"The grief he felt at our separation was not less than mine. He did not understand what was going on. He did not seem to believe me. When, however, he had gone beneath that roof, the very air of which appears to be a poison to the burning hearts of the descendants of Ziska, he received a terrible shock. He hurried to the room I had always occupied. He called me, and not seeing me come, became persuaded that I had died again, and would not be restored to him during the present life. Thus, at least, he explained to me what passed at that fatal moment, when his reason was shaken so violently that it did not recover for years. He looked at my picture for a long time. After all, a portrait is but an imperfect resemblance, and the peculiar sentiment the artist seizes and preserves is always inferior to that entertained by those who love us ardently; no likeness can please them; they are alternately afflicted and offended. Albert, when he compared this representation of my youth and beauty, did not recognise his dear old mother in the grey hair which seemed so venerable, and the paleness which appealed to his heart. He hurried in terror from the portrait, and met his relations, sombre, silent and afraid. He went to my tomb, and was attacked with vertigo and terror. To him the idea of death appeared monstrous; yet to console him his father had said I was there, and that he must kneel and pray for the repose of my soul.
"'Repose?' said Albert, without reflection, 'Repose of the soul! My mother's soul was not formed for such annihilation; neither was mine. We will neither of us rest in the grave. Never—never! This Catholic cavern, these sealed sepulchres, this desertion of life, this divorce of heaven and earth, body and soul, horrifies me!'"
By similar conversation Albert began to fill the timid and simple heart of his father with terror. His words were reported to the chaplain to be explained. This feeble man saw nothing in it but the outbreak of a soul doomed to eternal damnation. The superstitions fear which was diffused in the minds of all around Albert, the efforts of the family to lead him to return to the Catholic faith, tortured him, and his excitement assumed the unhealthy character you have seen in him. His ideas became confounded; and although he had seen evidences of my existence, he forgot that he had known me alive, and I seemed ever a fugitive spectre ready to abandon him. His fancy evoked this spectre, and inspired him with incoherent speeches and painful cries. When he became more calm, his reason was, as it were, veiled in a cloud. He had forgotten recent things, and was satisfied he had been dreaming for eight years, or rather those eight years of happiness and life seemed to be the creation of an hour of slumber.
"Receiving no letter, I was about to hurry to him. Marcus retained me. He said the post-office department intercepted our letters, or that the Rudolstadts suppressed them. My son was represented by his family, calm, well and happy. You know how sedulously his situation was concealed, and with what success, for a long time.
"In his travels Albert had known young Trenck, and was bound to him by the warmest friendship. Trenck, loved by the Princess of Prussia and persecuted by Frederick, wrote to my son of his joys and misfortunes. He requested him to come to Dresden to give him the benefit of his aid and arm. Albert made this journey, and no sooner had he left Riesenberg than he regained memory and mind. Trenck met my son amid the neophytes of the Invisibles. There they were made members of a chivalric fraternity. Having learned from Marcus of their intended interview, I hurried to Dresden, followed him to Prussia, where he introduced himself into the Royal Palace in disguise, to serve Trenck's love and fulfil a mission confided to him by the Invisibles. Marcus thought this activity and the knowledge of a useful and generous rôle might rescue Albert from his dangerous melancholy. He was right, for while among us Albert again became attached to life. Marcus, on his return, wished to bring and keep him for some time here, amid the real chiefs of the order. He was convinced that by breathing the true vital atmosphere of a superior soul, Albert would recover the lucidness of his mind. On the route he met the impostor Cagliostro, and was imprudently initiated by the rose-crosses in some of their mysteries. Albert, who long had received the rose-cross, now passed that grade and presided over their mysteries as Grand-Master. He then saw what, as yet, he had but a presentiment of. He saw the various elements of which masonic associations are composed, and distinguished the error, folly, emptiness and vanity which filled these sanctuaries, already a prey to the vices of the century. Cagliostro, by means of his police, which was ever watchful for the petty secrets of the world, which he feigned were the revelations of a familiar demon, by means of his captious eloquence, which parodied the great revolutionary inspirations, by the surprising tricks which enabled him to evoke shadows, and by his intrigues, horrified the noble adept. The credulity of the world, the low superstition of a large number of freemasons, the shameless cupidity excited by promises of the philosopher's stone, and so many other miseries of the age we live in had kindled a fire in his heart. Amid his retreat and study he had not distinctly understood the human race. He was not prepared to contend with all its bad instincts. He could not suffer such misery. He wished all charlatans and sorcerers to be unmasked and expelled shamelessly from our temples. He was aware that the degrading association of Cagliostro must be submitted to, because it was too late to get rid of him, and because his anger might deprive them of many estimable friends, and that, flattered by their protection and an appearance of confidence, he might do real service to a cause with which he was in fact unacquainted.
"Albert became indignant, and uttered the anathema of a firm and ardent mind, against our enterprise. He foretold that we would fail, because we had mixed too much alloy with the golden chain. He left us, saying, that he would reflect on the things the necessity of which we strove to make him understand, in relation to the terrible necessities of conspiracies, and that he would come to ask for baptism when his poignant doubts were relieved. Alas! we did not know the character of his reflections at Riesenberg. He did not tell us; perhaps when their bitterness was passed, he did not remember them. He passed a year there, in alternate calm and madness, exuberant power and painful decay. He wrote sometimes, without mentioning his sorrows and troubles. He bitterly opposed our political course. He wished us thenceforth not to seek to work in the shade and deceive men, to make them swallow the cup of regeneration. 'Cast aside your black masks,' said he; 'leave your caverns, efface from the front of your temple the word mystery, which you borrowed from the Roman church, and which ill befits the coming age. Do you not see you are imitators of the Jesuits? No, I cannot toil with you. It is to look for life amid carcases. Show yourself by daylight. Do not lose a precious moment for the organization of your army. Rely on its enthusiasm, on the sympathy of the people, and the outbursts of generous instincts. An army, even, becomes corrupted in repose, and a ruse, employed for concealment also deprives us of the power and activity required for the strife. Albert was right in theory, but the time was not come to put it in action. That time, perhaps, is yet far distant.
"You at last came to Riesenberg, and found him in the greatest distress. You know, or rather you do not know, what influence you exerted on him. You made him forget all but yourself—you gave him, as it were, a new life and death.
"When he fancied that all between you and him was over, all his power abandoned him, and he suffered himself to waste away. Until then, I was not aware of the true nature and intensity of his suffering. The correspondent of Marcus said, the Giants' Castle became more and more closed to profane eyes, that Albert never left it, and passed with the majority of persons as a monomaniac; that the poor, nevertheless, loved and blessed him, and that some persons of superior mind having seen him, on their departure did homage to his eloquence, his lofty wisdom and his vast ideas. At last I heard that Supperville had been sent for, and I hurried to Riesenberg, in spite of Marcus's protests. Being prepared to risk all, Marcus seeing me resolved, determined to accompany me. We reached the walls of the castle in the disguise of beggars. For twenty-seven years I had not been seen—Marcus had been away ten. They gave us alms and drove us away. We met a friend and unexpected savior in poor Zdenko. He treated us as brothers, because he knew how dear we were to Albert. We knew how to talk to him in the language that pleased his enthusiasm, and revealed to him the secrets of the mortal grief of his friend. Zdenko was not the only madman by whom our life has been menaced. Oppressed and downcast, he came as we did to the gate of the castle, to ask news of Albert, and, like us, he was repelled with vain words which were most distressing to our anguish. By a strange coincidence with the visions of Albert, Zdenko said he had known me; I had appeared to him in his dreams and ecstasies, and without being able to account for it, abandoned his will fully to me. 'Woman,' said he, 'I do not know your name, but you are the good angel of my Podiebrad. I have often seen him draw your face on paper, and heard him describe your voice, look, and manner, when he was well, when heaven opened before him, and he saw around his bed persons who are, as men say, no more.' Far from opposing Zdenko, I encouraged him; I flattered his illusion, and induced him to receive us in the Cavern of Tears.
"When I saw this underground abode, and learned that my son had lived weeks there, aye, even months, unknown to the whole world, I saw how sad must be his thoughts. I saw a tomb to which Zdenko seemed to pay a kind of worship, and not without great difficulty could I learn its destination. It was the greatest secret of Albert and Zdenko, and their chief mystery. 'Alas!' said the madman, 'there we buried Wanda of Prachalitz, the mother of my Albert. She would not remain in that chapel where they had fastened her down in stone. Her bones trembled and shook, and those (he pointed to the ossuary of the Taborites, near the spring in the cavern) reproached us for not placing hers with them. We went to that sacred tomb, which we brought hither, and every day covered it with flowers and kisses.' Terrified at this circumstance, the consequences of which might lead to the discovery of our secret, Marcus questioned Zdenko, and ascertained that the coffin had been brought hither without being opened. Albert, however, had been sick, and so far astray that he could not remember my being alive, and persisted in treating me as dead. Was not this through a dream of Zdenko? I could not believe my ears. 'Oh! my friend,' said I to Marcus, 'if the light of reason be thus extinguished forever, may God grant him the boon of death!'
"Having thus possessed myself of all Zdenko's secrets, we knew that he could pass through the underground galleries and unknown passages into the Giants' Castle. We followed him one night, and waited at the entrance of the cistern until he had glided into the house. He returned laughing and singing, to tell us that Albert was cured and asleep, and that they had dressed him in his robes and coronet. I fell as if I were stricken by lightning, for I knew that Albert was dead. Thenceforth, I was insensible, and I found myself, when I awoke, in a burning fever. I lay on bear skins and dry leaves in the underground room Albert had inhabited in the Schreckenstein. Zdenko and Marcus watched me alternately. The one said, with an air of pride, that his Podiebrad was cured, and soon would come to see me: the other, pale and sad, observed, 'Perhaps all is not lost; let us not abandon the hope of such a miracle as rescued you from the grave.' I did not understand any longer: I was delirious, and wished to run, cry, and shout. I could not, however, and the desolate Marcus, seeing me in such a state, had neither time nor disposition to attend to anything serious. All his mind and thoughts were occupied by an anxiety which was most terrible. At last, one night, the third of my attack, I became calm, and regained my strength. I tried to collect my ideas, and arose; I was alone in the cave which was dimly lighted by a solitary sepulchral lamp. I wished to go out—where were Marcus and Zdenko? Memory returned; I uttered a cry, which the icy vaults echoed back so lugubriously, that cold perspiration streamed down my brow, which was damp as the dew of the grave. Again I fancied that I was buried alive. What had passed? What was going on? I fell on my knees, and wrung my hands in despair. I called furiously on Albert. At last, I heard slow and irregular steps, as if persons with a burden, approach. A dog barked, and having preceded them, scratched at the door. It was opened, and I saw Zdenko and Marcus bearing the stiff, discolored body of Albert, for to all appearance he was dead. His dog Cynabre followed and licked his hands, which hung loosely by his side. Zdenko sang sadly an improvised song, 'Come, sleep on the bosom of your mother, poor friend, who have been so long without repose. Sleep until dawn, when we will awaken you to see the sun rise.'