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Marie Antoinette Romances, Vol 1: Balsamo, The Magician

<h2>CHAPTER XL. THE ART OF MAKING GOLD.</h2> The two threaded a narrow staircase which led, as did the grand stairs, to the first floor rooms, but a door was under an archway there, which the guide opened and the cardinal bravely walked into a dark corridor thus disclosed. Balsamo shut the door, and the sound of the closing made the visitor look back with some emotion. "We have arrived," said the leader. "Only one door to open and shut behind us. Do not be astonished at the noise it makes, as it is of iron." It was fortunate that the cardinal was warned in time, for the snap of the handle and the grinding of the hinges might make nerves more susceptible than his to vibrate. They went down three steps and entered a large cell with rafters overhead, a huge lamp with shade, many books, and a number of chemical and physical instruments—such was the aspect. In a few seconds the cardinal felt a difficulty in breathing. "What does this mean, my lord?" he asked. "The water is streaming off me and I am stifling. What sound is that, master?" "This is the cause," answered the host, pulling aside a large curtain of asbestos, and uncovering a large brick furnace in the centre of which glared two fiery cavities like lions' eyes in the gloom. This furnace stood in an inner room, centrally, twice the size of the first, unseen from the stone-cloth screen. "This is rather alarming, meseems," said the prince. "Only a furnace, my lord." "But there are different kinds of furnaces; this one strikes me as diabolical, and the smell is not pleasant. What devil's broth are you cooking?" "What your eminence wants. I believe you will accept a sample of my produce. I was not going to work until to-morrow; but as your eminence changed his mind, I lit the fire as soon as I saw you on the road hither. I made the mixture so that the furnace is boiling, and you can have your gold in about ten minutes. Let me open the ventilator to let in some air." "What, are these crucibles on the fire——" "In ten minutes they will pour you out the gold as pure as from any assayer's in christendom." "I should like to look at them." "Of course, you can; but you must take the indispensable precaution of putting on this asbestos mask with glass eyes; or the ardent fire will scorch your sight." "Have a care, indeed! I prize my eyes, and would not give them for the hundred thousand crowns you promised me." "So I thought, and your lordship's eyes are good and bright." The compliment did not displease the prince, who was proud of his personal advantages. "He, he!" he chuckled; "so we are going to see gold made?" "I expect so, my lord." "A hundred thousand crowns' worth?" "There may be a little more, as I mixed up liberally the raw stuff." "You are certainly a generous magician," said the prince, fastening the fireproof mask on, while his heart throbbed gladly. "Less than your eminence, though it is kind to praise me for generosity, of which you are a good judge. Will your highness stand a little one side while I lift off the crucible covers?" He had put on a stone-cloth shirt, and seizing iron pincers, he lifted off an iron cover. This allowed one to see four similar melting pots, each containing a fluid mass, one vermilion red, others lighter but all ruddy. "Is that gold?" queried the prelate in an undertone, as if afraid by loud speaking to injure the mystery in progress. "Yes, the four crucibles contain the metal in different stages of production, some having been on eleven hours, some twelve. The mixture is to be thrown into the first mass of ingredients—the living stuff into the gross—at the moment of boiling—that is the secret, which I do not mind communicating to a friend of the science. But, as your eminence may notice, the first crucible is turning white hot; it is time to draw the charge. Will you please stand well back, my lord?" Rohan obeyed with the same punctuality as a soldier obeying his captain. Dropping the iron pincers, which had already heated to redness, the other ran up to the furnace a carriage on wheels of the same level, the top being an iron block, in which were set eight molds of round shape and the same capacity. "This is the mold in which I cast the ingots," explained the alchemist. On the floor he spread a lot of wet oakum wads to prevent the splashing of the metal setting the floor afire. He placed himself between the molds and the furnace, opened a large book, from which he read an incantation, and said, as he caught up long tongs in his hand to clutch the crucible: "The gold will be splendid, my lord, of the first quality." "Oh, you are never going to lift that mass single-handed?" exclaimed the spectator. "Though it weighs fifty pounds, yes, my lord; but do not fear, for few metal-melters have my strength and skill." "But if the crucible were to burst——" "That did happen once to me: it was in 1399, while I was experimenting with Nicolas Flamel, in his house by St. Jacques' in the Shambles. Poor Nick almost lost his life, and I lost twenty-seven marks' worth of a substance more precious than gold." "What the deuse are you telling me? that you were pursuing the great work in 1399 with Nicolas Flamel?" "Yes, Flamel and I found the way while together fifty or sixty years before, working with Pietro the Good, in Pela town. He did not pour out the crucible quickly enough, and I had a bad eye, the left one, for ten or twelve years, from the steam. Of course you know Pietro's book, the famous 'Margarita Pretiosa,' dated 1330?" "To be sure; and you knew Flamel and Peter the Good?" "I was the pupil of one and the master of the other." While the alarmed prelate, wondered whether this might not be the Prince of Darkness himself and not one of his imps by his side, Balsamo plunged his tongs into the incandescence. It was a sure and rapid seizure. He nipped the crucible four inches beneath the rim, testing the grip by lifting it just a couple of inches. Then, by a vigorous effort, straining his muscles, he raised the frightful pot from the scorching bed. The tongs reddened almost up to the grasp. On the superheated surface white streaks ran like lightning in a sulphurous cloud. The pot edges deepened into brick red, then browner, while its conical shape appeared rosy and silvery in the twilight of the recess. Finally the molten metal could be spied, forming a violet cream on the top, with golden shivers, which hissed out of the lips of the container, and leaped flaming into the black mold. At its orifice reappeared the gold, spouting up furious and fuming, as if insulted by the vile metal which confined it. "Number two," said Balsamo, passing to the second mold, which he filled with the same skill and strength. Perspiration streamed from the founder, while the beholder crossed himself, in the shadow. It was truly a picture of wild and majestic horror. Illumined by the yellow gleams of the metallic flame, the operator resembled the condemned souls writhing in the Infernos of Dante and Michelangelo, in their caldrons. Add to this the sensation of what was in progress being unheard-of. Balsamo did not stop to take breath between the two drawings of the charges, for time pressed. "There is little loss," observed he, after filling the second mold. "I let the boiling go on the hundredth of a minute too long." "The hundredth of a minute?" repeated the cardinal, not trying to conceal his stupefaction. "Trifles are enormous in the hermetical art," replied the magician simply; "but anyway, here are two crucibles empty and two ingots cast, and they amount to a hundred weight of fine gold." Seizing the first mold with the powerful tongs, he threw it into a tub of water, which seethed and steamed for a long time; at length he opened it, and drew out an ingot of purest gold in the shape of a sugarloaf, flattened at both ends. "We shall have to wait nearly an hour for the other two," said Balsamo. "While waiting, would your eminence not like to sit down and breathe the fresh air?" "And this is gold!" said the cardinal, without replying, which made the hearer smile, for he had firm hold of him now. "Does your eminence doubt?" "Science has so many times been deceived." "You are not speaking your mind wholly," said Balsamo. "You suppose that I cheat you, but do so with full knowledge. My lord, I should look very small to myself if I acted thus, for my ambition would then be restricted by the walls of this foundry, whence you would go forth to give the rest of your admiration to the first juggler at the street corner. Come, come! honor me better, my prince, and take it that I would cheat you more skillfully and with a higher aim if cheating was intended by me. At all events your eminence knows how to test gold?" "By the touchstone, of course." "Has not my lord made the application of the lunar caustic to the Spanish gold coins much liked at card-play on account of the gold being the finest, but among which a lot of counterfeits have got afloat?" "This indeed has happened me." "Well, here is acid, and a bluestone, my lord." "No, I am convinced." "My lord, do me the pleasure of ascertaining that this is not only gold, but gold without alloy." The doubter seemed averse to giving this proof of unbelief, and yet it was clear that he was not convinced. Balsamo himself tested the ingots and showed the result to his guest. "Twenty-eight karats fine," he said: "I am going to turn out the other twain." Ten minutes subsequently, the two hundred thousand crowns' worth of the precious metal was lying on the damp oakum bed, in four ingots altogether. "I saw your eminence coming in a carriage, so I presume it is in waiting. Let it be driven up to my door, and I will have my man put the bullion in it." "A hundred thousand crowns," muttered the prince, taking off the mask in order to gloat on the metal at his feet. "As you saw it made, you can freely say so," added the conjurer, "but do not make a town talk of it, for wizards are not liked in France. If I were making theories instead of solid metal, it would be a different matter." "Then what can I do for you?" questioned the prince, with difficulty hoisting one of the fifty pound lumps in his delicate hands. The other looked hard at him and burst into laughter without any respect. "What is there laughable in the offer I make you?" asked the cardinal. "Why, your lordship offers me his services, and it seems more to the purpose that I should offer mine." "You oblige me," he said, with a clouding brow, "and that I am eager to acknowledge. But if my gratitude ought to be rated higher than I appraise it, I will not accept the service. Thank heaven, there are still enough usurers in Paris for me to find the hundred thousand crowns in a day, half on my note of hand, half on security; my episcopal ring alone is worth forty thousand livres." Holding out his hand, white as a woman's, a diamond flashed on the ring-finger as large as a hickory nut. "Prince, you cannot possibly have held the idea for an instant that I meant to insult you. It is strange that truth seems to have this effect on all princes," he added, as to himself. "Your eminence offers me his services; I ask you yourself of what nature can they be?" "My credit at court, to begin with." "My lord, you know that is shaky, and I would rather have the Duke of Choiseul's, albeit he may not be the prime minister for yet a fortnight. Against your credit, look at my cash—the pure, bright gold! Every time your eminence wants some, advise me overnight or the same morning, and I will conform to his desire. And with gold one obtains everything, eh, my lord?" "Nay, not everything," muttered the prince, falling from the perch of patronage, and not even seeking to regain it. "Quite right. I forgot that your eminence seeks something else than gold, a more precious boon than all earthly gifts; but that does not come within the scope of science as in the range of magic. Say the word, my lord, and the alchemist will become a magician, to serve you." "Thank you, I need nothing and desire no longer," sighed the prelate. "My lord," sighed the tempter, drawing nearer, "such a reply ought not to be made to a wizard by a prince, young, fiery, handsome, rich and bearing the name of Rohan. Because the wizard reads hearts and knows to the contrary." "I wish for nothing," repeated the high nobleman, almost frightened. "On the contrary, I thought that your eminence entertained desires which he shrank from naming to himself, as they are truly royal." "I believe you are alluding to some words you used in the Princess Royal's rooms?" said the prince, starting. "You were in error then, and are so still." "Your highness is forgetting that I see as clearly in your heart what is going on now as I saw your carriage coming from the Carmelite convent, traversing the town and stopping under the trees fifty paces off from my house." "Then explain what is there?" "My lord, the princes of your house have always hungered for a great and hazardous love affair." "I do not know what you mean, my lord," faltered the prince. "Nay, you understand to a T. I might have touched several chords in you—but why the useless? I went straight to the heartstring which sounds loudest, and it is vibrating deeply, I am sure." With a final effort of mistrust the cardinal raised his head and interrogated the other's clear and sure gaze. The latter smiled with such superiority that the cardinal lowered his eyes. "Oh, you are right not to meet my glance, my lord, for then I see into your heart too clearly. It is a mirror which retains the image which it has reflected." "Silence, Count Fenix; do be silent," said the prelate, subjugated. "Silence?—you are right, for the time has not come to parade such a passion." "Not yet? may it expect a future?" "Why not?" "And can you tell me whether this is not a mad passion, as I have thought, and must think until I have a proof to the opposite?" "You ask too much, my lord. I cannot say anything until I am in contact with some portion of the love-inspirer's self—for instance, a tress of her golden hair, however scanty." "Verily you are a deep man! You truly say you can read into hearts as I in my prayer-book." "Almost the very words your ancestor used—I mean Chevalier Louis Rohan, when I bade farewell to him, on the execution-stage in the Bastille, which he had ascended so courageously." "He said that you were deep?" "And that I read hearts. For I had forewarned him that Chevalier Preault would betray him. He would not believe me, and he was betrayed." "What a singular connection you make between my ancestor and me," said the cardinal, turning pale against his wish. "Only to show that you ought to be wary, in procuring the lock to be cut from under a crown." "No matter whence it comes, you shall have it." "Very well. Here is your gold; I hope you no longer doubt that it is gold?" "Give me pen and paper to write the receipt for this generous loan." "What do I want a receipt from your lordship for?" "My dear count, I often borrow, but I never fail to write a receipt," rejoined the prince. "Have it your own way, my lord." The cardinal took a quill and scrawled in large and illegible writing a signature under a line or two which a schoolboy would be ashamed of at present. "Will that do?" he inquired, handing it to Balsamo, who put it in his pocket without looking at it. "Perfectly," he said. "You have not read it." "I have the word of a Rohan, and that is better than a bond." "Count Fenix, you are truly a noble man, and I cannot make you beholden to me. I am glad to be your debtor." Balsamo bowed, and rang a bell, to which Fritz responded. Saying a few words in German to him, the servant wrapped up the ingots of gold in their wads of ropeyarn, and took them all up as a boy might as many oranges in a handkerchief, a little strained but not hampered or bent under the weight. "Have we Hercules here?" questioned the cardinal. "He is rather lusty, my lord," answered the necromancer, "but I must own that, since he has been in my employment, I make him drink three drops every morning of an elixir which my learned friend Dr. Althotas compounded. It is beginning to do him good. In a year he will be able to carry a hundredweight on each finger." "Marvelous! incomprehensible!" declared the prince-priest. "Oh, I cannot resist the temptation to tell everybody about this." "Do so, my lord," replied the host, laughing. "But do not forget that it is tantamount to pledging yourself to put out the match when they start the fire going to burn me in public." Having escorted his illustrious caller to the outer door, he took his leave with a respectful bow. "But I do not see your man," said the visitor. "He went to carry the gold to your carriage, at the fourth tree on the right round the corner on the main street. That is what I told him in German, my lord." The cardinal lifted his hands in wonder and disappeared in the shadows. Balsamo waited until Fritz returned, when he went back to the private inner house, fastening all the doors. <hr style="width:65%;"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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