Consuelo, page 40
"And I," said Consuelo, smiling, "think I shall not undertake the charge of this education. What I heard in the grotto was so beautiful, so grand, so incomparable, that I should fear, in doing so, only to muddy a spring of crystal. Oh! Albert, I see plainly that you know more of music than I do. And now what will you say to the profane music of which I am forced to be a professor? I fear to discover in this case, as in the other, that I have hitherto been beneath my mission, and guilty of equal ignorance and frivolity."
"Far from thinking so, Consuelo, I look upon your profession as sacred; and as it is the loftiest which a woman can embrace, so is your soul the most worthy to fill such an office."
"Stay!—stay!—dear count," replied Consuelo, smiling. "From my often speaking to you of the convent where I learned music, and the church where I sung the praises of God, you conclude that I was destined to the service of the altar, or the modest teachings of the cloister. But if I should inform you that the zingarella, faithful to her origin, was from infancy the sport of circumstances, and that her education was at once a mixture of religious and profane, to which her will was equally inclined, careless whether it were in the monastery or the theater——"
"Certain that God has placed his seal on your forehead and devoted you to holiness from your mother's womb, I should not trouble myself about these things, but retain the conviction that you would be as pure in the theater as in the cloister."
"What! would not your strict ideas of morality be shocked at being brought in contact with an actress?"
"In the dawn of religion," said he, "the theater and the temple were one and the same sanctuary. In the purity of their primitive ideas, religious worship took the form of popular shows. The arts have their birth at the foot of the altar, the dance itself, that art now consecrated to ideas of impure voluptuousness, was the music of the senses in the festivals of the gods. Music and poetry were the highest expressions of faith, and a woman endowed with genius and beauty was at once a sibyl and priestess. To these severely grand forms of the past, absurd and culpable distinctions succeeded. Religion proscribed beauty from its festivals, and woman from its solemnities. Instead of ennobling and directing love, it banished and condemned it. Beauty, woman, love, cannot lose their empire. Men have raised for themselves other temples which they call theaters, and where no other god presides. Is it your fault, Consuelo, if they have become dens of corruption? Nature, who perfects her prodigies without troubling herself as to how men may receive them, has formed you to shine among your sex, and to shed over the world the treasures of your power and genius. The cloister and the tomb are synonymous; you cannot, without morally committing suicide, bury the gifts of Providence. You were obliged to wing your flight to a freer atmosphere. Energy is the condition of certain natures; an irresistible impulse impels them; and the decrees of the Deity in this respect are so decided, that he takes away the faculties which he has bestowed, so soon as they are neglected. The artist perishes and becomes extinct in obscurity, just as the thinker wanders and pines in solitude, and just as all human intellect is deteriorated, and weakened, and enervated, by inaction and isolation. Repair to the theater, Consuelo, if you please, and submit with resignation to the apparent degradation, as the representative for the moment of a soul destined to suffer, of a lofty mind which vainly seeks for sympathy in the world around us, but which is forced to abjure a melancholy that is not the element of its life, and out of which the breath of the Holy Spirit imperiously expels it."
Albert continued to speak in this strain for a considerable time with great animation, hurrying Consuelo on to the recesses of his retreat. He had little difficulty in communicating to her his own enthusiasm for art, or in making her forget her first feeling of repugnance to re-enter the grotto. When she saw that he anxiously desired it, she began to entertain a wish for this interview, in order to become better acquainted with the ideas which this ardent yet timid man dared to express before her so boldly. These ideas were new to Consuelo, and perhaps they were entirely so in the mouth of a person of noble rank of that time and country. They only struck her, however, as the bold and frank expression of sentiments which she herself had frequently experienced in all their force. Devout, and an actress, she every day heard the canoness and the chaplain unceasingly condemn her brethren of the stage. In seeing herself restored to her proper sphere by a serious and reflecting man, she felt her heart throb and her bosom swell with exultation, as if she had been carried up into a more elevated and more congenial life. Her eyes were moistened with tears and her cheeks glowed with a pure and holy emotion, when at the end of an avenue she perceived the canoness, who was seeking her.
"Ah! dear priestess," said Albert, pressing her arm again his breast, "will you not come to pray in my church?"
"Yes, certainly I shall go," she replied.
"And when?"
"Whenever you wish. Do you think I am able yet to undertake this new exploit?"
"Yes; because we shall go to the Schreckenstein in broad daylight and by a less dangerous route than the well. Do you feel sufficient courage to rise before the dawn and to escape through the gates as soon as they are opened? I shall be in this underwood which you see at the side of the hill there, by the stone cross, and shall serve as your guide."
"Very well, I promise," replied Consuelo, not without a slight palpitation of heart.
"It appears rather cool this evening for so long a walk—does it not?" asked the canoness, accosting them in her calm yet searching manner.
Albert made no reply. He could not dissemble. Consuelo, who did not experience equal emotion, passed her other arm within that of the canoness, and kissed her neck. Wenceslawa vainly pretended indifference, but in spite of herself she submitted to the ascendancy of this devout and affectionate spirit. She sighed, and on entering the castle proceeded to put up a prayer for her conversion.
CHAPTER LIII
MANY days passed away however without Albert's wish being accomplished. It was in vain that Consuelo rose before the dawn and passed the drawbridge; she always found his aunt or the chaplain wandering on the esplanade, and from thence reconnoitering all the open country which she must traverse in order to gain the copsewood on the hill. She determined to walk alone within range of their observation, and give up the project of joining Albert, who, from his green and wooded retreat, recognized the enemy on the look-out, took a long walk in the forest glades, and re-entered the castle without being perceived.
"You have had an opportunity of enjoying an early walk, Signora Porporina," said the canoness at breakfast. "Were you not afraid that the dampness of the morning might be injurious to your health?"
"It was I, aunt, who advised the signora to breathe the freshness of the morning air; and I think these walks will be very useful to her."
"I should have thought that, for a person who devotes herself to the cultivation of the voice," said the canoness, with a little affectation, "our mornings are somewhat foggy. But if it is under your direction——"
"Have confidence in Albert," interrupted Count Christian, "he has proved himself as good a physician as he is a good son and a faithful friend."
The dissimulation to which Consuelo was forced to yield with blushes, was very painful to her. She complained gently to Albert when she had an opportunity of speaking to him in private, and begged him to renounce his project, at least until his aunt's vigilance should be foiled. Albert consented, but entreated her to continue her walks in the environs of the park, so that he might join her whenever an opportunity presented itself.
Consuelo would gladly have been excused, although she liked walking, and felt how necessary to her convalescence it was, to enjoy exercise for some time every day, free from the restraint of this enclosure of walls and moats, where her thoughts were stifled as if she had been a prisoner; yet it gave her pain thus to practice deception toward those whom she respected, and from whom she receive hospitality. Love, however, removes many obstacles, but friendship reflects, and Consuelo reflected much. They were now enjoying the last fine days of summer; for several months had already passed since Consuelo had come to dwell in the Castle of the Giants. What a summer for Consuelo! The palest autumn of Italy was more light, and rich, and genial But this warm, moist air, this sky, often veiled by white and fleecy clouds, had also their charm and their peculiar beauty. She found an attraction in these solitary walks, which increased perhaps her disinclination to revisit the cavern. In spite of the resolution she had formed, she felt that Albert would have taken a load from her bosom in giving her back her promise; and when she found herself no longer under the spell of his supplicating looks and enthusiastic words, she secretly blessed his good aunt, who prevented her fulfilling her engagement by the obstacles she every day placed in the way.
One morning, as she wandered along the bank of the mountain streamlet, she observed Albert leaning on the balustrade of the parterre, far above her. Notwithstanding the distance which separated them, she felt as if incessantly under the disturbed and passionate gaze of this man, by whom she suffered herself in so great a degree to be governed. "My situation here is somewhat strange!" she exclaimed; "While this persevering friend observes me to see that I am faithful to the promise I have made, without doubt I am watched from some other part of the castle, to see that I maintain no relations with him that their customs and ideas of propriety would proscribe. I do not know what is passing in their minds. The Baroness Amelia does not return. The canoness appears to grow cold toward me, and to distrust me. Count Christian redoubles his attentions, and expresses his dread of the arrival of Porpora, which will probably be the signal for my departure. Albert appears to have forgotten that I forbade him to hope. As if he had a right to expect every thing from me, he asks nothing, and does not abjure a passion which seems, notwithstanding my inability to return it, to render him happy. In the meantime, here I am, as if I were engaged in attending every morning at an appointed place of meeting, to which I wish he may not come, exposing myself to the blame—nay, for aught I know, perhaps to the scorn—of a family who cannot understand either my friendship for him nor my position toward him; since indeed I do not comprehend them myself nor foresee their result. What a strange destiny is mine! Shall I then be condemned forever to devote myself to others, without being loved in return, or without being able to love those whom I esteem?"
In the midst of these reflections a profound melancholy seized her. She felt the necessity of belonging to herself—that sovereign and legitimate want, the necessary condition of progress and development of the true artist. The watchful care which she had promised to observe toward Count Albert, weighed upon her as an iron chain. The bitter recollections of Anzoleto and of Venice clung to her in the inaction and solitude of a life too monotonous and regular for her powerful organization.
She stopped near the rock which Albert had often shown her as being the place where he had first seen her, an infant, tied with thongs on her mother's shoulders like the pedlar's pack, and running over mountains and valleys, like the grasshopper of the fable, heedless of the morrow, and without a thought of advancing old age, and inexorable poverty. "O, my poor mother!" thought the young zingarella, "here am I, brought back by my incomprehensible fate to a spot which you once traversed only to retain a vague recollection of it and the pledge of a touching kindness. You were then young and handsome, and doubtless could have met many a place where love and hospitality would have awaited you—society which would have absolved and transformed you, and in the bosom of which your painful and wandering life would have at last tasted comfort and repose. But you felt, and always said, that this comfort, this repose, were mortal weariness to the artist's soul. You were right—I feel it; for behold me in this castle, where, as elsewhere, you would pause but one night. Here I am, with every comfort around me, pampered, caressed, and with a powerful lord at my feet; and nevertheless I am weary, weary, and suffocated with restraint."
Consuelo, overpowered with an extraordinary emotion, seated herself on the rock. She looked at the sandy path, as if she thought to find there the prints of her mother's naked feet. The sheep in passing had left some locks of their fleece upon the thorns. This fleece, of a reddish brown, recalled the russet hue of her mother's coarse mantle—that mantle which had so long protected her against sun and cold, against dust and rain. She had seen it fall from her shoulders piece by piece. "And we, too," she said, "were wandering sheep; we, too, left fragments of our apparel on the wayside thorn, but we always bore with us the proud love and full enjoyment of our dear liberty."
While musing thus, Consuelo fixed her eyes upon the path of yellow sand which wound gracefully over the hill, and which, widening as it reached the valley, disappeared toward the north among the green pine-trees and the dark heath. "What is more beautiful than a road?" she thought. "It is the symbol and image of a life of activity and variety. What pleasing ideas are connected in my mind with the capricious turns of this! I do not recollect the country through which it winds, and yet I have formerly passed through it. But it should indeed be beautiful, were it only as a contrast to yonder dark castle, which sleeps eternally on its immovable rocks. How much pleasanter to the eye are these graveled paths, with their glowing hues and the golden broom which shadow them, than the straight alleys and stiff palings of the proud domain? With merely looking at the formal lines of a garden, I feel wearied and overcome. Why should my feet seek to reach that which my eyes and thoughts can at once embrace, while the free road, which turns aside and is half hidden in the woods, invites me to follow its windings, and penetrate its mysteries? And then it is the path for all human kind—it is the highway of the world. It belongs to no master, to close and open it at pleasure. It is not only the powerful and rich that are entitled to tread its flowery margins and to breathe its rich perfume. Every bird may build its nest amid its branches; every wanderer may repose his head upon its stones—nor wall nor paling shuts out his horizon. Heaven does not close before him; so far as his eye can reach, the highway is a land of liberty. To the right, to the left, woods, fields—all have masters; but the road belongs to him to whom nothing else belongs, and how fondly therefore does he love it! The meanest beggar prefers it to asylums, which, were they rich as palaces, would be but prisons to him. His dream, his passion, his hope will ever be the highway. O, my mother, you knew it well, and often told me so! Why can I not reanimate your ashes which repose far from me, beneath the seaweed of the lagunes? Why canst thou not carry me on thy strong shoulders, and bear me far, far away, where the swallow skims onward to the blue and distant hills, and where the memory of the past and the longing after vanished happiness cannot follow the light-footed artist, who travels still faster than they do, and each day places a new horizon, a second world, between her and the enemies of liberty? My poor mother, why canst thou not still by turns cherish and oppress me, and lavish alternate kisses and blows, like the wind which sometimes caresses and sometimes lays prostrate the young corn upon the fields, to raise and cast it down again according to its fantasy? Thou hadst a firmer soul than mine, and thou wouldst have torn me, either willingly or by force, from the bonds which daily entangle me."
In the midst of this entrancing yet mournful reverie, Consuelo was struck by the tones of a voice that made her start as if a red-hot iron had been placed upon her heart. It was that of a man from the ravine below, humming in the Venetian dialect the song of the "Echo," one of the most original compositions of Chiozzetto.4 The person who sung did not exert the full power of his voice, and his breathing seemed affected by walking. He warbled a few notes now and then, stopping from time to time to converse with another person, just as if he had wished to dissipate the weariness of his journey. He then resumed his song as before, as if by way of exercise, interrupted it again to speak to his companion, and in this manner approached the spot where Consuelo sat, motionless, and as if about to faint. She could not hear the conversation which took place, as the distance was too great; nor could she see the travelers in consequence of an intervening projection of the rock. But could she be for an instant deceived in that voice, in those accents, which she knew so well, and the fragrants of that song which she herself had taught, and so often made her graceless pupil repeat?
At length the two invisible travelers drew near, and she heard one whose voice was unknown to her say to the other, in bad Italian, and with the patois of the country, "Ah, signor, do not go up there—the horses could not follow you, and you would lose sight of me; keep by the banks of the stream. See, the road lies before us, and the way you are taking is only a path for foot passengers."
