THE MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN (Complete Edition: Volumes 1-5). Alexandre Dumas
distrust these romantic transports: I speak to you as a friend—listen to me."
Stunned at the height of her rebellion, Lorenza listened in spite of herself, from so much concentrated wrath being in his voice, and gloomy fire in his eye, while his white but powerful hand opened and shut so strangely as he slowly and solemnly spoke:
"Mark this, my child, that I have tried to have this place fit for a queen, with nothing lacking for your comfort. So calm your folly. Live here as you would do in your convent cell. You must become habituated to my presence. As I have great sorrows, I will confide in you; dreadful disappointment, for which I will crave a smile. The kinder, more patient and attentive you are, the more of your bars I will remove, so that in some months—who knows how soon?—you will become perhaps more free than I am, in the sense that you will not want to curtail my liberty."
"No, no," replied the Italian, unable to understand that firm resolution could be allied to such gentle words, "no more professions and falsehoods. You abducted me, so that I am my own property still; restore me to heaven, if you will not let me be my own mistress. I have borne with your despotism so far from remembering that you saved me from the robbers who would have ruined me; but this gratitude is much enfeebled. A few days more of this captivity against which I revolt, and I shall no longer feel obliged to you; a few more, and I shall perhaps believe you were in concert with those highwaymen."
"So you honor me with a captaincy of brigands," sneered Balsamo.
"I do not know about that, but I noticed secret signs and peculiar words."
"But," replied the other, losing color, "you will never tell them; never to a living soul? You will bury them in the remotest place in your memory so that they shall die there, smothered."
"Just the other way," retorted Lorenza, delighted as angry persons are at having found the antagonist's vulnerable point. "My memory shall piously preserve those words, which I will repeat over and over again when alone, and say aloud when the opening comes, as already I have done."
"To whom?"
"To the princess royal."
"Lorenza, mind this well," said he, clenching his nails in his flesh to subdue his fury and check his rushing blood at the thought that his brothers were in danger through the woman whom he had selected to aid them all, "if you said them, never again will you do so. For the doors will be kept fastened, those bars pointed at the head, and those walls reared as high as Babel's."
"I have already told you, Balsamo, that any soul wherein the love of liberty is reinforced by the hate of tyranny must escape from all prison houses."
"Well and good; try it, woman; but mark this well: you will only twice try it. For the first time I will punish you so severely that you will weep all the tears in your body; and for the second I will strike you pitilessly that you will pour forth all the blood in your veins."
"Help, help, he is murdering me," shrieked the woman, at the last paroxysm of wrath, tearing her hair and rolling on the carpet.
For an instant Balsamo considered her with mingled rage and pity, the latter overcoming the other.
"Come, come, Lorenza, return to your senses, and be calm. A day will come when you will be rewarded amply for what you have suffered, or fancy."
"Imprisoned," screamed the Italian, "and beaten."
"These are times to try the mind. You are mad, but you shall be cured."
"Better throw me into a madhouse at once; shut me up in a real jail."
"No, you have warned me what you would do against me."
"Then," said the infuriate, "let me have death straightway."
Springing up with the suppleness and rapidity of the wild beast, she leaped to break her head against the wall. But Balsamo had merely to stretch out his hands toward her and utter a single word rather with his will than with his lips, to stop her dead. She stopped, indeed, reeled and dropped sleep-stricken in the magnetiser's arms.
The strange enchanter, who seemed to rule all the material part of the woman though the mental portion baffled him, lifted up Lorenza in his arms and carried her to the couch; there he laid a long kiss on her lips, drew the curtains of bed and windows, and left her.
A sweet and blessed sleep enveloped her like the cloak of a kind mother wrapping the willful child who has much suffered and wept.
Chapter XXXIX.
The Predicted Visit.
Lorenza was not mistaken.
A carriage, going through St. Denis gateway, and following the street of the same name, turned into the road leading out to the Bastille.
As the clairvoyant had stated, this conveyance enclosed the Cardinal Prince of Rohan, Bishop of Strasburg, whose impatience had caused him to anticipate the hour fixed for his visit to the magician in his cave of mystery.
The coachman, who had been inured to obscurity, pitfalls and dangers of some darksome streets by the prelate's love adventures, was not daunted the least when, after leaving the part of the way still populated and lighted, he had to take the black and lonesome Bastille Boulevard.
The vehicle stopped at the corner of St. Claude Street, where it hid along the trees twenty paces off.
Prince Rohan, in plain dress, glided up the street, and rapped three times on the door, which he easily recognized from the indication the count had afforded.
Fritz's steps sounded in the passage, and he opened the door.
"Is it here resides Count Fenix?" inquired Rohan.
"Yes, my lord, and he is at home."
"Say a visitor is here."
"Shall I announce his Eminence Cardinal Prince de Rohan?" asked Fritz.
The prince stood aghast, looking round him and at himself to see if anything about him in costume or surroundings betrayed his rank. No; he was alone and in civilian dress.
"How do you know my name?" he inquired.
"My lord told me just now, that he expected your Eminence."
"Yes, but to-morrow, or the day after?"
"Not so, please your highness—this evening."
"Announce me, any way," said the prelate, putting a double-louis gold piece in his hand.
Fritz intimated that the visitor should follow him; and he walked briskly to the door of the ante-chamber, which a large chandelier with a dozen tapers illuminated. The visitor followed, surprised and meditative.
"There must be some mistake, my friend," he said, pausing at the door, "in which case I do not wish to disturb the count. It is impossible he can expect me, as he could not know I was coming."
"As your highness is Cardinal Prince Rohan, you are certainly expected by my lord."
Lighting the other candelabra, Fritz bowed and went out. Five minutes elapsed, during which the prelate, the prey to singular emotion, scanned the elegant furniture of the room, and the half-dozen paintings by masters on the tapestried walls. When the door opened, Count Fenix appeared on the threshold.
"Good-evening to your highness," he simply said.
"I am told that you expected me," observed the visitor, without replying to the welcome. "Expected this evening? impossible!"
"I ask your pardon, but I was expecting your highness," returned the host. "I may be doubted, seeing how paltry is my reception, but I have hardly got settled yet, from being but a few days in town. I hope for your eminence's excusing me."
"My visit expected? Who could have forewarned you?"
"Yourself, my lord. When you