Imagine an atheist with a religion more attractive than religion itself; a republican full of politeness and interest for kings; a gentleman of the privileged classes tender and solicitous for the people, endowed with the most startling eloquence, attacking all the received religions of the earth.
Imagine Epicurus in white powder, embroidered coat, and silk stockings, not content with endeavoring to overturn a religion in which he did not believe, but also attacking all existing governments, and promulgating the theory that all men are equal, or, to use his own words, that all intelligent beings are kings.
Imagine the effect of all this in society as it then was, without fixed principles or steady guides, and how it was all assisting to light the fire with which France not long after began to consume herself.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE BUCKET.
We have endeavored to give an idea in the last chapter of the interest and enthusiasm which drew such crowds of the people to see M. Mesmer perform publicly his wonderful experiments.
The king, as we know, had given permission to the queen to go and see what all Paris was talking of, accompanied by one of the princesses. It was two days after the visit of M. de Rohan to the countess. The weather was fine, and the thaw was complete, and hundreds of sweepers were employed in cleaning away the snow from the streets. The clear blue sky was just beginning to be illumined by its first stars, when Madame de la Motte, elegantly dressed, and presenting every appearance of opulence, arrived in a coach, which Clotilde had carefully chosen as the best looking at the Place Vendôme, and stopped before a brilliantly-lighted house.
It was that of Doctor Mesmer. Numbers of other carriages were waiting at the door, and a crowd of people had collected to see the patients arrive and depart, who seemed to derive much pleasure when they saw some rich invalid, enveloped in furs and satins, carried in by footmen, from the evident proof it afforded that God made men healthy or unhealthy, without reference to their purses or their genealogies. A universal murmur would arise when they recognized some duke paralyzed in an arm or leg; or some marshal whose feet refused their office, less in consequence of military fatigues and marches than from halts made with the ladies of the Opera, or of the Comédie Italienne. Sometimes it was a lady carried in by her servants with drooping head and languid eye, who, weakened by late hours and an irregular life, came to demand from Doctor Mesmer the health she had vainly sought to regain elsewhere.
Many of these ladies were as well known as the gentlemen, but a great many escaped the public gaze, especially on this evening, by wearing masks; for there was a ball at the Opera that night, and many of them intended to drive straight there when they left the doctor’s house.
Through this crowd Madame de la Motte walked erect and firm, also with a mask on, and elicited only the exclamation, “This one does not look ill, at all events.”
Ever since the cardinal’s visit, the attention with which he had examined the box and portrait had been on Jeanne’s mind; and she could not but feel that all his graciousness commenced after seeing it, and she therefore felt proportionate curiosity to learn more about it.