“Mine was a young man—— ”
“Mine old as Mathusaleh, and adorned with a sounding Greek name, Althotas.”
The carriage was coming back.
“I should like to go, if only to vex the King who will not dismiss Choiseul in your favor; but I shall be laughed at.”
“In good company, then, for I will go with you.”
At full speed the horses drew the carriage to Paris, containing the young and the old plotter.
CHAPTER X.
A SEANCE OF MESMERISM.
IT was six P. M.
Saint Claude Street was in the outskirts on the main road to the Bastile Prison. The house of the Count Felix, alias Baron Balsamo, was a strong building, like a castle; and besides a room used for a chemical laboratory, another study, where the sage Althotas, to whom the duke alluded, concocted his elixir of long life, and the reception rooms, an inner house, to which secret passages led, was secluded from ordinary visitors.
In a richly furnished parlor of this secret annex, the mysterious man who, with masonic signs and words, had collected his followers on Louis XV. Place, and saved Andrea upon Gilbert’s appeal—he was seated by a lovely Italian woman who seemed rebellious to his entreaties. She had no voice but to reproach and her hand was raised to repulse though it was plain that he adored her and perhaps for that reason.