by George Sand
Yet isn’t it strange that I find myself here with another person given to ecstasies? While Gottlieb’s are of a lesser order than Albert’s, he too is attached to a secret religion, to beliefs that are jeered at, persecuted, or despised. Gottlieb says that Boehme has many other disciples here in this land, that several shoemakers openly profess his doctrine, that its basic principles have been forever implanted in the humble souls of many unknown philosophers and prophets who fanaticized Bohemia long ago and who now keep a sacred fire smoldering beneath the ashes all over Germany. In fact, I remember the fervent Hussite shoemakers that Albert told me about, their bold sermons and terrifying exploits back in the days of Jan Zizka. The very name of Jacob Boehme bears witness to that glorious beginning. I don’t know much about what is going on in the contemplative minds of patient Germania. My busy, dissipated life kept me away from such an investigation. But even if Gottlieb and Zdenko were the last disciples of the mysterious religion that Albert preserved like a precious talisman, I still feel that this is my religion, since it proclaims the future equality of one and all as well as the coming revelation of God’s justice and goodness on this earth. Oh yes, I have to believe in this kingdom of God that Christ announced to mankind! I have to trust that these iniquitous monarchies and corrupt societies will be overthrown so as not to doubt Providence, seeing where I am!
No news from prisoner no. 2. If it’s not an impudent lie that Mayer relayed to me, Amalia of Prussia is accusing me of having betrayed her. May God forgive her for doubting me. Even though I’ve heard the same accusations on her account, I’ve never doubted her. I won’t do anything more to try and see her. By trying to justify myself, I could further compromise her, having already done so unwittingly.
My robin is a faithful companion. Seeing Gottlieb in my cell without his cat, the robin has warmed up to him, and poor Gottlieb has gone completely crazy with pride and joy. He calls him lord and doesn’t allow himself to be familiar with him. He offers him food with the deepest respect and a kind of religious quiver. It’s no use trying to convince him that this is just a bird like the others; no matter what I say, he won’t give up the idea that a heavenly spirit has taken this form. I’m trying to distract him by teaching him a little something about music, and he truly has a fine mind for it. His parents are delighted by my care and attention, and they’ve offered to put a spinet in one of their rooms where I could give him lessons and do some work myself. A few days ago I would have been overjoyed by this proposal, but now I don’t dare accept it. I no longer even dare sing in my cell since I’m so afraid of drawing over here that crude music lover, that ex-teacher of trumpet, may God confound him!
May 10th.—For a long time I was wondering what had become of the anonymous friends, the marvelous protectors whose intervention in my affairs the Count de Saint-Germain announced to me and whose meddling apparently only hastened the disasters that the king’s benevolence hastened to rain down on me. If those were the conspirators whose punishment I’m sharing, they were all scattered and destroyed at the time of my arrest, I was thinking, or else they turned their backs on me when I refused to escape from Herr Buddenbrock’s clutches the day of my transfer from Berlin to Spandau. Well, here they are again, and they’ve made Gottlieb their emissary. How reckless they are! Let’s hope they won’t bring down upon that innocent’s head the same evils they’ve brought down upon mine!
This morning Gottlieb secretly brought me a note worded as follows:
“We are working toward your deliverance; the time is near. But a new danger, one that would delay the success of our endeavor, threatens you. Beware of anyone urging you to escape before we have given you sure directives and precise details. A trap is being laid for you. Stay on your guard and persevere in your strength.
Your brothers: The Invisibles”
This note fell at Gottlieb’s feet this morning as he was crossing a prison courtyard. He, for one, firmly believes that it came down from heaven and that the robin had something to do with it. While encouraging him to talk, without much trying to counter his fantastic ideas, I nonetheless learned some strange things which may contain an element of truth. I asked him if he knew what the Invisibles were.
“Nobody knows,” he replied, “even though everybody pretends to know.”
“How’s that, Gottlieb? So you’ve heard talk about these people?”
“While I was an apprentice to the master cobbler in the city, I heard lots of things on the subject.”
“So there’s talk? Do working folks know about them?”
“This is how it came to my ears, and of everything I’ve heard said, these are some of the few words worth listening to and remembering. One poor fellow in our workshop hurt his hand so grievously that there was talk of cutting it off. He was the sole breadwinner for a big family that he’d been looking after with lots of love and courage. He came to see us with his hand in a bandage and said sadly while watching us work, ‘How lucky you are to have your hands unfettered! I’ll soon have to go off to the poorhouse, I guess, and my mother will be left begging so that my little brothers and sisters don’t starve to death.’ Somebody suggested that we draw up a collection, but we were all so poor, and even though my parents are rich, I had so little money handy that we couldn’t pull together enough to be any decent help for our poor comrade. We emptied our pockets, then racked our brains to find a way to get Franz out of this fix. But nobody came up with anything because Franz had knocked at every door, only to be rebuffed by one and all. It is said that the king is very rich, that his father left him a huge treasure. But it’s also said that he spends it outfitting soldiers, and as there was a war on, with the king away and everybody afraid of shortages, the poor working folks were having a hard time, and Franz couldn’t get enough help from kindhearted souls. As for the hard-hearted ones, they’ve never got a penny in their pockets. All of a sudden a young man from the workshop said to Franz, ‘If I were in your shoes, I know just what I’d do! But maybe you won’t have the guts.’ ‘It’s not guts I’m short of. What should I do?’ asked Franz. ‘Go ask the Invisibles.’ Franz seemed to understand, since he shook his head reluctantly and didn’t say a word. When a few young men like me didn’t know what that meant and asked for an explanation, the reply from every quarter was, ‘You don’t know the Invisibles? What children you are, that’s plain to see! The Invisibles are people you don’t see, but they do things, all sorts of good, all sorts of evil as well. It’s not known if they live in some particular place, but they’re everywhere, in all four corners of the earth, or so people say. They assassinate a good many travelers and defend others from bandits; it all depends whether these are found worthy of punishment or protection. They’re behind every revolution, reaching into every court, conducting every kind of business, deciding whether there’ll be war or peace, ransoming prisoners, comforting those in distress, punishing scoundrels, making kings tremble on their thrones; in short, they’re the cause of everything good or bad that happens in the world. Perhaps they’ve been wrong more than once, but it’s said that they mean well. And besides, who can say if today’s sorrow won’t be the cause of a great joy tomorrow?’
“We were listening with great wonder and awe,” Gottlieb continued, “and little by little I understood enough to be able to tell you what workingmen and poor ignorant folks make of the Invisibles. Some say they’re wicked people, worshipers of the devil, who imparts to them his power, the knack for knowing secret things, the ability to tempt men by the lure of the riches and honors at their disposal, the skill of divining the future, making gold, curing the sick, rejuvenating the old, raising the dead, preventing the living from dying, for they’ve discovered the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. Others think they are religious, benevolent men who have pooled their resources to assist those in distress and work together to right wrongs and reward virtue. In our workshop everyone had something or another to say. ‘They’re the old Order of the Knights Templar,’ said one. ‘Now they’re call
ed Freemasons,’ another added. ‘No,’ a third chimed in, ‘they’re Zinzendorf’s Herrnhuters, in other words, the Moravian Brethren, formerly the United Brethren, the Orphans of Mount Tabor; in short, old Bohemia still alive and well and secretly threatening all the dominions of Europe because it wants to turn the whole universe into a republic.’
“Still others claimed they were just a handful of sorcerers, students and disciples of Paracelsus, Boehme, Swedenborg, and now Schröpfer the lemonadeseller (what a fine addition to the group), all eager to rule the world and overthrow empires with magic tricks and demonic rites. Most agreed that they were the old secret tribunals of free-judges, which had never disbanded in Germany; now, after having worked underground for several centuries, they were beginning to rear their heads with pride and make felt their arms of iron, swords of fire, and diamond scales of justice.
“As for Franz, he was hesitant to appeal to them, for he said that once you had accepted their favors, you were bound to them for this life and the next, which put your salvation in great jeopardy and your family in grave danger. Yet necessity won out over fear. A fellow worker, the one who had given him that piece of advice and who was greatly suspected of being a member of the Invisibles, even though he vigorously denied it, secretly let him know how to make what he called the signal of distress. We never learned what it was. Some said that Franz drew a cabalistic sign on his door in his own blood; others, that he went at midnight to a knoll where four roads met at the foot of a cross and there a horseman in black appeared before him; and still others simply said that he deposited a letter in the hollow of an old weeping willow at the gate of the cemetery. What is certain is that he got help; his family did not have to beg while waiting for him to heal, and he managed to get treatment from a skillful surgeon who fixed him all up. About the Invisibles, he never said a single word, except that he would bless them his whole life long. And that, sister, is how I first heard about these terrifying and benevolent creatures.”
“But you who’ve got more learning than the young men in your workshop, what do you think of the Invisibles?” I asked Gottlieb. “Are they cultists, charlatans, or conspirators?”
Up to that moment Gottlieb had been making a lot of sense, but then he slipped back into his usual ramblings, and I couldn’t make out a thing except that they were truly invisible, impalpable beings, that like God and the angels they could only be apprehended by our senses when they had assumed certain forms in order to communicate with humans.
“It’s very clear,” he said, “that the end of the world is near. Unmistakable signs have burst forth. The Antichrist is already born. Some say that he’s in Prussia and is called Voltaire, but I don’t know this Voltaire, and it may be somebody else, all the more because V is not W, and the name that the Antichrist will bear among men will begin by that letter, and it will be a German name.3 While awaiting the great wonders that are going to burst forth in this century, God who doesn’t take part in anything ostensibly, who is eternal silence,4 is raising up among us beings with natures superiorly endowed for good and for evil, occult forces, angels and demons, the latter for testing the righteous, the former for ensuring their triumph. And then, the great battle between the two principles has already begun. The king of evil, the father of error and ignorance is defending himself in vain. The archangels have drawn the bow of knowledge and truth, and their arrows have pierced Satan’s armor. Satan is still roaring and writhing, but soon he’ll renounce falsehood, lose all his venom, and rather than the impure blood of reptiles, he’ll feel the dew of pardon running through his veins. This is the clear and certain explanation for the incomprehensible, frightening things happening in the world. Good and evil are wrestling in a higher realm far removed from human endeavor. Victory and defeat hover over us, and no one can subject them to his will. Frederick of Prussia attributes to his mighty weapons triumphs that destiny alone has granted him before he is crushed or raised up according to its secret designs. Yes, I tell you, it’s very plain that nobody understands what’s going on in the world any longer. They see impiety taking up the arms of faith and vice versa. They suffer oppression, poverty, and all the scourges of discord without their prayers being heard, without the miracles of the old religion interceding. They no longer agree about anything, they quarrel without knowing why.
They’re marching blindfolded toward an abyss. The Invisibles urge them on, but who knows if the wonders signaling their mission are the work of God or the devil. In the same way, in the early years of Christianity, many people considered Simon Magus just as powerful, just as divine as Christ. Now I say that every wonder comes from God since Satan can’t perform any wonders without God’s consent, and that among those who are called the Invisibles, some act by the direct light of the Holy Spirit whereas others receive the power through a cloud and are destined to do good, believing all the while that they’re doing evil.”
“That explanation is quite abstract, my dear Gottlieb. Is it Jacob Boehme’s or your own?”
“It’s his, if one wants to understand it that way; it’s mine, if his inspiration didn’t suggest it to me.”
“Fine, Gottlieb! I’m no further along than before, since I still don’t know if these Invisibles are my good or bad angels.”
May 12th.—The wonders have indeed begun, and my destiny is churning in the hands of the Invisibles. Like Gottlieb I’ll ask, “Are they from God or the devil?” Today Gottlieb was called over by the sentry who guards the esplanade and is assigned to the little bastion at the end of it. This sentry, according to Gottlieb, is none other than an Invisible, a spirit. The proof of this is that he knows all the sentries and gladly chats with them when they fool around and order shoes from him, but he’s never seen this one before; plus, this sentry seemed to be of superhuman stature, and the expression on his face defied definition. “Gottlieb,” he said in a very low voice, “Porporina must be delivered three nights from now. It depends on you, you can get the keys for her room from under your mother’s pillow, take her through the kitchen, and bring her here, to the end of the esplanade. I’ll take care of the rest. Warn her so that she’ll keep herself ready; and remember, if you’re not sufficiently careful and zealous, we’re done for, all three of us.”
That’s where things stand now. This news has made me sick with emotion. All night long I ran a fever; all night long I heard the fantastic violin. Escaping! Getting out of this dreary prison! Above all, getting away from the terror this Mayer stirs up in me! Oh, if that means risking my life alone, I’m ready, but what will be the consequences for Gottlieb, for this sentry, a stranger to me, who is sacrificing himself so unselfishly, and finally for these unknown accomplices who are about to assume a new burden? I tremble, I hesitate, I’m wavering. Here I am writing to you again without giving a thought to preparing my escape. No, I won’t run away unless I’m reassured about the fate of my friends and protectors. There is nothing that daunts Gottlieb’s resolve. When I ask if he’s not afraid of anything, he tells me that he’d gladly give his life for me; and when I add that he may miss seeing me, he replies that this is his business, that I have no idea what he intends to do. Besides, all this seems to him a divine injunction, and he unthinkingly obeys the unknown power that drives him on. I, on the other hand, I read over and over the note I received a few days ago from the Invisibles, and I fear that the sentry’s words may in fact be the trap that I’ve been warned about. I’ve still got forty-eight hours. If Mayer shows up again, I’ll risk everything; if he keeps on ignoring me, and if I have no better guarantee than a stranger’s tip, I’ll stay.