[CHAPTER XXX]
Consuelo remained in a state of strange stupor. What amazed her most, what the testimony of her senses could hardly persuade her of, was not the magnanimous conduct of Albert, nor his heroic sentiments, but the wonderful facility with which he himself solved the terrible problem of fate he had made himself. Was it, then, so easy for Consuelo to be happy? Was her love for Leverani lawful? She thought she had dreamed what she had heard. It was already permitted her to yield to her love of the stranger. The austere Invisibles permitted Albert to consent on account of his greatness of soul, his courage, and virtue. Albert himself justified and defended her against Trenck's censure. Finally, Albert and the Invisibles, far from condemning their mutual passion, abandoned them to themselves, to their invincible sympathy. All this was without effort, without regret or remorse, without a tear from any one. Consuelo, quivering with emotion rather than cold, returned to the vast vaulted room, and rekindled the fire which Albert and Trenck had sought to put out. She looked at the prints of their wet feet on the floor. This satisfied her of the reality of their presence, and Consuelo needed the evidence to satisfy herself. Stooping in the hearthside, like a dreamy Cinderella, protected ever by the fireside spirits, she sank into intense meditation. So facile a triumph over fate had not seemed possible to her. Yet no fear could prevail against the wonderful serenity of Albert. Consuelo could least of all doubt this—Albert did not suffer. Her love did not offend his justice. He fulfilled, with a kind of enthusiastic joy, the greatest sacrifice it is in the power of man to offer to God. She did not ask if to be thus detached from human weakness could be reconciled with human affections. Did not this peculiarity betoken a new phase of madness? After the exaggeration of sorrow produced by memory and isolated sentiment, did he not feel, as it were a kind of paralysis of heart in relation to the past? Could he be cured so soon of his love? and was this love so unimportant a matter that a simple act of will, a simple decision of mind, could thus efface every trace of it? Though admiring this triumph of philosophy, Consuelo could not but feel humiliated at seeing thus destroyed, by a single breath, the long passion of which she had ever been so justly proud. She passed in review the least words he had uttered, and the expression of his face, as he spoke, was yet before her eyes. It was an expression with which Consuelo was unacquainted. Albert was also as much changed in externals as in mind. To tell the truth, he was a new man: and had not the sound of his voice, his features, and the reality of his conversation satisfied her, Consuelo might have thought that she saw in his place that Sosia, that fanciful Trismegistus, whom the doctor persisted in substituting for him. The modification which quiet and health had conferred on Albert seemed to confirm Supperville's error. He had ceased to be so painfully emaciated, and seemed to have grown, so expanded did his hitherto thin and feeble form seem to have become. He had another bearing. He moved with more activity, his step was firmer, and his dress as elegant and careful as it had been negligent and despised. His very trifling habits now amazed Consuelo. In other days he would not have dreamed of fire. He would have been sorry that his friend Trenck was wet, but would not have dreamed, so foreign to him were all external things, of gathering up the scattered brands. He would not have shaken his hat before he put it on, and would have let the rain run unremarked through his long hair. Now he wore a sword, though of yore he would never have consented to do so, or even play with it. Now it did not annoy him; he saw its blade glitter in the blaze, and did not recall the blood his ancestors had shed. The expiation imposed on John Ziska, in his person, was a painful dream, which blessed slumber had entirely effaced. Perhaps he had forgotten it when he forgot the other memories of his life and love, which seemed to have been, yet not to be, those of his own life.
Something strange and unnatural took place in Consuelo's mind, which was like chagrin, regret, and wounded pride. She repeated to herself the supposition Trenck had made in relation to a new passion, and this idea seemed probable. A new love alone could grant him toleration and pity. His last words, as he led his friend away, story and romance, were a confirmation of this doubt. Were they not an explanation of the intense joy which seemed to animate him?
"Yes, his eyes gleamed," thought Consuelo, "as I never saw them before. His smile had an expression of intoxication of triumph. He smiled, he almost laughed. There was even irony in his tone when he said, "You will smile at your praise." Doubt is gone; he loves, yet not me. He does not object, he does not oppose my infidelity; he urges me on, and rejoices at it. He does not blush for me, but gives me up to a weakness of which I alone am ashamed, and the disgrace of which will fall on me alone. Oh, heaven! I alone was not guilty. Albert has been yet more so. Alas! why did I discover the secret of a generosity I would have admired so much, even though I did not avail myself of it. I see clearly now that there is a sanctity in plighted faith. God only, who changes our hearts, can loose us. Then, perhaps, beings united by their oaths may give and receive the sacrifice of their faiths. When mutual inconstancy alone presides over divorce, something terrible occurs, and there is, as it were, a complicity of parricide between the two. They have coldly stifled in their bosoms the love which united them."
Consuelo early in the morning regained the wood. She had passed the whole night in the tower, absorbed by countless dark and sad thoughts. She had no difficulty in finding the road homewards, though she had gone over it in the dark, and her anxiety made it seem shorter than it really was. She descended the hill, and retraced her steps up the rivulet, till she came to the grating, which she passed, walking along its horizontal bars above the water. She was no longer afraid or agitated. It did not matter whether she was seen or not, for she had determined to tell her confessor everything. Besides, the sentiments of her past life so occupied her, that present things had but a secondary interest. Leverani scarcely seemed to exist for her. The human heart is so constituted, that young love needs dangers and obstacles. Old love revives when we cannot awaken it in the heart of another.
On this occasion the invisible guardians of Consuelo seemed all asleep, and her nocturnal walk had been observed by no one. She found a new letter of the stranger on her piano, as tenderly respectful as the one of the previous evening had been bold and passionate. He complained that she had been afraid of him, and reproached her for having shut herself up in her apartments from fear, as if she entertained doubt as to the humility of his veneration. He humbly asked to be permitted to see her in the garden at twilight, and promised not to speak to her, not to show himself, if she demanded it. "Let it be an alienation of heart, or an error of judgment," added he, "Albert renounces you, tranquilly, and apparently even coldly. Duty speaks to him more loudly than love. In a few days the Invisibles will announce their resolution, and give you the signal of liberty. You can then remain here, to become initiated in their mysteries; and if you persist in this generous intention, I will abide by my oath, not to show myself to you. If you have made this promise only from compassion, if you wish to release yourself, speak, and I will break my engagements, and fly with you. I am not Albert; I have more love than virtue. Choose."
"Yes, that is certain," said Consuelo, letting the letter fall on the strings of the piano. "This man loves me, and Albert does not. It is possible that he never loved me, and that my image has been a mere creation of his delirium. Yet this love seemed to me sublime. Would to God it yet were sufficiently so, to enable me to conquer mine by a painful and sublime sacrifice! This would be far better for us than the separation of two adulterous hearts. Better, too, were it that Leverani should be abandoned by me, with pain and grief, than received as a necessity of my isolation, in a season of anger, indignation, shame, and painful intoxication of passion."
She wrote to Leverani, in reply, the following brief words:—
"I am too proud and too sincere to deceive you. I know what Albert thinks, and what he has resolved on. I have overheard his confessions to a mutual friend. He leaves me without regret, and virtue alone does not triumph in his love. I will not follow his example. I loved you, and abandon you without loving another. I owe this sacrifice to my dignity and conscience. I hope you will not come near my house. If you yield to a blind passion, if you wrest any new confession from me, you will repent it. You would perhaps be indebted for my confidence to the just anger of a broken heart, and to the terror of a crushed soul. This would be my punishment and your own. If you persist, Leverani, you do not feel the love I have thought you did."