"'Were you the friend of my mother?' said he. 'Were you requested to speak to me? Ah! yes! Speak!—speak! You see I was not mistaken. An inward voice informed me of all. I saw that something of her existed in you. No—I am not superstitious. I am not mad. My heart is only much more alive and accessible than others, in relation to certain things which they neither understand nor comprehend. This you would know, had you known my mother. Speak to me, then, of her. Speak to me, with her mind—with her intellect.'
"Having thus but very imperfectly succeeded in soothing his emotion, I took him beneath the arcades, and questioned him about his childhood, his recollections, the principles which had been instilled in him, and the ideas he had formed of his mother's opinions. The questions I put satisfied him that I was well informed of his family affairs, and capable of understanding the impulses of his heart. How enthusiastically proud was I, my daughter, to see the deep and ardent love Albert entertained for me, the faith he had in my piety and virtue, and his horror of the pious hatred the Catholics of Riesenberg had for my memory! I rejoiced in the purity of his soul, the grandeur of his religious and patriotic sentiment, and in the many sublime ideas which a Catholic education had not been able to stifle in him. How great, however, was the grief, the precocious and incurable sadness which already crushed his young heart. The same kind of sorrows, that had so soon crushed him has broken my heart. Albert fancied himself a Catholic. He did not dare to place himself in open revolt against the Catholic Church, and felt a necessity of believing in the established church. Better informed and more thoughtful than his age suggested (he was only twenty), he had reflected much on the long and sad histories of heresies, and could not make up his mind to find fault with certain doctrines. Forced also to think that the innovators, so libelled by ecclesiastical historians, had gone far astray, he floated in a sea of uncertainty, sometimes condemning revolt, and anon finding fault with tyranny. He could decide on nothing, except that good men, in their attempts at reform, had gone astray, and that others had sullied the sanctuary they sought to defend.
"It became necessary to enlighten his mind, to combat the excesses of both armies, to teach him to embrace boldly the defence of the innovators, while he deplored their errors—to exhort him to abandon the party of cunning, violence, and timidity, while he recognised the excellence of a certain mission in remote time. I had no difficulty in enlightening him. He had already foreseen, divined, and resolved on all before I spoke to him. His instincts had fulfilled all wished. When he understood me, a grief more overwhelming than uncertainty took possession of his soul. The truth was unknown in the world. The law of God enlightened no sanctuary, no people, no caste. No school practised Christian virtue, nor sought to elevate and demonstrate it. Protestants as well as Catholics had abandoned the divine ways. The law of the stronger existed everywhere, and Christ was crucified every day on altars erected by men. This sad though interesting conversation consumed the whole night. The clocks slowly struck the hours without Albert's thinking of counting them. I felt alarmed at his power of intellectual tension, as it made me aware of his great passion for strife and capacity for sorrow. I admired the manly pride and the lacerated expression of my noble and unfortunate child. I felt myself reproduced in him. I fancied that I read the story of my past life, and in him resumed the history of the long tortures of my own heart and brain. I saw in his broad brow, which was lighted up by the moon, the useless external and the moral beauty of my own lonely and unappreciated youth. I wept at the same time for him and for myself. His tears were long and painful. I did not dare to unfold to him the secrets of our conspiracy. I feared that at first he would not understand them, and that he would reject them as vain and idle. Uneasy at seeing him walking up and down for so long a time, I promised to show him a place of safety, if he would consent to wait, and prepare himself for certain revelations. I gently excited his imagination by the hope of a new confidence, and took him to an hotel, where we both supped. I did not give him the promised confidence for some days, fearing an over excitement of his mental faculties.
"Just as he was about to quit me, it struck him to ask me who I was. 'I cannot tell you,' said I; 'my name is assumed, and I have reasons to conceal it. Speak of me to no one.'
"He asked no other question, and seemed satisfied with my answer. His delicate reserve, however, was accompanied by another sentiment, strange as his character and sombre as his mental habits. He told me long afterwards that he had always taken me for the soul of his mother, appearing under a real form, with circumstances the vulgar could not understand, and which were really supernatural. Thus, in spite of all I could do, Albert would recognise me. He preferred rather to invent a fantastic world than to doubt my presence, and I could not deceive the victorious instinct of his heart. All my efforts to repress his excitement had no other effect than to fix him in a kind of calm delirium, which had no confidant nor opposer, not even in myself, its object. He submitted religiously to the will of the spectre, which forbade itself to be known or named, yet he would believe himself under its influence.
"From this terrible tranquillity—which Albert henceforth bore in all the wanderings of his imagination, from the sombre and stoical courage which made him always gaze, without growing pale, at the prodigies begotten by his imagination—I fell, for a long time, into an unhappy error. I was not aware of the strange idea he had formed relative to my apparition. I thought that he looked on me as a mysterious friend of his dead mother and of his own youth. I was amazed, it is true, at the little curiosity he exhibited, and the small surprise he displayed at my constant care. This blind respect, this delicate submission, this absence of uneasiness about the realities of life, appeared so perfectly in consonance with his retired, dreaming, and meditative character, that I did not think proper to account for or examine into its secret causes. While thus toiling to fortify his mind against the excess of his enthusiasm, I aided, ignorantly, in the development of that kind of madness which was at once so sublime and deplorable, and to which he was so long a victim.
"Gradually, after many conversations, of which there were neither confidants nor witnesses, I explained to him the doctrines of which our order is the depository and the secret diffuser. I initiated him into our plan of general reform. At Rome, in the caverns appropriated to our mysteries, Marcus introduced and had him admitted to the first grades of masonry, reserving to himself the right of revealing to him the meaning of the strange and fantastic signs, the interpretation of which is so easily changed and adapted to the courage and intelligence of the candidates. For six years, I accompanied my son in all his journeys, always leaving cities a day after, and coming to them when he had fixed himself. I took care always to reside at some distance from him, and did not suffer either his tutor or valets to see me; he taking care also to change them frequently, and to keep them always at a distance. I once asked him if he was not surprised to find me everywhere?
"'Oh, no,' said he, 'I am well aware that you will always follow me.'
"When I sought to explain to him the motive of this confidence, he said:
"'My mother bade you restore me to life; and you know, did you now desert me, I would die.'