by George Sand
Now forty, perhaps fifty years old, and the mother of five children, Consuelo is still strong and lithe as a young maiden. While the Illuminati first take her for a fiery and adventurous queen of the Gypsies, they soon see her as the sister-soul guiding Albert through the storms of life, acting as a rampart of love between him and a hostile world. The family lives, as Consuelo explains to them, by sharing the humble ways of the peasants, bringing art and enthusiasm to these innately poetic souls and receiving their gifts of hospitality in turn. This way of life, Consuelo continues, fulfills the duties of the artist. It anticipates as well the God-given ideal for society, in which everything that is not based upon egalitarian exchange must disappear. Consuelo, too, winds up taking on mythical dimensions. Her husband proclaims her Heaven’s consolation to all those in distress, the peace of the Lord promised to men of good will; and in a ballad for which she composed the music and Albert the lyrics, Consuelo becomes the incarnation of the Gentle Goddess of Poverty, humanity’s “fertile mother, robust nurse and militant church,” who nurtures all ages of the world with poetry, love, and the secrets of God.
Consuelo and Albert simultaneously look back to the War of the Hussites while casting an eye forward to the French Revolution, preparing its advent as well as apprehending its violent turn. Likewise, George Sand peers into the past in order to nourish her aspirations for future revolutions. The words that she uses to characterize the hopes and dreams of Consuelo, Albert, and all their companions in the Invisibles apply to her as well: “They believed themselves on the eve of an evangelical republic, like the disciples of Jesus eagerly awaiting the kingdom of God on earth, like the Bohemian Taborites who thought paradise close at hand, like the French Convention that years later felt it would soon win over the entire planet.” While none of these groups attained the ideal shimmering before their eyes, it is clear to Sand that the efforts of all have made important contributions to humanity’s progress: “Yet, without such mad confidence, where would the great sacrifices be; without great madness, where the great achievements? Without the utopia of the divine dreamer Jesus, where would the notion of human brotherhood be? . . . Without the noble chimeras of the eighteenth century, would we have conquered the rudiments of equality?” For all these ardent conspirators, life is a voyage through time and eternity, an ever unfolding process in which nothing ever lives in vain, nothing ever dies, nothing is ever lost, and history will be a wave of revolts and revolutions washing over the earth until the divine ideal is finally realized here below.
A Note to the Reader
Sand’s text has occasional footnotes, which are reproduced as they appear there. I have added some explanatory comments on names and places; these appear at the end of the book, grouped by chapter.
Chapter I
The Italian Opera in Berlin, built during the first years of the reign of Frederick the Great, was then one of the most beautiful auditoriums in all Europe. There was no charge for admission, as the king paid for the show. Yet tickets were required because the boxes had all been permanently assigned: here the princes and princesses of the royal family, there the diplomats, then the traveling celebrities and the members of the Academy, elsewhere the generals; finally, everywhere the king’s family, the king’s household, the king’s employees, the king’s protégés; and no one had grounds for complaint, since it was the king’s theater and the king’s players. For the fine inhabitants of the fine city of Berlin there remained a few spots in the orchestra, occupied for the most part by the military, as every regiment had the right to send a certain number of men per company. Instead of the joyous, impressionable, and quick-witted populace of Paris, the artists looked out upon an orchestra thronged with six-foot heroes, as Voltaire used to call them. With their high-crowned caps, and most of them with their wives hoisted up on their shoulders, this rather brutish fellowship reeked of tobacco and schnapps, understood absolutely nothing, and looked goggle-eyed at everything. Out of respect for their orders, they neither clapped nor whistled, yet made lots of noise with their perpetual jostling.
Behind these gentlemen there were invariably two rows of boxes from which no one could see or hear a single thing. Yet, for reasons of propriety, the occupants of these boxes were forced to attend on a regular basis the performances that His Majesty so generously provided them. His Majesty never missed a show. This was a way of keeping a military eye on his numerous family and the restless anthill of his courtiers. Here he followed the example of his father, Big Willy, who had made the royal family and court spend every winter evening in front of third-rate German actors in a hall of poorly joined planks. Bored to death and chilled to the bone, there they sat without batting an eye while rain dripped down on them and the king snoozed. Frederick had suffered from this domestic tyranny; he had cursed it and endured it; and no sooner had he in turn become master than he promptly reestablished the same system, along with several other much more despotic and cruel customs, whose excellence he had come to recognize now that he was the only one in his kingdom not to suffer from them any longer.
Yet no one dared complain. The building was superb and luxuriously appointed, the artists remarkable, and the king, almost always standing in the orchestra near the footlights, his opera glass trained on the stage, gave an example of indefatigable enthusiasm for the arts.
Everyone knows how Voltaire, recently installed in Berlin, praised the splendors of the court of this Solomon of the North. Scorned by Louis XV, neglected by his patroness Mme de Pompadour, persecuted by the vulgar Jesuits, hooted down at the Théâtre-Français, he got fed up one day and came in search of honors, a salary, a chamberlain’s title, a grand sash, and an intimate friendship with a philosopher-king, which, in his estimation, was more flattering than all the rest. Like an overgrown child, the great Voltaire was pouting at France and thought that he had really found a way to get the goat of his ungrateful compatriots. He was therefore a bit drunk on his new glory when he wrote to his friends that Berlin was as fine as Versailles, that Phaëton was the most beautiful opera ever, and that the prima donna had the most beautiful voice in all Europe.
Yet, at the time when we resume our tale (so as not to weary our dear readers, we’ll let them know that nearly a year has passed since Consuelo’s last adventures), winter in all its rigor had settled down on Berlin, the great king had shown his true colors a bit, and Voltaire was starting to feel singularly disillusioned about Prussia. Seated in his box between d’Argens and La Mettrie, he no longer pretended to love music, for which he had no more feeling than for true poetry. His bowels were bothering him, and he was mournfully remembering those thankless audiences in Parisian theaters, whose resistance had been such a bitter pill for him, whose applause had tasted so sweet, whose contact, in a word, had put him in such terrible turmoil that he had sworn not to expose himself to that again, even though he could think of nothing else and endlessly toiled for them.
Yet that evening the performance was excellent. It was carnival; the entire royal family, even the margraves who had married into the depths of the German provinces, had assembled in Berlin. Titus by Metastasio and Hasse was on the program, and the two leading members of the Italian company, Porporino and Porporina, had the starring roles.
With a slight effort of memory our dear readers will recall that these two were not husband and wife, as their stage names would seem to suggest. The first was Signor Uberti, an excellent contralto, and the second was the Zingarella Consuelo, with her admirable voice, both students of Professor Porpora, who had allowed them, according to the Italian custom of the time, to take their teacher’s glorious name.
One must admit that in Prussia Signora Porporina did not sing with all the spirit of which she had felt capable in better days. While her colleague’s clear contralto, sheltered by a secure livelihood, a habit of uncontested success and a fixed fee of fifteen thousand pounds for two months of work, resonated without fail under the vaulted ceiling of the Berlin Opera, the poor Zingarella, perhaps of a more romanti
c mind, certainly more disinterested and less accustomed to the icy North and the chilly reception of Prussian corporals, did not feel any electricity and sang with that conscientious, perfect method that kept her safe from criticism but failed to arouse any enthusiasm. There is a close reciprocal relationship between the enthusiasm of the dramatic artist and that of the audience, and there was no enthusiasm in Berlin during the glorious reign of Frederick the Great. Regularity, obedience, and what was called reason in the eighteenth century and especially at Frederick’s court were the only virtues that could blossom in that atmosphere weighed and measured by the king’s hand. In any assembly over which he presided, one breathed in and out only as much as the king deigned to allow. In that whole crowded auditorium there was but one spectator free to give way to his impressions, and that was the king. He himself was the entire audience, and even though he was a good musician and loved music, all his faculties and tastes were subordinated to such an icy logic that the royal opera glass fixed on every gesture and seemingly every inflection of the diva’s voice, instead of stimulating her, made her feel totally paralyzed.
It was moreover fortunate for her to be subjected to this harrowing fascination. The tiniest dose of inspiration, the slightest burst of unexpected passion would probably have scandalized the king and his court, whereas intricate, arduous passages executed with the purity of an irreproachable instrument thrilled the king, the court, and Voltaire. As every one knows, Voltaire said, “Italian music is far superior to French music because it has more ornaments, and triumphing over difficulty is something at least.” That sums up Voltaire’s aesthetics. He could have said like a certain witty contemporary when someone asked if he liked music: it doesn’t exactly bother me.
Everything was going well, and the opera was drawing to a close without mishap. The king was very pleased, and every now and then he turned around to nod in approval at his choirmaster. He was even preparing to applaud Porporina at the end of her cavatina, as he was kind enough to do in person and always judiciously. Just then, by some inexplicable whim, Porporina, in the middle of a brilliant trill that had never given her any trouble, stopped short, stared with a haggard eye into a corner of the auditorium, clasped her hands, exclaimed, “Oh my God!” and fell down flat in a faint on the stage. Porporino hastened to get her up; she had to be carried offstage; and the auditorium began to buzz with questions, remarks, and observations. During this commotion that muffled his curt, imperious tone, the king bellowed to the tenor still on stage, “Well, what’s going on? What’s the meaning of this? Conciolini, go have a look, and make it snappy!”
Conciolini returned a few seconds later. Respectfully bowing over the footlights near which the king was still standing, leaning on an elbow, he said, “Your Majesty, it’s as though Signora Porporina were dead. It is feared that she’ll be unable to finish the opera.”
“Nonsense!” said the king shrugging his shoulders. “Get her a glass of water and some smelling salts, and let’s wind this up as soon we can.”
Conciolini, who had no desire to provoke the king and suffer a public broadside of temper, scurried back into the wings like a rat, and the king began a lively chat with the head of the orchestra and the musicians. Those in the audience who found the king’s mood far more interesting than poor Porporina made extraordinary efforts, but all in vain, to hear what the monarch was saying.
Baron von Poelnitz, the king’s great chamberlain and theater director, promptly appeared and gave Frederick an account of the situation. In Frederick’s realm nothing happened with the solemnity imposed by an independent, powerful people. . . . The king’s place was everywhere; the performance was his, and for him. No one was surprised to see him take the starring role in this unexpected interlude.
“Now let’s see, Baron,” said he in a voice loud enough to be heard by a portion of the orchestra, “won’t this soon be over? It’s ridiculous! Don’t you have a doctor in the wings? You’ve always got to have a doctor at the theater.”
“Sire, the doctor is with her. He doesn’t dare bleed her for fear of aggravating her weakness and making it impossible for her to carry on. Yet he’ll be forced to do so if she doesn’t come out of her swoon.”
“So it’s serious! She’s not faking?”
“Sire, this strikes me as very serious.”
“In that case, drop the curtain, and let’s get going. Better yet, let’s have Porporino come sing us something for our trouble so that we don’t end on a catastrophe.”
Porporino obeyed and sang two pieces admirably well. The king clapped his hands, the audience imitated him, and the show was over. A minute later, while the court and townspeople were leaving, the king was up on stage, having Poelnitz show him the way to Porporina’s dressing room.
When an actress is taken ill on stage, audiences are not always as compassionate as they ought to be. However much dilettantes may adore an idol, their pleasure is generally so egotistical that they are much more annoyed to forfeit some part of it due to an interrupted performance than they are affected by the victim’s sufferings and anguish. A few sensitive ladies, as people then used to say, deplored the evening’s catastrophe in the following terms.
“Poor little thing! She probably got a frog in her throat just as she was about to start on the trill, and for fear of getting it wrong, she preferred to have a spell.”
“As for me, I’m willing to believe that she wasn’t faking,” said an even more sensitive lady. “You don’t fall like a heap of bricks unless you’re truly ill.”
“Oh, who knows, my dear?” replied the first lady. “Great actresses fall as they wish, and they don’t worry about hurting themselves a bit. It has such an effect on the audience!”
“What the devil was going on with Porporina this evening, for her to make such a scene?” La Mettrie asked the Marquis d’Argens in another part of the vestibule from which an elegant crowd was exiting. “Do you suppose her lover beat her?”
“Don’t talk that way about a charming, virtuous girl,” replied the marquis. “She hasn’t got a lover, and if she ever does, she’ll never deserve such outrage, unless he’s the vilest of men.”
“Oh! I beg your pardon, Marquis. I forgot that I was addressing the valiant champion and defender of all theater girls, past, present, and future! By the way, how is Mlle Cochois?”
At that same moment Princess Amalia, the king’s sister and abbess of Quedlinburg, was saying to her usual confidante, the beautiful Countess von Kleist, while they were being driven back to the palace, “My dear child, did you notice how upset my brother got this evening?”
“No, Madame,” replied Mme de Maupertuis, the princess’s head governess, an excellent person, very simple and very absentminded, “I didn’t notice.”
“Well, I’m not talking to you,” the princess retorted in the brusque, determined tone that made her seem so much like Frederick on occasion. “Do you notice anything? Notice the stars just now. I’ve got something to say to von Kleist that I don’t want you to hear.”
Mme de Maupertuis conscientiously closed her ears. The princess leaned over toward Mme von Kleist, seated across from her, and said, “Say what you will; it seems to me that the king, maybe for the first time in fifteen or twenty years, since the time that I’ve been old enough to observe and understand, is in love.”
“Your Royal Highness said as much last year with regard to Signora Barberini. Yet the king had never dreamed of it.”
“Never dreamed of it! You’re wrong, my child. He had dreamed of it so much that when young Chancellor Cocceï made her his wife, my brother suffered three days long the worst repressed rage of his entire life.”
“Your Highness is well aware that His Majesty cannot bear misalliances.”
“Oh, yes, that’s what it’s called when people marry for love. A misalliance! Oh, what a grand word! Devoid of meaning, like all the words that rule the world and tyrannize every single soul.”
The princess heaved a great sigh. Then, as was her
custom, she slipped into another mood. Now ironic and impatient, she said to her head governess, “Maupertuis, you’re eavesdropping! You’re not looking at the stars, and those were my orders. It’s no good being the wife of such a great scholar if you’re going to listen to the twaddle of two silly women like von Kleist and me! Yes, I’m telling you,” she said, turning back to her favorite, “the king had a vague fancy for that Barberini girl. I know from reliable sources that he often went for tea with Jordan and Chazols in her rooms after the show. She even attended a few midnight suppers at Sans-Souci, which was unheard of in Potsdam before she came along. Do you want to hear more? She stayed there, she had her own rooms for weeks, maybe for months on end. You see that I know quite well what’s going on and that my brother’s airs of mystery don’t fool me.”
“Since Your Royal Highness is so well informed, she knows that, for reasons . . . of State which it is not my place to guess, the king has occasionally wanted to make people think that he was less austere than generally assumed, even though at bottom. . . .”
“Even though at bottom my brother hasn’t ever loved a woman, not even his own wife. That’s what they say, and that’s how things look, right? Well, I don’t believe in his virtue, even less his coldness. Frederick has always been a hypocrite, you see. But he won’t convince me that Signora Barberini stayed in his palace just to pretend to be his mistress. She’s as pretty as an angel, devilishly smart, well-educated, and speaks I don’t know how many languages.”
“She’s very virtuous and adores her husband.”
“And her husband adores her, all the more because their marriage is a horrible misalliance, right, von Kleist? Come now, you don’t want to answer me? I suspect, noble widow, that you are contemplating a misalliance with some poor page or skinny bachelor of science.”