by George Sand
Yet the first sum of money that Frau Schwartz had seized from the prisoner the day of her arrival had run out a long time ago, thanks to Herr Schwartz’s ingeniously concocted bills. After having made rather meager new expenditures and drawn up a rather fat new bill according to his prudent, profitable custom, he was too cowardly to talk business and ask for money from a person condemned not to have any. Having been informed by Consuelo on day one that her savings had been entrusted to Porporino, Schwartz, without so much as a word to her, went to Berlin and presented his bill to that faithful trustee. Forewarned by Consuelo, Porporino refused to pay up before the bill had been approved by the consumer herself and sent the creditor back to his friend, who had money, he knew, as he had just given her some.
Schwartz came back pale and desperate, screaming that he would go bankrupt and considering himself robbed, even though the first hundred ducats seized from the prisoner would have paid four times over all the charges she had run up in two months. Frau Schwartz endured this alleged injury with the philosophy that comes from greater strength of mind and perseverance.
“We’ve no doubt been sacked like victims in a forest,” she replied. “But did you ever expect to make much off that prisoner? I warned you about this. An actress? They have no savings. And for her trustee, an actor? They have no honor! Well, we’re out two hundred ducats, but we’ll make it up with the other customers, who are good ones. This’ll teach you not to offer your services recklessly to just anybody. I’m not sorry, Schwartz, that you’ve had this little lesson. Now, as for that little snip who doesn’t even have the courtesy to come back with a gold Frederick in her pocket to pay the frisker for her trouble, who seems to consider Gottlieb a poor idiot because he doesn’t flirt with her, I’m going to have the pleasure of putting her on a regime of dry, even moldy bread. What a rotter!”
Grumbling and shrugging her shoulders, Frau Schwartz went back to her business. Finding herself under the hood of the fireplace near Gottlieb, she asked while skimming her pots, “What have you got to say about this, you little slyboots?”
These words were said merely for the sake of talking for she knew that Gottlieb listened as well as his cat Beelzebub.
“My shoe is coming along, mother!” replied Gottlieb with a demented smile. “Soon I’ll be starting a new pair!”
“Indeed!” said the old woman pitifully nodding her head. “So every day you make a pair? Keep it up, son. . . . That will earn you a good living! My God, my God!” she added, placing the covers back on her kettles. She sounded resigned to her sorrow, as if maternal indulgence had inspired tender feelings in this thoroughly petrified heart.
When her dinner failed to appear that day, Consuelo guessed what had happened, even though she found it hard to believe that a hundred ducats had been spent so fast on such meager fare. She had already drawn up a plan with regard to Herr and Frau Schwartz. She still had not received a single penny from the King of Prussia and greatly feared that old promises would be her only pay (Voltaire was leaving with the same wages). If she were held captive much longer, and if Schwartz did not change his terms, she knew that the little sums she had earned by delighting the ears of a few individuals less stingy but less rich would not go far. She wanted to force him to scale down his fees, and for two or three days she contented herself with the bread and water he brought her without seeming to notice the change in her regime. Her stove began to be as neglected as all the rest, and Consuelo endured the cold without complaint. Fortunately the intolerably severe weather was past. It was April, a season less springlike in Prussia than in France, but the temperatures were turning milder.
Before entering into negotiations with her greedy tyrant she thought it best to find a safe place for her money; for she had to expect an arbitrary search and seizure as soon as she admitted to having resources. Even though necessity cannot turn us into geniuses, it does make us see things clearly. Consuelo had no tools for hollowing out wood or lifting stones. Yet the next day while she was studying every nook and cranny of her cell with the minute patience that prisoners alone possess, she wound up discovering a brick that seemed not to fit into the wall as tightly as the others. By dint of scratching around the edges with her nails, she removed the mortar and saw that it was not, as elsewhere, cement, but some crumbly substance that she took for dry bits of bread. She managed to pull the brick out and found a little space, probably devised by some prisoner or other, back between this loose piece and the well-pointed masonry that formed the thick wall. All her doubts vanished when her fingers, searching around in this little cubbyhole, encountered several objects, veritable treasures for any prisoner: a package of pencils, a penknife, a flint stone, tinder, and several rolls of those skinny, coiled tapers that we call cave rats. Since there was no humidity in the wall, everything was in tip-top shape. Besides, these items could have been put there just a few days before the cell became hers. To them she added her purse as well as her little filigree crucifix on which Herr Schwartz had often fixed a covetous eye, remarking how much Gottlieb would like that little trinket. Then she put the brick back, cementing it in place with bits of her noonday bread. So that this mortar would be the same color as the rest, she darkened the crumbs by rubbing them on the floor. Now that there was no need to worry for a while about how to take care of her needs or how to spend her evenings, she steadfastly awaited the Schwartzes’s visit and felt as proud and happy as if she had discovered a new world.
Schwartz meanwhile soon got tired of not finding any way to make money. Though his business might be small, a little was better than nothing, he would tell himself, and he was the first to break the silence by asking his prisoner no. 3 if she had no more orders to place with him. Then Consuelo decided to say not that she had money but that every week she regularly received a sum by means impossible to discover.
“Yet if you were to figure it out, that would prevent me from spending anything,” she said. “It’s up to you to decide if you prefer strict obedience to your orders or honest profit.”
After considerable strife, after futile searches of Consuelo’s clothes, mattress, floor, and furniture over the course of several days, Schwartz began to think that some high-placed prison official was himself making it possible for her to communicate with the outside world. Corruption was everywhere in the prison hierarchy, and the underlings found it profitable not to check up on their more powerful colleagues.
“Let’s just take what God sends our way!” said Schwartz with a sigh.
And he resigned himself to settling his accounts with Proporina on a weekly basis. She did not make a fuss about the first bill, but from then on arranged not to pay for anything more than twice its value. Even though Frau Schwartz found this very stingy, it did not prevent her from receiving her salary and more or less earning it.
Chapter XIX
It won’t seem at all miraculous to those who are fond of reading stories about prisoners that this simple hiding place nonetheless escaped the jailers’ eager scrutiny. Consuelo’s little secret was not discovered. After her walk she inspected her treasures and found them intact. As soon as it was dark, her first thought was to push her mattress in front of the window, light her little candle, and start writing. We’ll let her speak for herself. For a long time after her death Consuelo’s manuscript remained in the hands of Canon***, but now it is in our possession. We are translating it from Italian.
The Diary of Consuelo
called Porporina
Prisoner at Spandau, April 175*
April 2nd.—Music is the only thing I’ve ever written, and though I’m at ease speaking several languages, I don’t know whether I’m capable of expressing myself correctly in any one of them. I never thought that I’d have to paint whatever might occupy my heart and life in a language other than that of the divine art I profess. Words and sentences seemed so cold in comparison with what I was able to express in song! I could count the letters, rather notes I’ve dashed off, and haphazardly, in the three or four most
critical points in my life. So this is the first time I’ve ever felt the need to retrace with words what I’m feeling, what’s happening to me. It’s even a great pleasure to give it a try. Illustrious, revered Porpora, dear, sweet Haydn, excellent and worthy Canon***, you who are my only friends, and perhaps you too, noble, hapless Baron von Trenck, my thoughts turn to you while I’m writing; it’s to you that I’m telling my setbacks and trials. I feel that I’m talking to you, that I’m with you, that in my dreary solitude I’m escaping death’s nothingness by initiating you into the mystery of my life. Perhaps I’ll die here of boredom and misery, even though my physical strength and mental fortitude don’t seem to have suffered many ill effects so far. Yet I don’t know what evils the future holds in store for me, and if I succumb, at least you’ll have a trace of me and a depiction of my death throes. It will be a legacy to whatever prisoner has this cell after me and finds the hiding place in the wall where I myself found the paper and pencils I’m using to write to you. Oh, now I thank my mother, who never knew how to write, for having seen to it that I learned how! Yes, writing is a great comfort in prison. My sad song could not get through these thick walls to your ears. The words that I’m writing will reach you some day. . . . And who knows if I won’t soon find a way of sending them to you. I’ve always put my trust in Providence.
April 3rd.—My entries will be brief, without lengthy meditations. This small supply of paper, flimsy as silk, won’t last forever, and it’s possible that my captivity will. I’ll say a few words to you every night before going to sleep. I don’t want to waste my candle either. I cannot write during the day as I’d risk getting caught. I won’t tell you why I was sent here. I don’t know why, and if I tried to guess at the reason with you, I might compromise certain people who nonetheless told me nothing. Nor will I complain about the authors of my misfortune. If I were to give way to reproaches and resentment, I think I’d lose the strength sustaining me. Here I only want to think about those I love, also the one I loved.
Every evening I sing for two hours, and I think I’m making progress. What good will that do me? The vaults of my dungeon reply without hearing me. . . . But God hears me, and when I’ve composed a canticle and sing it to him with the fervor of my soul, I feel a celestial calm and fall asleep almost happy. It seems to me that I’m receiving a heavenly reply, that while I’m sleeping a mysterious voice is singing me another canticle more beautiful than mine, which I try to remember the next day and sing in turn. Now that I’ve got pencils and still a bit of ruled paper, I’m going to write down my compositions. Perhaps one day you’ll try them out, my dear friends, and I won’t be altogether dead.
April 4th.—This morning the robin came to my room and stayed for over a quarter of an hour. For two weeks I’ve been inviting him to do me this honor, and today at last he made up his mind. He lives in some old ivy that has dragged itself up as far as my window, which my jailers have spared since it greens up their door a few feet below. For a long time the pretty little bird had been watching me with a curious, wary eye. Attracted by the bread that I’ve been rolling up to look like little worms and wriggling at him, teasing him with the lure of living prey, he would flit over near the bars of my window as if carried by a gust of wind. As soon as he saw that he’d been tricked, he would give me a dirty look, squawk out something sounding like an insult, and fly away. And then these hideous iron bars, so close together and so black, through which we’ve made acquaintance look so much like a cage that he was horrified by them. Yet today, as I wasn’t thinking about him any longer, he decided to fly through the bars into my room and, without giving a thought to me, I’m also quite sure, perched on a crosspiece of a chair. Not wanting to scare him away, I didn’t move a muscle, and he began glancing around in amazement, just like an explorer discovering a new land and making his observations so that he could describe these wondrous things to his friends. He was astonished by me most of all. As long as I kept still, he seemed to find me very funny. With his big round eyes and beak up in the air like a little snub nose, his physiognomy is silly and saucy in the wittiest way. I finally coughed a bit to get a conversation going, and he took off all alarmed. But in his haste he couldn’t find the window. He flew up to the ceiling and went madly round and round for a minute, then finally calmed down, seeing that I was not about to give chase. Exhausted more by his fright than his flight, he swooped down on the stove and seemed most pleasantly surprised by the heat, for this bird is very sensitive to the cold. He flitted around the room a bit more, then with secret pleasure returned to the stove several times to warm up his sweet little feet. He made so bold as to go peck at my little worms of bread lying on the table. After giving them a scornful shake and strewing them about, he was no doubt overcome with hunger and wound up swallowing one, which he didn’t find too bad. Just then Herr Schwartz (my jailer) came in, and the dear little visitor found the window to make his escape. But I’m hoping he’ll return, for all day long he has scarcely gone away, never stopped looking at me, as though he were promising to come back and letting me know that he no longer has such a poor opinion of me and my bread.
How I’ve gone on and on about a robin. I didn’t think I was such a child. Does prison turn people into idiots? Or is there some mystery of sympathy and affection among all breathing things under the firmament? My harpsichord has been here for a few days now. I’ve been able to work, study, compose, sing. . . . So far none of that has moved me as much as the visit of this little bird, this being! Yes, he’s a being, and that’s why I felt my heart beat when I saw him close by. Yet my jailer is also a being, a being of my own kind. His wife, his son whom I see several times a day, the sentry who spends his days and nights marching back and forth on the rampart, never taking his eyes off me, they are better organized beings, natural friends, brothers and sisters before God. Yet the sight of them gives me much more pain than pleasure. For me, this jailer is a grate in the door of my cell, his wife a padlock, her son a stone embedded in the wall. In the soldier watching over me I see only a gun aimed in my direction. To my mind there’s nothing human about them, nothing alive. They’re machines, instruments of torture and death. Were it not for my fear of impiety, I would hate them. . . . Oh, my dear robin! You I love! There’s no denying the feeling. Whoever can explain this kind of love!
April 5th.—Another event. Here’s the note I received this morning. The handwriting was hard to read, and the slip of paper filthy.
“Sister, the spirit visits you, so you are a saint, I was very sure of it. I am your friend and servant. Dispose of me as you wish, and order all that you will of your brother.”
Who is this friend, this improvised brother? I’ll never guess. While opening my window to say hello to the robin this morning, I found this on the sill. Could he have brought it to me? I’m tempted to think that he is the one who wrote these words. In any case, he knows me, the dear little being, and he’s beginning to love me. He practically never goes near the Schwartzes’ kitchen. A smell of hot grease spews forth from their little kitchen window and wafts upstairs, which is not the least annoyance of my abode. But I no longer want to go elsewhere since my little bird is making this place his home. He’s too refined to become familiar with this soup-slinging turnkey, his nasty wife, and their ugly offspring.1 I’m clearly the one who enjoys his trust and affection. Today he came into my room again and gobbled up breakfast. When I took a walk at noon on the esplanade, he came down out of his ivy and flitted around my head, squawking all the while as if to tease me and make sure that I saw him. Ugly Gottlieb was at his door, watching me with his wild eyes and sniggering. He is always with a dreadful orange cat who fixes my robin with a gaze even more horrible than his master’s. It makes me shudder. I hate that cat almost as much as Frau Schwartz with her prying fingers.
April 6th.—Another note this morning! This is becoming bizarre. The same crooked, pointy handwriting, a slovenly scrawl; the same rough wrapping paper as well. My Lindor is no hidalgo, but he’s tender-hearted
and full of enthusiasm: “Dear sister, soul chosen by God and marked by his finger, you are wary of me. You won’t speak to me. Don’t you have any orders for me? Is there nothing I can do for you? My life is yours. Give your brother his orders.” I look at the sentry, a lout of a soldier who knits stockings while marching to and fro, shouldering his gun. He gazes back, looking as though he’d be more inclined to send me a bullet instead of a little love note. Wherever I turn my eyes, I see nothing but enormous gray walls bristling with nettles, bordered by a moat which is bordered by yet more fortifications. I don’t know what they’re called nor what purpose they serve, but they prevent me from seeing the water. At the top of this outer fortification I can see another sentry’s cap plus the tip of his gun and hear him ferociously bellowing at every boat that approaches the citadel, “Steer clear!” If only I could see these boats, a little running water, and a bit of the countryside! I can only hear the slap of oars, every now and then a fisherman’s song and far off in the distance, when the wind is blowing from that direction, the seething, swirling eddies formed by the confluence of the two rivers at a certain distance from the prison. But where are these mysterious notes and this fine devotion that I find so perplexing coming from? Maybe my robin knows, but the cunning little creature won’t say.