Consuelo, page 33
She resolved not to contradict his illusion too abruptly.
"Albert," said she, "for your name is no longer John, as mine is no longer Wanda, look at me well, and see that I, as well as you, am changed in features and character. What you have just said, I came to recall to your mind. Human justice is more than satisfied, and it is the day of divine justice which I now announce to you. God commands us to forgive and to forget. These fatal recollections, this pertinacity of yours in exercising a faculty which he has not given to other men, this scrupulous and gloomy remembrance which you retain of your anterior existences, God is offended at, and withdraws from you, because you have abused them. Do you hear me, Albert, and do you understand me now?"
"O my mother!" replied Albert, pale and trembling, falling on his knees and looking at Consuelo with an extraordinary expression of terror, "I do hear thee, and understand thy words. I see that thou transformest thyself, to convince and subdue me. No, thou art no longer Wanda of Ziska, the violated virgin, the weeping nun. Thou art Wanda of Prachalitz, whom men call Countess of Rudolstadt, and who bore in thy bosom the wretched being they now call Albert."
"It is not by the caprice of men that you are so called," returned Consuelo, with firmness; "for it is God who has caused you to live again under other conditions and with new duties. Those duties, Albert, you either do not know or you despise them. You travel back the course of ages with an impious pride; you aspire to penetrate the secrets of destiny; you think to equal yourself with God, by embracing in your view the present and the past. It is I who tell you this, and it is truth, it is faith which inspires me; this always looking backward is rash and criminal. This supernatural memory which you attribute to yourself is an illusion. You have taken some vague and feeble glimmerings for certainty, and your imagination has deceived you. Your pride has built up an empty and unsubstantial edifice, when you assign to yourself the most important parts in the history of your ancestors. Beware lest you are not what you suppose. Fear lest, to punish you, eternal wisdom should open your eyes for an instant, and cause you to perceive in your former life, less illustrious faults and less glorious objects of remorse, than those on which you dare to pride yourself."
Albert heard this discourse with timid attention, his face hidden in his hands, and his knees buried in the earth.
"Speak! speak! O voice of Heaven! which I hear, but which I no longer recognize," murmured he, in stifled accents. "If thou art the angel of the mountain—if thou art, as I believe, the celestial figure which has so often appeared to me upon the Stone of Terror—speak—command my will, my conscience, my imagination. Thou well knowest that I seek for the light with anguish, and that if I lose myself in the darkness, it is from my desire to dissipate it in order to reach thee."
"A little humility, a little confidence and submission to the eternal decrees of wisdom, which are incomprehensible to man—that is the path of truth for you, Albert. Renounce from your heart, and renounce firmly, once for all, any wish to know any thing beyond this passing existence which is imposed upon you; and you will again become acceptable to God, useful to man, tranquil in yourself. Humble your proud intellect; and without losing faith in your immortality, without doubting the divine goodness, which pardons the past and watches over the future, apply yourself to render humane and full of good fruits, this present life which you despise, when you ought to respect it and give yourself to it, with all your strength, your self-denial, and your charity. Now, Albert, look at me, and may your eyes be unsealed. I am no longer your sister nor your mother; I am a friend whom Heaven has sent to you, and whom it has conducted by miraculous means to snatch you from pride and from insanity. Look at me, and tell me, on your soul and on your conscience, who I am and what is my name."
Albert, trembling and confused, raised his head and looked at her again, but with less wildness and terror than before.
"You cause me to leap over abysses," said he to her; "by your deep and searching words you confound my reason, which (for my misfortune) I thought superior to that of other men, and you order me to know and understand the present time and human affairs. I cannot. To lose the remembrance of certain phases of my life, I must pass through a terrible crisis; and to seize the sense of a new phase, I must transform myself by efforts which lead me to the gates of death. If you command me, in the name of a power which I feel superior to mine, to assimulate my thoughts to yours, I must obey; but I know those horrible struggles, and I know that death is their termination. Pity me, you who operate upon me by a sovereign charm; aid me, or I sink. Tell me who you are, for I do not know. I do not remember ever to have seen you before; I do not know your sex, and you are there before me like a mysterious statue, the type of which I vainly strive to find in my memory. Help me! help me! for I feel that I am dying."
While speaking thus, Albert, whose face was at first flushed with a feverish brightness, became again of a frightful paleness. He stretched out his hands toward Consuelo; but immediately lowered them to the ground to support himself, as if he had been overpowered by an irresistible faintness. Consuelo, becoming by degrees initiated into the secrets of his mental malady, felt herself reanimated, and as if inspired by new strength and intelligence. She took his hands, and obliging him to rise, she conducted him toward the chair which was near the table. He let himself fall into it, overpowered by unsufferable fatigue, and bent forward as if about to faint. The struggle of which he spoke was but too real. Albert had the faculty of recovering his reason, and repelling the suggestions of the fever which consumed his brain; but he did not succeed without efforts and sufferings which exhausted his powers. When this reaction was produced of its own accord, he issued from it refreshed, and as it were renewed, but when he induced it by a resolution of his still powerful will, his body sank under the effort, and all his limbs were affected by catalepsy. Consuelo understood what was passing within him. "Albert," said she, placing her cold hand upon his head, "I know you, and that suffices. I am interested in you, and that also must be sufficient for you at present. I forbid your making any effort of your will to recognize or to speak to me. Only listen; and if my words seem obscure to you, wait till I explain myself, and be in no haste to discover their meaning. I ask of you a passive submission and an entire abandonment of your reflective powers. Can you descend into your heart, and there concentrate all your existence?"
"Oh, how much good you do me!" replied Albert. "Speak to me again—speak to me always thus. You hold my soul in your hands. Whoever you may be, keep it—do not let it escape—for it would go and knock at the gates of eternity, and would there be broken. Tell me who you are—tell me quickly; and if I do not comprehend, explain it to me; for, in spite of myself, I seek to know and am agitated."
"I am Consuelo," replied the young girl; "and you know it, since you instinctively speak to me in a language which I alone, of all those near you, can comprehend. I am the friend whom you have expected for a long while, and whom you recognized one day as she was singing. Since that day you have left your family and hidden yourself here. Since that day I have sought for you; you have appealed to me several times through Zdenko; but Zdenko, who executed your orders in certain respects, was not willing to conduct me to you. I have succeeded, through a thousand dangers——"
"You could not have succeeded had Zdenko been unwilling," interrupted Albert, raising his body, which was weighed down and resting upon the table. "You are a dream, I see it well, and all that I hear is simply passing in my imagination. Oh, my God! you lull me with deceitful joys, and suddenly the disorder and incoherence of my dreams are revealed to me, and I find myself alone—alone in the world with my despair and my madness! O Consuelo! Consuelo! fatal and delicious dream! where is the being that bears your name, and is sometimes clothed with your form? No, you exist only in me, and it is my delirium which has created you."
Albert again let his head fall on his extended arms, which became cold and rigid as marble.
Consuelo saw him approach his lethargic crisis, and felt herself so exhausted and so ready to faint, that she feared she could not avert it. She endeavored to reanimate Albert's hands in her own, which were hardly more alive. "My God," said she, with a choking voice, her heart sinking within her, "succor two unfortunate beings who can hardly do any thing for each other!"
She saw herself alone, shut up with a dying man, dying herself, and expecting no help for herself or for him, except from Zdenko, whose return seemed to her more to be dreaded than desired.
Her prayer seemed to strike Albert with an unexpected emotion. "Some one is praying by my side," said he, trying to raise his overburdened head. "I am not alone. Oh, no! I am not alone," added he, looking at Consuelo's hand clasped in his. "Succoring hand, mysterious pity, human, fraternal sympathy! You render my agony very gentle, my heart very grateful!" And he imprinted his frozen lips on Consuelo's hand, and remained thus for a long while.
A feeling of modesty restored to Consuelo the sense of life. She did not dare to withdraw her hand from the unfortunate young man; but divided between her embarrassment and her weariness, and no longer able to remain standing, she was compelled to rest upon Albert, and to place her other hand upon his shoulder.
"I feel myself restored," said Albert, after a few moments. "It seems to me that I am in my mother's arms. O my aunt Wenceslawa, if it be you who are near me, forgive me for having forgotten you—you, and my father, and all my family—whose very names had escaped my memory. I return to you—do not leave me; but restore to me Consuelo—Consuelo, whom I had so long expected, whom I had at last found, and whom I find no more, and without whom I can no longer exist."
Consuelo endeavored to speak to him; but in proportion as Albert's memory and strength seemed restored to him, Consuelo's life seemed to desert her. So much terror and fatigue, so many emotions and superhuman efforts, had so broken her down, that she could struggle no longer. The words expired upon her lips, she felt her limbs bend under her, and every object swam before her eyes. She fell upon her knees by the side of Albert, and her swooning form struck the breast of the young man.
Immediately Albert, as if awaking from a dream, saw her—recognized her—uttered a deep cry, and arousing himself, pressed her in his arms with wild energy. Through the veil of death which seemed to spread over her eyelids, Consuelo saw his joy and was not terrified. It was a holy joy radiant with purity. She closed her eyes and fell into a state of utter prostration, which was not sleep nor waking, but a kind of indifference and insensibility to all present things.
CHAPTER XLV
WHEN Consuelo recovered the use of her faculties, finding herself seated upon a hard bed, and not yet able to raise her eyelids, she endeavoured to collect her thoughts. But the prostration had been so complete that her powers returned but slowly; and as if the sum of the fatigues and emotions which she had latterly experienced had surpassed her strength, she tried in vain to remember what had happened to her since she left Venice. Even her departure from that adopted country, where she had passed such happy days, appeared to her like a dream; and it was a solace (alas, too fleeting!) to her to be able to doubt for an instant her exile, and the misfortunes which caused it. She therefore imagined that she was still in her poor chamber in the Corte Minelli, on her mother's pallet, that after having had a violent and trying scene with Anzoleto, the confused recollection of which floated in her memory, she returned to life and hope on feeling him near her, on hearing his interrupted breathing, and the tender words he addressed to her in a low and murmuring voice. A languishing and delicious joy penetrated her heart at this thought, and she raised herself with some exertion to look at her repentant friend, and to stretch out her hand to him. But she pressed a cold and unknown hand; and in place of the smiling sun, whose rosy brilliancy she was accustomed to see through her white curtain, she saw only a sepulchral light, falling from the roof of a gloomy vault, and swimming in a humid atmosphere; she felt under her arm the rude spoils of savage animals, and amid a horrible silence the pale face of Albert bent toward her like that of a specter.
Consuelo thought she had descended living to the tomb; she closed her eyes, and fell back upon the bed of dried leaves with a deep groan. It was some minutes before she could remember where she was, and to what gloomy host she was confided. Terror, which the enthusiasm of her devotion had hitherto combated and subdued, seized upon her, so that she feared to open her eyes lest she should see some horrible spectacle—the paraphernalia of death—a sepulcher—open before her. She felt something upon her brow, and raised her hand to it. It was a garland of leaves with which Albert had crowned her. She took it off to look at it, and saw a branch of cypress.
"I believed you dead, O my soul, O my consolation!" said Albert, kneeling beside her; "and before following you to the tomb, I wished to adorn you with the emblems of marriage. Flowers do not grow around me, Consuelo. The black cypress offered the only branches from which my hand could gather your coronet of betrothal. There it is; do not despise it. If we must die here, let me swear to you that, if restored to life, I would never have had any other spouse than you; that I die united with you by an indissoluble oath."
"Betrothed! united!" cried Consuelo, casting terrified glances around her; "who has pronounced that decree? who has celebrated that marriage?"
"It is destiny, my angel," replied Albert, with an inexpressible gentleness and sadness. "Think not to escape from it. It is a strange destiny for you, and even more so for me. You forbade me a short time since to search into the past; you prohibited to me the remembrance of those bygone days which are called the night of ages. My being has obeyed you, and henceforth I know nothing of my anterior life. But my present life, I have questioned it, I know it. I have seen it entire with one glance; it appeared to me during the instant in which you reposed in the arms of death. Your destiny, Consuelo, is to belong to me, and yet you will never be mine. You do not love me, you never will love me as I love you. Your love for me is only charity, your devotion only heroism. You are a saint whom God sends, but you will never be a woman to me. I must die, consumed by a love you cannot partake; and yet, Consuelo, you will be my wife as you are now my betrothed, whether we perish now, and your pity consents to give me that title of husband, which no kiss will ever confirm, or whether we again see the sun, and your conscience commands you to accomplish the designs of God toward me."
"Count Albert," said Consuelo, endeavoring to rise from her bed covered with bear-skins, which resembled a funereal couch, "I know not if it be the enthusiasm of a heated imagination, or the continuance of your delirium, which make you speak thus. I have no longer the strength to dispel your illusions; and if they must turn against me—against me, who have come at the peril of my life to succor and console you—I feel that I can no longer contend with you for my life or my liberty. If the sight of me irritates you, and if God abandons me, may His will be done! You, who think you know so many things, do not know how my life has been poisoned, and with how little regret I should sacrifice it."
"I know that you are very unhappy, my poor saint. I know that you wear on your brow a crown of thorns, which I cannot tear away. The cause and the consequences of your misfortunes I do not know, neither do I ask you for them. But I should love you very little, I should be little worthy of your compassion, if from the day when I first met you I had not felt and recognized in you the sorrow which fills your soul and embitters your life. What can you fear from me, Consuelo?—from my soul? You, so firm and so wise, whom God has inspired with words which subdued and restored me in an instant, you must feel the light of your faith and your reason strangely weakened, since you fear your friend, your servant, your slave. Rouse yourself, my angel; look at me. See me here at your feet, and forever, my forehead in the dust. What do you wish—what do you command? Do you wish to leave this place on the instant, without my following you, without my ever appearing before you again? What sacrifice do you exact? What oath do you wish me to take? I can promise you every thing, and obey you in every thing. Yes, Consuelo, I can even become a tranquil man, submissive, and in appearance as reasonable as other men. Should I thus be less repulsive, less terrifying to you? Hitherto I have never been able to do as I wished, but hereafter every thing you desire will be granted me. Perhaps I may die in transforming myself according to your will; but I tell you in my turn that my life has ever been embittered, and that I should not regret losing it for you."
"Dear, generous Albert!" said Consuelo, reassured and greatly affected, "explain yourself more clearly, and let me at last understand the depths of your impenetrable soul. You are in my eyes superior to all other men; and from the first moment that I saw you, I felt for you a respect and a sympathy which I have no cause to conceal. I have always heard it said that you were insane, but I have not been able to believe it. All that has been related to me of you only added to my esteem and to my confidence. Still I could not help seeing that you were overpowered by a deep and strange mental disease. I persuaded myself, presumptuously perhaps, but sincerely, that I could relieve your malady. You yourself have aided in making me think so. I have come to seek you, and now you tell me things respecting myself and you which would fill me with a boundless veneration, if you did not mix up with them strange ideas drawn from a spirit of fatalism which I cannot share. Can I say all without wounding you and making you suffer?"
"Say all, Consuelo; I know beforehand what you have to say."
"Well, I will say it, for I had so promised myself. All those who love you despair of you. They think they must respect, that is to say, spare, what they call your insanity; they fear to exasperate you by letting you see that they know it, lament it, and fear it. For myself, I cannot believe them, and cannot tremble in asking you why, being so wise, you have sometimes the appearance of an insane person; why, being so good, you perform deeds of ingratitude and pride; why, being so enlightened and religious, you abandon yourself to the reveries of a diseased and despairing mind; and lastly, why you are here alone, buried alive in a gloomy cavern—far from your family, who weep and search for you—far from your fellow-men, whom you cherish with an ardent zeal—far from me, too, whom you invoked, whom you say you love, and who has been able to reach you only by miracles of resolution and the divine protection?"
