[CHAPTER XXVI]
She had to wait twenty four hours after the receipt of this letter. Matteus said he would rather have his hand cut off than ask to see the prince after midnight. At breakfast, on the next day, he appeared more talkative than on the evening before, and Consuelo thought she observed that the imprisonment of the Chevalier had embittered him against the prince so much as to make him indiscreet, probably for the first time in his life. When she had made him talk for an hour, she discovered that no greater progress had been made in gleaning information than on the previous day. Whether he had played with her simplicity, to learn her thoughts and opinions, or whether he knew nothing in relation to the Invisibles, and the participation of his masters in their acts, he saw that Consuelo floated in a strange confusion of contradictory notions. In relation to all that concerned the social condition of the prince, Matteus maintained the rigid silence which had been imposed on him. He shrugged his shoulders, it is true, when he spoke of this strange order, the necessity of which he confessed he did not see. He did not comprehend why he should use a mask when he attended to persons, who came one after another, at greater or less intervals—and for a greater or shorter stay at the pavilion. He could not refrain from saying that his master had strange fancies, and was devoted to the strangest enterprises. In his house, however, all curiosity as well as all indiscretion was paralyzed by the fear of terrible punishment, in relation to which he would say nothing. In fact, Consuelo learned nothing, except that strange things took place at the castle, that they rarely slept at night, and that all the servants had seen ghosts. Matteus himself, and he was no coward, had seen in the winter, at times when the prince was away, and the castle unoccupied by its owners, figures wandering about the park which made him shudder, for they came and went none knew whither or whence. But this threw little light on Consuelo's situation. She had to wait until night, before she could send a new petition—which ran as follows:
"Whatever be the consequence to me, I ask humbly, to be brought before the tribunal of the Invisibles."
The day seemed endless; she sought to overcome her impatience and uneasiness, by singing all she had composed in prison, in relation to the grief and ennui of solitude, and she concluded this rehearsal with the sublime air of Almireno in the Rinalda of Haëndel.
Lascia ch 'lo nianga,
La dura sorte,
E ch lo sospiri
La liberta.
Scarcely had she concluded, when a violin with an extraordinary vibration repeated outside, the admirable musical phrase she had just sung, with an expression full of pain, and sorrowful as her own. Consuelo went to the window but saw no one, and the phrase lost itself in the distance. It seemed to her that this wonderful instrument and instrumentation could be Count Albert's alone. She soon dismissed this idea, as calculated to lead her back to a train of painful and dangerous illusions which had already caused her too much suffering. She had never heard Albert play any modern music, and none but an insane person would insist on evoking a spectre every time the sound of a violin was heard. This idea distressed Consuelo, and threw her into such a succession of sad reveries, that she aroused herself only at nine o'clock, when she remembered that Matteus had brought her neither dinner nor supper, and that she had fasted since morning. This circumstance made her fear that, like the Chevalier, Matteus had been made a victim to the interest he expressed for her. The walls certainly had eyes and ears. Matteus had perhaps said too much, and murmured a little against the disappearance of Leverani. "Was it not probable," she asked herself, "that he had shared the Chevalier's fate?"
This new anxiety kept Consuelo from being aware of the inconveniences of hunger. Matteus did not appear; she ventured to ring. No one came. She felt faint and hungry, and much afraid.
Leaning on the window-sill, with her head in her hands, she recalled to her mind, which was already disturbed by the want of food, the strange incidents of her life; and asked herself whether the recollection of reality or a dream made her aware that a cold hand was placed on her head, and that a low voice said, "Your demand is granted; follow me!"
Consuelo had not yet thought of lighting her rooms, but had been able clearly to recognise objects in the twilight, and tried to distinguish the person who thus spoke to her. She found herself suddenly enwrapped in intense darkness, as if the atmosphere had become compact and the sky a mass of lead. She put her hand to her brow, which the air seemed not to touch, and felt on it a hood which was at once as light and impenetrable as that which Cagliostro had previously thrown over her head. Led by an invisible hand, she descended the stairway of the house, but soon discovered there were more steps than she had been aware of, and that for half an hour she went through caverns.