The Countess von Rudolstadt

by George Sand

  “Is it possible,” I asked the master, “for an old man totally deprived of his senses and reason to be abandoned like this far away from any dwelling, in the middle of the mountains, without a guide, without a dog to lead him around and beg in his place?”

  “Let’s take him along to some shelter,” replied Spartacus.

  But as we were preparing to lift him up to see if he could stand on his legs, he motioned to us not to bother him by placing a finger on his lips and pointing to the far end of the courtyard with his other hand. We looked over that way and didn’t see anyone, but just then our ears were struck by the sound of a violin being played with extraordinary strength and accuracy. Never have I heard any musician give his bow such a broad, penetrating vibration and create such an intimate rapport between the strings of the soul and those of the instrument. The melody was simple and sublime, unlike anything I’ve heard in our concerts and theaters. It filled the heart with an emotion that was both pious and warlike. We felt a sort of rapture, the master and I, and we told each other with our eyes that this was something great and mysterious. A sort of vague brilliance, like that of ecstasy, had once again come over the old man’s eyes. A smile of beatitude parted his withered lips, a good sign that he was neither deaf nor insensible.

  Everything fell silent again after a short, adorable melody, and then we saw a man of mature years, whose aspect filled us with emotion and respect, emerge from a chapel opposite us. The beauty of his austere face and the noble proportions of his stature contrasted with the deformed limbs and wild features of the old man that Spartacus compared to a converted, baptized faun. The violin player walked straight up to us, his instrument under his arm, and his bow slipped through his leather belt. Loose-fitting trousers of rough material, sandals that looked like ancient buskins, and a sheepskin tunic of the sort worn by our Danube peasants gave him the appearance of a shepherd or ploughman. But his fine white hands were not those of a man who spent his life working the land. They were the hands of an artist. Likewise, the cleanliness of his garments and the pride in his eyes seemed to protest his wretched poverty and refuse to accept its hideous, degrading consequences. The master was struck by the man’s aspect. He squeezed my hand, and I could feel that his was trembling.

  “That’s him!” he said. “I didn’t know he was a musician, but I recognize his face for having seen it in my dreams.”

  The violin player came toward us without demonstrating any embarrassment or surprise. With kindly dignity he returned our greeting, and drawing near the old man, he said, “Come on, Zdenko, I’m on my way, lean on your friend.”

  The old man made an effort, the musician lifted him up, and bending over beneath him as though to act as his staff, he guided the old man’s tottering steps and slowed down his own pace accordingly. There was in this filial care, in the patience of a noble, handsome man still limber and strong, crawling along under the weight of an old man in rags, something more touching, if that’s possible, than the solicitude of a young mother adjusting her gait to her child’s first halting steps. I saw the master’s eyes fill with tears, and I too was moved, contemplating now our Spartacus, this man of genius and the future, now this stranger in whom I sensed the same grandeur buried in the shades of the past.

  Determined to follow and question him, but not wishing to distract him from his pious task, we trailed behind at a short distance. He was headed for the chapel out of which he had come, and once inside, he stopped and seemed to contemplate some broken tombstones invaded by brambles and moss. The old man had knelt down, and when he got back up, his friend kissed one of the tombstones, and they started off together.

  It was only then that he noticed us nearby, and he seemed a bit taken aback, but there was no mistrust in his gaze, bright-eyed and placid like that of a child. Yet he appeared to be over fifty, and the thick gray locks billowing around his manly face played up the flash of his large dark eyes. His mouth had an indefinable expression of strength and simplicity. One would have said that he had two souls, one all enthusiasm for things celestial, the other all benevolence for mankind here below.

  We were searching for a pretext to say a few words to him when all of a sudden he connected with our thoughts, by a naïve stroke of extraordinary expansiveness, and said, “You’ve seen me kiss this piece of marble, and the old man has prostrated himself on these tombs. Don’t take this as acts of idolatry. One kisses the clothes of a saint as one wears a token of love and friendship over the heart. Mortal remains are merely used clothing. We don’t trample on them with indifference; we keep them with respect and leave them with regret. Oh my father, oh my beloved family! I know full well that you aren’t here, and these inscriptions lie when they say: Here repose the Rudolstadts! The Rudolstadts are all on their feet, all living and acting in the world according to God’s will. Under these pieces of marble there are just bones, forms that came to life, that life abandoned to take on other forms. Blessed be the ashes of ancestors! Blessed be the grass and ivy crowning them! Blessed be the earth and rock defending them! But blessed, above all, be the living God who says to the dead, ‘Rise up and return to my fertile soul! where nothing dies, where everything is renewed and purified!’ ”

  “Liverani or Zizka Trismegistus, is this you I see once again on the tomb of your ancestors?” exclaimed Spartacus enlightened by a celestial certainty.

  “Neither Liverani, nor Trismegistus, nor even Jan Zizka,” replied the stranger. “Specters besieged my ignorant youth, but they’ve been absorbed by divine light, and the ancestors’ names have faded from my memory. My name is man and I am nothing more than other men.”

  “Those are profound words, but also wary,” said the master. “You can trust this sign; don’t you recognize it?”

  And thereupon Spartacus made him Masonic signs of the upper degrees.

  “I’ve forgotten that language,” replied the stranger. “I don’t despise it, but it’s become useless to me. Brother, don’t insult me by supposing that I don’t trust you. Your name, yours too, is it not man? Men have never done me harm, or if they have, I’m not aware of it any longer. It was therefore very limited harm, compared with the infinite good they can do each other, for which I must be grateful to them ahead of time.”

  “Is it possible, oh good man,” exclaimed Spartacus, “that time counts for nothing in your notion and feeling of life?”

  “There is no such thing as time, and if men meditated more on the divine essence, they wouldn’t count centuries and years any more than I do. What does it matter to one who partakes of God to the point of being eternal, to one who has always lived and will never cease to live, that there is a bit more or a bit less sand at the bottom of the clepsydra? The hand turning the hourglass can speed up or slow down; the hand providing the sand knows no cease.”

  “You mean to say that man can forget about counting and measuring time, that life always flows rich and abundant from the bosom of God? Is that your thought?”

  “You’ve understood me, young man. But I have a more beautiful demonstration of the great mysteries.”

  “The mysteries? Yes, I’ve come from far away to ask you questions and learn from you.”

  “So listen!” said the stranger, making the old man, who obeyed him with the trust of a little child, sit down on a tombstone. “This place particularly inspires me, and it’s here in the last rays of the sun and the first pale glimmer of the moon that I want to lift up your soul to knowledge of the most sublime truths.”

  We were quivering with joy at the idea of having found at last, after two years of seeking and searching, this wise man of our religion, this philosopher, both metaphysician and organizer, who was to entrust us with Ariadne’s thread and guide us out of the labyrinth of the ideas and things of the past. But the stranger seized his violin and began playing with verve. His vigorous bow made the leaves rustle like the evening breeze and the ruins echo like the human voice. His melody had a particular quality of religious enthusiasm, ancient simplicity, and
stirring warmth. The motifs had a majestic fullness in their energetic brevity. There was nothing languorous or dreamy in these unfamiliar melodies. They were like songs of war, and they made triumphant armies bearing the banners, palms, and mysterious symbols of a new religion pass before our eyes. I saw the peoples in their immensity having come together under one flag; no turmoil in the ranks, a fever without delirium, an impetuous élan without anger, human activity in all its splendor, victory in all its mercy, and faith in all its sublime expansion.

  “Magnificent!” I exclaimed after he had given a fiery performance of five or six of these admirable melodies. “That’s the Te Deum of Humanity rejuvenated and reconciled, thanking the God of all religions, the light of all men.”

  “You’ve understood me, child!” said the musician, wiping the sweat and tears streaming down his face, “and you see that time has just one voice for proclaiming the truth. Look at this old man, he’s understood as well as you have, and now he’s thirty years younger.”

  We turned our eyes to the old man whom we had already forgotten. He was on his feet, walking about with ease and tapping his foot to the rhythm, as though he wanted to spring up and leap like a youth. The music had worked a miracle in him; he went down the hill with us without wanting to lean on any of us. When his pace slackened, the musician asked, “Zdenko, do you want me to play you again the march of Procopius the Great or the benediction of the Horebites’ flag?”

  But the old man signaled that he still had strength, as though he were afraid of squandering a celestial remedy and using up his friend’s inspiration.

  We were heading for the hamlet that had been on our right at the far end of the valley when we had taken the road to the ruins. On the way Spartacus questioned the stranger.

  “You’ve played incomparable melodies for us,” he said, “and with this brilliant prelude I understand that you meant to incline our senses to the enthusiasm that brims over in you, you wanted to lift yourself up, like a pythoness or prophet, so that you could utter your oracles, armed with all the power of inspiration, and totally filled with the spirit of the Lord. So now speak. The wind is still and the path easy, the moon is lighting our way. All nature seems deep in meditation to hear you, and our hearts are calling for your revelations. Our vain science, our proud reason, will grow humble under your fervent words. Speak, the moment has come.”

  But the stranger refused to explain himself.

  “What would I say that I haven’t just said in a more beautiful language? Is it my fault if you failed to understand me? You think I wanted to speak to your senses, and it was my soul speaking to you! What am I saying? It was the soul of all Humanity speaking to you through mine. Then I was truly inspired, and now I’m not. I need to rest. You’d feel the same way if you had taken in everything that I was trying to impart.”

  It was impossible for Spartacus to get anything more out of him that evening. When we reached the first cottages, the stranger said to us, “Friends, don’t follow me any further, and come back to see me tomorrow. Just knock on the first door you come to. You’ll be welcomed everywhere here if you know the language of the land.”

  There was no need to flash the small amount of money we had. The Bohemian peasant’s hospitality is worthy of ancient times. We were welcomed in a calm, obliging way, which soon turned affectionately cordial when they heard us speak the Slavic language fluently; the people here are still wary of anyone who approaches them in German.

  We soon learned that we were at the foot of the mountain and castle of the Giants, and, on the basis of the name, we could have thought ourselves magically transported to the great northern chain of the Carpathians. But we were told that one of the Podiebrad ancestors had baptized his estate with this name to commemorate a vow he had made in the Riesengebürge. They also told us how the Podiebrad descendants had changed their own name, after the disasters of the Thirty Years’ War, and taken that of Rudolstadt; the persecution at that time went so far as to Germanize the names of cities, estates, families, and individuals. All of these traditions are still alive in the hearts of the Bohemian peasants. So the mysterious Trismegistus for whom we were searching is very truly the same Albert Podiebrad who was buried alive twenty-five years ago, wrested from his tomb by what miracle it has never been known, who then disappeared for a long time, only to be persecuted and locked up some ten or fifteen years later for being a falsifier, an impostor and, above all, a Freemason and Rosicrucian; this famous Count von Rudolstadt whose strange trial was carefully hushed up, whose identity could never be ascertained. So trust the master’s inspirations, friend; you trembled to see us, on the basis of vague and incomplete revelations, racing off in search of a man who could be, like so many other Illuminati of the previous generation, a careless crook or a ridiculous adventurer. The master had guessed right. From a few scattered traits, a few mysterious writings by this strange character, he had sensed a man of intelligence and truth, a precious guardian of the sacred fire and holy traditions of earlier Illuminism, a disciple of the ancient secret, a doctor of the new interpretation. We’ve found him, and today we know more about the history of Freemasonry, about the famous Invisibles whose work and even existence we once threw into doubt, about ancient and modern mysteries than we had learned seeking to decipher lost hieroglyphs or consulting former disciples worn down by persecution and debased by fear. We’ve found, in short, a man, and we’re returning to you with this sacred fire that once turned a clay statue into an intelligent being, a new god, a rival to the old gods, fierce and stupid. Our master is Prometheus. Trismegistus had the flame in his heart, and we’ve stolen enough of it from him to initiate you all into new life.

  Our fine hosts’ tales kept us awake around the rustic hearth quite a while. They hadn’t paid any heed to the judgments and legal attestations declaring that Albert von Rudolstadt had forfeited, by reason of an attack of catalepsy, his name and rights. Their love of his memory, their hatred of the foreigners, these Austrian despoilers who, after having forcibly procured the rightful heir’s conviction, came and divided up his land and castle among themselves; the shameless squandering of the great fortune that Albert would have put to such noble use, and above all the wrecking hammer doggedly knocking down the ancient seigneurial manor so that the materials could be sold off cheaply, as if certain beasts destructive and sacrilegious by nature had needed to pollute and spoil the prey that they could not manage to carry off. All this was quite enough to make the peasants of the Bohemian Forest prefer a poetically miraculous truth to the conquerors’ reasonably odious assertions. It was twenty-five years ago that Albert Podiebrad disappeared, and nobody here has wanted to believe him dead, even though all the German gazettes said so as confirmation of an iniquitous judgment, even though the whole Viennese court laughed with scorn and pity listening to the story of a maniac who sincerely took himself for a dead man come back to life. And for a week now Albert von Rudolstadt has been here in these mountains, praying and singing every evening on the ruins of his forefathers’ castle. And for a week now as well all the men old enough to have seen him in his youth have been recognizing him with his grey hair and bowing down before him as their true master and old friend. There is something admirable about this memory, about the love of these people for him; nothing, in our corrupt world, can give an idea of the pure morals and noble sentiments we’ve encountered here. This fills Spartacus with awe, and he’s all the more impressed because a minor episode of persecution that we endured at the hands of these peasants confirmed to us how faithful they are to misfortune and gratitude.

  Here’s what happened. When, at the break of day, we wanted to leave the cottage to go ask about the violin player, we found a picket of improvised foot-soldiers guarding all the exits.

  “We beg your pardon,” stated the head of the family calmly, “for having called all our friends and relatives, with their flails and scythes, to keep you here against your will. You’ll be free to go this evening.” And given our astonishment at this
violence, our host continued with a grave look, “If you are good men, if you understand friendship and devotion, you won’t be angry with us. If, on the other hand, you’re traitors and spies sent here to persecute and kidnap our Podiebrad, we won’t tolerate it, and we’ll keep you here until he’s far away, out of your reach.”

  We understood that these good men, at first so expansive with us, had grown suspicious during the night, and we could only admire their solicitude. But the master was desperate about losing sight of this precious hierophant that we had come seeking with such trouble and so few chances of success. He decided to write to Trismegistus in Masonic code, telling him his name and position, giving him some inkling of his designs and invoking his allegiance to shield us from the peasants’ suspicions. A few seconds after that letter had been taken to the next cottage, there arrived a woman before whom the peasants respectfully opened their phalanx bristling with rustic weapons. We heard them murmuring, “The Zingara! the Zingara of consolation!” And soon this woman came into the cottage where we were, and closing the doors behind her, she began interrogating us, with scrupulous severity, by means of the signs and formulas of the Scottish rite. We were most surprised to see a woman initiated into these mysteries that, as far as I know, no other woman has ever possessed, and her commanding presence and searching gaze inspired in us a certain respect, despite the quite obviously zingaro costume that she wore with the ease that comes of habit. Her striped skirt, the big cloak of tawny homespun thrown over her shoulder like an ancient toga, her hair black as night, parted on the forehead and fastened by a band of blue wool, her large eyes full of fire, her ivory-white teeth, her weather-beaten but smooth complexion, her little feet and slender hands, and, as the finishing touch of her portrait, a rather beautiful guitar hitched up crosswise under her cloak, everything about her person and costume announced straight off a Zingara’s looks and trade. As she was very clean and her manner calm and dignified, we thought her the queen of her camp. But when she told us that she was Trismegistus’ wife, we gazed at her with greater interest and attention. She is no longer young, and yet one would be hard put to say if she is a person of forty withered with fatigue or a remarkably well-preserved fifty-year-old. She is still beautiful, and her elegant, lithe carriage is so noble, so chastely graceful that seeing her walking one would take her for a young maiden. When the initial severity of her features had softened, we were gradually penetrated by her charm. Her gaze is angelic, and the sound of her voice stirs your heart like a celestial melody. Whoever this woman may be, the philosopher’s legitimate wife or a generous adventuress trailing after him because of an ardent passion, it is impossible to think while gazing at her and listening to her voice that any vice, any degrading instinct could have sullied someone so calm, so frank, and so good. We had been alarmed, at first, to find our sage demeaned by carnal bonds. It didn’t take us long to discover that, in the ranks of true nobility, that of the heart and mind, he had met a poetic lover, a sister soul, to accompany him through the storms of life.