said Coconnas, “if I am really in love?”
“You are,” replied Réné.
“How do you know?”
“Because you asked the question.”
“By Heaven! you are right. But with whom?”
“With her who now, on every occasion, uses the oath you have just uttered.”
“Ah!” said Coconnas, amazed; “Maître Réné, you are a clever man! Now, La Mole, it is your turn.”
La Mole reddened, and seemed embarrassed.
“I, Monsieur Réné,” he stammered, and speaking more firmly as he proceeded, “do not care to ask you if I am in love, for I know that I am, and I do not hide it from myself; but tell me, shall I be beloved in return? for, in truth, all that at first seemed propitious now turns against me.”
“Perchance you have not done all you should do.”
“What is there to do, sir, but to testify, by one’s respect and devotion to the lady of one’s thoughts, that she is really and profoundly beloved?”
“You know,” replied Réné, “that these demonstrations are frequently very meaningless.”
“Then must I despair?”
“By no means; we must have recourse to science. In human nature there are antipathies to be overcome — sympathies which may be forced. Iron is not the lodestone; but by rubbing it with a lodestone we make it, in its turn, attract iron.”
“Yes, yes,” muttered La Mole; “but I have an objection to all these sorceries.”
“Ah, then, if you have any such objections, you should not come here,” answered Réné.
“Come, come, this is child’s play!” interposed Coconnas. “Maître Réné, can you show me the devil?”
“No, Monsieur le Comte.”
“I’m sorry for that; for I had a word or two to say to him, and it might have encouraged La Mole.”
“Well, then, let it be so,” said La Mole, “let us go to the point at once. I have been told of figures modelled in wax to look like the beloved object. Is that one way?”
“An infallible one.”
“And there is nothing in the experiment likely to affect the life or health of the person beloved?”
“Nothing.”
“Let us try, then.”
“Shall I make first trial?” said Coconnas.
“No,” said La Mole, “since I have begun, I will go through to the end.”
“Is your desire mighty, ardent, imperious to know what the obstacle is, Monsieur de la Mole?”
“Oh,” exclaimed La Mole, “I am dying with anxiety.”
At this moment some one rapped lightly at the street door — so lightly that no one but Maître Réné heard the noise, doubtless because he had been expecting it.
Without any hesitation he went to the speaking-tube and put his ear to the mouthpiece, at the same time asking La Mole several idle questions. Then he added, suddenly:
“Now put all your energy into your wish, and call the person whom you love.”
La Mole knelt, as if about to address a divinity; and Réné, going into the other compartment, went out noiselessly by the exterior staircase, and an instant afterward light steps trod the floor of his shop.
When La Mole rose he beheld before him Maître Réné. The Florentine held in his hand a small wax figure, very indifferently modelled; it wore a crown and mantle.
“Do you desire to be always beloved by your royal mistress?” demanded the perfumer.
“Yes, even if it cost me my life — even if my soul should be the sacrifice!” replied La Mole.
“Very good,” said the Florentine, taking with the ends of his fingers some drops of water from a ewer and sprinkling them over the figure, at the same time muttering certain Latin words.
La Mole shuddered, believing that some sacrilege was committed.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I am christening this figure with the name of Marguerite.”
“What for?”
“To establish a sympathy.”
La Mole opened his mouth to prevent his going any further, but a mocking look from Coconnas stopped him.
Réné, who had noticed the impulse, waited. “Your absolute and undivided will is necessary,” he said.
“Go on,” said La Mole.
Réné wrote on a small strip of red paper some cabalistic characters, put it into the eye of a steel needle, and with the needle pierced the small wax model in the heart.
Strange to say, at the orifice of the wound appeared a small drop of blood; then he set fire to the paper.
The heat of the needle melted the wax around it and dried up the spot of blood.
“Thus,” said Réné, “by the power of sympathy, your love shall pierce and burn the heart of the woman whom you love.”
Coconnas, true to his repute as a bold thinker, laughed in his mustache, and in a low tone jested; but La Mole, desperately in love and full of superstition, felt a cold perspiration start from the roots of his hair.
“And now,” continued Réné, “press your lips to the lips of the figure, and say: ‘Marguerite, I love thee! Come, Marguerite!’”
La Mole obeyed.
At this moment the door of the second chamber was heard to open, and light steps approached. Coconnas, curious and incredulous, drew his poniard, and fearing that if he raised the tapestry Réné would repeat what he said about the door, he cut a hole in the thick curtain, and applying his eye to the hole, uttered a cry of astonishment, to which two women’s voices responded.
“What is it?” exclaimed La Mole, nearly dropping the waxen figure, which Réné caught from his hands.
“Why,” replied Coconnas, “the Duchesse de Nevers and Madame Marguerite are there!”
“There, now, you unbelievers!” replied Réné, with an austere smile; “do you still doubt the force of sympathy?”
La Mole was petrified on seeing the queen; Coconnas was amazed at beholding Madame de Nevers. One believed that Réné‘s sorceries had evoked the phantom Marguerite; the other, seeing the door half open, by which the lovely phantoms had entered, gave at once a worldly and substantial explanation
