"Alas! madame, I would not speak with such volubility of so grave and painful a thing. Count Albert was considered to be mad; and united a sublime soul with an enthusiastic genius, strange whims and a diseased imagination, which was entirely inexplicable."
"Supperville, though he neither believed nor could make me understand it, has told me all that. Supernatural power was attributed to this young man, such as second sight, the power of making himself invisible... His family told the most unheard of things. . . All this, however, is impossible, and I hope you place no faith in it."
"Excuse me, madame, the suffering and distress of pronouncing on matters which surpass my capacity. I have seen strange things, and, at times, Count Albert has seemed to me a being superior to humanity. Then, again, he has appeared an unfortunate creature, deprived, by the very excess of his virtue, of the light of reason; never, however, did I see him like common men. When in delirium, and when calm, when enthusiastic and when depressed, he was always the best, the most just, the most enlightened, and the most poetically exalted of men. In a word, I would not know what to think, for I am the involuntary, though it may be the innocent cause, of his death."
"Well, dear countess, dry your beautiful eyes, take courage, and continue. I hear you without profane volatility, I vow."
"When he first loved me, I did not even suspect it. He never spoke to me; he did not even seem to see me. I think he was first aware of my presence, when he heard me sing. I must tell you he was a very great musician, and played the violin better than you would suspect any one in the world capable of doing. I think, however, I was the only person who ever heard him at Riesenberg; for his family were not aware that he possessed this great talent. His love, then, had its origin in a burst of enthusiasm, and in sympathy for music. His cousin, the Baroness Amelia, who had been betrothed to him for two years, and whom he did not love, became offended with me, though she did not love him. This, she exhibited with more frankness than wickedness: for, amid all her obstinacy, there existed something of greatness of soul. She became weary of Albert's coldness, of the sadness that pervaded the castle, and one fine morning left us, taking away, so to say, her father, Baron Frederick, Count Christian's brother, an excellent man, though of restricted mind, indolent and pure-hearted, a perfect slave to his daughter, and passionately devoted to the chase."
"You say nothing about the invisibility of Count Albert, of his disappearance for fifteen or twenty days, after which he reappeared suddenly, believing, or pretending to think that he had not left the house, and being either unwilling or unable to say where he had hid himself during the time he had been searched for everywhere."
"Since Dr. Supperville has told you this apparently wonderful fact, I will explain it; I alone can do so, for this has always been a secret, between Albert and myself. Near the Giants' Castle, there is a mountain known as the Stone of Terror,[9] an old subterranean work, which dates from the days of the Hussites. Albert, after studying a series of philosophical characters, yielded to an enthusiasm, extending almost to mysticism, and became a Hussite, or rather Taborite. Descended on the mother's side from George Podiebrad, he had preserved and developed in himself the sentiments of patriotic independence and of evangelical equality, which the preaching of John Huss and the victories of John Ziska instilled into the Bohemians."
"How she speaks of history and philosophy," said the princess, with an expressive glance to the Baroness Von Kleist. "Who would think an actress would understand those things as well as I who have passed a lifetime in study? Have I not told you, Von Kleist, that there was among those persons whom the opinions of courts dooms to the lowest class of society, intelligences equal, if not superior, to those formed with so much care and expense amid the highest grades?"
"Alas! madame," said Porporina, "I am very ignorant, and I never read anything before I came to Riesenberg; while there, however, I heard so much said of things of this kind, that thought itself forced me to understand all that passed in Albert's mind, so that finally I had some idea of it myself."
"Yes; but my dear, you became foolish; and, something of a mystic myself, I admire the campaigns of John Ziska, and the republican genius of Bohemia, if you please; however, I have ideas as utterly republican as yourself; for love has revealed to me a truth altogether contradictory to what pedants told me, in relation to the rights of the people, and the merits of individuals. I do not participate in your admiration of Taborite fanaticism, and their delirium of Christian equality. This is absurd, not to be realized, results in ferocious excesses, and overturns thrones. If it be necessary, I will aid you—make Spartan, Athenian, Roman republics—make republics like that of old Venice—I can submit to that. These sanguinary and filthy Taborites suit me no better than the Vandals of burning memory, the odious Anabaptists of Munster, and the Picords of old Germany."