Balsamo, the Magician; or, The Memoirs of a Physician Read online

  CHAPTER II.

  THE LIVING-WAGON IN THE STORM.

  A week after the events depicted, a living-wagon drawn by four horsesand conducted by two postboys, left Pont-a-Mousson, a pretty townbetween Nancy and Metz. Nothing like this caravan, as show peoplestyle the kind, had ever crossed the bridge, though the good folks seetheatrical carts of queer aspect.

  The body was large and painted blue, with a baron's insignia,surmounting a J. and a B., artistically interlaced. This box waslighted by two windows, curtained with muslin, but they were in thefront, where a sort of driver's cab hid them from the vulgar eye. Bythese apertures the inmate of the coach could talk with outsiders.Ventilation was given this case by a glazed skylight in the "dickey,"or hind box of the vehicle, where grooms usually sit. Another orificecompleted the oddity of the affair by presenting a stovepipe, whichbelched smoke, to fade away in the wake as the whole rushed on.

  In our times one would have simply imagined that it was a steamconveyance and applauded the mechanician who had done away with horses.

  The machine was followed by a led horse of Arab extraction, readysaddled, indicating that one of the passengers sometimes gave himselfthe pleasure and change of riding alongside the vehicle.

  At St. Mihiel the mountain ascent was reached. Forced to go at a walk,the quarter of a league took half an hour.

  Toward evening the weather turned from mild and clear to tempestuous. Acloud spread over the skies with frightful rapidity and intercepted thesetting sunbeams. All of a sudden the cloud was stripped by a lightningflash, and the startled eye could plunge into the immensity of thefirmament, blazing like the infernal regions. The vehicle was on themountain side when a second clap of thunder flung the rain out of thecloud; after falling in large drops, it poured hard.

  The postboys pulled up. "Hello!" demanded a man's voice from inside theconveyance, "what are you stopping for?"

  "We are asking one another if we ought to go on," answered onepostillion with the deference to a master who had paid handsomely.

  "It seems to me that I ought to be asked about that. Go ahead!"

  But the rain had already made the road downward slippery.

  "Please, sir, the horses won't go," said the elder postillion.

  "What have you got spurs for?"

  "They might be plunged rowels deep without making the balky creaturesbudge; may heaven exterminate me if----"

  The blasphemy was not finished, as a dreadful lightning stroke cut himshort. The coach was started and ran upon the horses, which had torace to save themselves from being crushed. The equipage flew down thesloping road like an arrow, skimming the precipice.

  Instead of the traveler's voice coming from the vehicle, it was hishead.

  "You clumsy fellows will kill us all!" he said. "Bear to the left,deuce take ye!"

  "Oh, Joseph," screamed a woman's voice inside, "help! Holy Madonna,help us!"

  It was time to invoke the Queen of Heaven, for the heavy carriage wasskirting the abysm; one wheel seemed to be in the air and a horse wasnearly over when the traveler, springing out on the pole, grasped thepostboy nearest by the collar and slack of the breeches. He raised himout of his boots as if he were a child, flung him a dozen feet clear,and taking his place in the saddle, gathered up the reins, and said ina terrifying voice to the second rider:

  "Keep to the left, rascal, or I shall blow out your brains!"

  The order had a magical effect. The foremost rider, haunted by theshriek of his luckless comrade, followed the substitute impulse andbore the horses toward the firm land.

  "Gallop!" shouted the traveler. "If you falter, I shall run right overyou and your horses."

  The chariot seemed an infernal machine drawn by nightmares and pursuedby a whirlwind.

  But they had eluded one danger only to fall into another.

  As they reached the foot of the declivity, the cloud split with anawful roar in which was blended the flame and the thunder.

  A fire enwrapped the leaders, and the wheelers and the leaders werebrought to their haunches as if the ground gave way under them. Butthe fore pair, rising quickly and feeling that the traces had snapped,carried away their man in the darkness. The vehicle, rolling on a fewpaces, stopped on the dead body of the stricken horse.

  The whole event had been accompanied by the screams of the woman.

  For a moment of confusion, none knew who was living or dead.

  The traveler was safe and sound, on feeling himself; but the lady hadswooned. Although he guessed this was the case, it was elsewhere thathe ran to aid--to the rear of the vehicle.

  The led horse was rearing with bristling mane, and shaking the door, tothe handle of which his halter was hitched.

  "Hang the confounded beast again!" muttered a broken voice within; "acurse on him for shaking the wall of my laboratory." Becoming louder,the same voice added in Arabic: "I bid you keep quiet, devil!"

  "Do not wax angry with Djerid, master," said the traveler, untying thesteed and fastening it to the hind wheel; "he is frightened, and forsound reasons."

  So saying, he opened a door, let down the steps, and stepped inside thevehicle, closing the door behind him.

  He faced a very aged man, with hooked nose, gray eyes, and shaking yetactive hands. Sunken in a huge armchair, he was following the lines ofa manuscript book on vellum, entitled "The Secret Key to the Cabinet ofMagic," while holding a silver skimmer in his other hand.

  The three walls--for this old man had called the sides of theliving-wagon "walls"--held bookcases, with shelves of bottles, jars andbrass-bound boxes, set in wooden cases like utensils on shipboard so asto stand up without upsetting. The old man could reach these articlesby rolling the easy chair to them; a crank enabled him to screw up theseat to the level of the highest. The compartment was, in feet, eightby six and six in height. Facing the door was a furnace with hood andbellows. It was now boiling a crucible at a white heat, whence issuedthe smoke by the pipe overhead exciting the mystery of the villagerswherever the wagon went through.

  The whole emitted an odor which in a less grotesque laboratory wouldhave been called a perfume.

  The occupant seemed to be in bad humor, for he grumbled:

  "The cursed animal is frightened: but what has he got to disturb him,I want to know? He has shaken my door, cracked my furnace, and spilt aquarter of my elixir in the fire. Acharat, in heaven's name, drop thebeast in the first desert we cross."

  "In the first place, master," returned the other smiling, "we are notcrossing deserts, for we are in France; and next, I would not abandona horse worth a thousand louis, or rather priceless, as he is of thebreed of Al Borach."

  "I will give you a thousand over and over again. He has lost me morethan a million, to say nothing of the days he has robbed me of. Theliquor would have boiled up without loss of a drop, in a little longer,which neither Zoroaster nor Paracelsus stated, but it is positivelyadvised by Borri."

  "Never mind, it will soon be boiling again."

  "But that is not all--something is dropping down my chimney."

  "Merely water--it is raining."

  "Water? Then my elixir is spoilt. I must renew the work--as if I hadany time to spare!"

  "It is pure water from above. It was pouring, as you might havenoticed."

  "Do I notice anything when busy? On my poor soul, Acharat, this isexasperating. For six months I have been begging for a cowl to mychimney--I mean this year. You never think of it, though you are youngand have lots of leisure. What will your negligence bring about? Therain to-day or the wind to-morrow confound my calculations and ruinall my operations. Yet I must hurry, by Jove! for my hundredth yearcommences on the fifteenth of July, at eleven at night precisely,and if my elixir of life is not then ready, good-night to the SageAlthotas."

  "But you are getting on well with it, my dear master, I think."

  "Yes, by my tests by absorption, I have restored vitality to myparalyzed arm. I only want the plant mentioned by Pliny, which we haveperhaps passed a hund
red times or crushed under the wheels. By the way,what rumbling is that? Are we still going?"

  "No; that is thunder. The lightning has been playing the mischief withus, but I was safe enough, being clothed in silk."

  "Lightning? Pooh! wait till I renew my life and can attend to othermatters. I will put a steel bridle on your electric fluid and make itlight this study and cook my meals. I wish I were as sure of making myelixir perfect----"

  "And our great work--how comes it on?"

  "Making diamonds? That is done. Look there in the glass dish."

  Joseph Balsamo greedily caught up the crystal saucer, and saw a smallbrilliant amid some dust.

  "Small, and with flaws," he said, disappointed.

  "Because the fire was put out, Acharat, from there being no cowl to thechimney."

  "You shall have it; but do take some food."

  "I took some elixir a couple of hours ago."

  "Nay, that was at six this morning, and it is now the afternoon."

  "Another day gone, fled and lost," moaned the alchemist, wringinghis hands; "are they not growing shorter? Have they less thanfour-and-twenty hours?"

  "If you will not eat, at least take a nap."

  "When I sleep, I am afraid I shall never wake. If I lie down for twohours, you will come and call me, Acharat," said the old man in acoaxing voice.

  "I swear I will, master."

  At this point they heard the gallop of a horse and a scream ofastonishment and disquiet.

  "What does that mean?" questioned the traveler, quickly opening thedoor, and leaping out on the road without using the steps.