"He always spoke in an exaggerated and inspired manner, and I too, from talking with him, acquired the same style. Marcus often reproached me—I likewise reproached myself—with having fed the internal flame which consumed Albert. Marcus wished to give him more positive instruction, and to use a more palpable logic to him; at other times, however, I was satisfied, that but for the manner in which I counselled him, this flame would have consumed him more rapidly and certainly. My other children had exhibited the same disposition to enthusiasm. Their souls had been repressed, and they had toiled to stifle them—like torches, the brilliancy of which was dangerous. They yielded, because they had no power to resist. But for my breath, which revived and gave air to the sacred spark, Albert, too, had gone to join his brethren; as I, but for Marcus, would have died without having truly lived. I also sought to distract his soul by a constant aspiration after the ideal. I advised him, I forced him to rigid study, and he obeyed me strictly and conscientiously. He studied the natural sciences, the languages of the different countries through which he travelled; he read a great deal, cultivated the arts even, and, without any master, devoted himself to music. All this was a mere amusement, a repose to his vast and powerful mind. A stranger to all the intoxications of his age, opposed to the world and all its vanities, he lived in perfect seclusion, and obstinately resisted the tutor, persisting in refusing to enter any saloon or be introduced at any court. With difficulty would he consent to see, at two or three capitals, the oldest and most affectionate friends of his father. When with them, he was grave and dignified as possible, giving no one reason to complain; but he was intimate only with a few adepts of our order, to whom Marcus especially introduced him. He requested us not to ask him to enlist with the propaganda, until he became aware that the gift of suasion had arisen in his heart, and he often declared frankly that he had it not, because as yet he did not entertain implicit faith in our means. He passed from grade to grade, like a docile pupil, yet he examined everything with a severe logic and scrupulous truth, reserving always as he told me, the right to propose reforms and ameliorations to us, when he should feel sufficiently enlightened to yield to personal inspiration. Until then, he wished to be humble, patient, and submissive to the established forms of our secret society. Plunged in study and meditation, he made his tutor respect the nervousness of his character and the coldness of his behavior. The abbé then learned to look on him as a sad pedant, and to have as little as possible to do with him, in order to have more liberty to participate in the intrigues of his order. Albert lived long in France and England without him: he was often a hundred leagues from him, and only met him when my son wished to visit another country; often they did not travel together. At such times I could see Albert as often as I pleased, and his devoted tenderness paid me five-fold for the care I took of him. My health became better, as often happens to constitutions thoroughly shaken: I became so used to sickness, that I did not even suffer from it. Fatigue, late hours, long conversations, harassing journeys, instead of oppressing, maintained a slow and tedious fever, which had now become my normal state. Feeble and trembling as you see me, there are no journeys and no fatigue that I cannot bear better than you, in the very flower of your youth. Agitation has become my element, and I find rest as I hurry on, precisely as professional couriers have learned to sleep while their horses are at the gallop.
"The experience of what a powerful and energetic mind, though in a diseased body, can accomplish, made me have more confidence in the power of Albert. I became used to see him sometimes weary and crushed, and again animated and excited, as I was. Often we bore together the same physical pain, the result of the same moral emotion. Never, perhaps, was our intimacy more gentle and close, than when the same fever burned in our veins, and the same excitement confounded our feeble sighs, now many times has it seemed that we were one being! How many times have we broken silence merely to address to each other the same words! How often, agitated and crushed in different manners, have we, by a clasp of the hand, communicated languor or agitation to each other! How much good and evil have we known together! Oh, my son! my only passion! flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone! what tempests have we passed through, covered by the same celestial ægis! what devastation have we escaped by clinging to each other, and by pronouncing the same formula of safety, love, truth, and justice!
"We were in Poland, on the frontiers of Turkey, and Albert, having passed through all the initiations of masonry, and the superior grades of the society which forms the link of the chain next to our own, was about to go to that part of Germany where we are, in order that he might be introduced to the secret bench of the Invisibles. Count Christian just then sent for him. This was a thunderbolt to me. My son, in spite of all the care I had taken to keep him from forgetting my family, loved it only as a tender recollection of the past. He did not understand the possibility of living any longer with it. It did not enter, however, into our minds to resist this order, dictated with cold dignity, and with confidence in paternal authority, as it is interpreted in the Catholic and noble families of our country. Albert prepared to leave me—he knew not for how long a time, yet without fancying that he would not see me shortly, and unite with Marcus the ties of our association. Albert had a small idea of time, and still less an appreciation of the material events of life.
"'Do we part?' said he, when he saw me weep. 'We cannot. Often as I have called on you from the depths of my heart, you have come. I will call you again.'
"'Albert—Albert—I cannot accompany you where you go now.'
"He grew pale and clung to me like a terrified child. The time was come to reveal my secret. 'I am not the soul of your mother,' said I, after a brief preamble, 'but your mother!"
"'Why do you say that?' said he, with a strange smile. 'Think you I did not know it? Are we not alike? Have I not seen your portrait at the Giants' Castle? Have I forgotten you? Besides, have I not always seen and known you?'
"'And you were not surprised to see me alive, when all thought me buried at the Giants' Castle?'
"'No,' said he, 'I was not surprised. I was too happy. God has miraculous power, and men need not be amazed at it.'
"The strange child had more difficulty in understanding the terrible realities of my story, than the miracle he had fancied. He had believed in my resurrection, as in that of Christ. He had fancied my doctrines about the transmission of life to be literal, and believed in it to the fullest sense. That is to say, he was not amazed to see me preserve the certainty of my identity, after having laid aside one body to deck me with another. I am not certain, even, if I satisfied him that my life had not been interrupted by my fainting, and that my mortal envelope had not remained in the tomb. He listened to me with a wondering and yet excited physiognomy, as if he had heard me speak other words than those I had uttered. Something inexplicable at that moment passed in his mind. A terrible link yet retained Albert on the brink of the abyss. Real life could not animate him, until he had passed through that crisis from which I had been so miraculously rescued—this apparent death, which in him was to be the last effort of eternity, struggling against the hold of time. My heart seemed ready to burst as I left him. A painful presentiment vaguely informed me that he was about to enter that phase which might almost be called climacteric, which had so violently shaken my own existence, and that the time was not far distant when Albert would either be annihilated or renewed. I had observed that he had a tendency to catalepsy. He had under my observation accesses of slumber—long, deep, and terrible. His respiration was weak, his pulse so feeble that I never ceased to write or say to Marcus, 'Let us never bury Albert, or else let us never be afraid to open his tomb.' Unfortunately for us, Marcus could not go to the Giants' Castle, being excluded from the territories of the Empire. He had been deeply compromised by an insurrection at Prague; to which, indeed, his influence had not been foreign. He had by flight only escaped from the stern Austrian laws. A prey to uneasiness, I came hither. Albert had promised to write to me every day, and I resolved also, as soon as I failed to receive a letter, to go to Bohemia, and appear at Riesenberg in spite of all difficulties.