"Exhausted by the effort of his attention and solicitude, my stoical friend lay overpowered by the side of Zdenko!"
[CHAPTER XXXV]
Overcome by the emotion of such recollections, the Countess Wanda, after a brief silence, resumed her story.
"We passed several days in the cavern, and my son recovered strength and activity with wonderful rapidity. Marcus, surprised at discovering the trace of no organic injury, or great change in the vital system, was alarmed at his profound silence and his apparent or real indifference to our transports. Albert had completely lost his memory. Wrapped in deep study, he in vain made silent efforts to understand what was passing around him. I was not so impatient as Marcus to see him regain the poignant recollection of his love, for I knew well that sorrow was the only cause of his disease, and of the catastrophe which had resulted from it. Marcus himself said that the effacing of the past alone would be the means of his regaining strength. His body recovered quickly at the expense of his mind, which was giving way rapidly beneath the melancholy effort of his thoughts.
"'He lives, and certainly will live,' said he; 'but will not his mind be obscured? Let us leave this cavern as soon as possible; air, sunlight, and exercise will doubtless awaken him from his mental slumber. Let us, above all things, abandon the false and impassive life which has killed him: let us leave this family and its society, which crushes his natural impulses. We will take him among persons who will sympathise with him, and in company with them his soul will recover its vigor.'
"Could I hesitate? Wandering leisurely towards evening around the Schreckenstein, where I pretended to ask charity, I learned that Count Christian had relapsed into a kind of dotage. He had not known of his son's return, and the prospect of his father's death would certainly have killed Albert. Was it, then, necessary to restore him to his old aunt, to the insane chaplain and brutal uncle, who had made his life and his mental death so painful and sad?
"'Let us fly with him,' said I to Marcus. 'Let him not witness his father's agony, nor that terrible spectacle of Catholic idolatry which ever surrounds the bed of death. My heart breaks when I think that my husband—who did not understand me, but whose simple virtues I venerate, and whom I have as religiously respected since I left him as I did before—will pass away without exchanging a mutual pardon. Since that must be the case—since the reappearance of myself and my child would be either useless or injurious to him, let us go. Do not let us restore to that sepulchral palace what we have wrested from death, and to whom hope and life now unfold a magnificent career. Ah! let us implicitly obey the impulse which brought us hither. Let us rescue Albert from the prison-house of false duties, created by rank and riches. Those duties to him will always be crimes; and if he persists in discharging them, for the purpose of gratifying the relations whom death and age rapidly claim, he will himself probably be the first to die. I know what I suffered from the slavery of thought, in that mortal and incessant contradiction between the soul and positive life—between principles, instincts, and compulsory habits. I see he has travelled the same path, and imbibed the same poisons. Let us take him away then, and if he choose to contradict us at some future day, can he not do so? If his father's life be prolonged, and if his mental health permit, will it not always be possible for him to return and console the declining years of Count Christian by his presence and his love?'
"'That will be difficult,' said Marcus. 'I see in the future terrible obstacles, if Albert should wish to annul his divorce from society, the world, and his family.'
"'Why should Albert do so? His family will perhaps become extinct, before he regains the use of his memory: and whatever name, honors, or wealth he may attain in the world, I know what he will think as soon as he returns to his senses. Heaven grant that day may borne soon. Our most important task is to place him in such a position that his cure may be possible.'