Chapter XV

During the day the piano came. It was the same one Consuelo had hired at Berlin. She was very glad not to be obliged to run the risk of a new acquaintance with another less agreeable and less sure instrument. The king, too, who was used to enquire into the minutest details, had ascertained when he gave the orders to send the instrument to the prison, that it did not belong to the prima donna, but was hired, and had caused the owner to be told that he would be responsible for its return, but that the rent must be paid by the prima donna. The owner had then said, that he had no resource to reach a person in prison, especially if the person should die. Poelnitz, who was charged with this mission, replied with a laugh, "My dear sir, you would not quarrel with the king on such a matter; and besides, it would be of no use. Your instrument is now under execution, and is, perhaps, at this moment in Spandau."

The manuscripts and arrangements of Porporina were also brought; and, as she was astonished at so much amenity in the prison _régime_, the commandant major of the place came to visit her, and to explain that she would be required to perform her duty as first singer of the opera.

"Such," said he, "is his majesty's will. Whenever the opera-bill hears your name, an escorted coach will take you to the theatre, and return with you to the fortress immediately after the representation. These arrangements will be effected with the greatest exactness, and with the respect due to you. I trust, mademoiselle, that you will not force us, by any attempt to escape, to double the rigor of your captivity. Agreeably to the king's orders, you have been placed in a room with a fire, and you will be allowed to walk on the ramparts as often as you please. In a word, we are responsible, not only for your person, but for your health and voice. The only inconvenience you will be subjected to, will be solitary confinement, without permission to see any one, either within or without the fortress. As we have but few ladies here, a single keeper suffices for the whole building they occupy, and you will not be forced to be tended on by coarse people. The good countenance and good manners of Swartz must have made you easy in that point of view. _Ennui_ will be the only inconvenience you will be subjected to, and I fancy that at your age and in the brilliant sphere in which you were----"

"Be assured, major," said Consuelo, with dignity; "I never suffer from _ennui_ when I have any occupation. I only require a small favor--writing materials and light--that I may attend to my music in the evenings."

"That is altogether impossible, and I am in despair at being forced to refuse the request of so spirited a lady. I can only, by way of palliative, give you permission to sing at any hour of the day or night. Yours is the only occupied chamber in this isolated tower. The quarters of Swartz are below, it is true, but he is too polite to complain of so magnificent a voice. For my part, I regret being too distant to hear it."

This dialogue, which was in the presence of Master Swartz, was terminated by low bows, and the old officer retired, with a conviction, derived from the prisoner's composure, that she had been consigned to his charge on account of some infraction of theatrical discipline, and for a few weeks at most. Consuelo herself did not know whether she was accused of complicity in a political conspiracy, or only of having served Frederick Von Trenck, or of being the prudent confidant of the Princess Amelia.

For two or three days the captive was more uncomfortable, sad, and _ennuyée_ than she chose to own. The length of the night at that season, fourteen hours, was particularly disagreeable, even while she hoped to be able to induce Swartz to give her pen, ink, and paper. Ere long, however, she saw that this obsequious personage was inflexible. He did not at all resemble the majority of people of his class, who love to persecute those committed to their custody. He was even pious, in his way, thinking perhaps that he served God and earned salvation so long as he persisted in discharging the duties of his situation, which he could not neglect. It is true the indulgences granted were few, and related to the articles in which there was more chance of profit with the prisoners than danger of losing his place.

"She is very simple to think that to earn a few groschen I would run the risk of losing my place," said he to his wife, who was the Egeria of these consultations. "Take care," he exclaimed, "not to grant her a single meal when her purse is empty!-----Do not be alarmed. She has saved something, and has told me that Signor Porporino, a singer of the theatre, has it in keeping."

"It is a bad chance," said the woman; "read again the code of Prussian law in relation to actresses; it forbids all suits on their part. Take care, then, that Porporino does not quote the law and retain the money when you present your accounts."

"But as her engagement at the theatre is not broken by imprisonment, since she must continue her duty, I will make seizure of the theatrical treasury."

"Who knows if she will get her salary? The king knows the law better than any one else, and if he invoke it."

"You think of everything, wife!" cried Swartz. "I will be on my guard. No money--no fire, no food, and regulation furniture. The letter of the orders!"

Thus the Swartz decided on Consuelo's fate. When she became satisfied that the honest keeper was incorruptible in relation to lights, she made up her mind, and so arranged her day, as to suffer least from the length of the night. She would not sing by day, reserving that occupation for the night. She also refrained, as far as possible, from thinking of music and occupying her mind with musical recollections and inspirations before the hours of darkness. On the contrary, she devoted the whole day to reflections suggested by her position, to the past, and to dreamy anticipations of the future. In this way, for the time, she succeeded in dividing her time into two parts, one philosophical, and the other musical, and saw at once, that with perseverance she could, to a certain degree, contrive to subject to the will of that capricious and fiery courser, fancy, the whimsical muse of the imagination. By living soberly, in spite of the prescriptions and insinuations of Swartz, by taking much exercise, even when she took no pleasure in it, on the ramparts, she was enabled to be calm at evening, and employ very agreeably those hours of darkness, which prisoners, by wishing to seek sleep to escape _ennui_, fill with phantoms and agitation. Finally, by appropriating only six hours to sleep, she was sure of being able to sleep quietly every night, never permitting an excess of repose to prevail over the tranquillity of the next night.

After eight days, she had become so used to prison, that it seemed she had never lived in any other manner. Her evenings, at first so much feared, became the most agreeable part of the day, and darkness, far from terrifying, revealed to her treasures of musical conception, which she had felt for a long time, though unable to evolve in the excitement of her profession. When she saw that improvisation and the exercise of memory would suffice to fill her evenings, she devoted a few hours of the day to note her inspirations, and to study her authors with more care than she had been able to do amid a thousand emotions, or beneath the eye of an impatient, and systematic teacher.

To write music she first made use of a pin, with which she pricked notes between the lines, and afterwards with little pieces of wood, stripped from the furniture, and which she charred against the stove when it was hottest. As this occupied much time, and she had a very small quantity of ruled paper, she saw it would be best to exercise the powerful memory with which she was gifted, and trust the numerous compositions she made every evening to it. Practice enabled her to do this so thoroughly, that she could pass from one to the other of these unwritten compositions without confusion.

Yet, as her room was very warm, thanks to the fuel which Swartz kindly added to the allowance, and as the rampart on which she walked was perpetually swept by an icy wind, she could not avoid several days' cold, which deprived her of the pleasure of singing at the Berlin theatre. The surgeon of the fortress, who had been ordered to see her twice a week, and to give an account of her health to Von Poelnitz, wrote that her voice was gone exactly on the day when the baron, with the king's consent, was about to suffer her to appear before the public again. Her egress was thus postponed, without her feeling any chagrin at it. She did not wish to breathe the air of liberty until she had become so used to her prison as to be able to return to it without regret.

She consequently did not nurse the cold with so much care as an actress usually displays for that precious organ, her throat, and thus experienced a phenomenon known to the whole world. Fever produces in every one's brain a more or less painful illusion. Some think that the angles, formed by the sides of the wall, draw near to them, until they seem finally to press and crush their frames. They see the angles gradually diverge and leave them free, return again, and resume the same alternative of annoyance and relief. Others take their bed for a wave, which raises and depresses them between the ceiling and the floor. The writer of this veracious history, is made aware of fever by the presence of a vast black shadow, which spreads upon a brilliant surface, in which she is placed. This spot of shade, swimming in an imaginary sun, is perpetually expanding and contracting. It dilates so as to cover the whole brilliant surface, and again contracts so as to be a mere thread, after which it extends again, to be successively attenuated and thickened. This vision would not be at all unpleasant for the dreamer, if he did not imagine, from some unhealthy sensation, difficult to be understood, that he was himself the obscure reflection of some unknown object, floating without repose in an arena embraced by the fires of an invisible sun. So great is this, that when the imaginary shadow contracts, his own being seems to diminish and elongate, so as to become the shadow of a hair; and when it expands, to be the reflection of a mountain overhanging a valley. In the reverie, however, there is neither mountain nor valley. There is nothing but the reflection of an opaque body making on the sun's reflection, which the black ball of a cat's eye makes in the transparent iris, and this hallucination, unaccompanied by sleep, becomes intensely painful.

We may mention another person, who, in a fever, sees a floor giving way every moment. Another, who fancies himself a globe, floating in space; a third, who takes the space between his bed and the floor for a precipice--while a fourth is always dragged to the left. Every reader may find observations and phenomena from his own experience; but this will not advance the question, nor will it explain better than we can, how every person during his life, or, at least, during a long series of years, has at night a dream which is his, and not another's, and undergoes at every attack of fever a certain hallucination, which always presents the same character and the same kind of anguish. This question is a physiological one, and I think the medical men will find some instruction--I do not say about the actual disease which reveals itself by other and more evident symptoms, but of some latent malady, originating in the weak point of the patient's organization, and which it is dangerous to provoke by certain reactives.

This question is not original with the author, who begs his reader's pardon for having introduced it.

Of our heroine, we must say that the hallucination caused by fever presented a musical character, and affected the auditory nerves. She resumed then the reverie she had when awake, or at least half awake, on her first night in the prison. She fancied that she heard the plaintive tone and the eloquent _phrases_ of Albert's violin--now strong and distinct, now weak, as if they came from the distance of the horizon. There was in these imaginary sounds something painfully strange. When the vibration seemed to approach, Consuelo felt a feeling of terror. When it was fully displayed, it was with a power which completely overwhelmed. Then the sound became feeble, and she felt some consolation, for the fatigue of listening with constant attention to a song which became lost in space, made her soon feel feeble, during which she could hear nothing. The constant return of the harmonious tremor filled her with fear, trembling, and terror, as if the sweep of some fantastic bow had embraced all air, and unchained the storm around.