Taking the Bastile; Or, Pitou the Peasant

by Alexandre Dumas

  CHAPTER XXI.

  THE QUEEN AND HER MASTER.

  Andrea's confession was a long one for it was not until eleven atnight that the royal boudoir door opened, and on the sill was seen theCountess of Charny, kissing her mistress's hand.

  She went away with weeping eyes but the Queen's were scorching, as shepaced her room.

  She gave order that she was to be disturbed on no account unless fornews from Paris.

  At the supposition that Charny had at last perceived that his wife wasstill young and fair, the Queen found that misfortune is nothing to aheart-chagrin.

  But in the midst of her feverish torment came the cruel consolation.According to Andrea's confession she had been wronged in a mesmerictrance and Gilbert had humbled her pride forever. Somewhere was thevisible token of her defeat--like a trophy of his shameful triumph,the young man had borne away in the wintry night the offspring of theoccult love of the gardener's boy for his suzerain's daughter!

  She could not but be wonderstricken at the magical combination ofwayward fortune, by which a peasant lad had been made to love the finelady who was to be the favorite of the Queen of France.

  "So the grain of dust has been lifted up to glitter like the diamond inthe lustre of the skies," she mused.

  Was not this lowborn lover the living symbol of what was happening atthe time, a man of the people swaying the politics of a great empire,one who personified, by privilege of the evil spirit who soared overFrance, the insult to its nobility and the attack on royalty by theplebeians?

  While shuddering, she wanted to look upon this monster who by a crimehad infused his base blood into the aristocratic blue: who had causeda Revolution that he should be delivered from the castle; it was hisprinciples which had armed Billet, Gonchon, Marat, and the others.

  He was a venomous creature and terrible; for he had ruined Andrea asher lover and wrecked the Bastile as the hater of kings.

  She ought to know him to avoid him or the better to fight him. Betterstill to make use of him. At any price she must see him and judge him.

  Two thirds of the night were passed in reverie before she sank intotroubled slumber.

  But even here the Revolution was her nightmare. She had a dream thatshe was walking in one of her German forests when a gnome seized herfrom behind a tree and she knew that it was Gilbert.

  She shrieked and, waking, found Lady Tourzel, an attendant, by herpillow.

  "The Queen is sick," she called out. "Fetch the doctor."

  "What doctor is in waiting?" asked the Queen.

  "Dr. Gilbert, the new honorary physician whom the King has appointed."

  "You speak as if you knew him, and yet he has only been a week in thiscountry from America, and only a day out of the Bastile?"

  "Your Majesty, I read his writings, and I was so curious to see theauthor," said the lady, "that I had him pointed out to me as he was inhis rooms."

  "Ah! well, let him begin his duties. Tell him I am ailing and requesthis presence."

  Surprised and profoundly affected, though he seemed but a littleuneasy, Gilbert appeared before the Queen. With her aristocraticintelligence she read that he felt timid respect for the woman,tranquil audacity for the patient and no emotion whatever for thesovereign. She was vexed, too, that he could look so well in the blacksuit worn by the third class of society and one the Revolutionistschose.

  The less provoking he was in bearing, the more her anger grew. She hadfancied the man an odious character, one of the heroes of impudencewhom she had often seen around her. She had represented as a Mirabeau,the man she hated next to Cardinal Rohan and General Lafayette, thisauthor of Andrea's woes. He was guilty in her eyes for looking thegentleman. The proud Austrian conceived a wild hatred against one whomshe thought had stolen the semblance of the rank he had no business toaspire to.

  As he had not ceased to look at her while she was dismissing all herladies, his persistency exasperated her like importunity.

  "Well, sir," she snapped at him like a pistol-shot, "what are you doingin staring at me instead of telling what ails me?"

  This furious apostrophe, accompanied with visual lightning, would haveblasted any courtier into dropping at her feet and sueing for mercythough he was a hero, a marshal, or a demigod.

  But Gilbert made answer quietly:

  "The physician judges by the eyes in the first place, my lady. As yourMajesty summoned me, I come not from idle curiosity but to obey yourorders and fulfill my duty. As far as in my power lays, I study yourMajesty."

  "Am I sick?"

  "Not in the usual meaning of the word, but your Majesty issuperexcited."

  "Why not say I am out of temper?" she queried with irony.

  "Allow me to use the medical term, since I am a medical man called in."

  "Be it so. Whence this superexcitement?"

  "Your Majesty is too intelligent not to know that a man of medicineonly judges the material state: he is not a wizard to sound at thefirst glance the mind of man."

  "Do you mean to imply that at the second, or third time, you could notmerely tell me my bodily ail but a mental one?"

  "Possibly," returned Gilbert coldly.

  She darted at him a withering look while he was simply staring at herwith desperate fixedness. Vanquished, she tried to wrench herself awayfrom what was alarming while fascinating, and she upset a stand so thata chocolate cup was smashed on the floor. He saw it fall and the cupshiver, but did not budge. The color flew to her brow, to which shecarried her chilly hand; but she dared not direct her eyes again on themagnetizer.

  "Under what master did you study?" she inquired, using a scornful tonemore painful than insolence.

  "I cannot answer without wounding your Majesty."

  The Queen felt that he gave her an advantage and she leaped in at theopening like a lioness on a prey.

  "Wound me?" she almost screamed. "I vow that you mistake. Dr. Gilbert,you have not studied the French language in as good sources asmedicine, I fear. Members of my class are not wounded by inferiors,only tired."

  "Excuse me, madam," he returned, "I forgot I was called in to apatient. You are about to stifle with excitement and I shall call yourwomen to put you to bed."

  She walked up and down the room, infuriated at being treated like agreat child, and, turning, said:

  "You are Dr. Gilbert? Strange--I have a girlish memory of one of yourname. A boy who looked unkempt, tattered and torn like a little JeanJacques Rousseau when a vagabond, who was delving the ground with thespade held in his dirty, crooked hands."

  "It was I," replied the other calmly. "It was in 1772, that the littlegardener's boy to whom you kindly allude, was earning his bread byworking in the royal gardens of Trianon. That is seventeen years ago,and much has happened in that time. It needed no longer to make thewild boy a learned man: revolutionary eras are the forcing-beds ofmind. Clear as your glance is, your Majesty does not see that the youthis a man of thirty; it is wrong to be astonished that little Gilbert,simple and uncouth, should have become a learned philosopher in thebreath of two revolutions."

  "Simple? perhaps we will recur to that on another occasion," saidthe Queen vindictively: "but let us have to do with the learnedphilosopher, the improved and perfect man whom I have under my eyes."

  Gilbert did not notice the sneer though he knew it was a fresh insult.

  "You are appointed medical attendant to the King," she continued: "itis clear that I have the welfare of my husband too near my heart toentrust his health to a stranger."

  "I offered myself, madam," responded Gilbert, "and his Majesty acceptedme without any doubts on my capacity and zeal. I am mainly a politicalphysician, vouched for by Minister Necker. But if the King has need ofmy knowledge of the scalpel and drugs, I can be as good a healer ashuman science allows one of our race to be. But the King most wants,besides the good adviser and physician, a good friend."

  "You, a friend of the King?" exclaimed the lady, with a new outbreak ofscorn. "By virtue of your quackery and charms?
have we gone back to theDark Ages and are you going to rule France with elixirs and jugglerylike a Faust?"

  "I have no pretentions that way."

  "Oh, why have you given that branch? you might, in the same way as yousent Andrea to sleep, put the monsters under a spell who howl and spitfire on our threshold."

  This time Gilbert could not help blushing at the allusion tomesmerizing Andrea, which was of inexpressible delight to her whobaited him as she believed she had left a wound.

  "For you can send people to sleep," she pursued: "you no doubt havestudied magnetism with those villains who make slumber a treacherousweapon and read our secrets in our sleep."

  "Indeed, madam, I have studied magnetism under the wise Cagliostro."

  "That teacher of moral theft, who taught his disciples how to riflebodies and souls by his infamous practice!"

  Gilbert understood all by this, and she shuddered with joy to the coreat seeing him lose color.

  "Wretch," she rejoiced, "I have stung him to the quick and the bloodflows."

  But the deepest emotions did not long hold the mesmerizer in theirspell. Approaching the Queen who was rash enough to look up in hertriumph and let her eyes be caught, he said:

  "You are wrong to judge fellow-creatures so harshly. You denounceCagliostro as a quack when you had a proof of his real science; whenyou were the Archduchess of Austria and first came to France. When Isaw you at Taverney, did not that wonder-worker whom you decry show toyour Majesty in a clear cup of water such a picture of your fate thatyou swooned away?"

  Gilbert had not seen the forecast, but he knew from his master, nodoubt, what Marie Antoinette had been shown. He struck so hard that sheturned dreadfully pale.

  "Yes," she said in a hoarse voice, "he showed me a hideous machine ofbloodshed. But I do not yet know that such a thing exists."

  "I know not that, but he cannot be denied the rank of sage who heldsuch might over his fellow-beings."

  "His fellows?" sneered the Queen.

  "Nay, his power was so great that crowned heads sank beneath hislevel," went on Gilbert.

  "Shame! I tell you that Cagliostro was a cowardly charlatan, and hismesmeric sleep a crime. In one case it resulted in a deed for whichhuman justice, represented by me, shall seize the author and punishhim."

  "Madam, be indulgent for those who have sinned."

  "Ho, ho! you confess then?"

  She thought by the gentleness of his tone that he was imploring hermercy. Some forgot herself and looked at him to scorch him with herindignation.

  But her glance crossed his only to melt like a steel blade on which theelectric fluid falls and she felt her hatred change to fright, whileshe recoiled a step to elude coming wrath.

  "Ah, madam, do you understand what the power is I had from the masterwhom you defamed? believe that if I were not the most respectful ofyour subjects, I could convince you by a terrible experiment. I mightconstrain you to write down with your own hands lines that wouldconvince you when you read them at your release from the charm. Butmark how solid is the patience and the generosity of the man whom youhave been insulting, and whom you placed in the Bastile. You regret itwas broken open because he was released by the people. And you willhate me, and continue to doubt when I relax the bond with which I holdyou."

  Ceasing to govern her with glances and magnetic passes, he allowed herto regain some self-control, like the bird in the vacuum, to whom alittle air is restored.

  "Send me to sleep--force me to speak or write while sleep-bound," criedthe Queen, white with terror. "Have you dared? Do you know that yourthreat is high-treason? a crime punishable with death!"

  "Do not cry out too soon. If I thus charmed you and forced you tobetray your inmost secrets it would be with a witness by. He wouldrepeat your revelations so as to leave you no doubt."

  "A witness? but, think, sir, that a witness to such a deed would be anaccomplice."

  "A husband is not the accomplice to an experiment he favors on hiswife."

  "The King?" screamed Marie Antoinette with dread, revealing rather thewife than the medium reluctant to make a scene for the spiritualist:"fie, Dr. Gilbert!"

  "The King, your natural defender, your sustainer," replied Gilbertquietly. "He would relate, when you were awakened, how respectfulI was, while proud in proving my science on the most venerated ofsovereigns."

  He left her to meditate on the depth of his words.

  "I see," she said at length, "you must be a mortal enemy----"

  "Or a proven friend----"

  "Impossible; friendship cannot dwell beside fear or distrust."

  "Between subject and monarch, friendship cannot live but on theconfidence the subject inspires. I have made the vow not to use myweapons but to repulse the wrongs done me. All for defense, nothing foroffence!"

  "Alas," moaned the Queen: "I see that you set a trap. After frighteningthe woman, you seek to rule the Queen."

  "No, lady, I am not a paltry speculator. You are the first woman inwhom I have found all feminine passions with all the dominant facultiesof man. You can be a woman and a friend. I admire you and would serveyou. I will do it without receiving aught from you--merely to studyyou. I will do more to show you how I serve you: if I am in the waysend me forth."

  "Send you hence," said she with gladness.

  "But no doubt you will reflect that my power can be exercised fromafar. It is true: but do not fear--I shall not employ it."

  The Queen was musing, unable to reply to this strange man when stepswere heard in the corridor.

  "The King," she exclaimed.

  "Then point out the door by which I may depart without being seen byhim."

  "Stay," she said.

  He bowed, and remained impassible while she sought to read on his browto what point triumph rose in him more plain than anger or disquiet.

  "At least he might have shown his delight," she thought.