"Most amazing! Most wonderful!" echoed the abbé, leaning back in his chair. "The wicked spirits conquered, and those who were afflicted through their malice being cured by means of the tub, what was there left of the curse bequeathed by Adam? If somebody would only go a step or two further and discover the elixir of life, and a method of making gold, the world would be quite a pleasant place to live in, and he for one would positively decline to leave it."
Gabrielle listened, mystified, glancing from one to another of the trio. Clovis was quite animated. His eyes sparkled, his cheeks were flushed, and his tongue loosened. What power was this of the abbé's, which could melt an icicle, bring a corpse to life? She was awed and uneasy.
Was Pharamond making fun of Clovis--fooling him to the top of his bent--in mischief? Surely not, for did he not owe to his brother's kindness a secure asylum, a refuge in an awkward strait, and pocket money also? For Gabrielle, in her kindness of heart, had guessed that the fugitives were out at elbows, and had quietly handed two neatly enveloped packets to her husband, with a request that he would pass them on. Clovis took the packets without surprise or even thanks, and his wife smiled to herself at his carelessness in money matters. Since his marriage he had always been well provided without the asking, and had come--how like a dreamer--to look on coin as convenient manna, which somehow dropped from heaven just at the auspicious moment.
What could so sensible a man as the abbé mean by encouraging him in his nonsense? He was sitting there now with head thrown back, and the placid air of one who knows how to enjoy digestion, rapping out now and then a leading question, such as would put Clovis on his mettle. Was she, Gabrielle, in the wrong to despise these things? It seemed so. Her husband dabbled in philanthropy; the abbé was an excellent man, bent on doing good to his fellows; and this was the reason for the interest of both in Mesmer.
"Just think!" the marquis was observing with regret, "what good work might be done in the district if we could inaugurate a magic tub! The mists rising from the Loire generate rheumatism and paralysis, to say nothing of fevers, all of which, by means of a blessed bucket, might cease to exist except in fable. Why! this gloomy old prison-house might become a central office from which benefits would be scattered broadcast; its primæval bloodstains might come in time to be washed away with Mesmer's tincture of iron!"
"Why not?" murmured the abbé, with increasing interest.
"Alas!" sighed Clovis. "The arrangement of the tub, it seems, is a matter of the most delicate nicety, which cannot be described by letter. If Mesmer would only visit us? But he is afraid now, he says, to venture into France."
"Why not go to him--Mahomet and the mountain, you know," suggested Pharamond. "Or get him to lend you for a time one of his cultured adepts."
"Ah! if he would do that!" echoed Clovis, eagerly. "If he would lend me somebody who knows."
"Our dear Gabrielle would not stand an adept!" cried the abbé, with laughter. "See how distressed she looks at my poor suggestion! Nay, sweet sister; I was only jesting. In sooth, this new-fangled bucket is too large a bolus to swallow. The idea of sensible people squatting round a tub with glass wands pressed against their temples!"