Ange Pitou by Alexandre Dumas part two

“Is it you, sir,” inquired the baroness, “who are Doctor Gilbert?”

“Yes, Madame, my name is Gilbert.”

“You are very young, to have acquired so great a reputation, or rather, does not that reputation appertain to your father, or to some relative older than yourself?”

“I do not know any one of the name of Gilbert but myself, Madame. And if indeed there is, as you say, some slight degree of reputation attached to the name, I have a fair right to claim it.”

“You made use of the name of the Marquis de Lafayette, in order to obtain this interview with me, sir; and, in fact, the marquis has spoken to us of you, of your inexhaustible knowledge—”

Gilbert bowed.

“A knowledge which is so much the more remarkable and so much the more replete with interest,” continued the baroness, “since it appears that you are not a mere ordinary chemist, a practitioner, like so many others, but that you have sounded all the mysteries of the science of life.”

“I clearly perceive, Madame, that the Marquis de Lafayette must have told you that I am somewhat of a sorcerer,” replied Gilbert, smiling; “and if he has told you so, I know that he has talent enough to prove it to you, had he wished to do so.”

“In fact, sir, he has spoken to us of the marvellous cures you often performed, whether on the field of battle, or in the American hospitals, upon patients whose lives were altogether despaired of; you plunged them, the general told us, into a factitious death, which so much resembled death itself, that it was difficult to believe it was not real.”

“That factitious death, Madame, is the result of a science almost still unknown, now confided only to the hands of some few adepts, but which will soon become common.”

“It is mesmerism you are speaking of, is it not?” asked Madame de Staël with a smile.

“Of mesmerism, yes, it is.”

“Did you take lessons of the master himself?”

“Alas! Madame, Mesmer himself was only a scholar.

Mesmerism, or rather magnetism, was an ancient science, known to the Egyptians and the Greeks. It was lost in the ocean of the middle ages. Shakespeare divined it in Macbeth. Urbain Grandier found it once more, and died for having found it. But the great master—my master—was the Count de Cagliostro.”

“That mountebank!” cried Madame de Staël.

“Madame, Madame, beware of judging as do contemporaries, and not as posterity will judge. To that mountebank I owe my knowledge, and perhaps the world will be indebted to him for its liberty.”

“Be it so,” replied Madame de Staël, again smiling: “I speak without knowing,—you speak with full knowledge of the subject. It is probable that you are right and that I am wrong. But let us return to you. Why is it that you have so long kept yourself at so great a distance from France? Why have you not returned to take your place, your proper station, among the great men of the age, such as Lavoisier, Cabanis, Condorcet, Bailly, and Louis?”

At this last name Gilbert blushed, though almost imperceptibly.

“I have yet too much to study, Madame, to rank myself all at once among these great masters.”

“But you have come at last, though at an unpropitious moment for us; my father, who would, I feel assured, have been happy to be of service to you, has been disgraced, and left here three days ago.”

Gilbert smiled.

“Baroness,” said he, bowing slightly, ” only six days ago I was imprisoned in the Bastille, pursuant to an order from Baron Necker.”

Madame de Staël blushed in her turn.

“Really, sir, you have just told me something that greatly surprises me. You in the Bastille!”

“Myself, Madame.”

“What had you done to occasion your imprisonment?”

“Those alone who threw me into prison can tell that.”

“But you are no longer in prison!”

“No, Madame, because the Bastille no longer exists.”

“How can that be?—does the Bastille no longer exist?” cried Madame de Staël, feigning astonishment.

“Did you not hear the firing of cannon?”

“Yes; but cannons are only cannons, that is all.”

“Oh, permit me to tell you, Madame, that it is impossible that Madame de Staël, the daughter of Monsieur de Necker, should not know, at this present time, that the Bastille has been taken by the people.”

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