[CHAPTER I.]
RAVALETTE.
“Years rolled away,” continued Beverly. “I had visited California; had there made friends, as I had reason to suppose, and knew that I had foresworn wealth and place in favor of usefulness, poverty and knowledge; and had there helped to found an institution which, while it was capable of diffusing infinite blessings to all around, languished for want of seven good men and true. Yet it, like all other blessings vouchsafed to man, may be so trodden down that it die; but nothing is more certain than that it will rise again to the life everlasting.
“Months passed, and a continent and an ocean lay between the Golden Gate and me. I was on my second journey toward the Orient, and had taken London and Paris on my way. My objects in the journey were triple: First, to visit the Supreme Grand Dome of the Rosicrucian Temple; to make my obeisance to its Grand Master; to study its higher doctrines, and visit the Brethren. Second, to obtain the materials, in Jerusalem, for the composition of the Elixir of Life; not that I intended to make it, but because I wanted to use them in my medical practice, which I purposed to resume on my return to America. And, third, I needed rest, relaxation, and change of scene; for I felt that if I did not go, what between the fraud I had suffered, the wretch’s scandal, the woman, the dead child in the cemetery, and a variety of other troubles, I should die; and if I died—what then?—And so I went.
“The scene I now present before you is Paris; the date, any day you choose to imagine between the 16th of August, 1863, and the 11th of June, 1854. I had just contracted for an anatomical Venus and cabinet, designed for one of the Rosicrucian Lodges in America, and had paid out some fourteen hundred dollars thereon, when, being weary, I strolled to the Batignolles, from there to La Plaissance and Luxembourg, when I met a person whom I had known in London, and he advised me by all means to again visit the Emperor, and also to go to certain localities named, before I left Paris. Promising that the advice should be followed, I accordingly one day found myself in the Palace of the Louvre, not for the first time, however, but for, perhaps, the tenth. On each of these occasions my time had been mainly spent in admiring and examining the contents of the Galleries Assyrienne and Egyptienne. The bas-reliefs, or coarse engravings rather, had commanded my attention on previous occasions, along with the sphinxes of Rhampses and Menepthah, as well as the curious statues of Amenophis, Sevekhatep, Osiris, and Seti, from all of which I had learned much of that strange civilization of the long-agone, usually assigned to the past four thousand five hundred years, but which had in reality utterly perished from off the earth at least ten thousand years earlier than the first year of that date! for, but a little while before I saw those statues Mariette had exhumed from the sands of Egypt, the celebrated sarcophagi and mummy, to which the best Egyptologers, including the Chevalier Bunsen, had, with one voice, assigned an age of not less than twelve thousand years.
“On this visit I stood rapt in wonder and conjecture before the cuneiform inscriptions upon a series of tablets, and which archæology has never yet interpreted—Bunsen, Layard, Botta, and Champollion having all alike failed in the attempt.
“During the five or six last visits to the museum, I had observed near me, apparently engaged in the same work as myself—the attempt to cypher out the meaning of the inscriptions—an old gentleman, evidently French, and as evidently belonging to the small remnant of the old Noblesse yet surviving on the soil of le Grand Nation, judging from his carriage, air, and manner—refined, polished, yet simple in the extreme; and from the benignance that beamed from his countenance, it was clear that there was happiness and content in his breast, and that he was a benefactor to, as well as a devoted student of, all that was interesting concerning mankind.
“On previous occasions when we met there had passed between us merely the compliments of the day, and those general courtesies due between well-bred people. This time, however, as if by mutual concession and attraction, our greeting was much warmer and more prolonged; for, after saluting, we drew chairs before the tablets and began conversing about the arrow-headed characters; and the old gentleman, whose name was Ravalette, said: ‘Sir, how is it that I see you daily here, taking copies, and trying to decypher letters that the best scholars in Europe have abandoned in sheer and hopeless despair? Surely a youth like you cannot hope for success where they have failed?’
“ ‘True,’ was the reply, ‘they may despair, but is that a reason why others should? I believe I shall yet correctly read these enigmas of the ages.’