"No; I am presumptuous enough to fear nothing. I am under the power of a miracle."
"I, too, Albert, cannot doubt myself."
Day began to break, and the pure morning air to exhale a thousand exquisite perfumes. It was the most delicious period of the summer; the birds singing amid the trees and flying from hill to valley. Groups formed every moment around the couple and far from being importunate, added to the pleasure of their fraternal friendship, to their pure happiness. All the Invisibles present were introduced to Consuelo as members of her family. They were the most eminent in virtue, talent, and intelligence in the order. Some were illustrious, and others obscure in the world, but were known in the temple by their labors. The noble and the peasant mingled together in close intimacy. Consuelo had to learn their true names, and the more poetical titles of their fraternal association. They were Vesper, Ellops, Peon, Hyas, Euryalus, Bellerophon, etc. Never had she around her so many pure and noble souls, so many interesting characters. The stories told of their conversion, the dangers they had run, and what they had done, charmed her as poems, the tenor of which she could not have reconciled with actual life, they appeared so touching and moving. There was, however, no portion of the common-place gallantry, and not the slightest approach to dangerous familiarity. Lofty language, inspired by equality and fraternity, was realised in its purest phase. The beautiful golden dawn rising over their souls as over the world, was, as it were, a dream in the existence of Consuelo and Albert. Enlaced in each other's arms, they did not think of leaving their beloved brethren. A moral intoxication, gentle and bland as the morning air, filled their souls. Love had expanded their hearts too amply to make them tremble. Trenck told them the dangers of his captivity and escape in Glatz. Like Consuelo and Haydn in the Boehmer-wald, he had crossed Poland, but in the midst of cold, covered with rags, with a wounded companion—the amiable SHELLES, whom his memoirs make known to us as an affectionate friend. To earn his bread, he had played on the violin, and, like Consuelo on the Danube, had been a minstrel. He then spoke in a low tone of the Princess Amelia, his love and hope. Poor Trenck! the terrible storm which overhung him, neither he nor his happy friends foresaw. He was doomed to pass from the midsummer's night's dream to a life of combat, deception, and suffering.
Porporino sang beneath the cypress-trees an admirable hymn composed by Albert, to the memory of the martyrs of their cause. Young Benda accompanied him on the violin; Albert took the instrument and delighted his hearers with a few notes; Consuelo could not sing, but wept with joy and enthusiasm; Count Saint Germain told of conversations with John Huss and Jerome of Prague, with such warmth, eloquence, and probability, that it was impossible not to have faith in him. In such seasons of emotion and delight, reason does not prohibit poetry. The Chevalier d'Eon described with refined taste the miseries and absurdities of the great tyrants of Europe, the vices of courts, and the weakness of the scaffolding of the social system that enthusiasm fancied so easy to break. Count Golowkin described the great soul and strange contradictions of his friend, Jean Jacques Rousseau.
This philosophical noble (they will to-day call him eccentric) had a very beautiful daughter, whom he educated according to his ideas, and who was at once Emile and Sophie, now as handsome a boy, then as charming a girl as possible. He wished to have her initiated, and for Consuelo to instruct her. The illustrious Zinzendorf explained the evangelical constitution of his colony of Moravian Hernhuters.—He consulted Albert with deference about many particulars, and wisdom seemed to speak by Albert's mouth. He was inspired by the presence and smile of his mistress. To Consuelo he seemed divine. All advantages to her seemed to deck him. He was a philosopher, an artist, a martyr, who had survived the ordeal; grave as a sage of the Portico, beautiful as an angel, joyous and innocent as a child or happy lover—perfect, in fine, as the one we love always is.
Consuelo, when she knocked at the door of the temple, had expected to die of fatigue and emotion. Now she felt herself aroused and animated as when, on the shore of the Adriatic, she used to sport in the sands in full health beneath a bright sun moderated by the evening breeze. It seemed that life in all its power, happiness in all its intensity, had taken possession of her, and that she breathed them at every pore. Why cannot the sun be stopped in the sky over certain valleys, where we feel all the plentitude of being, and where the dreams of imagination seem realised, or about to be?
The sky at last became purple and gold, and a silver bell warned the Invisibles that night withdrew its protecting cloak. They sang a hymn to the rising sun, emblematical to them of the day they dreamed of, and prepared for the world. All then made them adieux, promising to meet, some at Paris, others at London, Madrid, Vienna, Petersburg, Dresden, and Berlin. All promised on a year from that day to meet again at the door of the blessed temple, either with neophytes or with brethren now absent. They then folded their cloaks to conceal their elegant costumes, and silently dispersed by the shadowy walks of the park.
Albert and Consuelo, guided by Marcus, went down the ravine to the stream. Karl received them in his closed gondola, and took them to the door of the pavilion. There they paused for a moment to contemplate the majesty of the orb of day which rose in the sky. Until now, Consuelo, when she replied to Albert had called him by his true name; when, however, she was awakened from the musing in which she seemed delighted to lose herself, as she pressed her burning cheek on his shoulder, she could only say:
"Oh Leverani!"
[15]The harmonica, when first invented, created such a sensation in Germany, that poetical imaginations fancied they heard in it supernatural voices, evoked by the consecrators of certain mysteries. This instrument, which, before it became popular, was thought to be magical, was elevated by the adepts of German theosophy, to the same honor with the lyre among the ancients, and many other instruments among the primitive people of Himalaya. They made it one of the hieroglyphic figures of their mysterious iconography. They represented it under the form of a fantastic chimera. The neophytes of secret societies, hearing it for the first time after the rude shocks of their terrible ordeals, were so much impressed by it that many of them fell into ecstacies. They fancied they heard the song of invisibile powers, for both the instrument and the performer were concealed from them most carefully. There are extremely curious stories told of the employment of the harmonica in the reception of adepts of illuminatism.