[CHAPTER XXXIII]
"Rich, young, and of illustrious birth, I was married at the age of twenty to Count Christian, who was already more than forty. He might have been my father, and inspired me with affection and respect, but not with love. I had been brought up in ignorance of what that sentiment is to a woman. My parents were austere Lutherans, but were obliged to practise the obligations of their faith as obscurely as possible. Their habits and ideas were excessively rigid, and had great power on the mind. Their hatred of the stranger, their mental revolt against the religious and political tyranny of Austria, their fanatical attachment to the old liberties of the country, had passed into my mind, and these passions sufficed my youth. I suspected the existence of no other, and my mother, who had never known aught but duty, would have fancied she committed a crime, had she suffered me to have the least presentiment of any other. The Emperor Charles, father of Maria Theresa, long persecuted my family on account of heresy, and placed our fortune, our liberty, and almost our life, up to the highest bidder. I might ransom my parents by marrying a Catholic noble devoted to the empire, and I sacrificed myself with a kind of enthusiastic pride. Among those pointed out to me I chose Count Christian, because his mild, conciliatory, and apparently meek character made me entertain a hope of secretly converting him to the ideas of my family. Gladly did my parents receive and bless me for my devotion. Misfortune, though we may understand its extent, and be aware of its injustice, is not a means by which the soul can be developed. I very soon saw that the wise and calm Christian hid, under his benevolent mildness, an invincible obstinacy, and a deep attachment to the customs of his class and the prejudices of those around him—a kind of scornful hatred of all opposition to established ideas. His sister, Wenceslawa—tender, vigilant, generous but yet most alive to petty religious bigotry and pride of rank—was at once a pleasant and disagreeable companion for me. She was kindly but overpoweringly tyrannical to me; and her friendship, though devoted, was irritating to the last degree. I deeply suffered the want of sympathetic friends, the absence of the intellectual beings I could love. A contact with my companions destroyed me, and the atmosphere I breathed in seemed to dry up my heart. You know the story of the youth of Albert—his repressed enthusiasm, his misunderstood religion, and his evangelical ideas treated as heretical and mad. My life was the prelude to his; and you have sometimes at the Giants' Castle heard exclamations of terror and grief at the unfortunate resemblance, both in a moral and physical point of view, of the mother and son.
"The absence of love was the greatest evil of my life, and from it all others are derived. I loved Christian with deep friendship, but nothing could inspire me with enthusiasm, and an enthusiastic affection would have been necessary to repress the profound alienation of our natures. The stern and religious education I had received would not permit me to separate intelligence from love. I devoured myself. My health gave way; a strange excitement took possession of my nervous system. I had hallucinations and ecstasies called attacks of madness, which were carefully concealed instead of being cured. They sought to amuse and took me into society, as if balls, spectacles, and fetes, could replace sympathy, love, and confidence. At Vienna I became so ill that I was brought back to the Giants' Castle. I preferred this sad abode, the exorcisms of the chaplain, and the cruel friendship of the Canoness Wenceslawa, to the court of our tyrants.
"The death of my five children, one after the other, inflicted the last blow on me. It appeared that heaven had cursed my marriage. I longed anxiously for death, and expected nothing from life. I strove not to love Albert, my youngest son, being persuaded that he too was condemned like the others, and that my care would not suffice to save him.
"One final misfortune completely extinguished my faculties. I loved and was loved, and the austerity of my religion forced me to stifle even the self-knowledge of this terrible feeling. The medical man who attended me in my frequent and painful crises, was apparently not younger and not so handsome as Christian. I was not moved by the graces of his person, but by the profound sympathy of our souls, the conformity of ideas, or rather religious and philosophical instincts, and an incredible similarity of character. Marcus, I can mention only his first name, had the same energy, the same activity, the same patriotism, I had. Of him, as well as of me, might be said what Shakespeare makes Brutus assert. He was not one of those who hear injustice with an unmoved brow. The misery and degradation of the poor, serfdom, despotic laws and monstrous abuses, all the impious rights of conquest aroused tempests of indignation in his mind. What torrents of tears have we shed together over the wrongs of our country and of the human race, every where oppressed and deceived—in one place degraded by ignorance, in another decimated by avarice, and in a third, violated and degraded by the ravages of war—vile and unfortunate over all the world! Marcus, who was better informed than I was, conceived the idea of a remedy for all these evils, and often spoke to me of a strange and mysterious plan to organise an universal conspiracy against despotism and intolerance. I listened to his plans as mere things of romance. I hoped for nothing more. I was too ill and too utterly crushed to entertain hopes of the future. He loved me ardently; I saw and felt it. I partook of his passion, and yet during five years of apparent friendship and chaste intimacy, we never spoke of the lamentable secret that united us. He did not usually live in the Boehmer-wald—at least he often left it on pretence of visiting patients who were at a distance, but in fact to organise that conspiracy of which he constantly spoke to me, though without convincing me that it would be successful. As often as I saw him, I felt myself more excited by his genius, his courage and perseverance. Whenever he returned, he found me more debilitated, more completely a prey to an internal fire, and more devasted by physical suffering.
"During one of his absences I had terrible convulsions, to which the ignorant and vain Doctor Wetzelius, whom you know, and who attended me during my absence, gave the name of malignant fever. After these crises, I fell into so complete a state of annihilation that it was taken for death. My pulse ceased to beat, my respiration was not perceptible. Yet I retained my consciousness. I heard the prayers of the chaplain, and the lamentations of the family. I heard the agonising cry of poor Albert, my only child, and could not move. I could not even see him. My eyes had been closed, and it was impossible for me to open them. I asked myself if this could be death, and if the soul, having lost all means of action on the body in death, preserved a recollection of earthly sorrows, and was aware of the terrors of the tomb. I heard terrible things around my death-bed: the chaplain, seeking to calm the deep and sincere grief of the canoness, told her God should be thanked for all things, and it was a blessing to any husband to be freed from my continual agony, and the storms of a guilty mind. He did not use terms quite so harsh, but that was the sense. I heard him afterwards seek to console Christian with the same arguments, yet more softened in expression, but to me the sense was identical and cruel. I heard distinctly, I understood thoroughly. It was, they thought, God's will that I should not bring up my child, and that in his youth he would be removed from contact with the poison of heresy. Thus they talked to my husband when he wept and clasped Albert to his bosom, saying—'Poor child! what will become of you without your mother?' The chaplain's reply was, 'You will bring him up in a godly manner.'
"Finally, after three days of mute and silent despair, I was borne to the tomb, without having the power of motion, yet without for an instant having any doubt of the terrible death about to be inflicted on me. I was covered with diamonds—I was dressed in my wedding robe—the magnificent costume you saw in my portrait. A chaplet of flowers was placed on my head, a gold crucifix on my bosom, and I was placed in a white marble cenotaph, cut in the pavement of the chapel. I felt neither cold, nor the want of air. I existed in the mind alone.
"An hour after, Marcus came. His consternation deprived him of all thought; he prostrated himself on my grave, and they had to tear him away. At night he returned, bringing a lever and chisel with him. A strange suspicion had passed through his mind. He knew my lethargic crises. He had never seen them so long or so complete. From a few brief attacks which he had observed, he was satisfied of the possibility of a terrible error. He had no confidence in the science of Wetzelius. I heard him walking above my head, and I knew his step. The noise of the lever, as it lifted up the pavement, made my heart quiver, but I could not utter a cry, or make a sound. When he lifted up the veil which covered my face, I was so exhausted by the efforts I made to call him, that I seemed dead forever. He hesitated for a long time; he examined my extinct breath, my heart, and my icy hands. I had all the rigidity of a corpse. I heard him murmur, in an agonising tone—'All, then, is over! No hope! Dead—dead! Oh, Wanda!' Again there was a terrible silence. Had he fainted? Did he abandon me, forgetting, in the tremor inspired by the sight of one he loved, to shut up my sepulchre?
"Marcus, while in moody meditation, formed a scheme melancholy as his grief, and strange as his character. He wished to wrest my body from the outrage of destruction. He wished to bear it away secretly, to embalm and enclose it in a metallic case, keeping it ever with him. He asked himself if he would be bold enough to do so, and suddenly, in a kind of fanatic transport, exclaimed, that he would. He took me in his arms, and, without knowing if his strength would enable him to bear me to his house, which was more than a mile distant, he laid me down on the pavement, and with the terrible calmness which is often found in persons who are delirious, replaced the stones. Then he wrapped me up, covered me entirely with his cloak, and left the castle, which then was not shut so carefully as it now is, because at that time the bands of malefactors, made desperate by war, had not shown themselves in the environs. I was become so thin, that he had not a very heavy burden. Marcus crossed the woods, and chose the least frequented paths. He twice placed me on the rocks, being overcome with grief and terror, rather than with fatigue. He has told me since, more than once, that he was horrified at this violation of a grave, and that he was tempted to carry me back. At last he reached his home, going noiselessly into his garden, and put me, unseen by any one, into an isolated building, which was his study. There the joy of feeling myself saved, the first feeling of pleasure I had experienced in ten years, loosened my tongue, and I was able to make a faint exclamation.
"A new emotion violently succeeded the depression. I was suddenly gifted with excessive powers, and uttered cries and groans. The servant and gardener of Marcus came, thinking that he was being murdered. He had the presence of mind to meet them, saying that a lady had come to his house, to give birth secretly to a child, and that he would kill any one who saw her, and discharge any one who was so unfortunate as to mention the circumstance. This feint succeeded. I was dangerously ill in the study for three days. Marcus, who was shut up with me, attended to me with a zeal and intelligence which were worthy of his will. When I was cured, and could collect my ideas, I threw myself in alarm into his arms, remembering only that we must separate. 'Oh, Marcus!' said I, 'why did you not suffer me to die here in your arms? If you love me, kill me, for to return to my family is worse than death!'