Memoirs of a Physician (70 page)

‘ I am athirst !” cried Althotas ; ” I am athirst ! give me drink, Acharat ! “

Balsamo made no reply. He did not move ; he looked at the dying man as if he would not lose an atom of his agony.

” Do you hear me?” howled Althotas, ” do you hear me ?”

The same silence, the same immobility on the part of the gloomy spectator.

” Do you hear me, Acharat ? ” vociferated the old man, almost tearing his throat in his efforts to give emphasis to this last burst of rage ; ” water, give me water ! “

Althotas’s features were rapidly decomposing.

There was no longer fire in his looks, but only an unearthly glare ; the blood no longer coursed beneath his sunken and cadaverous cheek, motion and life were almost dead within him. His long, sinewy arms in which he had carried Lorenza like a child, were raised, but inert and powerless as the membranes of a polypus. His fury had worn out the feeble spark which despair had for a mo-ment revived in him.

” Ah ! ” said he, (( ah ! you think I do not die quickly enough ! You mean to make me die of thirst ! You gloat over my treasures and my manuscripts with longing eyes ! Ah ! you think you have them already ! wait wait ! “

And with an expiring effort, Althotas took a small bot-tle from beneath the cushions of the armchair, and un-corked it. At the contact with the air, a liquid flame

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burst from the glass vessel, and Althotas, like some potent magician, shook this flame around him.

Instantly the manuscripts piled round the old man’s armchair, the books scattered over the room, the rolls of paper disinterred with so much trouble from the pyramids of Cheops and the subterranean depths of Herculaneum, took fire with the rapidity of gunpowder. A sheet of flame overspread the marble slab, and seemed to Balsamo’s eyes like one of those flaming circles of hell of which Dante sings.

Althotas, no doubt, expected that Balsamo would rush amid the flames to save this valuable inheritance which the old man was annihilating along with himself ; but he was mistaken. Balsamo did not stir, but stood calm and isolated upon the trap-door, so that the fire could not reach him.

The flames wrapped Althotas in their embrace, but instead of terrifying him, it seemed as if the old man found himself once more in his proper element, and that, like the salamanders sculptured on our ancient castles, the fire caressed instead of consuming him.

Balsamo still stood gazing at him. The fire had reached the woodwork and completely surrounded the old man; it roared around the feet of the massive oaken chair on which he was seated ; and, what was most strange, though it was already consuming the lower part of his body, he did not seem to feel it.

On the contrary, at the contact with the seemingly purifying element, the dying man’s muscles seemed gradually to distend, and an indescribable serenity overspread his features like a mask. Isolated from his body at this last hour, the old prophet, on his car of fire, seemed ready to wing his way aloft. The mind, all powerful in its last moments, forgot its attendant matter, and, sure of having nothing more to expect below, it stretched ardently up-ward to those higher spheres to which the fire seemed to

bear it.

At this instant Althotas’s eyes, which at the first reflection of the flames seemed to have been re-endowed with

524: MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN.

life, gazed vaguely and abstractedly at some point in space which was neither heaven nor earth. They looked as if they would pierce the horizon, calm and resigned, analyzing all sensation, listening to all pain, while, with his last breath on earth, the old magician muttered in a hollow voice his adieus to power, to life, and hope.

” Ah ! ” said he, ” I die without regret ; I have possessed everything on earth, and have known all ; T have had all power which is granted to a human creature ; I had almost reached immortality !”

Balsamo uttered a sardonic laugh whose gloomy echo arrested the old man’s attention. Through the flames which surrounded him as with a veil he cast a look of savage majesty upon his pupil.

” You are right,” said he ; “one thing I had not foreseen God ! “

Then, as if this mighty word had uprooted his whole soul, Althotas fell back upon his chair. He had given up to God the last breath which he had hoped to wrest from Him.

Balsamo heaved a sigh, and without endeavoring to save anything from the precious pile upon which this second Zoroaster had stretched himself to die, he again descended to Lorenza, and touched the spring of the trap which readjusted itself in the ceiling, veiling from his sight the immense furnace which roared like the crater of a volcano.

During the whole night the fire roared above Balsamo’s head like a whirlwind, without his making an effort either to extinguish it or to fly. Stretched beside Lorenza’s body he was insensible to all danger ; but contrary to his expectations, when the fire had devoured all, and laid bare the vaulted walls of stone, annihilating all the valuable contents, it extinguished itself, and Balsamo heard its last bowlings, which like those of Althotas, gradually died away in plaints and sighs.

*******

[After the spirit-stirring scenes just narrated, in which the principal personages of the tale vanish from the stage,

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we have thought it better to hurry over the succeeding chapters, in which the book is brought to an end, merely giving the reader the following succinct account of their contents, as the effect of them when read at full length has been on ourselves, and we doubt not would be in the public, to detract from and weaken the interest which was wound up to so high a pitch by the preceding portion of the narrative. EDITOR.]

From the deathlike lethargy into which Andre had been plunged by Balsamo’s neglect to arouse her from the magnetic sleep, she at length recovered, but so utterly prostrate, both in mind and body, as to be wholly unfit for the performance of her duties at court. She therefore asked for and obtained from the dauphiness permission to retire into a convent, and the kindness of her royal mistress procured for her admission among the Carmelite Sisters of St. Denis, presided over by Mrne. Louise of France, whom we have already met in these pages.

This, it may readily be imagined, gave a death-blow to the unrighteous hopes of the Baron de Taverney, her father, and to the noble aspirations of her brother Philip. Frowned upon by the king, and the scoff of the sycophantic courtiers, among the foremost of whom was his old friend, the Duke de Eichelieu, Taverney after a stormy interview with his son, whom he disowned and cast off to seek his fortunes where he best might slunk back, despair and every evil passion boiling within his breast, to his patrimonial den, where, it is to be presumed, he found amid his misfortunes such consolation from his exalted philosophy as it was well calculated to afford.

Philip, heartbroken by his sister’s sufferings and the malicious whispers of the corrupt court, decided upon sailing for America, at that time the land of promise for ardent admirers and followers of liberty. His example was imitated by Gilbert, who had now also nothing to detain him in France, where his high-flown and romantic hopes were forever blasted, and they both took shipping in the same vessel from Havre.

Of Balsamo little more is said, and that little does not

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enlighten us as to his future fate. Weakened both in bodily health and in his influence over the secret brotherhood, he vegetated rather than lived in his mansion of the Rue St. Claude, to reappear, it is presumed, amid the stormy scenes of the French Revolution.

Having thus given a rapid resume of the intermediate events, we come at once to the

EPILOGUE.

THE NINTH OF MAT.

ON the ninth of May, 1774, at eight o’clock in the evening, Versailles presented a most curious and interesting spectacle.

From the first day of the month the king, Louis XV., attacked with a malady, the serious nature of which his physicians at first dared not confess to him, kept his conch, and now began anxiously to consult the countenances of those who surrounded him, to discover in them some reflection of the truth or some ray of hope.

The physician Bordeu had pronounced the king suffering from an attack of smallpox of the most malignant nature, and the physician La Martiniere, who had agreed with his colleague as to the nature of the king’s complaint, gave it as his opinion that his majesty should be informed of the real state of the case, ” in order that, both spiritually and temporarily, as a king and as a Christian, he should take measures for his own safety and that of his kingdom.”

” His most Christian majesty,” said he, “should have extreme unction administered to him.”

La Martiuiere represented the party of the dauphin the opposition. Bordeu asserted that the bare mention of the serious nature of the disease would kill the king, and said that for his part he would not be a party to such regicide.

Bordeu represented
Mme.
Dubarry’s party.

In fact, to call in the aid of the Church to the king was

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to expel the favorite. When religion enters at one door, it is full time for Satan to make his exit by the other.

In the meantime, during all these intestine divisions 01 the faculty, of the royal family, and of the different parties of the court, the disease took quiet possession of the aged, corrupt, and worn-out frame of the king, and set up such a strong position that neither remedies nor prescriptions could dislodge it.

From the first symptoms of the attack, Louis beheld his couch surrounded by his two daughters, the favorite, and the courtiers whom he especially delighted to honor. They still laughed and stood firm by one -another.

All at once the austere and ominous countenance of
Mme.
Louise of France appeared at Versailles. She had quitted her cell to give to her father, in her turn, the care and consolation he so much required.

She entered, pale and stern as a statue of Fate. She was no longer a daughter to a father, a sister to her fel-low-sisters ; she rather resembled those ancient prophet-esses who tfn the evil day of adversity poured in the startled ears of kings the boding cry, ” Woe ! Woe ! Woe ! “

She fell upon Versailles like a thunder-shock at the very hour when it was
Mme.
Dubarry’s custom to visit the king, who kissed her white hand and pressed them like some healing medicament to his aching brow and burning cheeks.

At her sight all fled. The sisters, trembling, sought refuge in a neighboring apartment.
Mme.
Dubarry bent the knee and hastened to those which she occupied ; the privileged courtiers retreated in disorder to the antechambers ; the two physicians alone remained standing by the fireside.

” My daughter ! ” murmured the king, opening his eyes, heavy with pain and fever.

“Yes, sire,” said the princess, “your daughter.”

” And you come “

” To remind you of God.”

The king raised himself in an upright posture, and attempted to smile.

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” For you have forgotten God,” resumed
Mme.
Lonise.

“II”

“And I wish to recall Him to your thoughts.”

“My daughter ! I am not so near death, I trust, that your exhortations need be so very urgent. My illness is very slight a slow fever attended with some inflammation.”

” Your malady, sire,” interrupted the princess, ” is that which, according to etiquette, should summon around your majesty’s couch all the great prelates of the kingdom. When a member of the royal family is attacked with the smallpox, the rites of the Church should be administered without loss of time.”

” Madame ! ” exclaimed the king, greatly agitated, and becoming deathly, pale, ” what is that you say ? “

” Madame ! ” broke in the terrified physicians.

” I repeat,” continued the princess, “that your majesty is attacked with the smallpox.”

The king uttered a cry.

” The physicians did not tell me so,” replied he.

” They had not the courage. But I look forward to another kingdom for your majesty than the kingdom of France. Draw near to God, sire, and solemnly review your past life.”

” The smallpox ! ” muttered Louis ; ” a fatal disease ! Bordeu ! La Martiniere ! can it be true ? “

The two practitioners hung their heads.

” Then I am lost ! ” said the king, more and more terrified.

“All diseases can be cured, sire,” said Bordeu, taking the initiative, ” especially when the patient preserves his composure of mind.”

” God gives peace to the mind and health to the body,” replied the princess.

” Madame ! ” said Bordeu, boldly, although in a low voice, “yon are killing the king !”

The princess deigned no reply. She approached the sick monarch, and taking his hand, which she covered with kisses :

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“Break with the past, sire,” said she, ”and give an example to your people. No one warned you ; you ran the risk of perishing eternally. Promise solemnly to live a Christian life if you are spared die like a Christian if God calls you hence ! “

As she concluded, she imprinted a second kiss on the royal hand, and with a slow step took her way through the antechambers. There she let her long black veil fall over her face, descended the staircase with a grave and majestic air, and entered her carriage, leaving behind her a stupefaction and terror which cannot be described.

The king could not rouse his spirits except by dint of questioning his physicians, who replied in terms of courtly flattery.

” I do not wish,” said he, ” that the scene of Metzwith the Duchess de Chateauroux should be re-enacted here. Send for Madame d’Aiguillon and request her to take Madame Dubarry with her to Rueil.”

This order was equivalent to an expulsion. Bordeu attempted to remonstrate, but the king ordered him to be silent. Bordeu, moreover, saw his colleague ready to report all that passed to the dauphin, and, well aware what would be the issue of the king’s malady, he did not persist, but quitting the royal chamber, he proceeded to acquaint Mine. Dubarry with the blow which had just fallen on her fortunes.