"Marcus put an end to the music, being satisfied with the effect he had produced. He did not wish to push the first experiment too far. Albert had seen and recognised me, and had found power to love. A long time yet passed before his mind recovered its freedom. He had however, no access of fever. When his mental powers were overtasked, he relapsed into melancholy silence. His face, though, insensibly assumed a less sad expression, and by degrees we combatted this taciturn disposition. We were at last delighted to see this demand for intellectual repose disappear, and he continued to think, except at his regular hours for sleep, when he was quiet as other men are. Albert regained a consciousness of life and love for you and me, for charity and enthusiasm towards his fellows, and for virtue, faith and the duty of winning its triumphs. He continued to love you without bitterness and without regret for all that he had suffered. Notwithstanding, however, his efforts to reassure us, and to exhibit his courage and self-denial, we saw that his passion had lost nothing of its intensity. He had merely acquired more moral power and strength to bear it. We did not seek to oppose him. Far otherwise. Marcus and I strove to endow him with hope, and we resolved to inform you of the existence of him for whom you were mourning, if not in your dress, in your heart. Albert, with generous resignation, forbade us to do so, refraining from all disposition to make a sacrifice of your happiness to your sense of duty.
"His health seemed completely restored, and others than I aided him to combat his unfortunate passion. Marcus and some of the chiefs of our order initiated him in the mysteries of our enterprise. He experienced a serious and melancholy joy in those daring hopes, and, above all, in the long philosophical discussions, in which, if he did not meet with entire similarity of opinions between him and his noble friends, he at least felt himself in contact with every profound and ardent idea of truth. This aspiration towards the ideal, long repressed and restrained by the narrow terrors of his family, had, at last, free room to expand, and this expansion, seconded by noble sympathies, excited even by frank and genial contradiction, was the vital air in which he could breathe and act, though a victim to secret suffering. The mind of Albert is essentially metaphysical: nothing smiles on him in the frivolous life where egotism seeks its food. He is born for the contemplation of high truths and the exercise of the most austere virtues. At the same time, by a perfection of moral beauty which is rare among men, he is gifted with a soul essentially tender and affectionate. Charity is not enough, he must love; and this passion extends to all, though he feels the necessity of concentrating it on some individuals. In devotion he is a fanatic, yet his virtue is not savage. Love intoxicates, friendship sways him, and his life is a fruitful and inexhaustible field, divided between the abstract being he reveres passionately, under the name of humanity, and the persons he loves. In fine, his sublime heart is a hearth of love; all noble passions exist there without rivalry, and if God could be represented under a finite and perishable form, I would dare assert that the soul of my son is an image of that universal soul we call the divinity.
"On that account, a weak human being, infinite in its inspiration limited and without resources, he had been unable to live with his parents. Had he not loved them ardently, he would have been able to live apart from them, healthy and calm, differing from them, but indulging their harmless blindness. This would, however, have required a certain coldness, of which he was incapable as I. He could not live isolated in his mind and heart. He had besought their aid, and appealed in despair for a community of ideas between him and the beings who were so dear to him. Therefore was it that, shut up in the iron wall of their Catholic obstinacy, their social prejudices and their hatred to a religion of equality, he had broken to pieces as he sighed on their bosoms; he had dried up like a plant without dew, calling on heaven for rain to endow him with an existence like those he loved. Weary of suffering alone, loving alone, weeping and praying alone, he thought he regained life in you; and when you participated in his ideas, he was calm and reasonable. Yet you did not reciprocate his sentiments, and your separation could not but plunge him into an isolation both deeper and more insurmountable. His faith was perpetually denied and contradicted, and became a torture too great for human power. Vertigo took possession of him: unable to mingle the sublime essence of his own soul in others like it, he died.
"So soon as he found hearts capable of comprehending and seconding him, we were amazed at his moderation in discussion, his tolerance, confidence, and modesty. We had apprehended, from the past, that he would be stern, self-willed, and exhibit the strong manner of talking, which, though proper enough in a mind convinced and enthusiastic, would be dangerous to his progress and detrimental to such an enterprise as ours. He surprised us by his candor, and charmed us by his behavior. He who made us better by speaking and talking to us, persuaded himself that he received what he really gave us. He soon became the object of boundless veneration, and you must not be surprised that so many persons toiled for your rescue, for his happiness had become the common object of all who had approached him, though merely for an instant."
[CHAPTER XXXVI]
"The cruel destiny of our race, however, was not fulfilled. Albert was yet to suffer, his heart was yet to bleed for his family, which was doomed to crush him, while it was innocent of his sufferings. As soon as he was strong enough to hear the news, we had not concealed from him the death of his father, which took place soon after his own, (I must use this phrase to describe that strange event.) Albert had wept for his father with deep regret: and the certainty that he had not left life to enter on the nonentity of the paradise or the hell of the Catholic, inspired him with the hope of a better and more ample life for one who had been so pure and worthy of reward. He was much more grieved at the state in which his relatives, Baron Frederick and Wenceslawa, were. He blamed himself for being happy away from them, and resolved to visit them and inform them of the secret of his cure and wonderful resurrection, and to make them as happy as possible. He was not aware of the disappearance of Amelia, which happened while he was ill, and it had been carefully hidden from him, as likely to make him unhappy. We had not thought it right to inform him of it, for we were unable to shelter my niece from the shame of her deplorable error. When about to seize her seducer, we were anticipated by the Saxon Rudolstadts. They had caused Amelia to be arrested in Prussia, where she expected a refuge, and had placed her in the power of Frederick, who did them the honor to shut up the poor girl at Spandau. She passed almost a year in strict confinement, seeing no one, and having reason to think herself happy at her error being concealed by the jailer monarch."
"Madame," said Consuelo, "is she there yet?"
"We are about to release her. Albert and Leverani could not rescue her when they did you, for she was much more closely watched; her imprudent attempts to escape, her revolts and temper, having aggravated her confinement. We have other means than those which won your safety. Our adepts are everywhere, and some even seek for courtly favor, to be able to serve us thus! We have obtained for Amelia the patronage of the young Margravine of Bareith, sister of the King of Prussia, who has requested and obtained her liberty, promising to take charge of her and be responsible for her conduct in future. In a few days the young baroness will be under the protection of the Princess Wilhelmina, whose heart is as good as her tongue is censorious, and who will be as kind to her as she was to the Princess Culmbach, another unfortunate creature, withered in the eyes of the world as Amelia was, and who like her was a victim of royal prisons.
"Albert was ignorant, then, of the misfortune of his cousin, when he resolved to visit his uncle and aunt at the Giants' Castle. He could not account for the inertia of Baron Frederick, who was able to live, to hunt, and drink, after so many and so great misfortunes, and for the passive character of Wenceslawa, who, while she sought to discover Amelia, took care not to give any éclât to what had happened. We opposed Albert's plan as much as possible, but he persisted in it, unknown to us. He set out one night, leaving us a letter, which promised us a prompt return. His absence was not long, in fact, but it was pregnant with sorrows.