“I am also a physiognomist. Do you know that you have said without speaking: ‘That is over; let us change the subject.'”
“At least I felt the desire to be put to the test.”
“Doctor, what do you think of the recent event?” inquired Marie Antoinette as though this was interlinked with what she had spoken.
“Madam, the daughter of Maria Theresa is not one of the women who faint at trifles.”
“Do you believe in forewarnings?”
“Science repels all phenomena tending to upset the prevailing order of things; still, facts offtimes give the lie to science.”
“I ought to have said; do you believe in predictions?”
“I believe that the Supreme Being has benevolently covered the future with an impenetrable veil. Still,” he went on as if making an effort over himself to meet questions which he wished relegated into doubt, “I know a man who sometimes confounds all the arguments of my intelligence by irrefutable facts. I dare not name him before your Majesty.”
“It is your master, the immortal, the all-powerful, the divine Cagliostro, is it not, Dr. Gilbert?”
“Madam, my only master is Nature. Cagliostro is but my saver. Pierced by a bullet in the chest, losing all my blood by a wound which I, a physician, after twenty years study, must pronounce incurable, he cured me in a few days by a salve of which I know not the composition: hence my gratitude to him, I will almost say my admiration.”