"And I never will, madame. From this day, in which I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, my solicitude for you will not cease."
"Oh, sir, do not speak to me of your protection."
"Oh, mon Dieu! I should humiliate myself, not you, in mentioning such a thing;" and he pressed her hand, which he continued to hold, to his lips.
She tried to withdraw it; but he said, "Only politeness, madame," and she let it remain.
"To know," said she, "that I shall occupy a place, however small, in the mind of a man so eminent and so busy, would console me for a year."
"Let us hope the consolation will last longer than that, countess."
"Well, perhaps so, monseigneur; I have confidence in you, because I feel that you are capable of appreciating a mind like mine, adventurous, brave, and pure, in spite of my poverty, and of the enemies which my position has made me. Your eminence will, I am sure, discover all the good that is in me, and be indulgent to all the rest."
"We, are, then, warm friends, madame;" and he advanced towards her, but his arms were a little more extended than the occasion required. She avoided him, and said, laughing:
"It must be a friendship among three, cardinal."
"Among three?"
"Doubtless, for there exists an exile, a poor gendarme, who is called M.
de la Motte."
"Oh, countess, what a deplorably good memory you have!"
"I must speak to you of him, that you may not forget him."
"Do you know why I do not speak of him, countess?"
"No; pray tell me."
"Because he will speak enough for himself: husbands never let themselves be forgotten. We shall hear that M. le Comte de la Motte found it good, or found it bad, that the Cardinal de Rohan came two, three, or four times a week to visit his wife."
"Ah! but will you come so often, monseigneur?"
"Without that, where would be our friendship? Four times! I should have said six or seven."
Jeanne laughed, "I should not indeed wonder in that case if people did talk of it."
"Oh! but we can easily prevent them."
"How?"
"Quite easily. The people know me----"
"Certainly, monseigneur."
"But you they have the misfortune not to know."
"Well?"
"Therefore, if you would----"
"What, sir?"
"Come out instead of me."
"Come to your hotel, monseigneur?"
"You would go to see a minister."
"Oh! a minister is not a man."
"You are adorable, countess. But I did not speak of my hotel; I have a house----"
"Oh! a pet.i.te maison?"
"No; a house of yours."
"A house of mine, cardinal! Indeed, I did not know it."
"To-morrow, at ten o"clock, you shall have the address."
The countess blushed; the cardinal took her hand again, and imprinted another kiss upon it, at once bold, respectful, and tender. They then bowed to each other.
"Light monseigneur down," said the countess; and he went away.
"Well," thought she, "I have made a great step in the world."
"Come," said the cardinal to himself as he drove off, "I think I have killed two birds with one stone; this woman has too much talent not to catch the queen as she has caught me?"
CHAPTER XVI.
MESMER AND ST. MARTIN.
The fashionable study in Paris at this time, and that which engrossed most of those who had no business to attend to, was Mesmerism--a mysterious science, badly defined by its discoverers, who did not wish to render it too plain to the eyes of the people. Dr. Mesmer, who had given to it his own name, was then in Paris, as we have already heard from Marie Antoinette.
This Doctor Mesmer deserves a few words from us, as his name was then in all mouths.
He had brought this science from Germany, the land of mysteries, in 1777. He had previously made his debut there, by a theory on the influence of the planets. He had endeavored to establish that these celestial bodies, through the same power by which they attract each other, exercised an influence over living bodies, and particularly over the nervous system, by means of a subtle fluid with which the air is impregnated. But this first theory was too abstract: one must, to understand it, be initiated into all the sciences of Galileo or Newton; and it would have been necessary, for this to have become popular, that the n.o.bility should have been transformed into a body of savants. He therefore abandoned this system, and took up that of the loadstone, which was then attracting great attention, people fancying that this wonderful power was efficacious in curing illnesses.
Unhappily for him, however, he found a rival in this already established in Vienna; therefore he once more announced that he abandoned mineral magnetism, and intended to effect his cures through animal magnetism.
This, although a new name, was not in reality a new science; it was as old as the Greeks and Egyptians, and had been preserved in traditions, and revived every now and then by the sorcerers of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, many of whom had paid for their knowledge with their lives. Urbain Grandier was nothing but an animal magnetizer; and Joseph Balsamo we have seen practising it. Mesmer only condensed this knowledge into a science, and gave it a name. He then communicated his system to the scientific academies of Paris, London, and Berlin. The two first did not answer him, and the third said that he was mad. He came to France, and took out of the hands of Dr. Storck, and of the oculist Wenzel, a young girl seventeen years old, who had a complaint of the liver and gutta serena, and after three months of his treatment, restored her health and her sight.
This cure convinced many people, and among them a doctor called Deslon, who, from his enemy, became his pupil. Prom this time his reputation gradually increased; the academy declared itself against him, but the court for him. At last the government offered him, in the king"s name, an income for life of twenty thousand francs to give lectures in public, and ten thousand more to instruct three persons, who should be chosen by them, in his system.