The listeners shuddered. Delsarte had produced one of those effects which can never be forgotten. The smouldering ashes did not burn long; four syllables were enough to extinguish the flame.
Following, not the chronological order, but that of circumstances and incidents calculated to throw light on my subject, I must once more retrace the course of years.
C.'s persistency went on before and after 1848. During the second period, all minds were greatly agitated by the state of politics. C., in spite of his undoubted liberalism--he spent a great part of his leisure in making democratic constitutions--thought, like every other claimant, that he had duties to perform; and that he might as well, to facilitate his task, make an ally of the Emperor, without scruple; but access to royalty was no less impossible than landing on the American shore where his panacea grew. He hit upon the following plan:
A number of ladies were to go in a body and implore Napoleon III to pardon certain exiles: for the same calamities always follow civil war, and there are always women ready to beg for justice or mercy.
C., who knew their purpose, said to one of the petitioners: "How are you going to make the Emperor understand that I am the only man capable of saving the situation?"
The petition was not presented; and the world remains to be saved!
Our Italian had another specialty: he was perpetually in search of some notorious somnambulist. It is a well-known fact that the mental agitation caused by governmental crises is very favorable to these pythonesses of modern times. Each wishes to outrun the future and to afford himself at least an illusion of the triumph of his party. The oracles varied according to the opinion of the person who magnetized these ladies, and, often, according to the presumed desire of the audience.
Delsarte allowed himself to be drawn into these mysteries. He had time for everything. It afforded him relaxation, and a means of observation. On one occasion, he followed the refugee to a garden where a person of "perfect lucidity" prophesied. The sibyl was a believer as well as a seer and pretended to communicate with God in person. I do not know exactly what supernal secrets the woman revealed, while she slept, but the result was ridiculous.
They had forgotten to fix the hour for the next sitting: so, to repair the omission--by means of a few passes--the somnambulist was restored to sleep and lucidity. Then in a corner of the garden, in a familiar tone and--to use the popular expression--in which, as may well be imagined, the voice of Jehovah was not heard:
"My God, what day shall we return?"