The Countess von Rudolstadt

by George Sand

  Consuelo was utterly stupefied listening to this speech. When the old man had finished, she got up and briskly said, “I don’t need to think things over, my mind is made up. Is Albert here? Take me to him.”

  “Albert is not here. He could not be a witness to this struggle. He does not even know about the crisis you’re undergoing just now.”

  “Oh my dear Albert!” exclaimed Consuelo, lifting her arms to the heavens, “I’ll come out of this triumphant.” Then she knelt down in front of the old man and said, “Father, forgive me and help me never to see this Liverani again; I don’t want to love him any longer, I won’t love him any longer.”

  The old man spread his trembling hands over Consuelo’s head, but when he withdrew them, she was unable to get up. She had forced her tears back into her breast, and broken by a battle beyond her strength, she was forced to lean on the confessor’s arm to make her way out of the chapel.

  Chapter XXIX

  The next day at noon the robin came pecking and scratching at Consuelo’s window. As she was about to open up and let him in, she noticed the black thread across his red breast, and her hand involuntarily leaped to the window latch. But she immediately pulled it back. “Go away, you bringer of trouble,” she said. “Go away, poor innocent with your burden of guilty letters and criminal words. I might not have the courage not to reply to a last farewell. I must not even let it be known that I am suffering and having regrets.”

  She fled into the music room to escape the winged tempter who, used to a better welcome, fluttered about and flew against the glass in a sort of rage. She sat down at the harpsichord to avoid hearing the screeching and scolding of her darling who had followed her to the window of this room, all the while feeling something like the anguish of a mother who closes her ears to the cries and entreaties of her child being chastised. Yet it was not to the robin’s outrage and grief that poor Consuelo was most sensitive just then. The note that he was carrying under his wing had a voice that she found much more heartrending. This was the voice, or so it seemed to our romantic recluse, weeping and wailing to be heard.

  She nevertheless resisted. Yet it is the nature of love to resent obstacles and renew the attack, ever more imperious and triumphant after each one of our victories. It could be said, quite literally, that resisting love only furnishes it with new weapons. Around three, Matteus came in with the flowers he brought his prisoner every day (for at bottom he loved her for her gentle, kind disposition), and, as usual, she undid the bunch so as to arrange the blooms herself in the beautiful vases on the console. This was one of the pleasures of her captivity, but this time she was rather indifferent to it and merely going through the motions, as though to kill a few seconds of the long hours that were eating away at her. But when she untied the clump of narcissus at the center of the sweet-smelling spray, out fell a letter, carefully sealed but without any address. In vain she tried to convince herself that it could be from the tribunal of the Invisibles. Would Matteus have brought it to her otherwise? Unfortunately, Matteus was no longer there to explain anything. She had to ring for him. He generally showed up in five minutes; this time he happened to take at least ten. Consuelo had shown too much courage with the robin to have any left for the bouquet. By the time Matteus was there, the letter had been read, and Consuelo had just arrived at the following postscript: “Don’t ask Matteus anything; he is not aware of the infraction I am making him commit.” Matteus was simply asked to wind up the clock that had stopped.

  The chevalier’s letter was more impassioned, more impetuous than all the others; it was even imperious in its delirium. We shall not transcribe it. Love letters convey no emotion except to the heart that inspires them and burns with the flame that has dictated them. One is just like all the others, but lovers always find in the letters written to them an irresistible power, an incomparable novelty. No one else can be loved so much nor in the same way; each lover is the most loved, the only beloved in the whole world. Without this ingenuous blindness, this proud fascination, there is no passion, and passion had at last invaded Consuelo’s peaceful, noble heart.

  The stranger’s note threw her into a dither. He was begging to see her. More than that, he announced that it was going to happen and excused himself ahead of time for having to make the most of these final moments. He feigned to believe that Consuelo had loved Albert and could love him again. He also feigned to want to submit to her decree, meanwhile demanding a word of pity, a tear of regret, a last farewell; always this last farewell that is like the announcement of a great artist’s last appearance, fortunately followed by many others.

  Sad Consuelo (sad and yet consumed with a secret, involuntary, and burning joy at the prospect of seeing him) felt by her flushed brow and pounding heart that she had an adulterous soul despite herself. She felt that neither her resolutions nor her willpower were saving her from being carried away by an unthinkable impulse, and if the chevalier were to decide to break his vow by speaking to her and showing her his face, as he sounded determined to do, she would not have the strength to prevent that violation of the Invisibles’ rules. Her only refuge was to beg for help from this very tribunal. But would she have to accuse and betray Liverani? The venerable old man who the night before had revealed to her that Albert was alive and lent her a fatherly ear would hear this secret as well under the seal of confession. He would take pity on the chevalier’s delirium, condemning him only in the depths of his heart. Consuelo wrote to him that she wanted to see him at nine o’clock that very evening, that her honor, her repose, perhaps her life were at stake. This was the hour at which the stranger had said he would come, but to whom and by whom could the letter be sent? Matteus refused to set foot outside the compound before midnight; those were his orders, nothing could shake his resolve. He had been sharply reprimanded for not fully living up to all his duties toward the prisoner; he was henceforth inflexible.

  The hour was drawing near, and Consuelo, all the while seeking a way around the fateful ordeal, had not given a moment’s thought to the means of withstanding it. O virtue imposed on women, you will never be more than just a name as long as men do not take on half the task! All your defense strategies amount to mere subterfuge; all your sacrifices of personal happiness come to nothing before the fear of driving the beloved to despair. Consuelo fastened on a last resort, a suggestion of the heroism and weakness dividing her mind. She began searching for the mysterious entrance to the subterranean passages, somewhere in the lodge itself, for she was determined to run down and take her chances on an unwarned appearance before the Invisibles. For no particular reason she assumed that their chambers would be accessible once she had got down inside and that they gathered every evening in the same place. What she did not know was that they were all absent that day and that Liverani had returned alone after having pretended to follow them on a mysterious outing.

  But all her efforts to find the secret entrance or trapdoor to the subterranean passages were fruitless. She no longer had, as at Spandau, the composure, perseverance, and faith necessary to discover the tiniest crack in a wall, the slightest protrusion of a stone. Her hands were shaking as she examined the woodwork and wainscoting; her eyes were bleary as well; at every instant she thought she heard the chevalier’s steps on the sand in the garden or the marble of the peristyle.

  All of a sudden she thought she heard steps coming from down below, as though he were climbing the stairs hidden beneath her feet, nearing an invisible door or, in the manner of familiar spirits, were about to come right through the wall before her eyes. She dropped her candle and fled to the far end of the garden. The lovely stream running through it broke her stride. She listened and heard or thought she heard steps behind her. Then she lost her head somewhat and leaped into the little boat the gardener used to bring sand and sod in from outside. Consuelo thought that by untying the boat she would run aground on the opposite bank, but the stream was running fast on its way out of the compound through a low, narrow arch closed with a grate. Sw
ept along by the current, the boat was soon going to crash into the grate. Consuelo preserved herself from too severe a shock by jumping into the bow and spreading out her hands. It was impossible for a child of Venice (and a child of the people) to have much trouble performing such a move. But, by a bizarre stroke of fortune, the grate gave way at the touch of her hand, thrown open by the sheer force of the current carrying the boat. “Alas,” Consuelo thought to herself, “perhaps they never close this passage, for I’m a prisoner of my word, and yet I’m fleeing and breaking my vow! But I’m only doing so to seek shelter and refuge among my hosts, not to abandon and betray them.”

  She jumped out onto the bank where her little boat had beached in a bend of the stream and plunged into thick brush. Consuelo could not run very fast under the dense cover. The path wound back and forth, getting narrower and narrower. The fugitive was crashing into trees at every instant and several times she fell to the grass. Yet she felt hope returning to her soul; she found the darkness reassuring; it seemed impossible that Liverani could find her here.

  After having walked haphazardly a long while, she found herself at the foot of a rock-strewn hill dimly silhouetted against a grey, cloudy sky. A rather chilly storm wind had come up, and it was beginning to rain. Consuelo dared not turn back for fear that Liverani had picked up her trail and was searching for her along the stream. So she took a gamble on the rather steep path going up the hill, figuring that once having reached the top she would be able to see the lights of the castle, wherever it might be. But when she got there in the dark, the lightning that was starting to streak through the sky revealed in front of her the ruins of a huge edifice, an imposing and melancholy wreck from another age.

  The rain forced Consuelo to seek shelter there, but finding it was no easy task. The towers had collapsed in upon themselves, and flocks of gerfalcons and tiercels stirred up at her approach, uttering that wild, piercing call that seems the voice of sinister spirits living among the ruins.

  Amid the rocks and brambles Consuelo picked her way through the roofless chapel, the skeletal forms of its dilapidated arches standing out in the bluish glare of the lightning, and she reached the courtyard whose level surface was covered with short, even grass; she sidestepped a deep well flush with the ground that was betrayed only by luxuriant maidenhair ferns and a superb wild rose, the tranquil proprietor of its inner wall. The heap of ruins around this abandoned courtyard were the most fantastic sight and, with each flash of lightning, the eye struggled to make out these thin, wasted specters, all these incoherent shapes of destruction: huge hoods of fireplaces, their undersides still black with smoke from hearths forever extinguished, flaring out from bare walls at a terrifying height; broken staircases launching their spirals into nothingness, as though they were leading witches to their aerial dance; whole trees that had taken root and grown in apartments still decorated with vestiges of frescoes; stone benches in deep window recesses, and always nothingness inside and out of these mysterious retreats, refuge for lovers in times of peace, hideaways for sentries in hours of danger; finally, loopholes festooned with dainty garlands, lonely gables rising into the air like obelisks, and doorways piled high with debris right up to the tympanum. It was a frightening and poetic place; Consuelo was filled with a sort of superstitious terror, as if her presence had profaned a close reserved for funereal conversations or the voiceless reveries of the dead. On a clear night and in calmer circumstances she could have admired the austere beauty of the monument; perhaps she would not have made the classical lament about the rigors of time and fate, pitilessly destroying palaces and fortresses and depositing their rubble in the grass next to those of cottages. The sadness inspired by the ruins of these daunting dwellings is not the same in the artist’s imagination and the patrician’s heart. But in this moment of commotion and fear, and on this stormy night, Consuelo, not being sustained by the enthusiasm that had moved her to more serious undertakings, felt herself reverting to her humble childhood, trembling at the prospect of seeing the ghosts of the night and especially fearing those of the old feudal lords, ferocious oppressors while they lived and desolate, threatening specters once they had died. The thunder was raising its voice, the wind was tearing bricks and mortar out of the crumbling walls, long shoots of brambles and ivy writhed like snakes from the battlements of the towers. Consuelo, still looking for shelter from the rain and falling debris, made her way under the arch of a staircase that looked better preserved than the others; it was that of the great feudal tower, the oldest and most solid structure in the entire edifice. Twenty stairs up, she found a great octagonal hall that occupied the whole inside of the tower, the spiral staircase having been built, as in all constructions of this sort, within the walls which were between eighteen and twenty feet thick. The arched ceiling of the hall was shaped like the inside of a beehive. All the doors and windows were gone, but these openings were so narrow and deep that they kept the wind out. Consuelo decided to wait there for the weather to subside, and drawing near a window, she spent over an hour contemplating the imposing spectacle of lightning streaking through the sky and listening to the terrifying roar of the storm.

  At last the wind fell, the clouds scattered, and Consuelo thought of leaving, but turning around, she was surprised to see inside the hall a light steadier than flashes of lightning. This glimmer, after some hesitation, so to speak, grew and filled the whole arch while little crackling sounds came from the fireplace. Consuelo looked over that way and saw beneath the half-moon of that ancient hearth, a huge maw gaping wide at her, some branches that seemed to have just burst into flames all by themselves. She drew nearer and saw some half-consumed logs and all the debris of a fire tended until a little while ago, then rather carelessly abandoned.

  Frightened to find this sign that someone was living there, even though she could not see any trace of furniture, Consuelo briskly turned back to the stairs and was about to start down when she heard voices coming from below and feet crunching over the chunks of plaster that littered the steps. Then her fantastic fears became real alarm. This damp, devastated tower could only be inhabited by some gamekeeper, perhaps as wild as his dwelling place, perhaps drunk and brutal, and most likely less civilized and respectful than courteous Matteus. The steps were drawing near rather fast. Consuelo dashed up the stairs to avoid running into these problematic comers, and after having climbed another twenty steps, she found herself on the third floor. They were not likely to follow her up there, for the roof was gone, which made the place uninhabitable. Fortunately for Consuelo the rain had stopped; she even saw a few stars shining through the stray vegetation that had invaded the top of the tower, about twenty yards above her head. Soon she noticed a ray of light on the somber walls. It was coming from beneath her feet, and Consuelo, carefully inching forward, saw through a wide crevice what was happening on the floor below. There were two men in the hall, one walking around and stamping his feet as if to get warm, the other bent over under the huge hood of the chimney and stirring the fire which was starting to burn well. At first she could only see attire that announced their brilliant rank and caps that kept their faces hidden, but when the fire burned brighter and the one who was poking it with the tip of his sword stood up to hang his cap on a stone protruding from the wall, Consuelo saw black locks of hair that gave her a start and the upper part of a face that nearly wrung from her a shriek of terror and tenderness at one and the same time. He raised his voice, and Consuelo’s doubts were gone, it was Albert von Rudolstadt.

  “Come over here, my friend,” he said to his companion, “and warm yourself at the only fireplace still standing in this huge manor. These are dismal quarters, Trenck, but you’ve had worse in your arduous travels.”

  “And often I’ve even had none at all,” replied Princess Amalia’s lover. “Truly, this is more comfortable than it looks, and more than once I’d have been happy to make do with it. So, my dear Count, you occasionally come here to mediate on these ruins and make a knightly vigil in this in
fernal tower?”

  “Indeed, I come here often, but for more conceivable reasons than that. I can’t tell you now, but later on you’ll learn why.”

  “Anyway, I can guess. From the top of this tower you can see into a certain enclosure and command a view of a certain lodge.”

  “Not so, Trenck. That place is hidden behind the woods on the hill, and I don’t see it from here.”

  “But you can easily get there in a few moments, then take refuge here from troublesome guards. Come on, admit that a little while ago, when I met you in the woods. . . .”

  “I can admit to nothing, Trenck my friend, and you gave me your word not to question me.”

  “True. I should only be rejoicing that I ran into you on the grounds of this immense estate, rather in this forest. I’d got so lost that without you I’d have fallen into some picturesque ravine or drowned in some limpid mountain stream. Are we far from the castle?”

  “More than a quarter of a league away. So dry your clothes while the wind dries out the trails through the grounds, and then we’ll get going.”

  “This old castle pleases me less than the new one, I confess, and I can certainly understand why it’s been abandoned to the ospreys. Yet I’m glad to find myself here alone with you at this hour and on this gloomy evening. It reminds me of our first meeting in the ruins of an ancient abbey in Silesia, my initiation, the vows I made before you, my judge, examiner, and master back then, my brother and friend today! Dear Albert! What strange and sinister vicissitudes we’ve been through since then! Both of us dead to our families, our countries, perhaps our loves! What will become of us, and what will be our lives henceforth among men?”