Gilbert still continued to hesitate.
The king approached him.
“Sir,” said he to Gilbert, laughing, “call him Satan, if you will; I shall still find a shield to protect me from him,—the one which your dogmatizers do not possess,—one that they never will possess, one which I alone perhaps in this century possess, and bear without feeling shame,—religion.”
“Your Majesty believes as Saint Louis did. It is true,” said Gilbert.
“And in that lies all my strength, I confess, Doctor. I like science; I adore the results of materialism; I am a mathematician, as you well know; you know that the sum total of an addition or an algebraical formula fills my heart with joy; but when I meet people who carry algebra to atheism, I have in reserve my profound, inexhaustible, and eternal faith—a faith which places me a degree above and a degree below them,—above them in good, and beneath them in evil. You see, then, Doctor, that I am a man to whom everything may be said, a king who can hear anything.”
“Sire,” said Gilbert, with a sort of admiration, “I thank your Majesty for what you have just said to me; for you have almost honored me with the confidence of a friend.”
“Oh, I wish,” the timid Louis hastened to exclaim, “I wish all Europe could hear me speak thus. If Frenchmen could read in my heart all the energy of feeling, the tenderness which it contains, I think they would oppose me less.”
The last portion of the king’s sentence, which showed that the king was irritated by the attack the royal prerogative had been subjected to, lowered Louis XVI. in the estimation of Gilbert.
He hastened to say, without attempting to spare the king’s feelings,—
“Sire, since you insist upon it, my master was the Count de Cagliostro.”
“Oh!” cried Louis, coloring, “that empiric!”
“That empiric!—yes, Sire! Your Majesty is doubtless aware that the word you have just pronounced is one of the noblest used in science. Empiric means the man who experiments: the practitioner, the profound thinker,-the man, in short, who is incessantly investigating,—does all that God permits men to do that is glorious and beautiful. Let but a man experiment during his whole life, and his life will be well occupied.”
“Ah, sir, this Cagliostro whom you defend was a great enemy of kings.”
Gilbert recollected the affair of the necklace.
“Is it not rather the enemy of queens your Majesty intended to say?”
Louis shuddered at this sharp home-thrust.
“Yes,” said he, “he conducted himself, in all the affair of Prince Louis de Rohan, in a manner which was more than equivocal.”
“Sire, in that, as in other circumstances, Cagliostro carried out the human mission: he made his own researches. In science, in morals, in politics, there is neither good nor evil; there are only stated phenomena or accomplished facts. Nevertheless, I will not defend him, Sire. I repeat, the man may often have merited blame; perhaps some day this very blame may be considered as praise: posterity reconsiders the judgments of men. But I did not study under the man, Sire, but under the philosopher, under the great physician.”
“Well, well,” said the king, who still felt the double wound his pride and heart had received, “well; but we are forgetting the Countess de Charny, and perhaps she is suffering.”
“I will wake her up, Sire, if your Majesty desires it; but I had wished that the casket might arrive here during her sleep.”
Why?”
“To spare her a too harsh lesson.”
“Here is somebody coming at this moment,” said the king. “Wait.”
In fact, the king’s order had been punctually obeyed. The casket found at the hotel of the Countess de Charny, in the possession of the agent Wolfsfoot, was brought into the royal cabinet, under the very eyes of the Countess, who did not see it.
The king made a sign of satisfaction to the officer who brought the casket. The officer then left the room.
“Well!” said Louis XVI.
“Well, then, Sire, that is, in fact, the very casket which had been taken away from me.”
“Open it,” said the king.
“Sire, I am willing to do so, if your Majesty desires it; but I have only to forewarn your Majesty of one thing.”