The Countess von Rudolstadt

by George Sand

  “You’re asking me for Hiram’s shibboleth, the lost word. That’s not the one that will open the doors of the temple to me, for this word is tyranny or falsehood. But I know the true words, the names of the three doors of the sanctuary through which those who destroyed Hiram came to force this chief to bury himself under the ruins of his work; they are liberty, fraternity, equality.”

  “Consuelo, your interpretation, whether it be exact or not, reveals to us the depths of your heart. You need never kneel on Hiram’s tomb. Neither will you ever go for the degree where the neophyte prostrates himself over the simulacrum of the ashes of Jacques Molay, the grand master and great victim of the Temple, of the monk-soldiers and the prelate-knights of the Middle Ages. You would emerge victorious from the second test as from the first, discerning the insidious traces of a fanatic barbarism still necessary today as formulaic guarantees for minds imbued with the principle of inequality. Remember that for the most part Freemasons of the first degrees only aspire to raising a profane temple, a mysterious refuge for an association elevated to the status of a caste. You understand things otherwise, and you are going to march straight to the universal temple that is to receive all humanity united in one form of worship, in one love. Yet you must make one last station here and prostrate yourself before this tomb. You must adore Christ and recognize in him the one true God.”

  “You’re saying this to me as yet another test,” replied Consuelo in a firm voice. “But you have deigned to open my eyes to lofty truths by teaching me to read in your secret books. Christ is a divine man whom we revere as antiquity’s greatest philosopher and saint. We adore him as much as it is permitted to adore the best and the greatest of masters and martyrs. We can indeed call him the savior of mankind in the sense that he taught the people of his time truths that they had only glimpsed, which were to make humanity enter into a new phase of light and holiness. We can indeed kneel before his ashes to thank God for having given us such a prophet, such an example, such a friend, but we adore God in him and refrain from the crime of idolatry. We distinguish the divine nature of the revelation from that of the revealer. So I willingly render to these emblems of a martyrdom forever illustrious and sublime the homage of pious gratitude and filial enthusiasm, but I do not believe that the last word of the revelation was understood and proclaimed by mankind at the time of Jesus, for it hasn’t yet officially come to earth. Out of the wisdom and faith of his disciples, out of the continuation of his work over the course of seventeen centuries, I am awaiting a more practical truth, a more complete application of the holy word and brotherly doctrine. I am awaiting the development of the Gospel, I am awaiting something more than equality before God. It is this that I await, that I invoke among mankind.”

  “Your words are bold and your doctrines rife with danger. Have you thought that through in your solitude? Have you foreseen the trouble that your new faith was already gathering around your head? Do you know the world and your own strength? Do you know that we are one against a hundred thousand in the most civilized countries on the globe? Do you know that in these times, between those who worship the sublime revealer Jesus in a crude, abusive way and those, now nearly as many, who deny his mission and even his existence, between the idolaters and the atheists, the only place for us is amidst mankind’s persecutions, jibes, hatred, and scorn? Do you know that in France right now Rousseau and Voltaire, the religious philosopher and the unbelieving philosopher, are proscribed almost equally? Do you know this, which is even more frightening and incredible, that from the depths of their exile they proscribe each other? Do you know that you are going to return to a world where everything will conspire to shake your faith and corrupt your mind? Last, do you know you’ll have to work as an apostle amid danger, doubt, disappointment, and suffering?”

  “I am so resolved,” replied Consuelo lowering her eyes and placing her hand over her heart, “God help me!”

  “Well then, daughter,” said Marcus, still holding Consuelo’s hand, “we are going to subject you to some mental suffering, not to test your faith, about which we can now have no doubt, but to strengthen it. It is not in quiet repose nor in worldly pleasures that faith grows and intensifies, but in tears and tribulation. Do you feel the courage to confront painful emotions, perhaps violent fears as well?”

  “If it is necessary, and if it will benefit my soul, I submit to your will,” replied Consuelo, feeling a bit breathless.

  The Invisibles immediately began removing the carpets and candles from around the coffin. It was rolled off into one of the deep window recesses, and several disciples, having armed themselves with iron bars, hastened to raise a round paving stone in the middle of the floor. Then Consuelo saw a circular opening big enough to let one person through. Its granite rim, blackened and timeworn, was without doubt as ancient as the other architectural details of the tower. A long ladder was brought forth and sunk into the shadowy void of the orifice. Then Marcus, leading Consuelo to the entrance, asked her three times in a solemn tone if she felt the strength to descend alone into the dungeons of the great feudal tower.

  “Listen, my fathers or my brothers, for I don’t know what to call you . . . ,” said Consuelo.

  “Call them your brothers,” said Marcus. “You are here among the Invisibles, your equals in rank if you persevere one hour more. You are going to say farewell to them here and meet up with them again an hour later along with the council of the supreme leaders, whose voices are never heard, whose faces are never seen. These you will call your fathers. They are the sovereign pontiffs, the spiritual and temporal heads of our temple. We shall appear before them and you as well without our masks if you are firmly resolved to come join us at the door of the sanctuary by means of the dark and terrifying path starting here beneath your feet, where you must walk alone, shielded by nothing more than your courage and perseverance.”

  “I’ll do so if I must,” replied the trembling neophyte. “But this ordeal, which you declare so grim, is there no way around it? Oh my brothers, you surely don’t want to trifle with the mind of a woman without affectation or false pride. It’s already been put to the test quite enough. Today you’ve condemned me to a long fast, and even though emotion has kept hunger at bay for several hours, I feel physically weak; I don’t know if I won’t succumb to the labors you’re imposing on me. I don’t much care, and so I swear, if my body suffers or grows weak, but won’t you take as moral cowardice what is only a physical failing? Tell me that you’ll forgive me for having a woman’s nerves as long as, once I’m myself again, I still have a man’s heart.”

  “Poor child,” replied Marcus, “I prefer to hear you acknowledge your weakness rather than to try and dazzle us with foolish audacity. If you wish, we’ll let you have a guide, only one, to help and comfort you, if need be, on your pilgrimage. Brother,” he said to Chevalier Liverani, who had stood near the door throughout this entire dialogue, his eyes fixed on Consuelo, “take your sister’s hand and lead her through the subterranean passages to the place where we’ll all meet again.”

  “And you, brother,” said Consuelo distraught, “don’t you also want to accompany me?”

  “That I cannot do. You’re allowed only one guide, and the one I’ve assigned you is the only one I can give you.”

  “I’ll be brave,” said Consuelo, wrapping herself in her cloak. “I’ll go alone.”

  “You’re refusing the arm of a brother and a friend?”

  “I refuse neither his sympathy nor his interest, but I’ll go alone.”

  “Then go, noble girl, and have no fear. She who descended alone into the cistern of tears, at Riesenburg, she who faced so many dangers to find the secret cave of Schreckenstein, will easily find her way through the bowels of our pyramid. Go then, like the young heroes of antiquity, seeking initiation through the ordeals of the sacred mysteries. Brothers, give her the cup, the precious relic that one of Zizka’s descendants brought us, in which we consecrate the solemn sacrament of fraternal communion.”


  Liverani went to the altar and took a crudely carved wooden chalice, filled it, and gave it to Consuelo with some bread.

  “Sister,” said Marcus, “this is not merely sweet, generous wine and pure wheat bread that we’re offering you to restore your physical strength; this is the body and blood of the divine man, as he himself understood it, in other words, the symbol, at one and the same time heavenly and earthly, of fraternal equality. Our fathers, the martyrs of the Taborite church, believed that the ungodly and sacrilegious priests were less worthy, for the consecration of the solemn sacrament, than the pure hands of a woman or child. Take communion with us here while waiting to take your place at the temple banquet, where the great mystery of the last supper will be more clearly revealed to you. Take this cup and drink first. If you do this with faith, a few drops will be a sovereign tonic for your body, and your fervent soul will carry off your whole being on wings of fire.”

  Consuelo, having taken the first drink, handed the cup back to Liverani, and once he had drunk in turn, he passed it to all the brothers. After Marcus had drunk the last drops, he blessed Consuelo and beseeched the assembly to turn their thoughts inward and pray for her; then he gave the neophyte a little silver lamp and helped her place her feet on the first rungs of the ladder.

  “I need not tell you,” he added, “that your days are not threatened; but fear for your soul; fear never to reach the door of the temple if you are so unfortunate as to glance back a single time during your march. You’ll have several stations along the way; you must then examine everything that meets your eye, but as soon as a door opens in front of you, pass through it and don’t turn around. That, as you know, is the rigid prescription of the ancient initiations. You must also, according to the ancient rites, take care to keep the flame of your lamp burning, as the emblem of your faith and zeal. Go, daughter, and may this thought give you superhuman courage: What you are doomed to suffer now is necessary for your heart and spirit to grow in virtue and true faith.”

  Consuelo cautiously climbed down the ladder, and as soon as she reached the last rung, they pulled it up, and she heard the heavy paving stone fall back into place with a great thud, sealing off the entrance to the dungeons overhead.

  Chapter XXXIX

  At first Consuelo, going from a hall blazing with a hundred candles to a place lit only by the flicker of her little lamp, discerned nothing around her except for a luminous haze that her gaze could not penetrate. But little by little her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and seeing nothing terrifying between her and the walls of a room whose size and octagonal shape were identical to the one where she had just been, she felt reassured enough to go have a close look at the strange writing on the walls. It was one long inscription that went round and round the room, uninterrupted by any doors or windows. While taking note of this, Consuelo did not wonder how she would get out of this dungeon, but what could have been the use of such a construction. Sinister thoughts that she at first dismissed came to mind, but these were soon confirmed by the inscription that she read by slowly walking and moving her lamp along at the height of the letters.

  “Contemplate the beauty of these walls that rise up out of bedrock, four and twenty feet thick, that have stood for a thousand years, impervious to the assaults of war, the wear of time or the laborer’s toil! This masterpiece of architectural masonry was erected by the hands of slaves, no doubt to bury the treasures of a magnificent master. Yes! to bury in the rocky bowels, in the depths of the earth, treasures of hatred and vengeance. Here have perished, here have suffered, here have wept, roared and blasphemed twenty generations of men, innocent for the most part, some of them heroes, all of them victims or martyrs: prisoners of war, serfs having risen up in revolt or too overburdened with taxes to pay new ones, religious innovators, sublime heretics, hapless wretches, vanquished creatures, fanatics, saints, as well as scoundrels, men hardened to the ferocity of army life, to the law of murder and pillage, subjected in their turn to horrible reprisals. These are the catacombs of feudalism, of military or religious despotism. These are the dwellings that powerful men had built by slaves to stifle the screams and conceal the corpses of their conquered brothers in chains. Here, no air to breathe, no ray of light, not a single stone on which to lay one’s head; nothing but iron rings embedded in the wall to fasten the prisoners’ chains and prevent them from choosing a spot to rest on the damp, icy ground. Here, air, light, and food when it so pleased the guards on duty in the room above to crack the vault open a second and toss down a morsel of bread to hundreds of unfortunates heaped one on top of the other, the day after a battle, maimed or battered for the most part and, occasionally, something even more ghastly, one lone man, the last survivor, suffering and dying in despair amid the rotting corpses of his comrades, sometimes eaten by those same worms even before he was altogether dead and rotting away himself before the sensation of life and the horror of thought were annihilated in his brain. This, oh neophyte, is the source of the human grandeur you may have contemplated with admiration and envy among the mighty of this world! Skulls without flesh; human bones, dry and broken; tears and bloodstains; this is the meaning of the emblems on your coats of arms if your forefathers bequeathed to you the taint of patricians; this is what should be represented on the blazons of the princes you have served, or that you aspire to serve if you are from the plebs. Yes, this is the basis of aristocratic titles, this is the source of the glories and hereditary fortunes of this world; this is how a caste that the other castes still fear, flatter, and caress has raised itself up and prevailed. This, this is what men, from father to son, have invented to exalt themselves over other men.”

  After having deciphered this inscription by going three times round the dungeon, Consuelo, overwhelmed with grief and horror, put down her lamp and dropped to her knees for a rest. Deep silence reigned over this gloomy place, and terrifying thoughts were crowding into her mind. Consuelo’s vivid imagination conjured up somber visions around her. She thought she was seeing ghastly shades covered with hideous wounds fluttering along the walls or crawling over the ground at her side. She thought she was hearing their pitiful moans, their dying gasps, their feeble sighs, the grating of their chains. She resurrected in her mind how people must have lived back in the Middle Ages and even not so long ago during the Wars of Religion. She thought she was hearing, in the guardroom overhead, the heavy, ominous tread of these iron-shod men, their pikes echoing on the paving stones, their crude laughter, their songs of orgy, their threats and curses when the victims’ complaints reached their ears from down below, interrupting their dreadful sleep, for these jailors had slept, they had had to sleep, they had been able to sleep above this dungeon, this filthy abyss venting the miasmas of the grave and the roars of hell. Pale with horror, her gaze vacant, her hair standing on end, Consuelo could no longer see or hear anything. When she came back to herself and stood up to escape the chill creeping over her, she noticed that a flagstone had been uprooted and thrown down below during her painful trance, opening a new way before her. She went closer and saw a steep, narrow staircase that was hard to descend. It took her to another underground chamber, narrower and squatter than the first. When she felt the soft, almost velvety ground underfoot, Consuelo lowered her lamp to see if she was not sinking into mud. She saw only gray powder, finer than the finest silt, with a pebble-like bump every now and then that turned out to be a broken rib, the neck of a thighbone, the remains of a skull, a jawbone still sporting white, solid teeth, evidence of youth and strength suddenly shattered by violent death. A few nearly complete skeletons had been plucked out of this dust and propped up against the walls. One was perfectly preserved, standing with a chain fastened around his middle, as if he had been condemned to die there without being able to lie down. His body, instead of slumping over forward, bent and out of joint, had gone stiff and rigid, arched back in a posture of superb pride and implacable disdain. The ligaments of his frame and limbs had turned to bone. With his head thrown back and his teeth
clenched in an ultimate contraction of the jaws, he seemed to be gazing up at the vaulted ceiling and laughing in some terrifying burst of hilarity or sublime fanaticism. On the wall overhead his name and history were spelled out in big red letters. He was an obscure martyr of religious persecution and the last of the victims immolated in this place. At his feet there knelt a skeleton whose head, detached from the vertebrae, was lying on the ground, but whose stiff arms still embraced the martyr’s knees. This was his wife. Among various other details, the inscription said, “N*** perished here along with his wife, his three brothers and his two children for refusing to abjure the Lutheran faith and persisting, even under torture, in his denials of papal infallibility. He died on his feet and desiccated, petrified as it were, and without being able to see his family dying at his feet on the ashes of his friends and forefathers.”

  Opposite this inscription was another one that read, “Neophyte, this friable ground on which you tread is twenty feet thick. It is neither sand nor earth, but human dust. This was the castle’s boneyard. This is where the bodies of those who had died in the dungeon overhead were thrown when there was no more room for newcomers. These are the ashes of twenty generations of victims. Happy and few are the patricians who can count among their ancestors twenty generations of assassins and executioners.”

  Consuelo was less horrified by the sight of these funereal objects than she had been by the suggestions of her own mind in the dungeon. There is something too serious, too solemn about the sight of death itself to let debilitating fear or heartrending pity cast a pall over the enthusiasm or equanimity of strong, faithful souls. In the presence of these relics the noble disciple of Albert’s religion felt more respect and charity than terror or dismay. She knelt down before the martyr’s remains and, feeling her inner strength returning, kissed the fleshless hand and cried, “Oh! it is not the august spectacle of glorious destruction that calls forth horror or pity, but rather the idea of life in the throes of death. It’s thinking what must have transpired in these desolate souls that fills the minds of the living with bitterness and terror! But you, hapless victim, who died on your feet, with your head turned to the heavens, you are not to be pitied, for you did not surrender, and you breathed out your soul in a transport of fervor that fills me with awe.”