The Countess von Rudolstadt

by George Sand

  “Once again he’s right,” said Karl, who, despite his rough exterior, understood the mysteries of love (he had loved!). “You’ll take better care of him. I’ll go get the flask. Look here, Signora,” he added in a low voice, “I really think that if you had some feelings for him and were kind enough to tell him, he wouldn’t let himself die. Without that, I won’t vouch for a thing.”

  Karl went away with a smile. He did not altogether share Consuelo’s alarm; it was clear to him that the chevalier’s gasps and wheezes were already less labored. But Consuelo was terrified. Thinking that she was witnessing the generous man’s last moments, she wrapped her arms around him and brushed kisses all over the top of his broad forehead, the only part of his face that the mask left exposed.

  “Oh my God,” she said, “take it off; I won’t look at you, I’ll go away; at least you’ll be able to breathe.”

  The stranger took Consuelo’s hands and placed them on his heaving chest, as much to feel their gentle warmth as to rid her of the desire to help him by uncovering his face. At that moment her entire soul was in that chaste embrace. She remembered what Karl had said to her, half joking, half deeply moved.

  “Don’t die,” she said to the stranger. “Oh, don’t let yourself die. Don’t you feel that I love you?”

  No sooner had she said these words than she thought that they had been uttered in a dream. But they had escaped her lips, as though against her will. The chevalier had heard them. He struggled up, got to his knees, and embraced those of Consuelo, who burst into tears without knowing why.

  Karl returned with his flask. The chevalier rejected the deserter’s favorite remedy. Leaning on Karl, he made his way to the carriage where Consuelo sat down beside him. She was very worried about his catching a chill from his wet clothing.

  “Have no fear, Signora,” said Karl. “The chevalier hasn’t had time to get cold. I’m going to put my cloak around him. I stowed it in the carriage when I saw the rain coming on, for I suspected that one of you would get wet. If you put dry, thick wraps over wet clothes, you can keep warm for quite a while. It’s like being in a lukewarm bath, and it’s doesn’t do one any harm.”

  “But Karl, do the same thing,” said Consuelo. “Take my mantelet, for you got wet to protect us.”

  “Oh well, I’ve got thicker skin than the two of you. Put the mantelet around the chevalier, too. Bundle him up well, and even if it means finishing off this poor horse, I’ll get you to the next relay without going numb with cold.”

  For an hour Consuelo kept her arms wrapped around the stranger; and her head, which he had drawn down to his breast, restored his vital heat better than all of Karl’s prescriptions and recipes. Sometimes she felt his forehead and warmed it with her breath so that the perspiration gathered there would not grow cold. When the carriage came to a halt, he pressed her against his heart with a strength that let her know that he was to the fullest measure alive and happy. Then he dashed out of the carriage and disappeared.

  Consuelo found herself in some sort of shed, face to face with an elderly servant who was more or less a peasant. Holding a dark lantern, he led her over a hedge-lined path alongside a modest-looking house to a lodge. He stayed outside while showing her in, then shut the door behind her. Seeing another door standing open, she entered a little two-room apartment, very clean and simple: a well-heated bedroom with a good bed all made-up, and another room lit with candles where a cozy supper was laid out. She was disappointed to see only one place setting; and when Karl arrived with her parcels and offered to serve her at table, she dared not say that her protector’s company at supper was her only wish.

  “Go eat and sleep yourself, my good Karl,” she said. “I don’t need a thing. You’ve got to be more worn out than I am.”

  “No more than if I’d just said my prayers beside the fire with my poor wife, God rest her soul! Oh, this time when I saw that I was once again out of Prussia I kissed the earth, even though I truly don’t know if we’re in Saxony, Bohemia, Poland, or in China, as we used to say back at Count Hoditz’s estate in Roswald.”

  “And how can it be, Karl, that up in the driver’s seat you didn’t recognize a single place we passed through today?”

  “Apparently I’ve never taken this route, Signora. And then, I don’t know how to read what is written on the walls and signposts. Plus, we didn’t stop in any town or village. All our relays have been in the woods or the courtyard of some private house. Finally, reason number four, I gave the chevalier my word of honor not to tell you, Signora.”

  “That’s where you should have started, Karl; I wouldn’t have made any objections. But tell me, does the chevalier seem ill to you?”

  “Not at all, Signora. He comes and goes in the house, where he really does not seem to have much important business, for the only other person I see is an old gardener who doesn’t talk much.”

  “So go offer him your services, Karl. Run along and let me be.”

  “What am I to do? He refused them, ordering me to look after you alone.”

  “Well then, look after yourself, my friend, and have pleasant dreams about your freedom.”

  Consuelo went to bed at the first light of dawn, and when she was up and dressed, her watch said two. The day looked clear and sunny. She tried to open the shutters, but in both rooms she found that they were fastened with a secret lock, like those in the post chaise in which she had been traveling. She tried to go out; the doors were bolted shut from the outside. She returned to the window and made out a modest orchard in the foreground. Nothing suggested a town or highway nearby. There was total silence inside the house, and outside it was broken only by buzzing insects, pigeons cooing on the roof, and every now and then the plaintive creaking of a wheelbarrow in paths that her eyes could not see. She listened mechanically to these sounds that were sweet to her ear, so long deprived of the echoes of country life. Consuelo was still a prisoner, and all the care taken to keep that from her made her rather worried. But for a while she would resign herself to a captivity that hardly seemed cruel, and the chevalier’s love did not cause her the same horror as Mayer’s.

  Although faithful Karl had told her to ring as soon as she was up, she did not want to bother him, considering that he needed his rest more than she. She especially feared waking up her other traveling companion, whose fatigue had to be extreme. She went into the other room, and on the table where supper had been served the evening before and cleared away without her noticing she found heaps of books and writing paraphernalia.

  The books did not tempt her much. She was too restless to read. Since in the midst of her perplexities she took irresistible pleasure in retracing the events of the previous night, she made no effort to take her mind off them. Little by little, given that she was still being kept in solitary confinement, it came to her to continue her diary, and as a preamble she wrote this page on a loose sheet of paper.

  “Dear Beppo, it’s for you alone that I’ll go on with the tale of my strange adventures. Since I’m used to talking to you with the expansiveness inspired by the closeness of our ages and the kinship of our ideas, I can share with you emotions that my other friends wouldn’t understand, that they would no doubt judge more harshly than you. You can guess from this beginning that I don’t feel that I’ve done nothing wrong; in my own eyes I have done something wrong, even though I still have no idea what the significance and consequences of that may be.

  “Joseph, before I tell you how I escaped from Spandau (which, in truth, seems to me almost nothing in comparison with what is on my mind just now), I have to tell you . . . how to tell you? . . . I myself don’t know. Was it a dream? Yet I feel my head burning and my heart tossing as though it wanted to leap out of me and lose itself in another soul. . . . Well, I’ll tell you very simply, because everything is in this word, my dear friend, my good chum: I’m in love!

  “I love a man whom I don’t know, whose face I haven’t seen, whose voice I haven’t heard. You’re going to say that this is ma
dness, and you’re quite right: Isn’t love serious madness? Listen, Joseph, and don’t doubt my happiness which surpasses all the illusions of my first love in Venice, a happiness so intoxicating that I can’t feel shame about having accepted it so hastily, so madly, nor can I fear that I may have misplaced my affection, or even that my love won’t be requited. . . . Oh! I am loved, I feel it so clearly! . . . You can be sure that I’m not wrong, that this time I’m truly in love, dare I say passionately? Why not? Love comes to us from God. It’s not up to us to light it in our hearts as we would light a candle on the altar. All the efforts I made to love Albert (whose name I can’t write anymore without trembling!) didn’t manage to kindle that ardent, sacred flame; since I’ve lost him, I’ve loved the memory of him more than I ever loved the person. Who knows how I might love him if he were given back to me? . . .”

  No sooner had Consuelo written these last words than she rubbed them out, perhaps not well enough to prevent someone from still being able to read them, but well enough to elude the fear of having thought them. She was all aflutter, and her innermost depths betrayed, despite herself, the truth of her amorous inspiration. In vain she strove to go on writing so as better to explain to herself the mystery of her own heart. To render its subtle nuance she found nothing but these terrifying words, “Who knows how I might love Albert if he were given back to me?”

  Consuelo did not know how to lie; she had thought herself in love with the memory of a dead man; but she felt her bosom brimming with life, and a real passion annihilating an imaginary one.

  To get herself out of this inner turmoil she tried to reread everything that she had written and found precisely nothing but turmoil. Having lost all hope of being able to enjoy enough composure to sum up her thoughts, feeling that this effort was bringing on a fever, she crumpled up the sheet and threw it on the table until there came an opportunity to burn it. Trembling like a soul wracked with guilt, her face on fire, she paced around wildly, not understanding anything any longer except that she was in love and that it was not up to her to doubt it.

  There was a knock on her bedroom door, and she went to let Karl in. His face was flushed, his eyes bleary, and his jowls a bit slack. She thought he was sick with exhaustion, but soon she understood from his replies that he had indulged a bit too much in the wine or beer of welcome the morning of their arrival. This was poor Karl’s only failing. A certain dose made him overly confident; a stronger one could make him terrifying. Fortunately, he had limited himself to the dose of expansiveness and good will, and he was still feeling a few of the effects, even after having slept all day. He was crazy about the chevalier and could speak of nothing else. The chevalier was so kind, so humane, hardly proud with humble folks! He had sat Karl down facing him rather than letting Karl serve him at table; he had forced Karl to share his meal and poured him the best wine, clinking glasses at every refill, and keeping up with him like a true Slav.

  “What a pity he’s only Italian!” said Karl. “He deserves to be Bohemian; he holds his wine as well as I do.”

  “That may not be saying much,” replied Consuelo, none too pleased about the chevalier’s great aptitude for drinking with footmen.

  But she immediately upbraided herself for having been capable of considering Karl, after all he done for her, inferior to her or her friends. Besides, the chevalier had no doubt sought out the company of this devoted servant to hear someone talk about her.

  “Oh, Signora,” he naively added, “this worthy young man is madly in love with you. For you he’d commit crimes, even despicable deeds!”

  “I’d certainly spare him that,” said Consuelo, who disliked this language, even though Karl no doubt failed to measure its impact. “Could you explain to me,” she asked, to change the subject, “why I am kept so carefully under lock and key here?”

  “Oh! Signora, if I knew that, they’d have to cut out my tongue before I’d say so. I gave the chevalier my word of honor not to answer any of your questions.”

  “Many thanks, Karl! So you love the chevalier much more than you do me?”

  “Oh, never! That’s not what I’m saying. But since he’s proven to me that it’s for your own good, I must serve you despite yourself.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “I’ve got no idea; but I’m sure of it. He ordered me as well, Signora, to keep you shut away, under surveillance, in short, a prisoner in solitary confinement until we arrive.”

  “So we’re not staying here?”

  “We’re leaving again as soon as it’s dark. We won’t be traveling by day any longer, to spare you fatigue, and for other reasons that I don’t know.”

  “And you’re going to be my jailer the whole time?”

  “As you say, Signora. I swore it on the Gospel.”

  “Come on now! The chevalier is playing a joke. I’ll make the best of it, Karl. I’d rather deal with you than Herr Schwartz.”

  “And I’ll keep you a bit better,” replied Karl, with a jolly laugh. “For starters, I’m going to fix your dinner, Signora.”

  “I’m not hungry, Karl.”

  “Oh, that’s impossible. You’ve got to have dinner, and a good dinner, Signora. Those are my orders, as Master Schwartz used to say.”

  “If you do exactly as he did, you won’t force me to eat. He was delighted to charge me again the next day for the meal that he’d conscientiously put back in the larder.”

  “That was good for his business. With me it’s different. The chevalier takes care of the business end of things. He’s not stingy, that one; he’s spending money hand over fist. He must be awfully rich, or his inheritance won’t last long.”

  Consuelo had him bring her a candle, then went into the next room to burn what she had written. But she looked for it in vain; the sheet was nowhere to be found.

  Chapter XXIII

  A few seconds later Karl came back with a letter written in a hand that was unfamiliar to Consuelo. This is more or less what it said:

  “I’m leaving, perhaps never to see you again. I’m giving up three days that I still could have spent with you, three days that I may never see again my whole life long! I do so willingly. I must. One day you’ll appreciate the saintliness of my sacrifice.

  “Yes, I love you, I too love you passionately! Yet I know you scarcely more than you know me. You don’t owe me any thanks for what I’ve done for you. I was obeying the highest orders, fulfilling the duties of my charge. Hold me to account merely for the love that I have for you, that I can prove to you only by going away. This love is as violent as it is respectful. It will be as lasting as it was sudden and impulsive. I’ve hardly seen your face, I know nothing of your life, but I felt that my soul belonged to you, that I could never take it back. Were your past as sullied as your brow is pure, I would hold you no less worthy of respect and no less dear. I leave, my heart brimming with pride, joy, and bitterness. You love me! How shall I bear the idea of losing you if the dreadful will that disposes of your life and mine condemns me to that? . . . I do not know. Just now I cannot be unhappy, despite my terror. I’m too drunk on love, yours and mine, to feel any pain. Were I to spend my whole life searching in vain for you, I shall not lament having met you, having tasted in your kiss a happiness that will leave me eternal regrets. Nor shall I lose hope of finding you again one day; were it only for a second, were I never to know any other expression of your love than this saintly kiss given and returned, I’ll still find myself a hundred times happier than I had been before knowing you.

  “And now, saintly girl, poor troubled soul, you too must remember without shame or fear those brief, divine moments in which you felt my love entering your heart. As you said, love comes to us from God, and it is not up to us to smother love or kindle it despite itself. Were I unworthy of you, that sudden inspiration that made you respond to my embrace would be no less celestial. But the Providence that is watching over you would not have the treasure of your love fall into the mire of a cold, egotistical heart. Were I ungratef
ul, there would merely be on your part a noble instinct gone astray, a saintly inspiration spent and lost. I adore you, and whatever else I may be, it was no delusion when you thought yourself loved. You have not been profaned by the beating of my heart, the press of my arm, the breath from my lips. Our mutual confidence, blind faith, and irresistible impulse raised us up in a second to the sublime abandon sanctified by long passion. Why regret it? I realize that there’s something frightening in this destiny that has thrust us together. But it’s the hand of God, don’t you see? That we cannot fail to recognize. I’m carrying this awful secret away with me. You keep it too; don’t entrust it to anyone. Beppo might not understand. Whoever that friend may be, I’m the only one who can respect you in your madness and revere you in your weakness, since that madness and that weakness are mine. Adieu! Perhaps forever. Yet I am free in the eyes of the world; it seems to me that you are, too. I can love no one but you, and it’s clear to me that you love no one else. . . . But our fate is no longer in our hands. I am bound by eternal vows, as you too will no doubt soon be. At least, the Invisibles have you in their power, and that power is without appeal. Therefore adieu. . . . my breast is being rent asunder, but God will give me the strength to accomplish this sacrifice, and even more exacting ones if there be. Adieu. . . . Adieu! O great God, have pity on me!”

  The unsigned letter was written in a labored or disguised hand.

  “Karl!” exclaimed Consuelo, pale and trembling. “Wasn’t it the chevalier who gave you this?”

  “Yes, Signora.”

  “And he wrote it himself?”

  “Yes, Signora, which wasn’t easy. He’s got a wound on his right hand.”

  “A wound, Karl? A bad one?”

  “Maybe. It’s deep, even though he hardly seems to give it a thought.”

  “But where did he get it?”

  “Last night, while we were changing horses before reaching the border, the wheel horse tried to bolt before the postilion had mounted the lead. You were alone in the carriage; the postilion and I were four or five steps away. The chevalier held the horse with the strength of a demon and the courage of a lion, for it was a terrifying animal!”