Consuelo, page 92
"If your excellencies demand it," said he, "I shall lend my sacred functions to the celebration of this marriage. But Count Albert, not being at present in a state of grace, must first through confession and extreme unction make his peace with the church."
"Extreme unction!" said the canoness, with a stifled groan. "Gracious God! is it come to that?"
"It is even so," replied Supperville, who as a man of the world and a disciple of the Voltaire school of philosophy, detested both the chaplain and his objections; "yes, it is even so, and without remedy; if his reverence the chaplain insists on this point, and is bent on tormenting Count Albert by the dreary apparatus of death."
"And do you think," said Count Christian, divided between his sense of devotion and his paternal tenderness, "that a gayer ceremony, and one more congenial with his wishes might prolong his days?"
"I can answer positively for nothing," replied Supperville, "but I venture to anticipate much good from it. Your excellency consented to this marriage formerly——"
"I always consented to it. I never opposed it," said the count, designedly raising his voice; "it was master Porpora who wrote to say that he would never consent, and that she likewise had renounced all idea of it. Alas!" he added, lowering his voice, "it was the death-blow to my poor child."
"You hear what my father says," murmured Albert in Consuelo's ear, "but do not grieve for it. I believed you had abandoned me, and I gave myself up to despair; but during the last eight days I have regained my reason, which they call my madness. I have read hearts as others open books—I have read, with one glance, the past, the present, and the future. I learned, in short, that you were faithful, Consuelo; that you had endeavored to love me; and that you had, indeed, for a time succeeded. But they deceived us both; forgive your master, as I forgive him!"
Consuelo looked at Porpora, who could not indeed catch Albert's words, but who on hearing those of Count Christian was much agitated, and walked up and down before the fire with hurried strides. She looked at him with an air of solemn reproach; and the maestro understood her so well that he struck his forehead violently with his clenched hand. Albert signed to Consuelo to bring the maestro close to his couch, and to assist him to hold out his hand. Porpora pressed the cold fingers to his lips, and burst into tears. His conscience reproached him with homicide; but his sincere and heartfelt repentance palliated in some measure his fatal error.
Albert made a sign that he wished to listen what reply his relations made to the doctor, and he heard it, though they spoke so low that Porpora and Consuelo who were kneeling by his side could not distinguish a word.
The chaplain withstood, as well as he could, Supperville's bitter irony, while the canoness sought by a mixture of superstition and tolerance, of Christian charity and maternal tenderness, to conciliate what was irreconcilable to the Catholic faith. The question was merely one of form—that is to say, whether the chaplain would consider it right to administer the marriage sacrament to a heretic, unless indeed the latter would conform to the Catholic faith immediately afterward. Supperville indeed did not hesitate to say that Count Albert had promised to profess and believe anything after the ceremony was over; but the chaplain was not to be duped. At last, Count Christian, calling to his aid that quiet firmness and plain good sense with which, although after much weakness and hesitation, he had always put an end to domestic differences, spoke as follows:
"Reverend sir," said he to the chaplain, "there is no ecclesiastical law which expressly forbids the marriage of a Catholic to a schismatic. The church tolerates these alliances. Consider Consuelo then as orthodox, my son as heretic, and marry them at once. Confession and betrothal, as you are aware, are but matters of precept, and in certain cases may be dispensed with. Some favorable change may result from this marriage, and when Albert is cured it will then be time to speak of his conversion."
The chaplain had never opposed the wishes of Count Christian, who was in his eyes a superior arbiter in cases of conscience even to the pope himself. There only now remained to convince Consuelo. This Albert alone thought of, and drawing her toward him, he succeeded in clasping the neck of his beloved with his emaciated and shadowy arms.
"Consuelo," said he, "I read at this hour in your soul that you would give your life to restore mine. That is no longer possible; but you can restore me forever by a simple act of your will. I leave you for a time, but I shall soon return to earth under some new form. I shall return unhappy and wretched if you now abandon me. You know that the crimes of Ziska still remain unexpiated, and you alone, my sister Wando, can purify me in the new phase of my existence. We are brethren; to become lovers, death must cast his gloomy shadow between us. But we must, by a solemn engagement, become man and wife, that in my new birth I may regain my calmness and strength, and become, like other men, freed from the dreary memories of the past. Only consent to this engagement; it will not bind you in this life, which I am about to quit, but it will unite us in eternity. It will be a pledge whereby we can recognize each other, should death affect the clearness of our recollections. Consent! it is but a ceremony of the church which I accept, since it is the only one which in the estimation of men can sanction our mutual relation. This I must carry with me to the tomb. A marriage without the assent of my family would be incomplete in my eyes. Ours shall be indissoluble in our hearts, as it is sacred in intention. Consent!"
"I consent," exclaimed Consuelo, pressing her lips to the pale cold forehead of her betrothed.
These words were heard by all.
"Well!" said Supperville, "let us hasten," and he urged the chaplain vigorously, who summoned the domestics and gave them instructions to have every thing prepared for the ceremony. Count Christian, a little revived, sat close beside his son and Consuelo. The good canoness thanked the latter warmly for her condescension, and was so much affected as even to kneel before her and kiss her hands. Baron Frederick wept in silence, without appearing to know what was going on. In the twinkling of an eye an altar was erected in the great saloon. The domestics were dismissed; they thought it was only the last rights of the church which were about to be administered, and that the patient required silence and fresh air. Porpora and Supperville served as witnesses. Albert found strength sufficient to pronounce a decisive yes and the other forms which the ceremony required, in a clear and sonorous voice, and the family from this conceived a lively hope of his recovery. Hardly had the chaplain recited the closing prayer over the newly married couple, ere Albert arose, threw himself into his father's arms, and embraced him, as well as his aunt, his uncle, and Porpora, earnestly and rapidly; then seating himself in his arm-chair, he pressed Consuelo to his heart and exclaimed:
"I am saved!"
"It is the final effort, the last convulsion of nature," said Supperville, who had several times examined the features, and felt the pulse of the patient, while the marriage ceremony was proceeding.
In fact, Albert's arms loosed their hold, fell forward, and rested on his knees. His aged and faithful dog, Cynabre, who had not left his feet during the whole period of his illness, raised his head and uttered thrice a dismal howl. Albert's gaze was riveted on Consuelo; his lips remained apart as if about to address her; a faint glow animated his cheek; and then gradually that peculiar and indescribable shade which is the forerunner of death crept from his forehead down to his lips, and by degrees overshadowed his whole face as with a snowy veil. The silence of terror which brooded over the breathless and attentive group of spectators was interrupted by the doctor, who, in solemn accents, pronounced the irrevocable decree: "It is the hand of Death!"
CHAPTER CVI
COUNT CHRISTIAN fell back senseless in his chair. The canoness, sobbing convulsively, flung herself on Albert's remains, as if she hoped by her caresses to rouse him to life again, while Baron Frederick uttered some unmeaning words with a sort of idiotic calm. Supperville approached Consuelo, whose utter immobility terrified him more than the agitation of the others.
"Do not trouble yourself about me, sir," she said, "nor you either, my friend," added she, addressing Porpora, who hastened to add his condolence, "but remove his unhappy relatives and endeavor to sustain and comfort them; as for me, I shall remain here. The dead need nothing but respect and prayers."
The count and the baron suffered themselves to be led away without resistence; as for the canoness, she was carried, cold and apparently lifeless, to her apartment, where Supperville followed to lend assistance. Porpora, no longer knowing where he was or what he did, rushed out and wandered through the gardens like an insane person. He felt as if suffocated. His habitual insensibility was more apparent than real. Scenes of grief and terror had excited his impressionable imagination, and he hastened onward by the light of the moon, pursued by gloomy voices which chanted a frightful Dies iræ incessantly in his ears.
Consuelo remained alone with Albert; for hardly had the chaplain begun to recite the prayers for the dead, than he fainted away and was borne off in his turn. The poor man had insisted on sitting up along with the canoness during the whole of Albert's illness, and was utterly exhausted. The Countess of Rudolstadt, kneeling by the side of her husband and holding his cold hands in hers, her head pressed against his which beat no longer, fell into deep abstraction. What Consuelo experienced at this moment was not exactly pain; at least it was not that bitter regret which accompanies the loss of beings necessary to our daily happiness. Her regard for Albert was not of this intimate character, and his death left no apparent void in her existence. The despair of losing those whom we love, not infrequently resolves itself into selfishness, and abhorrence of the new duties imposed upon us. One part of this grief is legitimate and proper; the other is not so, and should be combated, though it is just as natural. Nothing of all this mingled with the solemn and tender melancholy of Consuelo. Albert's nature was foreign to her own in every respect, except in one—the admiration, respect, and sympathy with which he had inspired her. She had chalked out a plan of life without him, and had even renounced the idea of an affection which, until two days before, she had thought extinct. What now remained to her was the desire and duty of proving faithful to a sacred pledge. Albert had been already dead as regarded her; he was now nothing more, and was perhaps even less so in some respects; for Consuelo, long exalted by intercourse with this lofty soul, had come in her dreamy reverie to adopt in a measure some of his poetical convictions. The belief in the transmission of souls had received a strong foundation in her instinctive repugnance toward the idea of eternal punishment after death, and in her Christian faith in the immortality of the soul. Albert, alive, but prejudiced against her by appearances, seemed as if wrapped in a veil, transported into another existence incomplete in comparison with that which he had proposed to devote to pure and lofty affection and unshaken confidence. But Albert, restored to this faith in her and to his enthusiastic affection, and yielding up his last breath on her bosom—had he then ceased to exist as regarded her? Did he not live in all the plenitude of a cloudless existence in passing under the triumphal arch of a glorious death, which conducted him either to a temporary repose, or to immediate consciousness in a purer and more heavenly state of being? To die struggling with one's own weakness, and to awake endowed with strength; to die forgiving the wicked, and to awake under the influence and protection of the upright; to die in sincere repentance, and to awake absolved and purified by the innate influence of virtue—are not these heavenly rewards? Consuelo, already initiated by Albert into doctrines which had their origin among the Hussites of Old Bohemia, as well as among the mysterious sects of preceding ages, who had humbly endeavored to interpret the words of Christ—Consuelo, I repeat, convinced, more from her gentle and affectionate nature than by the force of reasoning, that the soul of her husband was not suddenly removed from her forever and carried into regions inaccessible to human sympathies, mingled with this belief some of the superstitious ideas of her childhood. She had believed in spirits as the common people believe in them, and had more than once dreamed that she saw her mother approach to protect and shield her from danger. It was a sort of belief in the eternal communion of the souls of the living and the dead—a simple and childlike faith, which has ever existed to protest as it were against that creed which would forever separate the spirits of the departed from this lower world, and assign them a perfectly different and far distant sphere of action.
Consuelo, still kneeling by Albert's remains, could not bring herself to believe that he was dead, and could not comprehend the dread nature either of the word or of the reality. It did not seem possible that life could pass away so soon, and that the functions of heart and brain had ceased forever. "No," thought she, "the Divine spark still lingers, and hesitates to return to the hand who gave it, and who is about to resume his gift in order to send it forth under a renewed form into some loftier sphere. There is still, perhaps, a mysterious life existing in the yet warm bosom; and besides, wherever the soul of Albert is, it sees, understands, knows all that has taken place here. It seeks perhaps some aliment in my love—an impulsive power to aid it in some new and heavenly career." And, filled with these vague thoughts, she continued to love Albert, to open her soul to him, to express her devotion to him, to repeat her oath of fidelity—in short, in feeling and idea, to treat him, not as a departed spirit for whom one weeps without hope, but as a sleeping friend whose awakening smiles we joyfully await.
When Porpora had become more composed, he thought with terror of the situation in which he had left his pupil, and hastened to rejoin her. He was surprised to find her as calm as if she had watched by the bedside of a sleeping friend. He would have spoken to her and urged her to take some repose:
"Do not utter unmeaning words," said she, "in presence of this sleeping angel. Do you retire to rest, my dear master; I shall remain here."
"Would you then kill yourself?" said Porpora, in despair.
"No, my friend, I shall live," replied Consuelo; "I shall fulfill all my duties toward him and toward you, but not for one instant shall I leave his side this night."
When morning came, all was still. An overpowering drowsiness had deadened all sense of suffering. The physician, exhausted by fatigue, had retired to rest. Porpora slumbered in his chair, his head supported on Count Christian's bed. Consuelo alone felt no desire to abandon her post. The count was unable to leave his bed, but Baron Frederick, his sister, and the chaplain, proceeded almost mechanically to offer up their prayers before the altar; after which they began to speak of the interment. The canoness, regaining strength when necessity required her services, summoned her women and old Hans to aid her in the necessary duties. Porpora and the doctor then insisted on Consuelo taking some repose, and she yielded to their entreaties, after first paying a visit to Count Christian, who apparently did not see her. It was hard to say whether he waked or slept, for his eyes were open, his respiration calm, and his face without expression.
When Consuelo awoke, after a few hours' repose, she returned to the saloon, but was struck with dismay to find it empty. Albert had been laid upon a bier and carried to the chapel. His arm-chair was empty, and in the same position where Consuelo had formerly seen it. It was all that remained to remind her of him, in this place where every hope and aspiration of the family had been centered for so many bitter days. Even his dog had vanished. The summer sun lighted up the somber wainscoting of the apartment, while the merry call of the blackbirds sounded from the garden with insolent gayety. Consuelo passed on to the adjoining apartment, the door of which was half open. Count Christian, who still kept his couch, lay apparently insensible to the loss he had just sustained, and his sister watched over him with the same vigilant attention that she had formerly shown to Albert. The baron gazed at the burning logs with a stupefied air; but the silent tears which trickled down his aged cheeks showed that bitter memory was still busy with his heart.
Consuelo approached the canoness to kiss her hand, but the old lady drew it back from her with evident marks of aversion. Poor Wenceslawa only beheld in her the destroyer of her nephew. At first she had held the marriage in detestation, and had opposed it with all her might; but when she had seen that time and absence alike failed to induce Albert to renounce his engagement, and that his reason, life, and health, depended on it, she had come to desire it as much as she had before hated and repelled it. Porpora's refusal, the exclusive passion for the theater which he ascribed to Consuelo, and in short all the officious and fatal falsehoods which he had despatched in succession to Count Christian, without ever adverting to the letters which Consuelo had written, but which he had suppressed—had occasioned the old man infinite suffering, and aroused in the canoness' breast the bitterest indignation. She felt nothing but hate and contempt for Consuelo. She could pardon her, she said, for having perverted Albert's reason through this fatal attachment, but she could not forgive her for having so basely betrayed him. Every look of the poor aunt, who knew not that the real enemy of Albert's peace was Porpora, seemed to say "you have destroyed our child; you could not restore him again; and now the disgrace of your alliance is all that remains to us."
This silent declaration of war hastened Consuelo's resolve to comfort, so far as might be, the canoness for this last misfortune. "May I request," said she, "that your ladyship will favor me with a private interview? I must leave this tomorrow ere daybreak; but before setting out I would fain make known my respectful intentions."
"Your intentions! Oh, I can easily guess them," replied the canoness, bitterly. "Do not be uneasy, mademoiselle, all shall be as it ought to be, and the rights which the law yields you shall be strictly respected."
