is praying before going to rest."
"Look through the house for the cardinal. Is his carriage at the door? Is it on the road? Come along nearer to Paris, as we drove. Nearer!"
"Ah, I see it! It has stopped at the tollbar. A footman gets down to speak with his master."
"List to him, Lorenza, for it is important that I should know what the cardinal says to this man."
"You did not order me to listen in time, for he has done speaking to the man. But the man speaks to the coachman, who is told to drive to St. Claude Street, in the swamp, by the rampart road."
"Thank you, Lorenza."
The count went to the wall, pulled aside an ornament which disclosed an ivory mouthpiece and spoke some words in a tube of unknown length and direction; it was his way of corresponding here with his man of trust, Fritz.
"Are you content with me?" asked the medium.
"Yes, dear Lorenza, and here is your reward," he said, giving her a fond caress.
"Oh, Joseph, how I love you!" she said with an almost painful sigh.
Her arms opened to enfold Balsamo on her heart.
Chapter XXXVII.
The Double Existence.
But he recoiled swiftly, and the arms came together ere falling folded on her bosom.
"Would you like to speak with your friend?" he asked.
"Yes, speak to me often. I like to hear your voice."
"You have often told me, dearest, that you would be very happy if we could dwell together afar from the world."
"That would indeed be bliss."
"Well, I have realized your wish, darling. We are by ourselves in this parlor, where none can hear and none intrude."
"I am glad to hear it."
"Tell me how you like the place."
"Order me to see it."
"Does it please you?" asked the count, after a pause.
"Yes; here are my favorite flowers. Thank you, my kind Joseph. How good you are!"
"I do all I can to please you."
"Oh, you are a hundred times kinder to me than I deserve."
"You confess that you have been wicked?"
"Very badly so, but you will overlook that?"
"After you explain the enigma which I have struggled against ever since I knew you."
"Hearken, Balsamo. In me are two Lorenzas, quite distinct. One loves you and the other detests you, as if I lived two existences. One during which I enjoy the delights of paradise, the other when I suffer the opposite."
"These two existences are your waking mood and your magnetic sleep?"
"Yes."
"Why do you hate me when in your waking senses and love me when in the charmed sleep?"
"Because Lorenza is the superstitious Italian girl who believes that science is a crime and love a sin. Then she is afraid of the sage Balsamo and the loving Joseph. She has been told that to love would destroy her soul; and so she flees from the lover to the confines of the earth."
"But when Lorenza sleeps?"
"It is another matter. She is no longer a Roman girl and superstitious, but a woman. She sees that the genius of Balsamo dreams of sublime themes. She understands how petty an object she is compared with him. She longs to live by him and die at his side, in order that the future shall breathe her name while it trumpets the glory of—Cagliostro."
"Is that the name I am to be celebrated under?"
"The name."
"Dear Lorenza! so you like our new home?"
"It is richer than any you have found for me; but that is not why I like it more—but because you say you will be oftener with me here."
"So, when you sleep, you know how fondly I adore you?"
"Yes," she said with a faint smile, "I see that passion, then, and yet there is something you love above Lorenza," she sighed. "Your dream."
"Rather say, my task."
"Well, your ambition!"
"Say, my glory."
"Oh, heaven!" and her heart was laboring; her closed lids allowed tears to struggle out.
"What is it you see?" inquired Balsamo, astounded at the lucidity which frightened even him.
"I see phantoms gliding about among the shadows. Some hold in their own hands their severed crowned heads, like St. Denis in that Abbey; and you stand in the heart of the battle like a general in command. You seem to rule, and you are obeyed."
"Does that not make you proud of me?" inquired the other joyfully.
"You are good enough not to care to be great. Besides, in looking for myself in this scene, I see nothing of me. Oh, I shall not be there," she sighed. "I shall be in the grave."
"You dead, my dearest Lorenza!" said Balsamo, frowning. "No, we shall live and love together."
"No, you love me no more, or not enough," crowding upon his forehead, held between her hands, a multitude of glowing kisses. "I have to reproach you for your coldness. Look now how you draw away from me as though you fled my fondlings. Oh, restore to me my maiden quietude, in my nunnery of Subiaco—when the night was so calm in my cell. Return me those kisses which you sent on the wings of the wind coming to me in my solitude like golden-pinioned sylph, which melted on me in delight. Do not retreat from me. Give me your hand, that I may press it; let me kiss your dear eyes—let me be your wife, in short."
"Lorenza, sweetest, you are my well-beloved wife."
"Yet you pass by the chaste and solitary flower and scorn the perfume? I am sure that I am nothing to you."
"On the contrary, you are everything—my Lorenza. For it is you who give me strength, power and genius—without you I should be nothing. Cease, then, to love me with this insensate fever which wrecks the nights of your people, and love me as I love you. Thus I am happy."
"You call that happiness?" scornfully said the Italian.
"Yes, for to be great is happiness."
She heaved a long sigh.
"Oh, if you only knew the gladness in being able to read the hearts of man and manipulate them
