"'Madame,' said he firmly, 'I have sworn before God that you never shall return there. You belong to me alone. You will not leave me; if so, it will cause my death.' This terrible resolution at once terrified and charmed me. I was too much enfeebled to be able to comprehend its meaning for a long time. I listened to him, with the timid submission and compliance of a child. I suffered him to cure and attend to me, becoming gradually used to the idea of never returning to Riesenberg, and never contradicting the belief of my death. To convince me, Marcus made use of a lofty eloquence, he told me, with such a husband I could not live, and had no right to undergo certain death. He swore that he had the means of hiding me for a long time, and even forever, from all who would know me. He promised to watch over my son, and to enable me to see him in secret. He gave me, even, certain assurances of these strange possibilities, and I suffered myself to be convinced. I lived with him, and was no longer the Countess of Rudolstadt.
"One night, just as we were about to part, they came for Marcus, saying that Albert was dangerously ill. Maternal love, which misfortune seemed to have suppressed, awoke in my bosom. I wished to go to Riesenberg with Marcus, and no human power could dissuade me from it. I went in his carriage, and in a long veil waited anxiously at some distance from the house, while he went to see my son, and promised me an account of his state. He soon returned, and assured me that my child was in no danger, and wished me to go to his house, to enable him to pass the night with Albert. I could not do so. I wished to wait for him, hidden behind the walls of the castle, while he returned to watch my son. Scarcely was I alone, than a thousand troubles devoured my heart. I fancied that Marcus concealed Albert's true situation from me, and perhaps that he would die without receiving my last farewell. Under the influence of this unhappy persuasion, I rushed into the portico of the castle. A servant I met in the court let his light fall, and fled when he saw me. My veil hid my face, but the apparition of a woman at midnight was sufficient to awake the superstitious fears of these credulous servants. No one suspected that I was the shadow of the unfortunate and impious Countess Wanda. An unexpected chance enabled me to reach the room of my son without meeting any one, and it happened that Wenceslawa had just left to procure some remedy Marcus had ordered. My husband, as was his wont, had gone to the oratory to pray, instead of trying to avert the danger. I took my child in my arms; I pressed him to my bosom. He was not afraid of me, for he had not understood what was meant by my death. At that moment the chaplain appeared at the door. Marcus thought that all was lost. With a rare presence of mind, however, he stood without moving, and appeared not to see me. The chaplain pronounced, in a broken voice, a few words of an exorcism, and fell half dead, after having made a single step towards me. I then made up my mind to fly through another door, and in the dark reached the place where Marcus had left me. I was reassured; I had seen Albert restored, and the heat of fever was no longer on his lips. The fainting and terror of the chaplain were attributed to a vision. He maintained that he had seen me with Marcus, clasping my child to my bosom. Marcus had seen no one. Albert had gone to sleep. On the next day he asked for me, and on the following nights, satisfied that I did not sleep the eternal slumber, as they had attempted to persuade him, he fancied that he saw me yet, and called me again and again. Thenceforth, throughout his whole youth, Albert was closely watched, and the superstitious family of Riesenberg made many prayers to conjure the unfortunate assiduities of my phantom around his cradle.
"Marcus took me back before day. We postponed our departure for a week, and when the health of my son was completely established we left Bohemia. Always concealed in my places of abode, always veiled in my journeys, bearing a fictitious name, and for a long time having no other confidant than Marcus, I passed many years with him in a foreign country. He maintained a constant correspondence with a friend, who kept him informed of all that passed at Riesenberg, and who gave him ample details of the health, character, and education of my son. The deplorable condition of my health was a full excuse for my living in retirement and seeing no one. I passed for the sister of Marcus, and lived long in Italy, in an isolated villa, while during a portion of the time Marcus travelled and toiled for the accomplishment of his vast plans.
"I was not Marcus's mistress: I remained under the influence of my scruples, and I needed ten years' meditation to conceive the right of a human being to repudiate the yoke of laws, without pity and without intelligence, such as rule human society. Being thought dead, and being unwilling to endanger the liberty I had so dearly purchased, I could not invoke any civil or religious power to break my marriage with Christian, and I would not have been willing to arouse again his sorrow, which had long been lulled to sleep. He was not aware how unhappy I had been with him; he thought I had gone for my own happiness, for the peace of my family, and for the health of my son, into the deep and never-ending repose of the tomb. Thus situated, I looked on myself as sentenced to eternal fidelity to him. At a later day, when by the care of Marcus the disciples of the new faith were reunited and constituted secretly into a religious church, when I had so changed my opinions as to accept the new communion, and had so far modified my ideas as to be able to enter this new church which had the power to pronounce my divorce and consecrate my union, it was too late. Marcus, wearied by my obstinacy, had felt the necessity of another love, to which I had attempted to persuade him. He had married, and I was the friend of his wife; yet he was not happy. This woman had not mind enough, nor a sufficient intelligence, to satisfy such a man as Marcus. He had been unable to make her comprehend his plans or to initiate her in his schemes. She died, after some years, without having guessed that Marcus had always loved me. I nursed her on her death-bed; I closed her eyes without having any reproach to make against her, without rejoicing at the disappearance of this obstacle to my long and cruel passion. Youth was gone; I was crushed; my life was too sad, and had been too austere, to change it when age had begun to whiten my hairs. I at last began to enter the calm of old age, and I felt deeply all that is august and holy in this phase of female life. Yes; our old age, like our whole life, when we understand it, is much more serious than that of men. They may forget the course of years—they may love and become parents at a more advanced period than we can, for nature prescribes a term after which there seems to be something monstrous and impious in the idea of seeking to awaken love, and infringing, by ridiculous delirium, on the brilliant privileges of the generation which already succeeds and effaces us. The lessons and examples which it also expects from us at this solemn time, ask for a life of contemplation and meditation which the agitation of love would disturb without any benefit. Youth can inspire itself with its own ardor, and find important revelations. Mature age has no commerce with God, other than in the calm serenity which is granted to it as a final benefit. God himself aids it gently, and by an irresistible transformation, to enter into this path. He takes care to appease our passions, and to change them into peaceable friendship. He deprives us of the prestige of beauty, also removing all dangerous temptations from us. Nothing, then, is so easy as to grow old, whatever we may say and think of those women of diseased mind, whom we see float through the world in a kind of obstinate madness, to conceal from each other and from themselves the decay of their charms and the close of their mission as women. Yes; age deprives us of our sex, and excuses us from the terrible labors of maternity, and we will not recognise that this moment exalts to a kind of angelic state. You, however, my dear child, are far from this terrible yet desirable term, as the ship is from the port after a tempest, so that all my reflections are lost on you. Let them serve, therefore, merely to enable you to comprehend my history. I remained, what I had always been, the sister of Marcus, and the repressed emotions, the subdued wishes which had tortured my youth, gave, at least, to the friendship of matured age a character of force and enthusiastic confidence not to be met with in vulgar friendships.
"As yet I have told you nothing of the mental cares and the serious occupations which during the last fifteen years kept us from being absorbed by our suffering, and which since then have given us no reason to regret them. You know their nature, their object, and result; all that was explained to you last night. You will to-night learn much from the Invisibles. I can only tell you that Marcus sits among them, and that he himself formed their secret council with the aid of a virtuous prince, the whole of whose fortune is devoted to the grand mysterious enterprise with which you are already acquainted. To it I also have consecrated all my power for fifteen years. After an absence of twelve years, I was too much changed and too entirely forgotten not to be able to return to Germany. The strange life required by certain duties of our order also favored my incognito. To me was confided, not the absolute propagandism which is better suited to your brilliant life, but such secret missions as befitted my prudence. I have made long journeys, of which I will tell you by-and-bye. Since then I have lived here totally unknown, performing the apparently insignificant duties of superintending a portion of the prince's household, while in fact I was devoting myself to our secret task, maintaining in the name of the council a vast correspondence with our most important associates, receiving them here, and often with Marcus alone, when the other supreme chiefs are absent, exercising a marked influence on those of their decisions which appeared to appeal to the delicate views and the particular qualities of the female mind. Apart from the philosophical questions which exist and exert an influence here, and in relation to which I have by the maturity of my mind taken an active part, there are often matters of sentiment to be discussed and decided. You may fancy, from your temptations elsewhere, circumstances often occur where individual passions—love, hatred, and jealousy—come into contact. By means of my son, and even in person, though under disguises not unusual to women in courts, as a witch or illuminatus, I have had much to do with the Princess Amelia, with the interesting and unfortunate Princess of Culmbach, and with the young Margravine of Bareith, Frederick's sister. Women must be won rather by the heart than by the mind. I have toiled nobly, I must say, to attach them to us, and I have succeeded. This phase of my life, however, I do not wish to speak of to you. In your future enterprises you will find traces of me, and will continue what I have begun. I wish to speak to you of Albert, and to tell you all that part of his existence of which you are ignorant. Attend to me for a brief time. You will understand how, in the terrible and strange life I have led, I became alive to tender emotions and maternal joys."
[CHAPTER XXXIV]
"Minutely informed of all that had passed at the Giants' Castle, I had no sooner resolved to make Albert travel, and determined on the road that he should adopt, than I hurried to place myself on his route. This was the epoch of the travels of which I spoke to you just now, and Marcus accompanied me in many of them. The governor and servants who were with him had never known me, and I was not afraid to see them. So anxious was I to meet my son, that I had much difficulty to restrain myself as I travelled behind him, for some hours, until he reached Venice, where he was to make his first halt. I was resolved, though, not to show myself to him without a kind of mysterious solemnity, for my object was not only the gratification of the maternal instinct which impelled me to his arms, but a more serious purpose, really a mother's duty. I wished to wrest Albert from the narrow superstitions in which it had been sought to enwrap him. I wished to take possession of his imagination, of his confidence, of his mind, and whole soul. I thought him a fervent Catholic, and at that time he was, in appearance. He practised regularly all the external obligations of the Roman creed. The persons who had informed Albert of these details, were ignorant of what passed in my son's heart. His father and aunt were scarcely better informed. They found nothing but a savage strictness to shelter, and blamed merely his too strict and rigid manner of interpreting the bible. They did not understand that in his rigid logic and loyal candor my noble child, devoted to the practice of true Christianity, had already become a passionate and incorrigible heretic. I was rather afraid of the Jesuit tutor who was with him. I was afraid that I could not approach him without being observed and annoyed by a fanatical Argus. I soon learned that the base Abbé ***** did not even attend to his health, and that Albert, neglected by the valets, of whom he was unwilling to require anything, lived almost alone and uncontrolled in the cities he had visited. I observed his motions with great anxiety. Lodging at Venice in the same hotel with him, I frequently met him, alone and musing, on the stairway, in the galleries, and on quais. Ah! you cannot imagine how my heart beat at his approach—how my bosom heaved, and what torrents of tears escaped from my terrified yet delighted eyes! To me he seemed so handsome, so noble, and alas! so sad, for he was all on earth that I was permitted to love. I followed him with precaution. Night came, and he entered the church of Saints John and Paul, an austere basilica filled with tombs, and with which you are doubtless acquainted. Albert knelt in a corner. I glided near him and placed myself behind a tomb. The church was deserted, and the darkness became every moment more intense. Albert was motionless as a statue. He seemed rather to be enwrapped in reverie than prayer. The lamp of the sanctuary but feebly lighted up his features. He was pale and I was terrified. His fixed eye, his half-open lips, an indescribable air of desperation in his features, crushed my heart. I trembled like the oscillating flame of a lamp. It seemed to me, if I revealed myself to him then, he would fall dead. I remembered what Marcus had said to me of his nervous susceptibility, and of the danger to such organizations of abrupt emotions. I left, to avoid yielding to my love. I went to wait for him under the portico. I had put over my dress, which was itself simple and dark, a brown cloak, the hood of which concealed my face, and made me resemble a native of the country. When he came out I involuntarily went towards him; thinking me a beggar, he took a piece, of gold from his pocket and handed it to me. Oh! with what pride and gratitude did I receive this gold. Look! Consuelo: it is a Venetian sequin, and I always wear it in my bosom like a precious jewel or relic. It has never left me since the day the hand of my child sanctified it. I could not repress my transport. I seized his hand and bore it to my lips. He withdrew in terror, for it was bedewed with my tears. 'What are you about, woman?' said he, in a voice the pure and deep tone of which echoed in the very bottom of my heart. 'Why thank me for so small a gift? Doubtless you are very unfortunate, and I have given you very little. How much will relieve you from suffering permanently? Speak! I wish to console you; I hope I can.' He then, without looking at it, gave me all the gold he had in his hands.
"'You have given me enough, young man,' said I; 'I am satisfied.'
"'Why, then, do you weep?' said he, observing the sobs which stifled my voice. 'Do you suffer from a sorrow to which riches cannot administer?'