Dr. Edward Pym was escorted into the Tuileries Palace not through the grand, public entrance, but through a series of discreet, guarded side corridors that spoke more of a state secret than a medical consultation. He was led to a small, private chamber in a quiet wing, a room that had been stripped of all its royal finery. There was no gilded furniture, no priceless tapestry. There was only a heavy oak table, two simple chairs, and the cold, unadorned light of the morning sun streaming through a tall, barred window. It felt less like a king's antechamber and more like a room designed for an interrogation.
At the door stood two imposing, red-coated Swiss Guards, their expressions as neutral and unreadable as the stone walls. Beside them, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword, was the King's new favorite, the intense-looking Colonel Damien Giraud. The message was clear: this was a place of absolute royal authority, a place from which there was no easy exit.
Dr. Pym himself was not what Louis had expected. He was not a charismatic showman like Mesmer or a venerable, bewigged physician like Dr. Lassonne. He was young, perhaps not yet thirty, with a high forehead, thinning brown hair, and the bright, ferociously intelligent eyes of a man who lives more in the world of ideas than the world of men. He wore simple, functional English clothes that were well-made but rumpled from travel. He clutched a worn leather medical bag to his chest as if it were a holy relic. He was visibly nervous, a scholar and a scientist thrust into the heart of a royal court, but beneath the nerves was a current of unshakeable, almost fanatical self-confidence.
Louis was already seated at the table. He did not rise. He simply gestured to the empty chair opposite him. "Doctor Pym. Thank you for coming so promptly."
The meeting began. It was immediately, shockingly clear that this was not to be a consultation. It was an examination. An interrogation. And the patient to be examined was Dr. Pym himself.
Louis, drawing upon the half-remembered specter of his 21st-century education—the biology classes, the scientific journals he'd skimmed, the very concept of the scientific method which was still in its infancy in this era—began to question Pym relentlessly. He did not ask about cures or miracles. He asked about methodology.
"You speak in your treatise of 'attenuating' pathogenic agents," Louis began, his voice cold and precise as a surgeon's scalpel. He had spent the night devouring the copy of Pym's radical medical paper that Talleyrand's agents had procured. "Describe the process to me. In detail. What level of heat do you apply to your samples? For how long? By what mechanism do you measure the 'weakening' of the agent? What are your experimental controls?"
Pym, who had steeled himself to deliver a simplified, hopeful speech to a grieving and scientifically illiterate monarch, was stunned into silence for a moment. The King was speaking the private, technical language of his own laboratory. He stared at the man across the table, a man who should have been asking about poultices and potions, but was instead asking about control groups.
"Your Majesty," Pym stammered, his nervousness giving way to a dawning excitement. "The process is delicate. It involves subjecting the cultivated pathogenic medium—the 'seed' of the disease—to a sustained, precise temperature, just below the point at which the organism is killed entirely. This weakens it, renders it less virulent, while preserving its essential form…"
"And how do you prove this 'weakening'?" Louis interjected, cutting him off. "Have you conducted serial dilutions? Have you performed inoculation trials on animals? What were your sample sizes? What was the observed mortality rate in the control group versus the test group?"
Pym's jaw dropped slightly. Sample sizes? Control groups? The King of France was discussing experimental design with him. He felt a dizzying sense of intellectual vertigo, as if he had stumbled into a secret society of which he was the only other member. His caution evaporated, replaced by the sheer joy of a man who has finally found someone who speaks his language.
"Yes! Yes, precisely, Your Majesty!" he said, leaning forward, his hands gesturing excitedly. "On rabbits! I have used dozens. The control group, inoculated with the fully virulent pathogen, suffered a ninety percent mortality rate. The test group, inoculated first with the heat-attenuated strain, showed only a twenty percent mortality rate when later exposed to the full disease! It proves the principle! The body can be taught! It can learn to recognize its enemy!"
The conversation continued like this for over an hour, a secret, impossible dialogue between two men from the future, trapped together in the past. Louis probed deeper, testing the limits of Pym's knowledge. "What is the medium in which you cultivate these agents? Beef broth? Agar? How do you ensure against contamination from airborne spores?"
With every correct, brilliant, forward-thinking answer Pym gave, Louis became more convinced. Scientifically, the man was real. He was a genius, an authentic pioneer who had somehow, through sheer intuition and intellect, stumbled upon the core tenets of immunology a century ahead of schedule.
While this extraordinary interrogation was taking place in the quiet of the Tuileries, a second, dirtier investigation was unfolding in the bustling streets of Paris. Talleyrand's agents, the quiet, unseen architects of the King's new secret state, were turning the city upside down.
One agent, a man with the face of a bored clerk who could blend into any crowd, was shadowing Pym's known political associates, marking down every meeting, every conversation. Another, disguised as a wine merchant, was in the tavern frequented by the deputies of the Condorcet salon, listening to the gossip, buying drinks for talkative secretaries. A third, using a hefty bribe and a master key, was at that very moment in Pym's modest room at a boarding house on the Rue Jacob, carefully searching his luggage, his books, his personal correspondence, looking for any letter, any contact, that might betray his true allegiance.
Just as Louis was concluding his interview with the now-ecstatic Dr. Pym, Talleyrand slipped into the antechamber. He presented his initial findings to the King after Pym had been escorted to a comfortable suite to await the King's decision. Talleyrand's report was as unsettling as Pym's science was thrilling.
"He appears to be precisely who he says he is, Your Majesty," Talleyrand said, his voice a low murmur. "A brilliant medical mind, but a political innocent. A man who genuinely believes the French Revolution, in its ideals of Reason and Progress, is the best hope for mankind. Our search of his rooms turned up no hidden communications, no suspicious sums of money. Only medical textbooks and treatises on republican philosophy. He is a true believer."
Louis felt a flicker of relief. "So, he is not a conspirator."
"No, Your Majesty," Talleyrand said, his expression grim. "He is not. Which, I fear, makes the situation infinitely more dangerous."
He laid out the rest of his findings. The men who had sponsored Pym's journey from London to Paris, who had paid for his lodgings and introduced him to the influential Marquise de Condorcet, were not mere sympathizers. They were known, hardline members of the Robespierrist faction, men who had gone to ground after the 'Night of the Furies' but were still active.
Talleyrand delivered his chilling summary. "My assessment, Your Majesty, is that Dr. Pym is not an assassin. He is, by all accounts, a genuine medical genius with an honest desire to save your son. And that is the perfect, diabolical beauty of the trap." He paused, letting the implication sink in. "He is not the dagger; he is the key, perfectly forged to fit the one lock you, and only you in all the world, can recognize. He is an honest man being used as the bait in a trap so sophisticated, so exquisitely cruel, that only a mind like Robespierre's could have conceived it before his death. A trap his followers are now patiently waiting to see you walk into."
The trap was not that the medicine was fake. The trap was that the medicine was real. And Louis, with his impossible future knowledge, was the only person in the 18th century who could possibly understand and believe in it, making the temptation to use it, to gamble on it, all but irresistible.
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