Consuelo, page 86
"I promise solemnly; and be assured also, my dear master, that you shall never have cause to charge me with the crime of ingratitude."
"Oh! as to that, I do not ask so much," replied he, bitterly; "it is more than belongs to human nature. When you are a prima donna, celebrated in every nation of Europe, you will have promptings of vanity and ambition—vices of the heart from which no great artist has ever been able to defend himself. You will long for success, no matter how purchased. You will not resign yourself to obtain it by patient perseverance, or to risk it for the sake of remaining faithful either to friendship or to the worship of beauty in its highest and purest forms. You will yield, as they all do, to the yoke of fashion; in each city you will sing the music that is in favor there, without troubling yourself about the bad taste of the public or the court. In fine, you will make your way and will be great notwithstanding, since there are no other means of seeming so in the eyes of the multitude. Provided that you do not forget to choose your subject with care, and sing well when you have to undergo the judgment of a little coterie of old heads like myself, and that, in the presence of the great Handel and Bach, you do honor to Porpora's method and credit to yourself, it is all that I ask—all that I hope! You see that I am not a selfish father, as some of your flatterers no doubt accuse me of being. I ask nothing from you which will not be for your own happiness and glory."
"And I care for nothing that relates to my personal advantage," replied Consuelo, touched by her old master's words. "I may allow myself to be carried away in the midst of success by an involuntary feeling of intoxication, but I cannot coolly think of planning a whole life of triumph in order to crown myself therein with my own hands. I wish to procure glory for your sake, my dear master; I wish to show you, spite of your incredulity, that it is for you alone that Consuelo labors and travels, and, in order to prove to you at once that you have calumniated her, since you believe in her oaths I swear to you to prove what I assert."
"And by what do you swear that?" said Porpora, with a smile of tenderness which was still mingled with a shade of distrust.
"By the white hairs on the sacred head of Porpora," replied Consuelo, drawing the old man's silvered head to her breast with all a daughter's affection, and kissing it on the brow with fervor.
They were interrupted at this moment by Count Hoditz, who was announced by a gigantic heyduc. This man, while requesting permission for his master to present his respects to Porpora and his pupil, looked at the latter with an air of attention, uncertainty, and embarrassment which surprised Consuelo, who was unable to remember where she had seen that good-natured though somewhat odd face. The count was admitted and presented his request in the most courteous terms. He was about to depart for his manor of Roswald in Moravia, and, wishing to render that residence agreeable to the margravine his spouse, was preparing a magnificent festival to surprise her on her arrival. In consequence he proposed to Consuelo to go and sing for three consecutive evenings at Roswald, and he requested that Porpora would be pleased to accompany her in order to assist in directing the concerts, performances, and serenades, with which he intended to regale the margravine.
Porpora alleged as an excuse the engagement he had just signed, and the necessity he was under of being in Berlin on a certain day. The count requested to see the engagement, and as Porpora had always found him civil and obliging, he gratified him, admitting him into the secret and allowing him the pleasure of commenting and giving advice upon it; after which Hoditz persisted in his demand, representing that they had more than sufficient time to make all the necessary arrangements without failing in the time fixed. "You can settle every thing in three days," said he, "and travel to Berlin by way of Moravia." It was not the direct road, indeed; but instead of proceeding slowly by way of Bohemia, through a country badly supplied with post-horses and lately devastated by war, Porpora and his pupil would thus arrive quickly and easily at Roswald, in one of the count's carriages and with his relays—in short, at his trouble and expense. He promised, also, to conduct them from Roswald to Pardubitz, if they chose to descend the Elbe to Dresden; or to Chrudim, if they decided to go by way of Prague. The facilities of traveling which he offered them would so far tend to shorten their journey, and the considerable sum which they were to receive would enable them to pursue the remainder of it with more comfort. Porpora therefore agreed to the proposal, notwithstanding Consuelo seemed somewhat disinclined to it. The terms were arranged and the time of departure was settled for the end of the week.
When Hoditz, after respectfully kissing Consuelo's hand, had left her alone with her master, she reproached the latter with having so easily yielded. Although she had no longer any thing to apprehend from the count's impertinence, she could not help feeling some degree of resentment against him, and never went to his house with pleasure. She did not like to tell Porpora of the adventure at Passau, but she reminded him of his sarcasms upon Count Hoditz's musical discoveries.
"Do you not see," said she, "that I shall be condemned to sing his music, and that you will have to direct his cantatas, and perhaps even his operas? Is this the fidelity which you would have me display for the culture of the beautiful?"
"Come, come!" said Porpora, smiling, "it will not be so bad as you think; I expect to be famously amused, without the patrician maestro suspecting it in the least. To perform these things in public before a respectable audience would be a shame and a disgrace; but it is allowable to the artist to amuse himself, and he would be much to be pitied if he was not sometimes permitted to laugh in his sleeve at those by whom he gains his bread. Besides you will see the princess of Culmbach there, whom you like, and who is truly charming; she will laugh with us, though she seldom laughs at all at her step-father's music."
There was nothing for it but to give up the point, make her arrangements, and say farewell. Joseph was in despair. Nevertheless a stroke of good fortune, a real gratification for an artist, helped to compensate him, or at least to turn his attention from the pain of separation. While performing a serenade beneath the window of the excellent comic actor Bernardoni, the famous harlequin of the theater of the Corinthian gate, his performance struck this amiable and excellent artist with admiration and surprise. He made him come in, and asked who was the author of the original and agreeable trio. On learning the truth, he was astonished at the young composer's youth and talent, and at once confided to him the music of a ballet which he was writing, and which was entitled The Devil on Two Sticks. Haydn worked indefatigably at the tempest incidental to the piece, which cost him much labor, and the remembrance of which made the good old man smile even when eighty years of age. Consuelo sought to amuse him and dissipate his melancholy by always talking to him about his tempest, which Bernardoni wished to be terrible, aud which Beppo, never having beheld the sea, did not know how to describe. Consuelo pictured to him the Adriatic in a storm, and sang the mournful plaint of the waves, not without laughing with him at those imitative harmonies which require to be aided by blue cloths, shaken from scene to scene by vigorous arms.
"Listen," said Porpora to him one day, in order to put an end to his uncertainty; "you might labor a hundred years with the best instruments in the world, and the most intimate knowledge of winds and waters, without being able to translate the divine harmonies of nature. This is not the province of music. It is merely guilty of folly and conceit when it runs after noisy effects and endeavors to imitate the war of the elements. Its nature is much higher. Its domain is that of the emotions. Its aim is to inspire them, as its origin is from their inspiration. Think then of a man abandoned to the fury of the waves, and a prey to the deepest terror; imagine a scene at once frightful, magnificent, terrible; the danger imminent, and then, musician—or I should rather say, human voice, human wailing, living and thrilling soul—place yourself in the midst of this distress, this disorder, this confusion and despair; give expression to your anguish, and your hearers, intelligent or not, will share it. They will imagine that they behold the sea, that they hear the groaning of the riven timbers, the shouts of the mariners, the despair of the hapless passengers! What would you say of a poet, who in order to depict a battle, should tell you in verse that the cannon uttered boom, boom, and the drums dub, dub? It would be a better imitation than any image, but it would not be poetry. Painting itself, that descriptive art par excellence, does not consist in servile imitation. The artist would trace in vain the dull green sea, the dark and stormy heaven, the shattered ship. If his feelings do not enable him to render the terrible and poetical whole, his picture will make as little impression as any ale-house sign. Therefore, young man, inspire your whole being with the idea of some great disaster; it is thus you will render it moving to the feelings of others."
He continued to repeat these paternal exhortations, while the carriage, now ready to start, was being packed with the travelers' luggage. Joseph listened attentively to his lessons, drinking them in as it were from the fountain-head, but when Consuelo, muffled in a cloak and fur cap, came to throw herself on his neck, he turned pale, stifled a cry, and not able to witness her departure, he fled, and hastened to hide his grief in the depths of Keller's back-shop. Metastasio by degrees conceived a friendship for him, perfected him in Italian, and compensated him, in some degree, by his good advice and generous services for Porpora's absence; but Joseph long continued to sigh with bitter regret for the loss of his tried friend and sister, Consuelo.
She on her side, although sincerely lamenting her separation from her faithful and amiable fellow-pupil, and feeling at first considerably dejected, found her spirits and courage gradually revive, and her poetic aspirations once more spring to life as she penetrated into the mountains of Moravia. A new and brighter horizon seemed opening before her. Freed and unfettered from all unfriendly ties, she saw herself at liberty to pursue her cherished art, and she inwardly resolved to devote herself heart and soul to its elevating and refining culture. Porpora, restored to the hope and the cheerfulness of his youth, thrilled her by his eloquent declamations; and the noble girl, without ceasing to love Albert and Joseph as two brothers whom she humbly hoped to meet once more in the mansions of the blessed, felt her bosom bound lightly as the lark which soars aloft with swelling note to salute the rising day.
CHAPTER CII
FROM the second relay Consuelo had recognized in the domestic who was seated before her upon the box of the carriage, and who paid the guides and scolded the postilions for their tardy pace, the same heyduc who had announced Count Hoditz on the day when he came to propose to her their pleasure excursion to Roswald. This tall showy looking man, who continually looked at her as if by stealth, and who seemed divided between his wish to speak to her and the fear of giving offense, at last fixed her attention, and one morning, when she was breakfasting in a solitary inn at the foot of the mountains—Porpora having gone to walk in pursuit of some musical theme, while waiting for the horses to be baited—she turned toward the man at the moment when he was handing her coffee, and looked at him somewhat angrily. But he assumed such a piteous expression that she could not help laughing. The April sun was reflected in dazzling rays from the snow which still crowned the mountain summits, and our young traveler found herself as if by sympathy in a gay and joyous frame of mind.
"Alas!" said the heyduc, "your highness does not deign to remember me then? But I should never forget you, were you disguised as a Turk or a Prussian corporal; yet I only saw you for an instant, but what an instant in my life!"
Thus saying he placed the salver on the table, and coming close up to her, he gravely made the sign of the cross, kneeled on the ground, and kissed the floor at her feet.
"Ha!" exclaimed Consuelo, "Karl the deserter, is it not?"
"Yes, signora," replied Karl, kissing the hand which she held out to him; "at least they tell me I must address you so, though I could never tell exactly whether you were a lady or a gentleman."
"Indeed? And whence comes your uncertainty?"
"Because I saw you first as a boy, and since then, although I recollected you very well, you were as like a young girl as you were before otherwise. But that is nothing; whatever you are, you conferred favors on me which I shall never forget; and were you to command me to cast myself from the top of yonder peak, I would do so at your bidding without a moment's hesitation."
"I ask nothing from you, my brave Karl, but to be happy and free; for you are now at liberty, and I hope enjoy your life!"
"At liberty? yes," said Karl, shaking his head; "but happy—alas! I have lost my poor wife!"
Consuelo's eyes filled with tears as she saw Karl's manly features working with emotion.
"Ah!" said he, wiping away a tear, "poor soul, she had gone through too much! The vexation of seeing me taken prisoner by the Prussians a second time, the fatigue of a long journey on foot when she was very weak and ill, and then the joy of seeing me once more, gave her such a shock that she died in eight days after reaching Vienna, where, thanks to your note and Count Hoditz's assistance, she found me again. This generous gentleman sent his own doctor and gave every assistance, but nothing was of any use; she was weary of life, look you, and she has gone to rest in the heaven of the merciful."
"And your daughter?" continued Consuelo, who hoped by these questions to prevent his thoughts from dwelling on his loss.
"My daughter?" said he, gloomily, and seeming hardly conscious of what he said; "the King of Prussia has killed her too."
"How! killed? What do you mean?"
"Was it not the King of Prussia who killed the mother in bringing all this evil upon her? Well, the child followed her mother. Since the evening when, after seeing me bleeding, gagged, and torn off by the recruiters, they remained lying half dead upon the road, the little one took a raging fever, and fatigue and want did the rest. When you saw them on the bridge of some Austrian village, they had not eaten any thing for two days. You gave them money; you told them I was saved; you did every thing in your power to comfort and cure them; they told me all that, but it was too late. They continued to sink from the moment we again met; and just when we might indeed have been happy, they both went down to the grave. The earth was scarcely heaped over my poor wife's body when it had to be removed to make room for my child; and now, thanks to the King of Prussia, Karl is alone."
"No, my poor Karl, you are not alone; you have friends who will always take an interest in your welfare, on account of your good heart."
"I know it. Yes, there are good people, and you are one of them. But what do I want now? I have no wife, no child, no country! I would never be safe at home again, for my mountain is too well known to the robbers who sought me out twice before. One of the first questions I asked myself when I saw myself alone in the world, was, if we were at war, or if we should soon be so, for I had a notion of serving against Prussia, so as to kill as many of these Prussians as I could. St. Wenceslas, the patron saint of Bohemia, would have strengthened my arm, and not a ball would have left my gun in vain. Perhaps Providence would have suffered me to meet the King of Prussia himself in some defile, and then—were he armed like the Archangel Michael—should I have to follow him as a dog follows a wolf—but I learned that peace was settled, and then having no longer any taste for soldiering, I waited on Count Hoditz to ask him not to present me to the empress, as he had intended. I would have killed myself, but he was so kind to me, and the Princess of Culmbach his daughter, to whom he related my history, told me such fine things of the duties of a Christian that I consented to enter their service, where indeed I am too well fed and too well treated for all I have to do."
"But, in the meantime, tell me, my good Karl," said Consuelo, drying her eyes, "how you knew me again?"
"Did you not come one evening to sing at the house of the margravine, my new mistress? You then passed by me dressed all in white, and I knew you at once, although you had become a young lady. Why, you see, I may forget many places through which I pass, as well as the names of people I have met, but as to faces I never forget them. I began to cross myself when I saw a young man who followed you, and whom I recognized at once as Joseph; but in place of being your master (for he was better dressed in those days than you), he had become your servant, and remained in the antechamber. He did not know me; and as the count had forbidden me to mention a word to any body of what had happened (I never asked nor knew why), I did not speak to the good Joseph, though I was well inclined to give him a hug. He almost immediately retired to another apartment; and I had orders not to quit the one I was in, and a good servant you know holds by his orders. But when every one was gone, Henri, my lord's valet, who is in his confidence, came to me and said—'Karl, you said nothing to Porpora's little attendant although you knew him, and you did well. The count will be pleased with you. As to the young lady who sang this evening——' 'Oh! I knew her also!' I exclaimed, 'but I said nothing.' 'Very well,' he added, 'you did well, for the count wishes no one to know that she traveled with him as far as Passau.' 'That is nothing to me,' said I; 'but I wish to know how she delivered me out of the hands of the Prussians.' Henri told me all about it, for he was there; how you had run after the carriage, and how when you had nothing to fear on your own account you made them come back to free me. You told something of it to my poor wife, and she told me. She died blessing you; 'for,' said she, 'they are poor young things almost as ill off as ourselves; and for all that, they gave us what they had got, and wept as if they had belonged to us.' So when I saw Joseph in your employment, having been directed to bring him some money for playing on the violin for my master, I slipped a few ducats (the first I had earned) into the paper, and he never knew any thing about it. When we return to Vienna, I shall take care that he never wants, so long as I have a farthing."
