand francs, which he will not get any more than the dog gets
the cake for which he has danced.
“Poor Mirabeau, how all these fools and conceited dunces make your
genius pay for the follies of your youth! Yet all this is providential
and heaven is obliged to proceed by human methods. All these politicians
and wirepullers blame him for some virtue which is not theirs, and yet,
if he dies to-morrow, the masses will award him an apotheosis, and all
these pigmies, over whom he stands head and shoulders, will follow as
mourners and howl: ‘Woe to France which has lost her greatest
orator--woe to royalty which has lost its supporter!'”
“Are you going to foretell the death of Mirabeau?” cried Gilbert, almost
frightened.
“Frankly, doctor, do you see any length of life for a man whose blood
stews him, whose heart swells to suffocate him and whose genius eats him
up? do you believe that even such powers will not be worn out in
stemming the tide of mediocrity? his enterprise is the rock of Sisyphus.
For two years they have been holding him down with the cry of
Immorality. As if God moulded all men in the same form, and as if the
circle enlarged for a great mind should not enclose greater vices.
Mirabeau will not be Premier because he owes a hundred thousand francs
debt, which would be settled were he a rich contractor’s son, and
because he is condemned to death for having run away with an old
imbecile’s wife--who smothered herself in charcoal fumes for the love of
a strapping military captain! What a farce the tragedy of human life is!
How I should weep over it if I had not made up my mind to laugh!”
“But your prediction?” cried Gilbert.
“I tell you,” said the diviner, in the prophet’s tone which was his
alone, and allowed no reply, “Mirabeau will wear out his life without
becoming Prime Minister. So great a bar is mediocrity. Go to the
Assembly to-morrow and see. Meanwhile, come with me to the Jacobins
Club, for these night-birds will hold their session in an hour. Do you
belong?”
“No: Danton and Desmoulins entered me at the Cordeliers. We will go
after dinner.”
Two hours subsequently, two man in gentlemanly black suits were set