"Ah! madame, there is no incongruity. We fear, yet detest sorcerers. That is exactly the way we think of the devil."
"Yet, if one wishes to see the devil, one must go to the magician. Is that your logic, my fair Von Kleist?"
"But, madame," said Consuelo, who had listened to this strange conversation, "how comes it that you know this man is like the count?"
"I forgot to tell you, and I learned the fact by mere chance. This morning, when Supperville told me your story, and that of Count Albert, his words made me curious to know if he was handsome, and if his face was like his strange imagination. Supperville, for some time, seemed lost in thought, and finally told me. 'Madame, I can give you an exact idea; you have among your playthings a creature, terribly like poor Rudolstadt, if he were only more pale, thin, and differently dressed. I mean your sorcerer, Trismegistus. That is the explanation of the affair, my dear widow; and about that there is no more mystery than there really is in Cagliostro, Trismegistus, Saint Germain&Co."
"You lift a burden off my breast," said Porporina, "and a black veil from my heart. It seems to me that I am born again, and awake from a painful sleep. Thanks are due to you for this explanation. I am not mad, then; I have no visions, and will not be afraid of myself. See what the human heart is," added she, after a moment of reverie. "I regret my fear and weakness. In my extravagance, I persuaded myself that Albert was not dead, and that one day, after having, by terrible apparitions, made me expiate the wrong I had committed, he would return, without a cloud, and without resentment. Now, I know that Albert sleeps in the tomb of his ancestors, and that he will not recover. That death will not relax its prey, is a terrible certainty."
"Could you entertain any doubt? Well! there is some happiness in being mad: for my own part, I had not hoped Trenck would leave the Silesian dungeons yet; it was possible, and has occurred."
"Were I to tell you, my beautiful Amelia, all the fancies to which my poor soul abandoned itself, you would see that in spite of the improbability, they were not impossible. Lethargy, for instance, Albert was liable to it. But I will not call back those conjectures. They injure me too much, now that the form I took for Albert is that of a chevalier of industry."
"Trismegistus is not what he is supposed to be. One thing, however, is certain, and that is, he is not Count Rudolstadt. Many years ago I knew him, and apparently, at least, he is a diviner. Besides, he is not so like Count Rudolstadt as you fancy. Supperville is too skillful a physician to bury a man in a lethargy. He, too, does not believe in ghosts, and has observed differences you did not."
"I would be so pleased to see Trismegistus again," said Consuelo in a tone of deep reverie.
"You will not, perhaps, see him soon," said the princess, very coldly. "He has gone to Warsaw, having left the very day you saw him in the palace. He never remains more than two days at Berlin. He will, however, certainly return during the ear——"