“Are you going to foretell the death of Mirabeau?” cried Gilbert, almost frightened.
“Frankly, doctor, do you see any length of life for a man whose blood stews him, whose heart swells to suffocate him and whose genius eats him up? do you believe that even such powers will not be worn out in stemming the tide of mediocrity? his enterprise is the rock of Sisyphus. For two years they have been holding him down with the cry of Immorality. As if God moulded all men in the same form, and as if the circle enlarged for a great mind should not enclose greater vices. Mirabeau will not be Premier because he owes a hundred thousand francs debt, which would be settled were he a rich contractor’s son, and because he is condemned to death for having run away with an old imbecile’s wife—who smothered herself in charcoal fumes for the love of a strapping military captain! What a farce the tragedy of human life is! How I should weep over it if I had not made up my mind to laugh!”
“But your prediction?” cried Gilbert.
“I tell you,” said the diviner, in the prophet’s tone which was his alone, and allowed no reply, “Mirabeau will wear out his life without becoming Prime Minister. So great a bar is mediocrity. Go to the Assembly to-morrow and see. Meanwhile, come with me to the Jacobins Club, for these night-birds will hold their session in an hour. Do you belong?”
“No: Danton and Desmoulins entered me at the Cordeliers. We will go after dinner.”
Two hours subsequently, two man in gentlemanly black suits were set down from a plain private carriage at the door of St. Roch’s church, where the throng was great. They were Dr. Gilbert and Baron Zannone, as Cagliostro chose to call himself at this epoch.
“Will you come into the nave or sit in the gallery?” asked the magician.
“I thought the nave was kept for the members?” said the other.
“Just so, but am I not a member of all societies?” returned the Arch-master laughing. “Besides, this club is but the seat of the Invisibles, and you can enter as one of the Rosicrucians. We are sixty thousand strong in France alone in three months since foundation as Jacobins, and will be four hundred thousand in a year.”
“Though I am a Rose-Croix, I prefer to be in the gallery where I can see over the crowd and you can better tell me of the persons whom I descry.”