by George Sand
For a second Consuelo thought it her duty to shut the doctor absolutely up so as not to become an accessory to his treason, but she also thought to herself that a man so devoted to the Invisibles that he would undertake to half-poison people to bring them, without their knowledge, to this castle could not be acting as he was without having been secretly authorized to do so. “This is a trap they’re setting for me,” she said to herself, “the first in a series of tests. Well then, let’s observe the attack.”
“So I must tell you, Madame,” said the doctor, “where you are and in whose house.”
“There we are,” Consuelo said to herself, then hastened to reply, “Thank you very much, Doctor, I didn’t ask for that information, and I don’t wish to know.”
“Tut, tut, tut!” Supperville retorted. “You’ve fallen straight into the romantic vein into which the prince likes to drag all his friends. But don’t take this nonsense seriously. At the least you’d go mad and swell his retinue of madmen and visionaries. For my part, I don’t intend to break my promise to him not to tell you either his name or the name of this place. Besides, that’s the last thing you should be thinking about, for it would only satisfy your curiosity, and that’s not the malady I mean to treat in you, which is, on the contrary, excessive confidence. So you can learn, without disobeying him and risking his displeasure (I am interested in not betraying you), that your host is the best and most absurd of old men. A man of intellect, a philosopher, a soul courageous and tender to the point of heroism, of insanity. A dreamer who treats the ideal as though it were something real, life as though it were a novel. A scholar who, by poring over the writings of wise men and seeking the quintessence of ideas, has come, like Don Quixote after reading all his books about chivalry, to take inns for castles, convicts for innocent victims, and windmills for monsters. In short, a saint, if one considers only the beauty of his intentions, a madman if one weighs the results. He has imagined, among other things, a network of permanent and universal conspiracy to entrap and paralyze the action of evildoers throughout the world: 1st to combat and thwart the tyranny of those who govern; 2nd to reform the immorality or barbarism of the laws that rule society; 3rd to pour enthusiasm for his propaganda and zeal for his doctrine into the hearts of all men of courage and dedication. Just that and nothing more? And he thinks he’ll manage! If only he were assisted by a few sincere, reasonable men, the bit of good he succeeds in doing could bear some fruit! But unfortunately he is surrounded by a gang of schemers and bold impostors who pretend to share his faith and serve his projects, who use his credit to corner good positions in every court in Europe, not without getting their hands on the better part of the money destined to his good works. That’s the man and his entourage. It’s for you to judge in what hands you find yourself, and whether this generous protection that fortunately snatched you out of the clutches of little Fritz doesn’t risk making you fall into something worse, all for wishing to lift you up into clouds. Now you’ve been warned. Beware of the fine promises and beautiful speeches, the tragic scenes and sleights of hand of men like Cagliostro, Saint-Germain, and associates.”
“Are those last two here right now?” asked Consuelo, a bit unsettled. She was also floating between the danger of being tricked by the doctor and the plausibility of his assertions.
“I have no idea,” he replied. “Everything that goes on here is mysterious. There are two castles: one plain to the eyes and palpable, where one sees the arrival of fine ladies and gentlemen who suspect nothing at all, where there are festivities and all the trappings of a princely existence, frivolous, and inoffensive. This castle covers and conceals the other one, which is a little subterranean world rather cleverly disguised. It’s in the invisible castle that all the pipe dreams of His Highness are lucubrated. Innovators, reformers, inventors, sorcerers, prophets, alchemists, all architects of a new society ever ready, so they say, to swallow up the old one tomorrow or the day after. They are the mysterious guests that are welcomed, put up, and consulted without anybody knowing a thing about it at ground level, or at least without any one of the profane being able to explain the noises coming from down below, aside from there being goblins and pesky ghosts in the foundations. Now, draw your conclusion. The aforesaid charlatans may be a hundred leagues away from here, for they are by nature great travelers, or a hundred feet from us, in good rooms with secret doors and false floors. It is said that this old castle used to be a meeting place for Free-Judges, and that since then, because of certain hereditary traditions, the ancestors of our prince have always amused themselves by hatching dreadful plots which, to my knowledge, have never amounted to anything. It’s an old custom around here, and even the finest minds go in for it quite a lot. As for me, I haven’t been initiated into the wonders of the invisible castle. Every now and then I spend a few days here when my sovereign, Princess Sophie of Prussia, Margravine of Bayreuth, lets me go for a breath of air outside of her realm. Now, given that I’m tremendously bored at the delightful court of Bayreuth, that at bottom I’m fond of the prince of whom we speak, that I’m not sorry to play a little trick every now and then on the Great Frederick whom I detest, I render the aforesaid prince a few disinterested services, which amuse me first and foremost. As I take orders only from him, these services are always very innocent. I found nothing loathsome about the orders to help get you out of Spandau and bring you here like a poor sleeping dove. I knew that you would be well treated, and I thought that you would have a chance to have some fun. But if, on the contrary, you’re being tormented, if the quack counselors of His Highness are trying to get their grips on you and make you an instrument of their social schemes. . . .”
“I fear nothing of the sort,” replied Consuelo, more and more amazed by the doctor’s explanations. “I’ll manage to protect myself from their suggestions if they offend my principles and revolt my conscience.”
“Are you so sure, Countess?” asked Supperville. “Beware, and don’t pride yourself on anything. Very reasonable and honest people have come out of here half-cracked and all ready for mischief. The schemers exploiting the prince won’t stop at anything, and the dear prince is so easy to dazzle that he himself has had a hand in the destruction of a few good souls he thought he was saving. I’m telling you, these schemers are very clever, they’ve got secret ways to frighten and persuade, to excite the emotions, intoxicate the senses and impress the imagination. First, steady pestering and a multitude of incomprehensible little ploys, followed by formulas, methods, and weird tricks at their disposal. They’ll send you ghosts, make you undergo fasts to addle your wits, beleaguer you with lovely or terrifying phantasmagoria. In a word, they’ll make you superstitious, perhaps they’ll make you go mad, as I had the honor of telling you, and then. . . .”
“And then? What can they expect to get out of me? What am I in the world that they would feel a need to snare me?”
“Indeed! The Countess von Rudolstadt has no idea?”
“None at all, sir.”
“Yet you must remember that Cagliostro showed you the late Count Albert, your husband, alive and busy.”
“How do you know that, if you are not initiated into the mysteries of the subterranean world you’ve just mentioned?”
“You said as much to Amalia of Prussia, who is something of a gossip, like all curious people. Are you not aware, moreover, that she is very thick with Count von Rudolstadt’s ghost?”
“A certain Trismegistus, from what I’ve heard!”
“Precisely. I’ve seen this Trismegistus, and it’s true that he bears a surprising resemblance to the count at first glance. It can be made even stronger by coiffing and dressing him as the count used to do, giving him a deathly pale face, and making him study the bearing and manner of the deceased. Now do you understand?”
“Less than ever. What would be the point in making this man pass for Count Albert?”
“How simple and honest you are! Count Albert died, leaving a great fortune which, without any male heirs
, is going to pass from the hands of Canoness Wenceslawa into those of little Baroness Amalia, Count Albert’s cousin, unless you assert your rights to a dower or to the use and enjoyment of the estate for as long as you shall live. First, they’ll try to make you decide to do that. . . .”
“That’s true,” exclaimed Consuelo. “You’re enlightening me as to the meaning of certain words.”
“This is nothing so far. This life-time usufruct, very contestable, at least in part, won’t satisfy the appetite of the crooks who want you in their clutches. You are childless; you need a husband. Well then, Count Albert is not dead; he had fallen into a state of catalepsy and was buried alive; the devil got him out of there; Cagliostro gave him a potion; Saint-Germain took him away. In short, after a year or two he shows back up, recounts his adventures, throws himself at your feet, consummates his marriage to you, heads off to the Castle of the Giants, has himself recognized by the old canoness and a few elderly servants who don’t see too well, brings about an enquiry if there are objections and pays off the witnesses. He even travels to Vienna with his faithful wife to reclaim his rights at the court of the empress. A little bit of scandal doesn’t hurt this kind of business. All the fine ladies are interested in a handsome man, the victim of a sinister adventure, of a silly, ignorant doctor as well. Prince von Kaunitz, who doesn’t dislike female singers, takes you under his wing; your cause prevails; you make a triumphant return to Riesenburg and show your cousin Amalia the door; you are rich and powerful; you join together with the prince here and his charlatans to reform society and change the face of the world. That’s all very nice, and it only costs you a bit of self-deception to replace an illustrious husband with a smart, handsome adventurer who is a great fortune-teller to boot. Now do you understand? Think it over. It was my duty as a doctor, as a friend of the Rudolstadt family, and a man of honor to tell you all this. They had counted on me to ascertain, if need be, that Trismegistus was Count Albert. But I who saw him die, not with the eyes of imagination, but with those of science, I who have very clearly observed certain differences between the two, and who know that in Berlin people have long been familiar with this adventurer, I will not lend myself to such a hoax. No thank you! I know that you wouldn’t either, but they’ll do everything to convince you that Count Albert has grown two inches taller and become fresh and pink in his coffin. I hear Matteus; he’s a good old dolt and doesn’t suspect a thing. As for me, I’ll go now, I’ve said my piece. I’m leaving the castle in an hour, as I’ve got nothing more to do here.”
After having gone on this way with remarkable volubility, the doctor replaced his mask, made a deep bow to Consuelo and left, letting her finish her supper all alone if she so desired. She was hardly so inclined. Upset and overwhelmed by everything that she had just heard, she withdrew to her bedroom and found a bit of rest only after suffering at length through the most painful perplexity and the most indeterminate anguish of doubt and disquiet.
Chapter XXVIII
The next day Consuelo felt shattered in mind and body. Supperville’s cynical revelations following fast upon the Invisibles’ fatherly encouragement was like being plunged into icy waters after basking in warmth. For a moment she had soared toward the heavens, then plummeted back to earth. She almost bore a grudge against the doctor for having disabused her, for in her dreams she had already taken to endowing with dazzling majesty this august tribunal that was reaching out to her like an adoptive family, a refuge from the dangers of the world and the errors of youth.
Yet the doctor seemed deserving of gratitude, and Consuelo acknowledged this without being able to entertain any such feeling for him. Wasn’t his behavior that of a sincere, courageous, and disinterested man? But Consuelo found him too skeptical, too much of a materialist, too inclined to despise good intentions and jeer at beautiful souls. Despite what he had said about the imprudent and dangerous credulity of the nameless prince, she still had an exalted idea of this noble old man who desired the good with the ardor of youth and enjoyed a child’s simple faith in human perfectibility. The words that they had spoken to her in that subterranean hall ran through her head again, and she found them full of serene authority and austere wisdom. Charity and goodness peered out from behind the threats and silences of a sham severity, ready to be cast aside at the slightest appeal from Consuelo’s heart. Would shifty, grasping charlatans have talked to her and treated her that way? Their valiant undertaking to reform the world, so ridiculous in the eyes of irreverent Supperville, responded to the eternal desire, the romantic hopes, the enthusiastic faith that Albert had inspired in his wife, that she had rediscovered with kindly sympathy in Gottlieb’s sick but generous mind. Wasn’t this Supperville odious to want to dissuade her from this, to take away her faith in God and at the same time her trust in the Invisibles?
Consuelo, much more inclined to the poetry of the soul than to the hard-boiled assessment of the sad realities of the here and now, wrestled with Supperville’s judgments and did her utmost to repudiate them. He who confessed not to have been initiated into the subterranean world and appeared ignorant of the very name and existence of the Council of the Invisibles, hadn’t he indulged in gratuitous assumptions? It was possible that Trismegistus was a crook, even though Princess Amalia asserted the contrary; plus, his friendship with Count Golowkin, the best and the wisest of the great men that Consuelo had met in Berlin, spoke in his favor. It was also conceivable that Cagliostro and Saint-Germain were frauds as well, even though they too could have been fooled by an extraordinary resemblance. But even if these three adventurers could be tarred with the same brush, it did not necessarily follow that they were members of the Council of the Invisibles, nor that this group of virtuous men would fail to reject their suggestions as soon as Consuelo herself had stated that Trismegistus was not Albert. Wouldn’t there still be time after this decisive test to take back her trust if they persisted in wanting to practice such gross deception on her? Until then Consuelo wanted to tempt fate and get to know better these Invisibles to whom she owed her freedom, whose paternal reproaches had touched her heart. She decided on the latter course, and while waiting to see how things turned out, she resolved to treat everything that Supperville had said as a test that he had been authorized to give her, or as a need to vent his spleen against rivals that enjoyed more respect and better treatment at the hands of the prince.
One last hypothesis tormented Consuelo more than all the others. Was it absolutely impossible that Albert was alive? Supperville had not observed the phenomena that over the course of two years had preceded his last illness. He had even refused to believe them, stubbornly holding to the view that the young count’s frequent retreats underground were for trysts with Consuelo. She alone, along with Zdenko, knew about his attacks of catalepsy. For reasons of pride, the doctor was unable to admit that he could have been wrong to certify Albert’s death. Now that Consuelo was aware of the existence and material strength of the Council of the Invisibles, she ventured to speculate in various and sundry ways about how they might have been able to wrest Albert from the horrors of premature burial and secretly give him refuge among them for unknown purposes. Everything that Supperville had told her about the castle’s mysteries and the prince’s eccentricities helped confirm this supposition. That an adventurer named Trismegistus bore such a resemblance to Albert might add a fantastic twist to the feat, but without destroying its possibility. This thought took such a hold on poor Consuelo that she fell into deep melancholy. If Albert were alive, she wouldn’t hesitate to go to him as soon as she could and devote herself to him for all eternity. Yet more than ever she felt that she was bound to suffer from a devotion in which love had no part. The chevalier arose in her imagination as a cause for bitter regret, in her conscience as a source of future remorse. If she had to give him up, newborn love would take the usual course of thwarted inclination and turn into passion. Consuelo did not ask herself with hypocritical resignation why dear Albert wanted to leave his cozy tomb. She told hers
elf that she was fated to sacrifice herself to him, perhaps even beyond the grave, and she wanted to fulfill that destiny right to the end. Yet she was suffering uncommonly and grieving over the stranger, her most involuntary, her most ardent love.
She was distracted from her meditations by a slight noise and the flick of a little wing on her shoulder. She gasped with surprise and joy seeing a pretty little robin fluttering around her room and approaching her without fear. After a moment of shyness he deigned to eat a fly out of her hand.
“Is it you, my poor friend, my faithful companion?” Consuelo asked with tears of childlike joy. “Could it be that you went searching and found me here? No, that’s not possible. You pretty, confident creature, you look like my friend, and you’re not him. You belong to some gardener, and you’ve escaped from the greenhouse where you spent the cold days among flowers that never lose their beauty. Come to me, you consoler of prisoners. Since the instinct of your kind draws you to solitary souls and captives, I want you to have all the affection I felt for your brother.”
Consuelo had been earnestly playing with the bird for a quarter of an hour when she heard a faint whistle outside that seemed to give the lovely, intelligent creature a start. He dropped the dainty little morsels that his new friend had been lavishing on him, hesitated a moment, flashed his big black eyes and suddenly decided to fly to the window, having no choice but to answer a second summons of irrecusable authority. Consuelo watched him disappear into the leaves. Yet while trying to see where he had gone, she noticed at the far end of her garden, on the other side of the stream marking its boundary, in a spot where the foliage thinned out a bit, someone easily recognized despite the distance. It was Gottlieb hauling himself along the water’s edge in a rather jolly way, singing and trying to skip. Consuelo, momentarily forgetting the Invisibles’ prohibition, did her best to attract his attention by waving her handkerchief out the window. But he was engrossed in calling back his robin. His head was angled up toward the trees while he whistled, and he went on without having seen Consuelo.