by George Sand
Consuelo put the letter in a book that she deposited in the garden at the appointed spot. Then she slowly walked away and hid for a long while in the foliage, hoping to catch a glimpse of the chevalier and trembling to have left there the confession of her innermost feelings, which could fall into the wrong hands. Yet, seeing the hours go by without anyone appearing and remembering these words from the stranger’s letter, “I’ll fetch your reply while you’re sleeping,” she decided that she ought to comply with his instructions in every respect and withdrew into her apartment. There, after a thousand restless musings, painful and delectable by turns, she finally fell asleep to the faint reverberation of the dance music starting up again, the fanfares sounding over supper and the faraway rumble of carriages announcing at dawn the departure of the many guests from the manor.
At precisely nine o’clock the recluse entered the room where she took her meals, always served with painstaking punctuality and an elegance worthy of the premises. Matteus, in keeping with the respectfully phlegmatic mien that was his custom, stood behind her chair. Consuelo had just gone down to the garden. The chevalier had come for her letter, for it was no longer in the book. Yet Consuelo had been hoping to find a new letter from him, and she was already accusing him of going lukewarm on their correspondence. She felt anxious, excited, and a bit exasperated by the immobility of the life that they seemed bent on forcing upon her. So she decided to stir things up a bit to see if she could speed up the course of the events slowly being prepared around her. It so happened that this very day, for the first time, Matteus was gloomy and tight-lipped.
“Master Matteus,” she said with forced gaiety, “I can see through your mask that you’ve got circles under your eyes and a tired complexion; you hardly slept a wink last night.”
“Madame does me too much honor to wish to taunt me,” replied Matteus a bit sourly. “Yet since Madame has the pleasure of living without a mask, it is easier for me to see that she is ascribing to me the fatigue and insomnia she herself suffered last night.”
“Your talking mirrors have already informed me of that, Monsieur Matteus. I know it’s made me awfully ugly, and things are bound to get even worse if boredom keeps eating away at me.”
“Madame is bored?” replied Matteus in the same tone he would have used to ask, “Madame rang?”
“Yes, Matteus, tremendously bored, and I’m starting to find it intolerable being shut away like this. As I’ve received neither a letter nor a visit, I presume they’ve forgotten about me here; and since you’re the only one kind enough not to do the same, I think I’m entitled to tell you that I’m beginning to find my situation perplexing and bizarre.”
“I cannot permit myself to judge Madame’s situation,” Matteus replied. “Yet it seemed to me that not long ago Madame received a visit and a letter?”
“Who told you such a thing, Master Matteus?” exclaimed Consuelo, blushing.
“That I would say,” he replied in an ironically unctuous tone, “were I not afraid of offending Madame and boring her with my chatter.”
“Were you my servant, Master Matteus, I don’t know what grand airs I could put on with you, but as I’ve scarcely had any servant aside from myself up till now, and as you moreover seem to be my jailer here more so than my butler, I beg you to chat, if you are so inclined, as much as you have on other days. You’re too witty this morning to bore me.”
“That’s because Madame is too bored to be prickly just now. So I’ll tell Madame that there was a grand gala last night at the castle.”
“I know. I heard the fireworks and the music.”
“Well then, a person who has been kept under close watch here since Madame’s arrival thought he could take advantage of the bustle and noise to slip into the restricted area of the grounds, defying the strictest prohibitions against trespassing. That led to an unfortunate event. . . . But I fear distressing Madame by telling her about it.”
“I think now that distress is preferable to boredom and anxiety. Be quick about it, Monsieur Matteus.”
“Well, Madame, this morning I saw being led off to prison the most amiable and youthful, the most handsome, courageous, generous, and witty, the greatest of all my masters, Chevalier Liverani.”
“Liverani? Who is Liverani?” exclaimed Consuelo, gripped with emotion. “He’s in prison, the chevalier? Tell me! Oh, my God, who is this chevalier, who is this Liverani?”
“I’ve told Madame quite enough about him. I don’t know if she knows him a little or a lot, but this much is certain, he’s been taken to the great tower for speaking and writing to Madame as well as refusing to divulge to His Highness Madame’s reply to him.”
“The great tower. . . . His Highness. . . . Do you mean everything you’re saying, Matteus? Am I here under the domination of a sovereign prince who is holding me as a prisoner of state, who punishes his subjects for showing me the slightest interest or pity? Or am I being tricked by some rich lord with bizarre ideas, who is trying to give me a scare to test my gratitude for services rendered?”
“It’s not forbidden for me to tell Madame that her host is a very wealthy prince, a man of intelligence, and a great philosopher. . . .”
“As well as the supreme head of the Council of the Invisibles?”
“I don’t know what Madame means by that,” replied Matteus with utter indifference. “In the list of His Highness’s titles and offices I’ve never seen any such mention.”
“But won’t I be allowed to see this prince, to throw myself at his feet, to request that he release this Chevalier Liverani, who is, I can swear to it, innocent of any indiscretion?”
“I have no idea, and I think it will at least be very difficult. Yet every evening, for a few seconds, I see His Highness to give an account of Madame’s health and activities. If Madame were to write a note, perhaps I could manage to have it read without it going through the secretaries.”
“Dear Monsieur Matteus, you are the soul of kindness, and I’m sure that you must enjoy the prince’s trust. Yes, of course, I’ll write, since you’re generous enough to take an interest in the chevalier.”
“It is true that I take a greater interest in him than in anyone else. He risked his own life to rescue me from a fire. He took care of me, healed my burns, and replaced the possessions I lost. He spent nights watching over me, as if he were my servant and I his master. He wrested one of my nieces from a life of vice and, with his good words and generous help, made an honest woman out of her. What good things he has done in this entire land and all over Europe, from what I hear! He is the finest young man in the world, and His Highness loves him like a father.”
“Yet His Highness puts him in prison for a slight misdeed?”
“Oh! Madame does not know that no misdeed is slight in the eyes of His Highness when it’s a matter of indiscretion.”
“So the prince is quite absolute?”
“Admirably just, but terribly severe.”
“But how can I play a part in the prince’s concerns and his council’s decisions?”
“That I do not know, as Madame can well imagine. There is always a flurry of secrets in this castle, especially when the prince comes to stay for a few weeks, which doesn’t happen often. A poor servant such as myself who would permit himself to delve into such matters would not be tolerated long here; and as I’m the oldest member of the staff, Madame must understand that I am neither curious nor talkative, otherwise. . . .”
“I understand, Monsieur Matteus. But would it be indiscreet of me to ask if the chevalier is being subjected to a harsh regime in prison?”
“That must be the case, Madame. Although I know nothing about what goes on in the tower or the dungeons, I’ve seen more people go in than come out. I don’t know if there are exits into the forest. As far as I know, there isn’t one into the grounds.”
“You’re making me shudder, Matteus. Could it be that I’ve brought serious trouble down on the head of this worthy young man? Tell me, does the prince have
a cold or violent disposition? Are his decrees dictated by fits of pique or long, reasoned displeasure?”
“It is not seemly for me to enter into such details,” was Matteus’s chilly reply.
“Well then, tell me about the chevalier, at least. Is he the sort of man that asks for mercy and gets it, or the sort that withdraws into a haughty silence?”
“He is tender and mild, full of respect and submission for His Highness. But if Madame has confided some secret in him, she has nothing to fear. He would undergo torture rather than betray another’s secret, even to the ear of a confessor.”
“Well then, I myself shall reveal to His Highness this secret that he deems important enough to kindle his anger against a hapless creature. Oh, my good Matteus, can’t you take my letter right away?”
“That’s impossible before night, Madame.”
“All the same, I’m going to write it now. An unexpected occasion may arise.”
Consuelo went into her study and wrote to ask the nameless prince for an interview in which she pledged to answer frankly all the questions he might deign to ask her.
At midnight Matteus brought her back this sealed reply:
“If it is to the prince that you wish to speak, your request is insane. Never will you see him, meet him, or learn his name.—If you wish to appear before the Council of the Invisibles, you will be heard, but carefully consider the consequences of your resolution; it will determine the course of your life as well as that of another.”
Chapter XXVI
It was necessary to wait another twenty-four hours after receiving that letter. Matteus declared that he would rather cut off one of his hands than ask to see the prince after midnight. At breakfast the next morning he appeared even a bit more expansive than the day before, and it seemed to Consuelo that the chevalier’s imprisonment had soured him on the prince to such a point that for the first time in his life he had quite an itch to be indiscreet. Yet, after having let him prattle on for over an hour, she saw that she was no further along than before. Whether he had feigned simplicity in order to study Consuelo’s thoughts and feelings, or whether he knew nothing about the Invisibles and his master’s role in their activities, Consuelo was left floating in a strange muddle of contradictory notions. With regard to the prince’s position in society, Matteus had entrenched himself behind the impossibility of breaking the strict silence imposed upon him. He shrugged his shoulders, it is true, at the mention of that bizarre injunction. He confessed not to understand why it was necessary to wear a mask in order to communicate with the individuals who arrived one after the other at various intervals and for retreats of various length in the lodge. He could not help saying that his master had inexplicable whims and devoted himself to incomprehensible labors, but all curiosity as well as all indiscretion were paralyzed in him by the fear of terrible punishment, the nature of which he did not explain. In short, Consuelo learned nothing, except that there were strange goings-on at the castle, that people there hardly slept at night, that all the servants had seen ghosts, that Matteus himself, who maintained that he was fearless and free-thinking, had often encountered on the grounds in winter, when the prince was away and the castle deserted, shapes that made him shudder, that had got in there he knew not how and left the same way. All this did not shed much light on Consuelo’s situation. She had to resign herself to waiting till evening to send this new petition: “Whatever may be the consequences for me, I earnestly and humbly ask to appear before the Tribunal of the Invisibles.”
The day seemed mortally long to her. She did her best to overcome her impatience and anxiety by singing everything that she had composed in prison about the pain and tedium of solitude. As night was falling, she ended with Almirena’s sublime aria in Handel’s Rinaldo:
Lascia ch’io piango
La dura sorte,
E ch’io sospiri
La libertà.
She had scarcely finished when a violin of extraordinary resonance repeated from outside the admirable phrase she had just sung, its expression just as sorrowful and deep as her own. Consuelo ran to the window, but saw no one, and the phrase died away in the distance. The instrument as well as the way it was played were remarkable, and it seemed to her that they could only belong to Count Albert; but she soon chased away that thought, considering it another one of those painful, dangerous illusions from which she had already suffered so much. She had never heard Albert play a single phrase of modern music, and only a crackpot would persist in evoking a ghost every time a violin was heard. Yet this feeling troubled Consuelo and threw her into such deep, dismal reveries that it was nine in the evening before she noticed that Matteus had brought her no lunch or supper and that she had had nothing to eat since morning. This made her fear that Matteus, like the chevalier, had become a victim of the interest he had shown her. No doubt the walls had eyes and ears. Perhaps Matteus had said too much; he had grumbled a bit about Liverani’s disappearance; that was probably enough for them to make him share the same fate.
These new anxieties prevented Consuelo from feeling how hungry she was. Yet it was getting later and later, and still there was no sign of Matteus; she ventured to ring for him. Nobody came. She was feeling very weak and, above all, very bewildered. Leaning on the window sill, her head in her hands, she was reviewing in her mind, already a bit addled by pangs of hunger, the strange events of her life, and wondering if she was remembering something real or a long dream. Just then a hand cold as marble bore down on her head, and a low, deep voice uttered these words, “Your request has been granted, follow me.”
Being able to discern things clearly in the twilight up to that moment, Consuelo had not yet thought to light any candles, and she tried to get a look at the person who had spoken these words to her. All of a sudden she was in thick darkness as if the air had become solid and the starry sky a leaden vault. She lifted a hand to her smothered brow and recognized a hood as light and impenetrable as the one that Cagliostro had once thrown over her head without her feeling it. An invisible hand swept her down the stairs of the lodge, but she soon realized that there were more steps than in the lodge, and they led down into subterranean passages where she marched for nearly half an hour. Fatigue, hunger, inner commotion, and oppressive heat made her go slower and slower. Ready to faint at every moment, she was tempted to beg for mercy. Yet a certain pride made her cringe at the idea of apparently going back on her resolve, so she bravely struggled on. At last she reached the end of her journey and was given a chair. At that moment she heard a lugubrious tone, like that of a gong, slowly tolling the midnight hour, and at the twelfth stroke the hood was lifted from her brow bathed in sweat.
Initially, she was dazzled by the brilliant lights. Clustered opposite her, they formed a thick cross blazing on the wall. When her eyes had adjusted, she saw that she was in a great hall in Gothic style whose vaulted ceiling, divided into flattened arches, resembled that of a deep dungeon or underground chapel. At the far end of the chamber, truly sinister in its aspect and lighting, she made out seven figures in red cloaks with ghastly white masks that made them look like corpses. They were seated behind a long black marble table. In front of the table, down a level, there also sat an eighth specter dressed in black with a white mask. Against the walls on both sides there stood in total silence some twenty-odd men in black cloaks and masks. Consuelo turned around and saw more black ghosts behind her. Two more were standing at each door, with broad, gleaming swords in their hands.
In other circumstances, Consuelo might have told herself that this lugubrious ceremonial was only a game, one of those Masonic ordeals she had heard about in Berlin. But aside from the fact that Freemasons did not appoint themselves as judges and assume the right to summon non-initiates to appear before their secret assemblies, she was inclined, because of everything leading up to this, to consider it serious, even frightening. She saw that she was visibly trembling, and had the assembly not kept utterly silent for five minutes, she would have lacked the strength to
pull herself together and prepare to answer.
Finally, the eighth judge rose and gestured to the two ushers standing with drawn swords on either side of Consuelo to bring her up to the foot of the tribunal, where she remained standing in a somewhat affected posture of calm and courage.