The Countess von Rudolstadt

by George Sand

Songs of triumph to him sing,

  she forgot everything to lend her voice to this hymn of grandiose enthusiasm.

  But the boat, gliding along the bank and occasionally running into a branch or a tuft of grass, rocked again and made her lose her balance. Only when she was forced to hang onto the first hand that offered her support did she notice a fourth person in the boat, a masked Invisible who had certainly not been there when she had stepped in.

  A huge dark gray cloak with long folds, a broad-brimmed hat worn in a certain way, something about the features of the mask through which the human physiognomy seemed to speak, but, more than all the rest, the pressure of the trembling hand that would not release its grip on hers made Consuelo recognize the man she loved, Chevalier Liverani, as he had first revealed himself to her on the lake at Spandau. At that point the music, the lights, the enchanted palace, the intoxicating festivities, even the approach of the solemn moment that would determine her fate, everything that was not this immediate emotion vanished from Consuelo’s memory. Flustered and as if overcome by a superhuman force, she fell back quivering on the cushions near Liverani. The other stranger, Marcus, was standing at the prow with his back to them. The fast, Countess Wanda’s tale, the anticipation of some dreadful denouement, the unexpected festivities glimpsed along the way had broken all of Consuelo’s strength. She felt nothing more than Liverani’s hand clasping hers, his arm delicately around her waist, ready to prevent her from pulling away, and the divine commotion that the beloved’s presence communicates even to the air that one breathes. Consuelo remained in this state for a few minutes, seeing the sparkling palace no more than if it had been subsumed in darkness, hearing nothing more than the burning respiration of her lover at her side and the beating of her own heart.

  “Madame,” said Marcus turning around all of a sudden, “don’t you know the aria being sung just now, and wouldn’t you like to stop and hear this magnificent tenor?”

  “Whatever the aria and the voice,” replied Consuelo, preoccupied, “let’s stop or go on; do as you will.”

  The boat was nearly at the foot of the castle. One could make out the figures at the windows, even those moving deep inside the rooms. They were not ghosts floating in a dream any longer, but real people, lords, great ladies, learned men, and artists of which many were known to Consuelo. But she made no effort to remember their names, nor the theaters or palaces where she had seen them. All of a sudden for her the world had once again become a magic lantern without meaning or interest. The only living being in all the universe seemed to be the one whose hand was stealthily burning hers under the folds of the cloaks.

  “Don’t you know this beautiful voice singing a Venetian melody?” asked Marcus once again, surprised by Consuelo’s stillness and apparent indifference.

  And as she seemed to hear neither the voice speaking to her nor the one singing, he came a bit closer and took the seat facing her to ask the question again.

  “A thousand pardons, sir,” replied Consuelo, having made an effort to listen. “I wasn’t paying attention. Indeed I know this voice, and that’s a melody I composed a long, long time ago. It’s very bad and very poorly sung.”

  “So what’s the name of the singer for whom you seem to me too severe? As for me, he’s admirable!”

  “Ah, you didn’t lose it?” Consuelo said under her breath to Liverani. He had just pressed into the hollow of her hand the little filigree cross that she had taken off for the first time in her life and entrusted to him on the trip from Spandau.

  “You don’t remember this singer’s name?” Marcus stubbornly went on, scrutinizing Consuelo.

  “Pardon, sir!” she replied a bit impatiently. “His name is Anzoleto. Ah! what a bad D. He missed that note.”

  “Don’t you want to see his face? Perhaps you’re wrong. From here you could see him perfectly, for I’ve got a good view of him. He’s a very handsome young man.”

  “What’s the use of looking at him?” asked Consuelo, somewhat peeved. “I’m sure he’s still the same.”

  Marcus gently took Consuelo’s hand, and Liverani also helped her up so that she could peer into the wide open window. Consuelo who might have resisted the one, surrendered to the other and glanced at the singer, this handsome Venetian on whom over a hundred women were fastening their gaze, protective, ardent, and lascivious.

  “He’s put on a lot of weight!” said Consuelo, sitting back down and furtively resisting Liverani’s fingers. He was trying to get the little cross back from her and in fact succeeded,

  “That’s the only way you remember an old friend?” asked Marcus, still watching her like a lynx through his mask.

  “He’s just a colleague,” replied Consuelo, “and in our circles colleagues aren’t always friends.”

  “But wouldn’t you enjoy talking to him? What if we went into this palace and you were asked to sing with him?”

  “If this is a test,” said a bit mischievously Consuelo, who was beginning to see how insistent Marcus was, “I’ll gladly do so, since I must obey your every command. But if this is a matter of my pleasure, I’d rather not.”

  “Am I to stop here, brother?” asked Karl, making a military gesture with the oar.

  “Go on, brother, and head out to the open water!” replied Marcus.

  Karl obeyed, and a few seconds later the boat had crossed the basin and plunged into a thick overhang of vines. It became very dark. There was only the bluish glimmer of the gondola’s little lantern on the surrounding foliage. Every now and then through the somber leaves one could still catch a faint flicker of the palace lights off in the distance. The sound of the orchestra slowly faded away. The boat skimmed along the bank, stripping branches covered with flowers, and Consuelo’s black cloak was strewn with their fragrant petals. She was starting to come back to herself, to struggle against the undefinable voluptuousness of love and night. She had withdrawn her hand from Liverani’s, and her heart was breaking as the veil of intoxication was being dispelled by glimmers of reason and will.

  “Listen!” said Marcus. “Can’t you hear the audience applauding? Yes, indeed! Clapping and cheering. They’re delighted by what they’ve just heard. That Anzoleto has scored a great success at the palace.”

  “They are no experts!” said Consuelo brusquely, seizing a magnolia that Liverani had just plucked and furtively thrown onto her knees.

  She convulsively gripped the flower in her hands and hid it in her bosom, like the last relic of an untamed love that the fateful ordeal would sanctify or break off forever.

  Chapter XXXVIII

  The boat made its final landing at the edge of the gardens and the woods, in a picturesque spot where the stream plunged down among ancient rock formations and ceased to be navigable. Consuelo had little time to contemplate the austere, moonlit landscape. It was still within the vast enclosure of the estate, but here art had been applied only to preserve nature’s primeval beauty: the old trees randomly seeded in the dark lawns, the felicitous rise and fall of the land, the rugged hills and waterfalls, the herds of bounding, timorous deer.

  Another person had drawn Consuelo’s attention: Gottlieb, lounging on the pole of a sedan chair, looking as though he were calmly, dreamily waiting for something. He gave a start when he recognized his friend from prison, but Marcus made a gesture, and he said not a word to her.

  “So you won’t let the poor child come shake my hand?” Consuelo whispered to her guide.

  “After your initiation you’ll be free to do as you please here,” he whispered back. “Be satisfied for now to see how Gottlieb’s health has improved, how he’s recovered his strength.”

  “Can’t you at least tell me if he suffered any persecution on my account after I escaped from Spandau?” asked the neophyte. “Pardon my impatience. This thought went on torturing me until the day I saw him walking along the wall by the lodge.”

  “He suffered indeed,” Marcus replied, “but briefly. As soon as he knew that you’d been rescued, he boasted w
ith naïve enthusiasm about having had a hand in it, and the involuntary revelations he made in his sleep were nearly fatal to a few of us. They wanted to put him in a madhouse as much to punish him as to prevent him from helping other prisoners. At that point he ran away, and as we were keeping an eye on him, we had him brought here where his body and soul have been lavished with care. We’ll send him back to his family and country once we’ve instilled in him the necessary strength and prudence to be useful to our mission, which has become his own, for he’s one of our purest and most fervent disciples. But the chair is ready, Madame; please get in. I’m not leaving you, even though I shall entrust you to the sure and faithful arms of Karl and Gottlieb.”

  Consuelo climbed docilely into the sedan chair, enclosed on all sides and receiving air only from a few slits in the roof. So she saw nothing more of the things going on around her. Sometimes she saw twinkling stars and concluded that she was still outside; at other times they disappeared without her knowing if that was due to buildings or the thick shade of trees. The porters walked fast and in utter silence; for a while she tried to make out from the occasional crunch of feet over the ground if she had four or only three escorts. Several times she thought she could hear Liverani’s footsteps to her right, but that was perhaps an illusion, and besides she felt it her duty not to think about that.

  When the chair stopped and was opened, Consuelo could not help feeling terrified when she found herself under the portcullis, still gloomily standing, of an old feudal manor. The moon was shining brightly over the courtyard surrounded by ruins and filled with figures in white coming and going, some singly and others in groups, like capricious ghosts. The massive black arch over the entrance made everything in the background look more blue, transparent, and fantastic. The wandering shades, silent or speaking in whispers, their noiseless movements through the high grasses of the courtyard, the sight of the ruins that Consuelo recognized as those she had once visited, where she had seen Albert, so affected her that she felt a spasm of superstitious fright. Instinctively she looked around for Liverani. He was in fact there with Marcus, but it was so dark under the arch that she could not distinguish which of the two gave her his hand; and this time her heart, chilled by a sudden sadness and an undefinable fear, told her nothing.

  They fixed her cloak and hood in such a way that she could see everything without anyone recognizing her. Someone whispered to her not to let a single word, a single exclamation escape her lips, no matter what she might see, and she was led to the far end of the courtyard, where a strange spectacle indeed met her eyes.

  Just then a faint, lugubrious bell summoned the shades to the ruined chapel where not so long ago by lightning’s glare Consuelo had sought refuge from the storm. Now the chapel was lit by candles systematically arranged. The altar seemed to have been raised recently; it was covered with a shroud and decorated with strange emblems, where Christian and Jewish symbols mixed with Egyptian hieroglyphs and cabalistic signs. In the middle of the choir, whose perimeter had been marked off anew with balustrades and symbolic columns, there was a coffin surrounded by candles, its lid covered with crossbones and surmounted by a skull in which a blood-red flame was burning. A young man was led to the cenotaph. Consuelo could not see his face, half concealed by a broad blindfold. He was a new initiate who looked broken by fatigue or emotion. An arm and a leg were bare, his hands bound behind his back, and his white robe was stained with blood. A band around his arm suggested that he had just been bled. Two shades brandished torches of burning resin around him, showering his face and chest with clouds of smoke and flurries of sparks. Then, between the young man and those presiding over the ceremony and decked out with the distinctive insignia of their various ranks, there began a bizarre exchange that reminded Consuelo of the dialogue between Albert and nameless others to which Cagliostro had made her privy in Berlin. Next, some shades armed with swords, whom she heard called the Dreadful Brothers, lay the initiate down on the stone floor and bore down on his heart with the points of their weapons while several others engaged in a fierce battle, their blades clicking and clanking, one faction intending to prevent the admission of the new brother, calling him perverse, unworthy, and treacherous, while the other claimed to fight for him in the name of truth and a right that he had earned. This strange scene affected Consuelo like a painful dream. The struggle, the threats, the magic rites, the adolescents sobbing around the coffin were so well simulated that any spectator who had not been initiated ahead of time would have been truly horrified. After the new initiate’s godfathers had won the battle of words and swords, he was raised up, given a dagger, ordered to march forward and strike anyone who might try and stop him from entering the temple.

  That is all Consuelo saw. Just when the new initiate, his arm held high and in a sort of delirium, was heading for a low door toward which he was being pushed, the two guides who had not let go of Consuelo’s arms swept her off as though to save her from a grisly sight. Pulling the hood down over her face, they led her in a roundabout way, and among piles of rubble on which she stumbled more than once, to a place of utter silence. There light was restored to her eyes, and she found herself in the great octagonal hall where she had overheard Albert’s conversation with Trenck. This time all the openings were closed up tight and carefully veiled; the walls and ceiling were hung with black; candles were burning here, too, but in a different arrangement from those in the chapel. The huge hearth was masked by an altar in the shape of Calvary with three crosses on top. In the middle of the room there was a tomb on which were laid out a hammer, nails, a spear, and a crown of thorns. Masked figures in black were kneeling or sitting around it on carpets seeded with silver tears; they neither wept nor moaned; they held themselves as though in austere meditation or mute, profound sorrow.

  Consuelo’s guides led her to the coffin. After the men standing guard had risen and lined up at the far end of it, one of them said to her, “Consuelo, you’ve just witnessed a Masonic initiation ceremony. There as well as here you’ve seen unknown rites, mysterious signs, funereal images, initiating pontiffs, and a coffin. What is your understanding of this simulation, these terrifying ordeals for the initiate, the words said to him, the displays of respect, love, and grief around an illustrious tomb?”

  “I don’t know if I’ve understood well,” Consuelo replied. “I found the scene upsetting and the ceremony barbarous. I felt sorry for the initiate whose courage and virtue were submitted to entirely material ordeals, as if physical courage sufficed to initiate one into the endeavors of moral courage. I object to what I saw, and I deplore these cruel games of somber fanaticism or these childish experiments in a wholly outward and idolatrous faith. I heard him being asked obscure riddles, and the initiate’s explanation of them seemed to me dictated by a suspicious or crude catechism. Yet the bloody tomb, the immolated victim, the ancient myth of Hiram, the divine architect assassinated by jealous and greedy workers, the sacred word lost for centuries and promised to the initiate as the magic key that will open the doors of the temple to him, I don’t take this as a symbol without grandeur or interest, but why is the fable so poorly spun or so speciously interpreted?”

  “What do you mean by that? Did you listen well to the tale you’re calling a fable?”

  “Here’s what I understood and what I had learned beforehand in the books I was told to meditate during my retreat. Hiram, who was in charge of building Solomon’s temple, had divided the workers into categories with different salaries, unequal rights. Three ambitious workers from the lowest category resolved to share in the salary reserved for the rival class and pry out of Hiram the watchword, his secret formula for distinguishing the journeymen from the masters at the solemn hour of reckoning. They lay in wait for him in the temple where he had stayed alone after the ceremony, and posting themselves at each of the three exits from the holy place, they prevented him from leaving, threatened him, cruelly beat and assassinated him without managing to get his secret out of him, the fateful word that
was to make them equal to him and his privileged ones. Then they carried off his body and buried it under piles of rubble, and to this day the faithful disciples of the temple, Hiram’s friends are still mourning his sinister fate, searching for his sacred word and rendering almost divine honors to his memory.”

  “And now, how do you explain this myth?”

  “I pondered it before coming here, and here’s how I understand it. Hiram is the cold reason and clever governance of ancient societies, based on inequality, on a caste system. The Egyptian fable suited the hierophants’ mysterious despotism. The three ambitious workers are indignation, revolt, and vengeance; perhaps the three castes inferior to the priestly caste, and they try to take their rights by violent means. Hiram assassinated is despotism having lost its prestige and might and gone to the grave with the secret of dominating men by blindness and superstition.”

  “Is this truly the way you’d interpret the myth?”

  “I read in your books that it was brought from the East by the Knights Templar and that they used it in their initiations. So they must have interpreted it more or less this way, but by baptizing theocracy as Hiram and the assassins as impiety, anarchy, and ferocity, the Knights Templar, who wanted to subject society to a sort of monastic despotism, were lamenting their impotence personified by Hiram’s annihilation. The key word of their empire, which was lost, then rediscovered, was association or ruse, something like the ancient city or the Temple of Osiris. That’s why I’m astonished to see this fable still being used for your initiations into the work of universal deliverance. I’d like to think that it’s proposed to your disciples only as a test of their intelligence and courage.”

  “Well, we who did not invent these forms of Masonry and indeed use them only as spiritual tests, we who are more than journeymen and masters in this symbolic knowledge, since, after having gone through all the Masonic degrees, we’re no longer Masons as the term is understood in the common ranks of the order, we beseech you to explain to us your understanding of the myth of Hiram so that we may pronounce upon your zeal, intelligence, and faith a judgment that will either stop you here at the door of the true temple or give you access to the sanctuary.”