“You propose to become the king’s physician,” said she. “Now, you must understand, sir, that I attach too much importance to the health of my husband to trust it in the hands of a man whom I do not know perfectly.”
“I offered myself to the king, Madame,” said Gilbert, “and I was accepted without your Majesty having any just cause to conceive the least suspicion as to my capacity or want of zeal. I am, above all, a political physician, Madame, recommended by Monsieur Necker. As for the rest, if the king is ever in want of my science, I shall prove myself a good physical doctor, so far as human science can be of use to the Creator’s works. But what I shall be to the king more particularly, besides being a good adviser and a good physician, is a good friend.”
“A good friend!” exclaimed the queen, with a fresh outburst of contempt. “You, sir, a friend of the king!”
“Certainly,” replied Gilbert, quietly; “why not, Madame?”
“Oh yes! all in virtue of your secret power, by the assistance of your occult science,” murmured she; “who can tell? We have already seen the Jacqueses and the Maillotins; perhaps we shall go back to the dark ages! You have resuscitated philters and charms. You will soon govern France by magic; you will be a Faust or a Nicholas Flamel!”
“I have no such pretensions, Madame.”
“And why have you not, sir?’ How many monsters more cruel than those of the gardens of Armida, more cruel than Cerberus himself, would you not put to sleep on the threshold of our hell!”
When she had pronounced the words, “would you not put to sleep,” the queen cast a scrutinizing look on the doctor.
This time Gilbert blushed in spite of himself.
It was a source of indescribable joy to Marie Antoinette; she felt that this time the blow she had struck had inflicted a real wound.
“For you have the power of causing sleep; you, who have studied everything and everywhere, you doubtless have studied magnetic science with the magnetizers of our century, who make sleep a treacherous instrument, and who read their secrets in the sleep of others.”
“In fact, Madame, I have often, and for a long time, studied under the learned Cagliostro.”
“Yes; he who practised and made his followers practise that moral theft of which I was just speaking; the same who, by the aid of that magic sleep which I call infamous, robbed some of their souls, and others of their bodies!”
Gilbert again understood her meaning, but this time he turned pale, instead of reddening. The queen trembled with joy, to the very depths of her heart.
“Ah, wretch” murmured she to herself: “I have wounded you, and I can see the blood.”
But the profoundest emotions were never visible for any length of time on the countenance of Gilbert. Approaching the queen, therefore, who, quite joyful on account of her victory, was imprudently looking at him:—
“Madame,” said he, “your Majesty would be wrong to deny the learned men of whom you have been speaking the most beautiful appendage to their science, which is the power of throwing, not victims, but subjects, into a magnetic sleep; you would be wrong, in particular, to contest the right they have to follow up, by all possible means, a discovery of which the laws, once recognized and regulated, are perhaps intended to revolutionize the world.”
And while approaching the queen, Gilbert had looked at her, in his turn, with that power of will to which the nervous Andrée had succumbed.
The queen felt a chill run through her veins as he drew nearer to her.
“Infamy,” said she, “be the reward of those men who make an abuse of certain dark and mysterious arts to ruin both the soul and body. May infamy rest upon the head of Cagliostro!”
“Ah!” replied Gilbert, with the accent of conviction, “beware, Madame, of judging the faults committed by human beings with so much severity.”
“Sir—”
“Every one is liable to err, Madame; all human beings commit injuries on their fellow-creatures, and were it not for individual egotism, which is the foundation of general safety, the world would become but one great battle-field. Those are the best who are good; that is all. Others will tell you that those are best who are the least faulty. Indulgence must be the greater, Madame, in proportion to the elevated rank of the judge. Seated as you are on so exalted a throne, you have less right than any other person to be severe towards the faults of others. On your worldly throne, you should be supremely indulgent, like God, who upon his heavenly throne is supremely merciful.”