“You make me very happy; what can I do for you?”
“Have you not, to begin with, some of the seed which makes one invisible: for on the way it seemed to me that one of Richelieu’s men was riding after me.”
“The Duke of Richelieu cannot be dangerous to you in any meeting,” said the mesmerist.
“But he was, my lord, before this last scheme failed.”
Balsamo comprehended that here was a plot of which Lorenza had not informed him. So he smiled without venturing on the unknown ground.
“I nearly fell a victim to the scheme, in which you had a share.”
“I, in a scheme against you? never.”
“Did you not give Richelieu a philter to make the drinker fail madly in love?”
“Oh, no, my lady: he composes those things himself; I did give him a simple narcotic—a sleeping draft. He called for it on the eve of the day when I sent you the note by my man Fritz to meet me at Sartines.”
“That is it—the very time when the King went to little Taverney’s rooms. It is all clear now, for the narcotic saved us.”