Balsamo, the Magician; or, The Memoirs of a Physician. Dumas Alexandre
on your left," continued the stranger, "sits the representative of Great Britain, the chief of the Scottish Rites. I salute your lordship. If the blood of your forefathers runs in your veins, England may hope not to have the Light die out."
The swords dropped, for anger was yielding to surprise.
"So this is you, captain?" went on the stranger to the last leader on the president's left; "in what port have you left your handsome cruiser, which you love like a lass. The Providence is a gallant frigate, and the name brings good luck to America."
"Now for your turn, Prophet of Zurich," he said to the man on the right of the chief. "Look me in the face, since you have carried the science of Physiognomy to divination, and tell me if you do not read my mission in the lines of my face?"
The person addressed recoiled a step.
"As for you, descendant of Pelagius, for a second time the Moors must be driven out of Spain. It would be an easy matter if the Castilians have not lost the sword of the Cid."
Mute and motionless dwelt the fifth chief: the voice seemed to have turned him to stone.
"Have you nothing to say to me?" inquired the sixth delegate, anticipating the denouncer who seemed to forget him.
"Yea, to you I have to say what the Son of the Great Architect said to Judas, and I will speak it in a while."
So replied the traveler, fastening on him one of those glances which pierced to the heart.
The hearer became whiter than his shroud, while a murmur ran round the gathering, wishful to call the accused one to account.
"You forget the delegate of France," observed the chief.
"He is not among you – as you well know, for there is his vacant place," haughtily made answer the stranger. "Bear in mind that such tricks make them smile who can see in the dark; who act in spite of the elements, and live though Death menaces them."
"You are a young man to speak thus with the authority of a divinity," resumed the principal. "Reflect, yourself – impudence only stuns the ignorant or the irresolute."
"You are all irresolute," retorted the stranger, with a smile of supreme scorn, "or you would have acted against me. You are ignorant, since you do not know me, while I know ye all. With boldness alone I succeed against you, but boldness would be vain against one with irresistible power."
"Inform us with a proof of this power," said the Swedenborg.
"What brings ye together?"
"The Supreme Council."
"Not without intention," went on the visitant, "have you come from all quarters, to gather in the sanctuary of the Terrible Faith."
"Surely not," replied the Swede; "we come to hail the person who has founded a mystic empire in the Orient, uniting the two hemispheres in a commonalty of beliefs, and joining the hands of human brotherhood."
"Would you know him by any token?"
"Heaven has been good enough to unveil it by the intermediation of its angels," answered the visionary.
"If you hold this secret alone and have not revealed it to a soul, tell it aloud, for the time has come."
"On his breast," said the chief of the Illuminati, "he wears a diamond star, in the core of which shines the three initials of a phrase known to him alone."
"State those initials."
"L. P. D."
With a rapid stroke the stranger opened his overcoat, coat and waistcoat and showed on the fine linen front, gleaming like flame, a jeweled plate on which flared the three letters in rubies.
"HE!" ejaculated the Swede: "can this be he?"
"Whom all await?" added the other leaders, anxiously.
"The Hierophant of Memphis – the Grand Copt?" muttered the three hundred voices.
"Will you deny me now?" demanded the Man from the East, triumphantly.
"No," cried the phantoms, bowing to the ground.
"Speak, Master," said the president and the five chiefs, bowing, "and we obey."
The visitor seemed to reflect during the silence, some instants long.
"Brothers," he finally said, "you may lay aside your swords uselessly fatiguing your arms, and lend me an attentive ear, for you will learn much in the few words I address you. The source of great rivers is generally unknown, like most divine things: I know whither I go, but not my origin. When I first opened my eyes to consciousness, I was in the sacred city of Medina, playing about the gardens of the Mufti Suleyman. I loved this venerable old man like a father, but he was none of mine, and he addressed me with respect though he held me in affection. Three times a day he stood aside to let another old man come to me whose name I ever utter with gratitude mixed with awe. This august receptacle of all human wisdom, instructed in all things by the Seven Superior Spirits, bore the name of Althotas. He was my tutor and master, and venerable friend, for he is twice the age of the oldest here."
Long shivers of anxiety hailed this speech, spoken in solemnity, with majestic gesticulation and in a voice severe while smooth.
"One day in my fifteenth year, in the midst of my studies, my old master came to me with a phial in hand. 'Acharat,' he said – it was my name – 'I have always told you that nothing is born to die forever in this world. Man only lacks clearness of mind to be immortal. I have found the beverage to scatter the clouds, and next will discover that to dispel death. Yesterday I drank of this distillation: I want you to drink the rest to-day.'
"I had extreme trust in my teacher but my hand trembled in taking this phial, like Eve's in taking the apple of Life.
"'Drink,' he said, smiling. And I drank.
"'Sleep,' he said, laying his hands on my head. And I slept.
"Then all that was material about me faded away, and the soul that solitarily remained lived again, like Pythagoras, for centuries through which it had passed. In the panorama unfolded before it, I beheld myself in previous existence, and, awaking, comprehended that I was more than man."
He spoke with so strong a conviction, and his eyes were fixed heavenward with so sublime an expression that a murmur of admiration hailed him: astonishment had yielded to wonder, as wrath had to astonishment.
"Thereupon," continued the Enlightened One, "I determined to devote my existence at present, as well as the fruit of all my previous ones, to the welfare of mankind. Next day, as though he divined my plan, Althotas came to me and said:
"'My son, your mother died twenty years ago as she gave birth to you; for twenty years your sire has kept hidden by some invincible obstacle; we will resume our travels and if we meet him, you may embrace him – but not knowing him.' You see that all was to be mysterious about me, as with all the Elect of heaven.
"At the end of our journeys, I was a Theosophist. The many cities had not roused my wonderment. Nothing was new to me under the sun. I had been in every place formerly in one or more of my several existences. The only thing striking me was the changes in the peoples. Following the March of Progress, I saw that all were proceeding toward Freedom. All the prophets had been sent to prop the tottering steps of mankind, which, though blind at birth, staggers step by step toward Light. Each century is an age for the people. Now you understand that I come not from the Orient to practice simply the Masonic rites, but to say: Brothers, we must give light to the world. France is chosen to be the torch-bearer. It may consume, but it will be a wholesome conflagration, for it will enlighten the world. That is why France has no delegate here; he may have shrunk from his duty. We want one who will recoil from nothing – and so I shall go into France. It is the most important post, the most perilous, and I undertake it."
"Yet you know what goes on there?" questioned the president.
Smiling, the man called Acharat replied: "I ought to know, for I have been preparing matters. The king is old, timid, corrupt, but less antiquated and hopeless of cure than the monarchy he represents. Only a few years further will he sit on the throne. We must have the future laid out from when he dies. France is