by George Sand
“Is she really in danger?” asked Consuelo.
“She will be if she goes on refusing the amorous attentions of the Marquis.”
“What marquis?” asked Consuelo, dumbfounded.
“Your mind is wandering, sister! I’m talking about Fritz, the grand lama.”
“Ah yes, the Margrave von Brandenburg!” said Consuelo, who finally understood that he meant the king. “So you’re really sure that he’s got his mind on that slip of a girl?”
“I won’t go so far as to say that he’s in love with her, but he’s jealous. And then, sister dear, you’ve got to see how you’re putting that poor little thing in jeopardy by making her your confidante. . . . Now, now, I know nothing about that, and I don’t want to know a thing. But, in the name of heaven, be careful, and don’t let our friends suspect that you have motives other than a love of liberty. We’ve decided to adopt your Countess von Rudolstadt. Once she’s initiated and bound by oaths, promises, and threats, you’ll be safe with her. But until then, I beg you, refrain from seeing her and telling her your concerns or ours. . . . And you can start by leaving this ball. It’s hardly suitable for you to be here, and the grand lama will surely find out. Give me your arm, and I’ll escort you to the door, but no further. I’m supposed to be under arrest at Potsdam, and the palace walls have eyes that can see through an iron mask.”
Just then there was a knock at the door. As the prince did not open up, more knocks followed.
“What an impudent rascal to insist on entering a box where there’s a lady present!” said the prince, showing his bearded mask at the little window in the door.
But there he saw a red domino with a ghastly pale face who made a strange gesture and said, “It’s raining.”
This news seemed to make a great impression on the prince.
“Should I leave or stay?” he asked the red domino.
“You must go look for a nun just like this one out in the crowd,” the domino replied, while the prince eagerly showed him in. “I’ll take care of the lady,” he added, gesturing toward Consuelo.
After they had exchanged a few whispers, the prince left without saying a word more to Porporina.
“Why did you take exactly the same disguise as the princess?” asked the domino, sitting down at the far end of the box. “That exposes her, yourself as well, to fatal errors. There I don’t see your usual prudence or devotion to others.”
“If my costume is just like someone else’s, that is news to me,” replied Consuelo warily.
“I thought it was a carnival prank that the two of you had arranged. Since that’s not the case, Countess, and it’s merely a coincidence, let’s talk about you and abandon the princess to her fate.”
“But it seems to me, Monsieur, that if someone’s in danger, those who talk about devotion to others shouldn’t stand idly by.”
“The person who just left will look after that august madcap. You’re no doubt aware that the matter concerns him more than it does us, since he too is courting you.”
“You’re wrong, Monsieur. I don’t know him any better than I do you. Moreover, you’re talking neither like a friend nor a jester. Let me get back to the ball.”
“First let me have the portfolio you were asked to give me.”
“Certainly not. I don’t have anything for anyone.”
“Good for you. That’s the way to talk. But with me there’s no need for that. I’m the Count de Saint-Germain.”
“I don’t know that.”
“Even if I were to take off my mask, you wouldn’t recognize me. The only time you saw my face was that night in the dark. But here are my credentials.”
The red domino gave Consuelo a sheet of music with a sign that she could not fail to recognize. She handed him the portfolio, not without trembling, and took care to add, “Mark my words. Nobody gave me any message for you. I alone am sending these letters and bills of exchange to the person you know.”
“So you’re Baron von Trenck’s mistress?”
Frightened by the grievous lie that this question required of her, Consuelo kept still.
“Answer me, Madame,” said the red domino. “The baron doesn’t hide from us that he receives help and consolation from a person who loves him. So you’re the baron’s friend?”
“I am,” was Consuelo’s staunch reply. “And I’m equally amazed and offended by your questions. Can’t I be the baron’s friend without exposing myself to such coarse language and foul suspicions?”
“The situation is too serious for you to dwell on words. Listen carefully. You’re charging me with a mission that jeopardizes my reputation and puts me in all kinds of personal danger. There may be some political conspiracy underneath all this, and that’s not something in which I wish to get involved. I gave my word to Trenck’s friends to help him out with a love affair. Let me make myself clear. I didn’t promise to help out with a friendship. The word is too vague, and I find it unsettling. I know that you’re incapable of telling a lie. If you positively declare that von Trenck is your lover and let me tell Albert von Rudolstadt. . . .”
“Good heavens! Don’t torture me like this, Monsieur. Albert is dead!”
“That’s what people say, I know. Yet he is forever alive for you and me.”
“True enough, if you mean that in a religious or symbolic sense. Yet materially. . . .”
“Let’s not argue. There’s still a veil over your spirit, but it will be lifted. The crucial thing for me right now is knowing what you are to Trenck. If he’s your lover, I’ll deliver this portfolio on which his life may depend, for he is utterly without resources. If you refuse to say, I refuse to be your go-between.”
“Well,” said Consuelo with a painful effort, “he is my lover. Here’s the portfolio and see that he gets it quickly.”
“That’s enough,” said Saint-Germain, taking the portfolio. “Now, you brave, noble girl, let me tell you that I admire and respect you. This was only a test of your sense of dedication and self-sacrifice. Come now, I know everything! I know full well that you’re lying out of generosity and that you’ve been faithful as a saint to your husband. I know that Princess Amalia, all the while making use of my services, doesn’t trust me and that working to free herself from the grand lama’s tyranny doesn’t stop her from acting like a princess and a tight-lipped one at that. That’s her role, and she’s not ashamed to expose you, a poor vagabond (as polite society likes to say) to eternal sorrow; yes, the greatest sorrow of all! that of standing in the way of your husband’s brilliant resurrection and throwing his present existence into a limbo of doubt and despair. But fortunately there is always a chain of invisible hands stretching between your soul and Albert’s, one working on this earth by light of day and the other laboring in an unknown world, in the shadow of mystery, far removed from the gaze of vulgar humans.”
Despite her determination to keep up her guard against the specious perorations of so-called prophets, Consuelo was moved by this bizarre language.
“Please explain yourself, Count,” she said, doing her best to sound cool and collected. “I’m well aware that Albert’s role has not come to an end on this earth, that death’s chilly breath has not destroyed his soul. Yet any connection between us is shrouded by a veil that may be lifted only when I myself die; that is, if God lets us enjoy a vague recollection of our previous lives. This is a mystery, and no one can abet the celestial influence that brings together in a new life those who loved each other in a past life. What notions are you trying to put into my head when you say that certain sympathies are watching over me and working toward that end?”
“I could only speak of myself and say that having known Albert from time immemorial, when I served under his orders in the war of the Hussites against Sigismund as well as later, during the Thirty Years’ War, when he was. . . .”
“I know that you claim to remember all your previous lives, like Albert with his sick, disastrous persuasion. Would to God that I had never doubted his sincerity on
that score! Yet this belief was so closely tied to a state of delirious frenzy in him that I never believed that this extraordinary, perhaps inadmissible power was real. So spare me the trouble of hearing about your weird conversations with Albert on the subject. I know that lots of people moved by idle curiosity would love to be in my place right now. They’d give you an encouraging smile and pretend to believe the fabulous stories that you reportedly tell so well. But I don’t know how to play a role when I don’t have to, and I’d be incapable of enjoying what they call your daydreams. They would remind me too much of Albert’s, which terrified and tormented me. Please keep your stories for those who can share them. On no account would I want to deceive you by pretending to lend them any credence. Even if they didn’t arouse any harrowing memories in me, I wouldn’t want to make fun of you. So kindly answer my questions without trying to lead my mind astray with vague words and double meanings. To encourage your frankness I’ll tell you that I already know that you’ve got particular and mysterious designs on me. You’re supposed to initiate me into some forbidding secret, and people of high rank are counting on you to teach me the elements of some occult science.”
“People of high rank sometimes say the strangest things, Countess,” the count replied imperturbably. “Thank you for your honesty with me, and I’ll refrain from touching on matters that you wouldn’t understand, perhaps because you have no wish to understand them. Let me just say that there is indeed an occult science on which I pride myself, in which I am seconded by minds more enlightened than mine. Yet there’s nothing supernatural about it since it is purely and simply the science of the human heart or, if you prefer, thorough knowledge of human life in its deepest motives and most secret deeds. And to prove to you that I’m not merely boasting, I’ll tell you—only with your permission, of course—exactly what has been going on in your own heart since you’ve been separated from Count von Rudolstadt.”
“Go ahead,” replied Consuelo, “for there’s no way for you to deceive me about that.”
“Well, for the first time in your life you’re in love, totally, truly in love. And the man you love, for whom you’re shedding tears of repentance, since you didn’t love him a year ago, the man whose absence gives you such bitter grief, whose disappearance has made your present life so drab and your future so dreary—it is not Baron von Trenck, for whom you’ve never felt more than friendship based on gratitude and serene affinity; nor Joseph Haydn, who is just your little brother in the fellowship of Apollo; nor King Frederick, who terrifies and intrigues you at one and the same time; nor the handsome Anzoleto, whom you can no longer respect. The man you love is the one you saw laid out on his deathbed, arrayed with the pomp that noble families in their pride put even in the tomb, on the shroud of the departed: Albert von Rudolstadt.”
Consuelo was momentarily stunned to hear this revelation of her innermost feelings out of the mouth of a man she did not know. But then she thought to herself that the previous evening she had told her whole life to Princess Amalia and bared her heart. She also recalled the many hints that Prince Heinrich had just dropped about the princess’s ties to a mysterious association in which the Count de Saint-Germain played a leading role. So she ceased to be amazed and ingenuously avowed that it was not much to his credit to know of matters that she had recently confided to a friend with a loose tongue.
“You mean the Abbess of Quedlinburg?” asked Saint-Germain. “Well, will you take my word of honor?”
“I have no right to call it into question,” Porporina replied.
“So I give you my word of honor,” said the count, “that the princess hasn’t said a word to me about you, since I’ve never had the privilege of talking to her or her confidante Mme von Kleist.”
“Yet you have dealings with her, at least indirectly?”
“Which consist in delivering Trenck’s letters to her and receiving her letters to him from third parties. You can see that her trust in me doesn’t go very far since she thinks that I’m not aware of the interest she takes in our fugitive. Anyway, there’s nothing perfidious about the princess. She’s merely crazy, like all oppressed people with a tyrannical bent. The servants of truth have placed a lot of hope in her and taken her under their wing. God willing, she won’t make them regret it!”
“You misjudge an interesting, unhappy princess, Count, and perhaps you don’t know her business well. As for me, I know nothing. . . .”
“It’s no good lying, Consuelo. You just had a midnight supper with her, and I can tell you all about it.”
The Count de Saint-Germain proceeded to report the minutest details of her supper the night before, from what the princess and Mme von Kleist had said to the finery they had worn, the menu, their meeting with the sweeper, etc. Then he went on to recount the king’s visit to our heroine that morning, the words they had exchanged, his walking stick raised up over Consuelo, his threats, his remorse—every single thing down to their slightest gestures and the looks on their faces—as if he had been there himself. He ended by saying, “How very wrong of you, you naïve, generous child, to let yourself fall for these returns of affection and kindness that the king knows how to show on occasion. You’ll come to regret it. The royal tiger will make you feel his claws unless you accept stronger, more honorable protection, something truly paternal and all-powerful that won’t be limited to the narrow confines of the marquisate of Brandenburg, something that will hover over you on the whole face of the earth, even into the wilderness of the New World.”
“As far as I know, God alone exercises such protection and offers it even to insignificant creatures like me,” said Consuelo. “If I’m facing danger here, it’s in God that I trust. I’d be suspicious of any other solicitude whose means and motives were unknown to me.”
“It doesn’t suit great souls to be suspicious,” replied the count, “and it’s because Mme von Rudolstadt is a great soul that she is entitled to protection from God’s true servants. That is the only motive for this offer. As for the means, they are immense and as different in their power and morality from those of princes as God’s purposes in their sublimity are different from those of the despots and little lords of this world. If you love and trust divine justice alone, you must see how it works through those good, intelligent people who are the ministers of God’s will here below and the executors of his supreme Law. Righting wrongs, protecting the weak, repressing tyranny, encouraging and rewarding virtue, disseminating the principles of morality, preserving honor’s sacred trust, such is the eternal mission of a glorious, venerable phalanx that has been carrying on under various names and forms since the dawn of history. Look at the crude, antihuman laws that rule the nations, mankind’s prejudices and errors, the monstrous traces of barbarism all over the globe! In a world so poorly managed by ignorant masses and treacherous governments, how can any virtue bloom or truth come forward? Yet it happens, and one sees spotless lilies, flowers without blemish, souls like yours and Albert’s rise up in splendor out of the mire. But do you think that they could keep their sweet perfume, shield themselves from the foul bites of snakes and lizards and withstand the storm without being sustained and preserved by propitious forces, helping hands? Do you think that Albert, that sublime man, a stranger to all vulgar turpitude, so far above humanity that he looked mad to the eyes of the profane, drew all his greatness and faith out of himself alone? Do you think he was an isolated phenomenon in the universe, that he never restored his strength in a circle of sympathy and hope? And you yourself, do you think that you would be what you are if the breath of God hadn’t passed from Albert to you? But now that you are separated from him, thrown into a sphere unworthy of you, exposed to all kinds of danger and temptation; you, a theater girl, the confidante of a lovesick princess and the putative mistress of a king worn out by debauchery and chilled by egotism, do you hope to keep the immaculate purity of your pristine innocence if the mysterious wings of the archangels don’t spread over you like a celestial shield? Watch out, Consuelo! It
’s not in yourself, at least not in yourself alone, that you’ll find the strength you need. The very prudence on which you pride yourself will be easily undone by the wiles of the evil spirit lurking in the shadows around your virginal bed. Learn to respect the saintly militia, the invisible army of faith that already forms a rampart around you. They ask of you neither commitments nor services. They merely command that you be meek and trusting when you feel the unexpected effects of the salutary adoption. I’ve told you enough. Now it’s up to you to think long and hard about what I’ve said. When the time comes and wondrous things start happening around you, remember that everything is possible for a community of believers working together, free and equal. Indeed, there are no limits to what they can do to reward merit. If you were to prove yourself worthy of winning from them a sublime prize, know that they could even resurrect Albert and give him back to you.”
After this speech ringing with tones of enthusiastic conviction, the red domino stood up. Without waiting for Consuelo’s reply, he bowed and left the box where she remained for a few instants, motionless, as though lost in strange reveries.
Chapter XIII
When at last Consuelo left the box, her only thought was to go home. In the corridors she was accosted by two masked figures, one of whom whispered to her, “Beware of the Count de Saint-Germain.”
Consuelo thought she recognized the voice of Uberti Porporino, her fellow performer. Grabbing the sleeve of his domino, she asked, “Who is this Count de Saint-Germain? I don’t know him.”
But the other masked figure seized her free hand and said, “Beware of adventures and adventurers.” As he did not even try to disguise his voice, Consuelo immediately recognized young Benda, the melancholy violinist.
And they hurried on, as though wanting to avoid her questions.
After all the trouble she had taken to come up with a good disguise, Consuelo was amazed to see how easily people recognized her. Accordingly, she hastened to leave. Yet it soon came to her attention that she was being observed and followed by another masked figure. Because of his size and bearing she thought it was Poelnitz, the director of the royal theaters and the king’s chamberlain. As soon as he opened his mouth, she was sure of it, despite all his efforts to alter his voice and pronunciation. She made no reply to his idle chatter since it was clear that he wanted to loosen her tongue. She finally got rid of him and crossed the room, hoping to throw him off in case he tried to follow her again. There was a crowd, and it was not easy to reach the exit. At that point she turned around to make sure that no one was watching her and was rather surprised to see Poelnitz in a corner having what looked like a confidential chat with the red domino she thought to be the Count de Saint-Germain. Unaware that Poelnitz had met him in France, she feared that she had been betrayed by the adventurer and returned home devoured by anxiety, not so much for herself as for the princess, whose secret she had reluctantly divulged to a very dubious character.