The Countess von Rudolstadt

by George Sand

  “But these days of reward have not yet to come to pass. Here, in this mysterious temple where we are gathered, according to the words of the Gospel, three or four together in the name of the Lord, we can only dream and experiment virtue among ourselves. We cannot invoke as a sanction of our promises, as a guarantee of our institutions, the outside world that would condemn us to exile, prison, or death if it were to penetrate our secrets. Rather than imitating its ignorance and tyranny, let us consecrate the conjugal love of these two children who have come to ask for the blessing of paternal and fraternal love, in the name of the living God, the giver of all love. Let us authorize them to promise each other eternal fidelity, but without inscribing their vows in a book of death, to remind them of it later through terror and constraint. Let God be the guardian of their vows. Let them pray to God every day of their lives that he keep burning in their hearts the sacred fire that he has sent down to them.”

  “That’s what I was waiting to hear from you, oh inspired sibyl!” exclaimed Albert, reaching out for his mother, exhausted from having spoken so long with such conviction. “I was waiting for you to acknowledge my right to promise everything to the woman I love. You recognize that this is my dearest and most sacred right. Therefore I promise her, I swear to her that I will faithfully love her and her alone my whole life long, with God as my witness. Tell me, oh prophetess of love, that this is not blasphemy.”

  “You are under the power of the miracle,” replied Wanda. “God is blessing your vow since he’s the one inspiring you with the faith to utter these words. Always is the most passionate word on the lips of lovers, in the ecstasy of their most divine joys. It is then an oracle escaping from their breasts. Eternity is the ideal of love, as it is of faith. Never does the human soul come any closer to reaching the height of its power and lucidity than when inspired by a great love. The always of lovers is an inner revelation, a divine manifestation that will shed its sovereign radiance and salutary warmth over every instant of their union. Woe to him that profanes these sacred words! He falls from grace into sin, extinguishing his heart’s faith, light, strength, and life.”

  “And I,” said Consuelo, “I receive your vow, oh Albert! And I beseech you to receive mine. I too am under the power of the miracle, and this always of our short lives seems nothing to me in comparison with eternity, and it’s for eternity that I want to promise to be yours.”

  “Woman of sublime daring!” said Wanda, with a smile of enthusiasm that seemed to shine through her veil, “ask God for eternity with the man you love as a reward for being faithful to him in this brief life.”

  “Oh, yes!” exclaimed Albert, lifting to the heavens his wife’s hand clasped in his. “That’s the goal, the hope, and the reward! To love each other greatly and ardently in this phase of life so as to be together once again in the others! Oh, I know in my heart that this is not the first day of our union, that we’ve already loved, already possessed each other in an earlier life. Such happiness is no mere accident. It’s the hand of God bringing us back together like the two halves of one being inseparable in eternity.”

  After the celebration of the wedding, and even though it was very late, they proceeded with the ceremonies for Consuelo’s definitive initiation into the Order of the Invisibles; thereafter, the members of the tribunal having disappeared, they strolled through the sacred wood, soon to gather round a banquet of fraternal communion. Presiding over the banquet was the prince (brother orator), who undertook to explain to Consuelo its deep and moving symbols. The meal was served by faithful attendants who had attained a certain degree in the order. Karl introduced Matteus to Consuelo, and she finally saw his honest, gentle face without a mask, but she noted with admiration that these worthy valets were not treated as inferiors by their brothers who occupied other degrees. There was no distinction between them and the eminent members of the order, whatever their rank in the world. The ministering brothers, as they were called, were willing and eager to fulfill their duties as cupbearers and servers; they attended to the order of the courses as aids skilled in the art of preparing a feast, which they moreover considered a religious ceremony, a eucharistic meal. So they were no more demeaned by this function than temple Levites presiding over the details of the sacrifices. Whenever they finished serving a table, they sat down themselves, not at places set apart and isolated from the others, but laid for them among the other guests. Everyone called out to them, vying for the pleasure and duty of filling their cups and plates. As in Masonic banquets a cup was never lifted to the lips without a noble idea, a generous sentiment, or some august patronage being invoked. But the rhythmic outbursts of noise, the childish gestures of the Freemasons, the mallet, the jargon of the toasts, and the vocabulary of tools were excluded from this expansive yet solemn feast. The ministering brothers maintained a bearing that was respectful without servility, modest without constraint. Karl sat between Albert and Consuelo during one course. She was moved to see not only his sobriety and good behavior, but also the extraordinary progress that had taken place in this worthy peasant’s mind. Capable of learning through the heart, he had been initiated into healthy notions of religion and morality through a rapid and admirable education of feeling.

  “Oh my friend,” she said to her husband, when the deserter had changed places and Albert returned, “that was the slave beaten by the Prussian militia, the wild woodcutter from the Bohemian Forest, the would-be assassin of Frederick the Great! Enlightened, charitable lessons have in such a short time turned him into a sensible, pious, and just man, instead of a bandit that the ferocious justice of nations would have driven to murder and punished with the whip and the gallows.”

  “Noble heart,” said the prince who had taken his place to the right of Consuelo, “at Roswald you gave great lessons of religion and mercy to this heart bewildered by despair, yet endowed with the noblest instincts. After that his education was quick and easy, and every time we had a good lesson for him, he would immediately take us at our word and exclaim, ‘That’s what the signora used to say!’ You may be sure that it would be easier than one thinks to enlighten and edify the coarsest of men if one were really willing to do so. Improving their situation and instilling them with self-respect by starting to value and love them requires nothing more than sincere charity and respect for human dignity. But you see that these good men have so far been initiated only into the lowest degrees, for we test the capacity of their minds and their progress in virtue to admit them more or less into our mysteries. Old Matteus is two degrees beyond Karl, and if he doesn’t advance, it will be because his mind and heart won’t have been able to go any further. We won’t ever be stopped by low extraction or humble station; and here you see Gottlieb the shoemaker, the jailer’s son at Spandau, admitted to a degree equal to yours, even though he fulfills, by taste and habit, lowly functions in my house. His vivid imagination, passion for study, enthusiasm for virtue, in a word, the incomparable beauty of the soul dwelling in that ugly body made him very quickly worthy of being treated like an equal and brother inside the temple. There was almost nothing in the realm of ideas or virtues to be transmitted to this noble child. On the contrary, he had too many of them. We had to calm the excesses of his feeling and treat the maladies of his body and mind that would have driven him mad. The immorality of his entourage and the perversity of official life would have exasperated him without corrupting him, but we alone, armed with the spirit of Jacob Boehme and the true explanation of his profound symbols, we could convince him without disenchanting him and correct the aberrations of his mystic poetry without chilling his zeal and faith. You must have noticed that curing the soul has had effects on the body. He was restored to health as though by magic, and his bizarre appearance has already been transformed.”

  After the meal they again took their cloaks and strolled on the far and gentler side of the hill shaded by the sacred wood. The ruins of the old castle reserved for the ordeals dominated this beautiful site, and little by little Consuelo recogniz
ed the trails over which she had raced during a stormy night a short time before. The abundant spring once consecrated to superstitious devotions came pouring out of a grotto rustically carved into the rock and babbled through the heather to the far end of the valley where it became the beautiful brook so well known to the captive in the lodge. Crossing back and forth under the lovely shade trees, paths naturally covered with fine-grained sand had a silvery sheen in the moonlight, and there groups of wanderers met and mingled in sweet conversation. The enclosure with the vast, sumptuous summerhouse that passed as a study, the prince’s favorite retreat, was surrounded by a high lattice-work fence, forbidden to the idle and indiscreet. The ministering brothers strolled about as well, in groups, but along the fence, keeping watch in order to warn the brothers if anyone profane were to approach. This danger was not the object of much fear. The duke seemed to busy himself only with Masonic mysteries, as he in fact did secondarily, but Freemasonry at that time was tolerated by the law and protected by the princes who had been initiated or thought they had been. No one suspected the importance of the superior degrees that led step by step up to the Tribunal of the Invisibles.

  Besides, at that moment the highly visible festivities illuminating the façade of the ducal palace in the distance were absorbing the prince’s numerous guests so completely that no one thought to leave the glittering rooms and new gardens for the rocks and ruins of the old grounds. The young Margravine von Bayreuth, the duke’s close friend, was doing the honors for him at the gala. He had feigned a malaise so that he might disappear, and immediately after the Invisibles’ banquet he went back to preside over his illustrious guests’ supper at the palace. As Consuelo, leaning on her husband’s arm, saw these lights shimmering from afar, she again remembered Anzoleto and candidly accused herself, in front of Albert who was taking her to task for it, of having been momentarily cruel and ironic toward the cherished companion of her childhood.

  “Yes, it was wrong of me,” she told him, “but I was so unhappy just then. There I was determined to sacrifice myself to Count Albert, and the mischievous, cruel Invisibles were again throwing me into the arms of dangerous Liverani. I was sick at heart. It delighted me to find him once more, it drove me to despair having to part with him, and all the while Marcus was trying to distract me from my pain by making me admire handsome Anzoleto! Ah, never would I have dreamed of seeing him again with such indifference! But I thought I was doomed to the ordeal of singing with him, and I was ready to hate him for stealing my last moment, my last dream of happiness. Right now, my friend, I could set eyes on him again without bitterness and treat him with indulgence. Happiness makes one so kind and merciful! Let me one day render Anzoleto service and inspire him with a serious love of art, if not a taste for virtue!”

  “Why despair of it?” said Albert. “Let’s wait for a day when he’s down on his luck and alone. Now, in the midst of his triumphs, he’d be deaf to sage advice. But let him lose his voice and his looks, and we may take hold of his soul.”

  “That’s a conversion for you to undertake, Albert.”

  “Not without you, my Consuelo.”

  “So you have no fear of old memories?”

  “No, I’m presumptuous to the point of fearing nothing. I’m under the power of the miracle.”

  “I am too, Albert, I feel so sure of myself! Oh, how right you are to be so tranquil!”

  Day was breaking, and a thousand charming fragrances were stirring in the pure morning air. It was the loveliest time of summer. Nightingales were singing in trees, calling back and forth from one hill to the next. The groups that formed at every moment around the couple, far from annoying them, added to their pure delight the sweetness of fraternal affection or, at the very least, the most exquisite sympathies. All of the Invisibles present at these festivities were introduced to Consuelo as members of her new family. They were the best of the order’s talents, minds, and virtues, some being illustrious in the outside world and others quite obscure, but renowned within the temple for their labors and lights. Plebeians and patricians mingled in tender intimacy. Consuelo had to learn their real names as well as the more poetic ones they bore in the secrecy of their fraternal relations: Vesper, Ellops, Peon, Hylas, Euryalus, Bellerophon, and the like. Never had she found herself surrounded by so numerous a choice of noble souls and interesting personalities. The tales they told about their proselytizing, the dangers they had faced, and the results they had achieved charmed her like poems whose reality she would not have believed compatible with the ways of the insolent, corrupt world she had traversed. These tokens of affection and esteem, even to the point of tender effusions, without the slightest taint of trite gallantry or insinuation of dangerous familiarity, this elevated language, this charming commerce where equality and fraternity were realized in their most sublime forms, the lovely golden light that was dawning on life and in the heavens at the same moment, it was all like a divine dream in the lives of Consuelo and Albert. Arm in arm, they gave no thought to leaving their beloved brothers. An inner joy, sweet and suave as the morning air, filled their breasts and souls, and their hearts were so brimming with love that nothing could make them shudder. Trenck recounted his sufferings in prison at Glatz and his dangerous escape. Like Consuelo and Haydn in the Bohemian Forest, he had made his way across Poland, but in bitterly cold weather and covered in rags, with a wounded companion, the amiable Shelles, that Trenck’s memoirs have since portrayed as the most gracious of friends. He had fiddled for peasants in exchange for bread, like Consuelo on the banks of the Danube. Then he lowered his voice to talk about Princess Amalia, his love and his hopes. Poor Trenck! He did not foresee the dreadful storm gathering over his head any more than the happy couple destined to go forth from this beautiful summer night’s dream into a life of struggle, disappointment, and suffering.

  Under the cypresses, Porporino sang an admirable hymn that Albert had composed to the memory of the martyrs of their cause. Young Benda accompanied him on his violin, and Albert himself took the instrument and delighted the listeners with a few notes. Consuelo could not sing, for she was weeping tears of joy and enthusiasm. The Count de Saint-Germain related the conversations of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague with such fervor, eloquence, and verisimilitude that it was impossible while listening not to believe that he had been there. In such hours of deep emotion and delight, gloomy reason is defenseless against the magic of poetry. With sharp, subtle strokes and enchanting taste the Chevalier d’Eon painted the wretchedness and folly of the most illustrious tyrants of Europe, the vices of the courts, and the weakness of this social structure that enthusiasm deemed so pliable in its blazing flight. Count Golowkin drew a charming portrait of his friend Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s great soul and artless foibles. This philosophic nobleman (these days he would be called an eccentric) had a very beautiful daughter whom he was rearing as he saw fit; and she was both Emile and Sophie, sometimes the most handsome boy, sometimes the most appealing girl. He was to introduce her at the initiation and put Consuelo in charge of her education. The illustrious Zinzendorf explained how his colony of Moravian Herrnhutters was organized and their evangelical way of life. With deference he consulted Albert about several difficulties, and wisdom seemed to issue forth from Albert’s lips. This was so because he was inspired by Consuelo’s presence and gentle gaze. For her he was a god. He enjoyed every sort of prestige in her eyes: a philosopher and artist, a martyr who had been put to the test, a triumphant hero; solemn as an ancient Greek stoic, beautiful as an angel, playful on occasion and naïve as a child, as a blissful lover; perfect, in short, as is the man one loves! Consuelo had thought she would die of exhaustion and emotion knocking at the door of the temple. Now she felt strong and spirited as in the days when she used to play on the shores of the Adriatic with all the vim of adolescence, under a burning sun tempered by the breeze from the sea. It seemed that life in all its power, happiness in all its intensity had seized her by every one of her fibers and that she was sucking them in thro
ugh all her pores. She was not counting the hours; she would have wanted this enchanted night never to end. Why can’t one keep the sun below the horizon on certain nights when one feels all the fullness of being, when every dream of enthusiasm seems to have come true or to be within the realm of possibility!

  Finally the sky turned purple and gold, and a silver bell warned the Invisibles that night was taking back its protective veils. They sang a last hymn to the rising sun, an emblem of the new day that they were dreaming and preparing for the world. Then they bid each other fond farewells and arranged various meetings, some in Paris or London, others in Madrid, Vienna, Petersburg, Warsaw, Dresden, and Berlin. They all promised to come together the following year, on the same day, at the door of this blessed temple, with new neophytes or old brothers now absent. Then they wrapped themselves in their cloaks to hide their elegant attire and silently scattered over the shady trails of the grounds.

  Albert and Consuelo, guided by Marcus, went down the ravine to the stream. Karl welcomed them into his closed gondola and conveyed them to the lodge. On the threshold they paused a second to contemplate the majesty of the rising sun. Up until that moment Consuelo, replying to Albert’s passionate words, had always given him his true name, but when he tore her away from the meditation in which she seemed rapt, she could only say to him, leaning her burning brow on his shoulder, “Oh Liverani.”

  1. Everyone knows that the glass harmonica created such a sensation when it first appeared in Germany that poetic imaginations wanted to think that they were hearing the supernatural voices evoked by the consecrators of certain mysteries. There was a time when German disciples of theosophy exalted this instrument, hailed as magical before it became fashionable, to the same divine honors as the lyre in Antiquity as well as several other musical instruments used by the primitive Himalayans. They turned it into a hieroglyph, representing a fantastic chimera, in their mysterious iconography. Hearing it for the first time after the terrors and emotions of their arduous ordeals, the neophytes of secret societies were so awed that several fell into trances of ecstasy. They believed that they were hearing the music of invisible forces, for the performer and the instrument were very carefully concealed from their sight. There are extremely curious details about the extraordinary role of the glass harmonica in the Illuminati’s initiation ceremonies. [Translator’s note: This instrument invented in the eighteenth century was made up of a set of glass strips struck by a little hammer or crystal glasses filled with water and made to vibrate with the tips of one’s fingers.]