The Hero of the People. Alexandre Dumas

retaining in town against his wishes. For a thousand reasons he wants to be home beside his wife.”

      “Really, master, you are prodigious!”

      “Wait for something stronger. The second time you returned to France because political questions drew you, like many others; besides you had published several political treatises which you sent to King Louis XVI., and as there is much of the Old Man in you—you are prouder for the approval of the King than perhaps you would be of that of my predecessor in your training, Rousseau—who would be higher than a king this day, had he lived—you yearn to learn what is thought of Dr. Gilbert by the descendant of St. Louis, Henry Fourth and Louis XIV. Unfortunately a little matter has kept alive which you did not bear in mind, as a sequel to which I picked you up in a cave in the Azores, where my yacht put in. I restored you from the effects of a bullet in your breast. This little affair concerned Mdlle. Andrea Taverney, become Countess Charny, which she deserves, to save the Queen’s reputation, compromised by the King coming upon her and Count Charny by surprise.

      “As the Queen could refuse nothing to this saver, she got a blank warrant and committal to prison for you, so that you were arrested on the road out of Havre and taken to the Bastile. There you would be to this day, dear doctor, if the people, prepared for a rising by a person whom you may divine, had not in a day knocked the old building lower than the gutter. I was not sorry, for I had a taste of the fare myself before I was banished the Kingdom. This morning early, you contributed to the rescue of the Royal Family, by running to arouse Lafayette, who was sleeping the sleep of the virtuous; and just now, when you saw me, you were about to make a breastwork of your body for the Queen who seemed threatened—though, between ourselves, she detests you. Is this right? Have I forgotten anything of note, such as a hypnotic seance before the King when Countess Charny was made to disclose how she had led to your imprisonment and how she obtained a certain casket of your papers by one Wolfstep, a police agent? Tell me and if I have omitted any point, I am ready to do penance for it.”

      Gilbert stood stupefied before this extraordinary man, who knew so well to prepare his march that his hearer was inclined to attribute to him the faculty of comprising heavenly as well as mundane things, and to read in the heart of man.

      “Yes, it is thus and you are still the magician, the fortune-teller, the thaumaturgist, Cagliostro!”

      The wonder-worker smiled with satisfaction, for it was evident that he was proud of having worked on Gilbert such an impression as the latter’s visage revealed.

      “And now,” continued Gilbert, “as I love you as much as you do me, dear master, and my desire to learn what you have been doing is equal to yours and how I have fared, will you kindly tell me, if I am not intruding too far, in what part of the globe you have exhibited your genius and practiced your power?”

      “Oh, I?” said Cagliostro, smiling, “like yourself I have been rubbing shoulders with kings, but with another aim. You go up to them to uphold them; I to knock them over. You try to manufacture a constitutional monarch and will not succeed; I, to make emperors, kings and princes democratic, and I am coming on.”

      “Are you really?” queried Gilbert with an air of doubt.

      “Decidedly. It must be allowed that they were prepared for me by Voltaire, Alembert and Diderot, admirable Mecaenases, sublime contemners of the gods, and also by the example of Frederick the Great, whom we have the misfortune to lose. But you know we are all mortal, except the Count of St. Germain and myself.

      “So long as the Queen is fair, my dear Gilbert, and she can recruit soldiers to fight among themselves, kings who fret to push over thrones have never thought of hurling over the altar. But we have her brother, Kaiser Joseph II. who suppresses three-fourths of the monasteries, seizes ecclesiastical property, drives even the Camelite nuns out of their cells, and sends his sister prince of nuns trying on the latest fashions in hats and monks having their hair curled. We have the King of Denmark, who began by killing his doctor Struensee, and who, at seventeen, the precocious philosopher, said: ‘Voltaire made a man of me for he taught me to think.’ We have the Empress Catherine, who made such giant strides in philosophy that—while she dismembered Poland, Voltaire wrote to her: ‘Diderot, Alembert and myself are raising altars to you. We have the Queen of Sweden and many princes in the Empire and throughout Germany.'”

      “You have nothing left you but to convert the Pope, my dear master, and I hope you will, as nothing is beyond you.”

      “That will be a hard task. I have just slipped out of his claws. I was locked up in Castle Sanangelo as you were in the Bastile.”

      “You don’t say so? did the Romans upset the castle as the people of St. Antoine Ward overthrew the Bastile?”

      “No, my dear doctor, the Romans are a century behind that point. But, be easy: it will come in its day: the Papacy will have its revolutionary days, and Versailles and the Vatican can shake hands in equality at that era.”

      “I thought that nobody came alive out of Castle Sanangelo?”

      “Pooh! what about Benvenuto Cellini, the sculptor?”

      “You had not wings such as he made, had you, and did you flit over the Tiber like a new Icarus?”

      “It would be the more difficult as I was lodged for the farther security in the blackest dungeon of the keep. But I did get out, as you see.”

      “Bribed the jailor with gold?”

      “I was out of luck, for my turnkey was incorruptible. But, fortunately, he was not immortal. Chance—the believers say, Providence—well, the Architect of the Universe granted that he should die on the morrow of his refusing to open the prison doors. He died very suddenly! and he had to be replaced.”

      “The new hand was not unbribable?”

      “The day of his taking up his office, as he brought me the soup, he said: ‘Eat heartily and get your strength, for we have to do some stiff traveling this night.’ By George, the good fellow told no lie. That same night we rode three horses out dead, and covered a hundred miles.”

      “What did the government say when your disappearance was known?”

      “Nothing. The dead and still-warm other jailer was clad in the clothes I left behind; and a pistol was fired in his face; it was laid by his side and the statement was given out that in despair at having no escape and with the useless weapon which I had procured none could tell how, I had blown out my brains. It follows that I am officially pronounced dead and buried; the jailer being interred in my name. It will be useless, my dear Gilbert, my saying that I am alive, for the certificate of my death and burial will be produced to prove that I am no more. But they will not have to do anything of the sort as it suits me to be thought passed away at this date. I have made a dive into the sombre river, as the poets say, but I have come up under another name. I am now Baron Zanone, a Genoese banker. I discount the paper of princes—good paper in the sort of Cardinal Prince Rohan’s, you know. But I am not lending money merely for the interest. By the way, if you need cash, my dear Gilbert, say so? You know that my purse, like my heart, is always at your call.”

      “I thank you.”

      “Ah, you think to incommode me, because you met me in my dress as a workman? do not trouble about that; it is merely one of my disguises; you know my ideas about life being one long masquerade where all are more or less masked. In any case, my dear boy, if ever you want money, out of my private cash box here—for the grand cash box of the Invisibles is in St. Claude Street—come to me at any hour, whether I am at home or not—I showed you the little, side door; push this spring so—“ he showed him the trick—“and you will find about a million ready.”

      The round top of the desk opened of itself on the spring being pressed, and displayed a heap of gold coin and bundles of banknotes.

      “You are in truth a wonderful man!” exclaimed Gilbert; “but you ought to know that with twenty thousand a-year, I am richer than the King. But do you not fear being disquieted in Paris?”

      “On