The Countess von Rudolstadt

by George Sand

  “That’s a very complicated question, and all I can say is that I don’t believe in anything impossible, no more in magic than in the resurrection of the dead. As for our poor, mad imagination, it’s capable of anything.”

  “Your Highness doesn’t believe in magic, and yet. . . . But I’m no doubt being indiscreet?”

  “Out with it, And yet I’m a devotee of magic,’ as everyone knows. Well, my child, let me explain that bizarre inconsistency to you at the proper time and place. Given that the magical formulas sent by the sorcerer Saint-Germain boiled down to a letter to me from Trenck, you can already sense that this so-called necromancy is apt to serve as a pretext for many things. But it would take a long time to reveal to you everything that magic hides from the eyes of ordinary folks, court espionage, and tyrannical laws. Just be patient, for I’ve resolved to initiate you into all my secrets. You’re a worthier candidate than my dear von Kleist, with her timid, superstitious mind. Yes, such as you see, this tender heart, this angel of kindness has no common sense. She believes in the devil, sorcerers, ghosts, and omens, just as if she weren’t intimately acquainted with all the mysteries of the philosopher’s stone. She’s like those alchemists in times past who would patiently, knowingly set about creating monsters, then shudder with horror at what they had wrought and wind up enslaved to some genie having emerged from their alembic.”

  “Perhaps I’d be no braver than Mme von Kleist,” Porporina continued, “and I confess that I’ve had quite a sample of Cagliostro’s power, if not of his infallibility. Just imagine, after having promised to make me see the person I had in mind, whose name he claimed to read in my eyes, he showed me someone else. What is more, he showed me this person as someone alive, all the while seeming to have no idea that he was dead. Yet, despite this double error, he resurrected before my eyes the husband I lost, which will never cease to be a painful, terrifying puzzle for me.”

  “He showed you some phantom or other, and your imagination did all the rest.”

  “It wasn’t a matter of my imagination, let me assure you. I was expecting to see, behind a veil or reflected in a mirror, some portrait of Professor Porpora, for over supper I had mentioned his name several times, and while I was moaning about his absence, it hadn’t escaped me that Cagliostro was paying close attention to my words. To make things easier for him, I decided on Porpora as the subject of the apparition and was resolutely waiting to see him, not taking things seriously up to that point. In short, if there was ever a moment in my life when I wasn’t thinking about Count von Rudolstadt, it was just then. On the threshold of his magic laboratory Cagliostro asked if I would let him cover my eyes and lead me by the hand. Knowing him to be a gentleman, I didn’t hesitate to accept his offer, on the sole condition that he not leave me alone for a second.

  “ ‘I was just about to ask you,’ he said, ‘not to leave my side or drop my hand, no matter what happens, no matter what feelings come over you.’ I gave him my word, but a simple assertion wouldn’t satisfy him. He made me solemnly swear not to make a single move or sound, in short, to remain mute and impassive during the apparition. Then he put on his glove, and after covering my head with a black velvet hood that went all the way down to my shoulders, he had me walk for five minutes or so, during which time I didn’t hear any doors opening or closing. The hood prevented me from noticing any change of air, so I didn’t know if we had left the laboratory, and in order to confuse my sense of direction, he led me this way and that. Finally, he stopped and removed the hood so deftly that I didn’t even feel it come off. I knew that I was free to use my eyes again only because it was easier to breathe, but the darkness was so deep that eyes didn’t do me any good. Yet, little by little I began to see a chink of light, at first flickering and feeble, then clear and bright in front of me. At first it seemed quite far away, and when it was fully lit, very close by. It was, I think, the effect of a light more or less intense shining behind a transparency. Cagliostro had me go right up to the chink, which came through the wall, and I saw on the other side of it a strangely decorated room with lots of candles systematically arranged. In its furnishings and layout it had all the characteristics of a magician’s den. But I gave it just a passing glance, for my attention was absorbed by a person sitting at a table. He was alone, with his face hidden in his hands, as though immersed in meditation. I couldn’t make out his features, and his size was disguised by an outfit the likes of which I have never seen. As far as I could see, it was a white satin robe or cloak lined with purple that fastened in front with bejeweled clasps of gold. These were covered in hieroglyphics among which I could discern a rose, a cross, a triangle, a skull, and several rich cordons of various colors. One thing alone was clear to me: This person was not Porpora. A few minutes later this mysterious character whom I had begun to take for a statue slowly moved his hands, and I distinctly saw Count Albert’s face, not as I had seen it the last time, covered by the shadow of death, but lively in its pallor and brimming with soul in its serenity, in short, such as I had seen him in his finest hours of calm and confidence. I was on the verge of uttering a cry and breaking, with an involuntary movement, the plate of glass that separated me from him, but Cagliostro violently squeezed my hand, which reminded me of my oath and filled me with some vague terror. Just then, moreover, at the back of the room where my eyes were fixed on Albert, there opened a door, and several individuals, all unknown to me, all attired more or less like him, marched in with drawn swords. After having performed several odd movements, as though in a pantomime, each in turn took a solemn tone and addressed him in incomprehensible words. He stood up, marched toward them, and replied in words equally obscure and incomprehensible to me, even though I now know German as well as my mother tongue. This dialogue was like those one hears in dreams, and the eerie scene and supernatural apparition were so dreamlike that I tried to move just to make sure I wasn’t really sleeping. Cagliostro, however, forced me to remain still, and Albert’s voice rang so true in my ears that it was impossible for me to doubt the reality of what I was seeing. Finally, just when I was so carried away by the desire to speak to him that my oath was about to slip my mind, the black hood dropped back down over my head. I violently ripped it off, but the crystal star had vanished, and everything was dark. ‘If you move so much as a muscle,’ Cagliostro muttered in a quavering voice, ‘neither one of us shall ever see the light of day again.’ I had the strength to follow him and zigzag back and forth once again through long, empty spaces I didn’t recognize. Finally, when the hood came off once and for all, I found myself back in his dimly lit laboratory, just as it had been at the beginning of this adventure. Cagliostro was very pale and still shaking, for on our way back I had felt that his arm was convulsed with tremors and that he was hurrying me along, as though he were prey to a great fright. His first words to me were bitter rebuke for my breach of faith and the horrible dangers to which I had exposed him by trying to violate my oaths. ‘I should have remembered,’ he said in a sharp, furious tone, ‘that no woman feels bound by her word of honor, that one must beware of giving into their vain, reckless curiosity.’

  “Up until that moment I hadn’t dreamed of sharing my guide’s terror. I had been so stunned by the idea of finding Albert once again alive that I hadn’t stopped to wonder if this were humanly possible. I had even forgotten that death had forever taken this dear, precious friend away from me. The magician’s keen emotion finally reminded me that this was all most extraordinary and that I had just seen a phantom. Yet my mind was beating back the impossible, and Cagliostro’s harsh rebuke brought over me a sickly exasperation that saved me from weakness. My reply to him was brisk: ‘You’re pretending to take your own lies seriously, and that’s a terribly cruel game. Oh yes, you’re playing with the most sacred things, with death itself.’ He hotly retorted, but with a commanding look, ‘You faithless, feeble soul! You believe in death like the common herd, and yet you had a great master who told you a hundred times: No one dies, nothing dies, there
is no death. You accuse me of lying, yet you don’t seem to realize that the only lie here is the very word of death in your impious mouth.’ This strange reply, I confess, completely bewildered me and momentarily overwhelmed all my defenses. How could the man know so well my relations with Albert, even the mysteries of the doctrine? Did he share Albert’s faith, or was he using it as a weapon to sway my imagination?

  “I felt abashed and dismayed. But soon I told myself that I could not accept this crass interpretation of Albert’s beliefs, that God alone, not this impostor Cagliostro, could conjure up death or reawaken life. Convinced at last that I had been the dupe of some inexplicable illusion, whose mystery I might fathom one day, I stood up and gave the sorcerer a chilly compliment on his know-how. With a touch of irony I asked him to explain the bizarre things that the ghostly figures were saying among themselves. On that matter it was impossible to give me satisfaction, he replied, and I would have to be content with having seen that person calm and usefully employed. ‘It would be vain to ask,’ he added, ‘what he thinks and does in life. I don’t even know his name. When he entered your mind and you asked to see him, there took place between the two of you a mysterious communication that my power was able to make effective to the point of bringing him before you. My knowledge goes no further.’ ‘Your knowledge,’ I told him, ‘doesn’t even go that far; for I was thinking about Professor Porpora, and that’s not the one your power conjured up.’ ‘I know nothing about that,’ he said, with frightening seriousness, ‘and I don’t want to know. I saw nothing, neither in your thoughts, nor in the magic tableau. My mind couldn’t bear such spectacles, and I need to maintain all my lucidity to work my power. Yet the laws of science are infallible, and you must have thought, perhaps without even knowing it, about somebody else, since Porpora isn’t the one you saw.’ ”

  “That is the madman’s fine way of talking!” said the princess, shrugging her shoulders. “Each in his own way, but they all manage, by means of a certain specious reasoning that could be called the logic of insanity, never to run out of things to say and to addle our brains with their grand words.”

  “He certainly addled mine,” Consuelo continued. “I just couldn’t analyze things any longer. Albert’s apparition, whether it was real or not, made me grieve even more that I had lost him forever, and I burst into tears. ‘Consuelo,’ said the magician in a solemn voice, giving me his hand on the way out (and you can be sure that his calling me by my real name, which nobody here knows, was a further reason for amazement), ‘you have great faults for which amends must be made, and I hope that you’ll do everything to regain your peace of mind.’ I didn’t have the strength to reply. In vain I tried to hide my tears from my colleagues who had been impatiently waiting for me in the nearby parlor. I was even more impatient to go home, and once I was alone and had given free rein to my grief, I spent the whole night lost in thoughts and commentary about the scenes of this fateful evening. The more I tried to understand it, the more I got lost in a maze of uncertainties, and I must admit that my suppositions were often madder and more morbid than would have been blind faith in the oracles of magic. Worn out by this fruitless labor, I resolved to suspend judgment until things became clear. Yet in the aftermath I’ve remained impressionable, subject to vapors, sick in spirit, and deeply sad. I haven’t felt my friend’s loss more keenly than I already had, but my feelings of remorse, which he had soothed with his generous forgiveness, have come to torture me relentlessly. Utterly free to exercise my profession as an artist, I’ve become quickly bored with the frivolous intoxication of success, and then, in this country where people’s minds seem as dreary as the climate. . . .”

  “And as despotism,” added the abbess.

  “In this country where I myself feel dreary and cold, I soon realized that I wouldn’t make the progress that I had dreamed about. . . .”

  “So what progress do you want to make? We’ve never heard anyone whose talents come close to yours, and I don’t believe that there is a more perfect singer anywhere in the universe. This is not one of Frederick’s compliments. I’m just saying what I think.”

  “Even if Your Highness were right, which I don’t know,” said Consuelo with a smile, “for, aside from Romanina and Tesi, I’ve scarcely heard anyone except for myself, I think there is always much to be attempted and something to be found that goes beyond everything achieved thus far. Well then, the ideal I once had, perhaps I could have pursued it in a life of action, struggle, bold undertaking, shared sympathies, in a word, enthusiasm. But the cold regularity prevailing here, the military order reaching even into the wings of the theater, the calm, continual good will of an audience that thinks about its business while lending us an ear, the king’s weighty patronage that guarantees us success decreed in advance, the lack of competition and innovation in the troupe and repertoire, above all, the idea of indefinite captivity; this whole bourgeois way of life that we lead in Prussia, with its cool industriousness, dismal glory and inevitable greed, has stripped me of the hope, even the desire for improvement. There are days when I feel so sluggish, so utterly bereft of that touchy pride that feeds an artist’s conscience that I’d pay someone to boo at me, just to wake me up. But alas, whether I miss my entrance or burn out before the end of my task, there’s always the same applause. It gives me no pleasure when I don’t deserve it. And it pains me when by accident I do something to deserve it, because then it is very officially reckoned, as carefully measured by etiquette as usual, and yet I feel that something more spontaneous should be my due! You must find all this childish, my noble Amalia, but you wanted to see deep into the soul of an actress, and I’m hiding nothing from you.”

  “You explain it all so naturally that I understand as though I were feeling it myself. As a favor to you, I can certainly hiss and boo when I see that you’re sluggish, reserving the right to throw you a crown of roses once I’ve waked you up!”

  “Alas, kind princess, the king wouldn’t allow either one. The king doesn’t want anyone to offend the members of his troupe, for he knows that jeers are soon followed by infatuation. So, despite your generous intentions, there is no remedy for my tedium. Plus, with every passing day I more and more regret having chosen an existence so false, so devoid of feeling rather than a life of love and devotion. Especially since that adventure with Cagliostro, a black melancholy has seized the depths of my soul. Every single night I dream about Albert and see him irritated with me, or indifferent and preoccupied, speaking some incomprehensible tongue and engrossed in meditations that have nothing to do with our love, such as he was in that magic scene. I wake up drenched in cold sweat and begin to weep thinking that, in the new existence into which death has led him, his aching, dismayed soul may be suffering the effects of my disdain and ingratitude. In short, I killed him, and that’s a fact. And there’s no man on this earth, even having made a pact with all the forces of heaven and hell, who can bring him back to me. So there’s no way for me to make amends for anything in the useless, lonely life I’m dragging out, and my only desire is to see it end soon.”

  Chapter X

  “Haven’t you struck up any new friendships here?” asked Princess Amalia. “Among the many intelligent, talented people that my brother brags about having attracted from all the corners of the earth, isn’t there anyone worthy of esteem?”

  “Of course, Madame. Had I not felt inclined to solitude and seclusion, I could have found kindly souls. Mlle Cochois. . . .”

  “The Marquise d’Argens, you mean?”

  “Is that what she’s called?”

  “You’re right to be discreet. So, she’s a fine person?”

  “Extremely, and basically very kind, even though she’s somewhat vain about the marquis’ lessons and attentions and tends to look down on her fellow performers.”

  “She would be deeply humiliated if she knew who you are. The Rudolstadt name is one of the most distinguished in all Saxony, and that of d’Argens is only minor nobility from Provence or Langued
oc. And what about Mme de Cocceï, what is she like? Are you acquainted with her?”

  “Since Mlle Barberini got married, she has stopped dancing at the Opera and lives in the country most of the time, which means I’ve haven’t had many opportunities to see her. Of all the women at the theater she was the one with whom I felt the greatest affinity, and she and her husband often invited me to come for a visit at their estate. The king, however, let me know that he very much disliked the idea, and I was forced to give it up, without ever knowing why.”

  “I’ll tell you why. The king courted Mlle Barberini, who preferred the Lord Chancellor’s son, and the king is afraid that she’ll be a bad example to you. But isn’t there any man you’re close to?”

  “I’m very fond of Franz Benda, His Majesty’s first violin. There are parallels between his destiny and mine. In his youth he led the life of a zingaro, as I did as a child. Like me, he has very little relish for the splendors of this world and prefers freedom to money. He’s often told me that he fled the Saxon court to share the errant destiny of artists on the road, with all its joys and sorrows. Society doesn’t know that there are fine virtuosos out there on the streets and highways. An old blind Jew taught Benda what he knows while they were going up hill and down dale. His name was Lœbel, and Benda only speaks of him with admiration, even though he died on a pile of straw, perhaps even in a ditch. Before taking up the violin, Franz Benda had a superb voice and sang for a living. In Dresden, he got so bored and depressed that he lost his voice. With the fresh air and freedom of the vagabond life he found another talent, and his genius took off once again. It was this itinerant conservatory that trained the magnificent virtuoso whose collaboration is welcomed by His Majesty for his chamber music. Georg Benda, his youngest brother, is also an eccentric genius, epicurean one minute and misanthropic the next. His quirks make him difficult sometimes, but he’s never boring. I think this one will never manage to settle down like his other brothers, who have now all resigned themselves to the golden chains of the king’s predilection for music. But Georg, either because he’s the youngest or just can’t be tamed, always talks about running away. His boredom here is so wholehearted that it’s a pleasure to share it with him.”