“The sea is vast, the heavens are clouded, here and there appear unknown lands, and figures hideous as the monsters of the Grecian Archipelago. They watch the ship, which is being carried in a fog amongst the breakers, by a tempest less fearful than themselves. Oh! La Pérouse, La Pérouse, if you could hear me, I would cry to you. You set out, like Columbus, to discover a world; beware of unknown isles!”
He ceased, and an icy shiver ran through the assembly.
“But why did you not warn him?” asked Count Haga, who, in spite of himself, had succumbed to the influence of this extraordinary man.
“Yes,” cried Madame Dubarry, “why not send after him and bring him back? The life of a man like La Pérouse is surely worth a courier, my dear marshal.”
The marshal rose to ring the bell.
Cagliostro extended his arm to stop him. “Alas!” said he, “All advice would be useless. I can foretell destiny, but I cannot change it. M. de la Pérouse would laugh if he heard my words, as the son of Priam laughed when Cassandra prophesied; and see, you begin to laugh yourself, Count Haga, and laughing is contagious: your companions are catching it. Do not restrain yourselves, gentlemen—I am accustomed to an incredulous audience.”
“Oh, we believe,” said Madame Dubarry and the Duke de Richelieu; “and I believe,” murmured Taverney; “and I also,” said Count Haga politely.
“Yes,” replied Cagliostro, “you believe, because it concerns La Pérouse; but, if I spoke of yourself, you would not believe.”
“I confess that what would have made me believe, would have been, if you had said to him, ‘Beware of unknown isles;’ then he would, at least, have had the chance of avoiding them.”
“I assure you no, count; and, if he had believed me, it would only have been more horrible, for the unfortunate man would have seen himself approaching those isles destined to be fatal to him, without the power to flee from them. Therefore he would have died, not one, but a hundred deaths, for he would have gone through it all by anticipation. Hope, of which I should have deprived him, is what best sustains a man under all trials.”