"In the first place, then, I must tell you in whose house, and where you are."
"Are we come to that point?" said Consuelo, "Thank you, doctor—I neither asked nor wished to know."
"Ta, ta, ta!" said Supperville. "You have already fallen into the romantic ways into which it pleases the prince to drag his friends. Do not indulge in these toys; the least that can result from them to you, is to increase, when you have yourself gone mad, the number of fools and maniacs in this court. I have no intention to break the promise I gave the prince, to tell you either his name or where you are. About that you should not care, for it would be a mere gratification of your curiosity, and that is not the disease I wish to cure in you, for you are troubled with an excess of confidence. You may then learn without disobeying, or without the risk of displeasing him, (I am interested in not betraying you,) that you are in the house of the best and most absurd of old men—a man of mind, a philosopher, with a soul courageous and tender almost as a hero's or a madman's. He is a dreamer, treating the ideal as a reality, and life as a romance—a savant, who, from the study and the acquisition of the quintessence of ideas, has, like Don Quixote after his books of knight-errantry, fancied inns were castles, galley-slaves innocent victims, and wind-mills monsters. He is a saint, if we look at his intentions; a madman, if we think of the results. He has contrived, among other things, a perpetual net of conspiracies, permanent and universal, to paralyze the action of all the wicked of the world; 1. To combat and oppose tyranny in governments. 2. To reform the immorality or barbarism of the laws which govern society. 3. To infuse in the hearts of all men of courage and devotion, the enthusiasm of his propaganda, and the zeal of his doctrines—nothing less—and yet he seeks and expects to realize it! Were he seconded by some sincere and reasonable men, the little good he does might bear fruit. Unfortunately, however, he is surrounded by a clique of intriguers and ambitious impostors, who pretend to share his faith and serve him, but who really make use of his credit to procure good places in all the courts of Europe, and waste the greater part of the money he destines to carry out his plans. Such is the man, and the people around him. You can judge in what hands you are, and the generous protectors who rescued you from the claws of Frederick are not likely to expose you to a greater danger by exalting you to the clouds, merely to let you fall yet lower. You are now warned. Distrust their promises, their fine words, their tragedy, and the tricks of Cagliostro, Saint Germain, and company."
"Are the two persons you have mentioned ready here?" asked Consuelo, not a little troubled, and oscillating between the danger of being played upon by the doctor, and the probability of his assertions.
"I know nothing of the matter," said he. "All is passing in mystery. There are two castles, a visible one and a palpable one, where people who are well known come, and to whom fêtes are given, and where a princely life is exhibited in all frivolity and harmlessness. This castle conceals the other, which is a little subterrean world, exceedingly well masqued. In this invisible castle are all the crude dreamers of his highness—innovators, reformers, inventors, sorcerers, prophets, and alchemists: all the architects of the teeming new society, as they say, ready to swallow up to-morrow, or the day after, all that is of the old, are the mysterious guests he receives, fosters, and consults, without any one above ground being aware that he consults them, or, at least, without any profane mortal being able to explain the noise in the caverns, except by the presence of meteoric lights, and ghosts from the passages below. I imagine now, that the aforesaid charlatans may be a hundred leagues hence, for, in their way, they are great travellers, or in very comfortable rooms, with trap-doors in the floor, not so far away. It is said this old castle was once a rendezvous for the Free-Judges, and that ever since, on account of certain hereditary traditions, the ancestors of our prince have amused themselves by terrible plots, which, as far as I know, never had any result. This is the custom of the country, and the most illustrious brains are not those which are least given to such things. I am not initiated in the wonders of the invisible castle. From time to time I pass a few days here, when my mistress, Princess Sophia of Prussia, Margravine of Bareith, gives me leave to breathe a mouthful of fresh air outside of her domain. Now, I suffer terribly from ennui at the delicious court of Bareith, and as I have a kind of attachment to the prince of whom we speak, and am not sorry sometimes to play a trick on the great Frederick, whom I detest, I do the above-mentioned prince some service, and, above all, amuse myself. As I get orders from him alone, these services are very innocent. The affair of your escape from Spandau, and transportation hither like a poor sleeping bird, was not at all repugnant to me. I knew you would be well treated, and fancied you would amuse yourself. If, on the contrary, you be tormented, if the councillors of his highness seek to take possession of you, and make you aid their evil views——"
"I fear nothing of the kind," said Consuelo, very much amazed at the doctor's explanations. "I will be able to protect myself from their machinations, if they injure my sense of propriety and offend my conscience."
"And are you sure, countess?" said Supperville. "Listen to me. Confide, and presume on nothing. Very reasonable and honest people have left here, signed and sealed for evil. All means are good in the eyes of the intriguers who have the prince in charge, and he is so easily dazzled that he has sent to perdition many souls at the time he fancied he was saving them. You must know these intriguers are very shrewd, that they have terrible secrets, to convince, to persuade, to intoxicate the senses, and impress the imagination. First, is a retinue of tricks and incomprehensible means. Then old stories, systems, and prestiges aid them. They show you spectres, and trifle with the lucidity of your mind; they will besiege you with smiling or dazzling phantasmagoria, and make you superstitious or mad, perhaps, as I have the honor to tell you, and then——"
"What can they expect from me? What am I in the world, for them to catch in their nets?"
"Ah! does not the Countess of Rudolstadt suspect?"
"She has no idea."