Chapter XL

When she revived, Consuelo sat on a purple carpet, covering steps of white marble leading into an elegant portico in the Corinthian style. Two men in masks, whom she concluded by the color of their cloaks to be Leverani and Marcus, sustained, and seemed anxious to restore her. About forty other persons cloaked and masked, the same she had seen around the image of the tomb of Christ, stood in two ranks, and chanted in chorus a solemn hymn, in an unknown language, wearing crowns of roses and palms, and green boughs. The pillars were adorned with festoons of garlands, like triumphal arches, before the closed door of the temple, and above Consuelo. The moon, brilliant and in mid-heaven, illumined the whole white facade; and outside the sanctuary, old yews, cypresses, and pines formed an immense thicket, like a sacred wood, beneath which a mysterious stream, glancing in the silver light of the moon, murmured.

"My sister," said Marcus, aiding Consuelo to rise, "you have passed every test in triumph. Blush not at having failed in a physical point of view, under the pain of grief. Your generous heart was overcome by indignation and pity, at palpable evidences of the crimes and sufferings of man. If you had reached this place unassisted, we would have had less respect for you than now, when we have brought you hither overcome and insensible. You have seen the sacred places of a lordly castle--not of one celebrated above all others by the crimes of which it has been the theatre, but like others whose ruins cover all Europe--terrible wrecks of the vast net with which feudal power enwrapped, during so many centuries, the whole civilised world, and oppressed men with the crime of its awful domination and with the horrors of civil war. These hideous abodes, these savage fortresses, have necessarily served as theatres for all the crimes humanity witnessed before it was enlightened by means of the religious wars--by the toil of sects struggling to emancipate man, and by the martyrdom of the elect to establish the idea of truth.

"Pass through Germany, France, Italy, England, Spain, and the Slavonic countries, and you will not enter a valley or ascend a mountain, without seeing above you the ruin of some imposing tower or castle, or, at least, finding in the grass beneath your feet the vestiges of some fortification. These are the bloody traces of the right of conquest of the people by the patricians. If you explore these ruins--if you look into the soil which has devoured them and which seeks constantly to make them disappear, you will find everywhere traces of what you have found here--a jail, a well for the dead, narrow and dark dungeons for prisoners of importance, a place for silent murder, and on the summit of some huge tower, or in the depth of some dungeon, stocks for rebellious serfs or mutinous soldiers, a gallows for deserters and a stake for heretics. How many have perished in boiling pitch! how many have disappeared beneath the wave! how many have been buried alive! The walls of castles, the waters of rivers and rocky caverns, could they speak, would unfold myriads of crimes. The number is too great for history to enumerate in detail.

"Not the nobles alone, not the patrician races only, have made the soil red with innocent blood. Kings and princes and priests, thrones and churches, were the great causes of the iniquities and the living sources of destruction. Persevering yet melancholy attention has collected in our manor a portion of the instruments of torture used by the strong against the weak. A description of their uses would not be credible; the virtues could scarcely comprehend them; thought refuses to register them. During many centuries these terrible apparatus were used in royal palaces, in the citadels of petty princes, but above all, in the dungeons of the Holy Office. They are yet used there, though but rarely. The Inquisition yet exists: and in France, the most civilised country of the world, the provincial parliament even now burns witches.

"Besides, is royal tyranny now overthrown? Do kings and princes no longer ravage the earth? Does not war desolate opulent cities, as well as the pauper's hut, at the merest whim of a petty prince? Serfdom yet exists in half of Europe. Are not troops yet subjected to the lash and cane? The handsomest and bravest soldiers of the world, those of Prussia, are taught their duty like animals, by beating. Are not the Russian serfs often unmercifully knouted? If the fortresses of old barons are dismantled, and turned into harmless abodes, are not those of kings yet erect? Are they not frequently places where the innocent are confined? Were not you, my sister, the purest and mildest of women, a prisoner at Spandau?

"We knew you were generous, and relied on your character of justice and charity. Seeing you destined, like many who are here, to return to the world, to approach the persons of sovereigns, as you were particularly liable to their influence, it was our duty to put you on your guard against the intoxication of that brilliant and dangerous life. It was our duty to spare you no instructions, not even that of a terrible kind. We appealed to your mind by the solitude to which we doomed you, by the books we gave you. We spoke to your heart by paternal advice, now tender, and now stern. We addressed your vision by experiences of more painful significance than those of the old mysteries. Now if you persist in receiving your initiation, you may present yourself before the incorruptible paternal judges, who now are ready to crown you here, or give you leave to quit us forever."

As he concluded, Marcus pointed to the open door of the temple, above which were written the three words--_Liberty, Equality, Fraternity_--in letters of fire.

Consuelo was physically crushed and weakened to such a degree, that she existed in her mind alone. Standing at the base of a column, she leant on Leverani, but without seeing or thinking of him. However, she had not lost one word said by the initiator. Speechless, pale as a spectre, and with her eyes fixed, she had that wild expression which follows nervous crises. A deep enthusiasm filled her bosom, the feeble respiration of which Leverani could not distinguish. Her black eyes, which fatigue and suffering had caused to sink, glared brightly. A slight compression of her brow evinced deep resolution. Her beauty, which had always seemed gentle and soft, now appeared fearful. Leverani became as pale as the jessamine leaf which the night wind made to quiver on his mistress's brow. She arose, with more power than might have been expected; but at once her knees gave way, and she was almost borne up the steps by him, without the restraint of the arm, which had moved to the neighborhood of her heart, to which it had been pressed, disturbing the current of her thoughts for an instant. He placed between his own hand and Consuelo's, the silver cross, as a token to inform her who he was, and which, like a talisman, had given him such influence over her. Consuelo appeared neither to recognise the token, nor the hand that presented it. Her own was contracted by suffering. It was a mere mechanical pressure, as when on the brink of an abyss we seize a branch to sustain ourselves. The heart's blood did not reach her icy hand.

"Marcus," said Leverani, in a low tone, as the former passed him to knock at the door of the temple, "do not leave us; I fear the test has been too great."

"She loves you," said Marcus.

"Yes--but perhaps she will die!" said Leverani, with a shudder.

Marcus struck thrice at the door, which opened and shut as soon as he had passed in with Consuelo and Leverani. The other brethren remained on the portico, until they should be introduced for the initiation. For between the initiation and the final proofs there was always a sacred conversation between the principals and the candidates. The interior of the temple used for these initiations was magnificently adorned, and decorated between the pillars with statues of the greatest friends of humanity. That of Jesus Christ stood in the centre of the amphitheatre, between those of Pythagoras and Plato; Apollonius of Thyana was next to Saint John; Abeilard by Saint Bernard; and John Huss and Jerome of Prague, with Saint Catharine and Joan of Arc. Consuelo did not pause to attend to external objects. Wrapped in meditation, she saw with surprise the same judges who had profoundly sounded her heart. She no longer felt any trouble, but waited, with apparent calmness, for their sentence.

The eighth person, who sat below the seven judges, and who seemed always to speak for them, addressing Marcus, said--"Brother, whom bring you here? What is her name?"

"Consuelo Porporina," said Marcus.

"That is not what you are asked, my brother," said Consuelo; "do you not see me here as a bride, not as a widow? Announce the Countess Albert of Rudolstadt."

"My daughter," said the orator, "I speak to you in the name of the council. You are known no longer by that name; your marriage has been dissolved."

"By what right? by what authority?" said Consuelo quickly, with sudden emotion. "I recognise no theocratic power. You have yourself told me that you recognised no rights but those I gave you freely, and bade me submit merely to paternal authority. Such yours will not be, if it rescind my marriage without my own or my husband's consent. This right neither he nor I have given you."

"You are mistaken, daughter, for Albert has given us the right to decide on both your fate and his own. You yourself did the same, when you opened your heart, and confessed your love of another."

"I confessed nothing, and I deny the avowal you have sought to wrest from me."

"Bring in the sibyl," said the orator to Marcus.

A tall woman, dressed in white, with her face hid beneath her veil, entered and sat in the middle of the half circle formed by the judges. By her nervous tremor Consuelo recognised Wanda.

"Speak, priestess of truth," said the orator; "speak, interpreter and revealer of the greatest secrets, the most delicate movements of the heart. Is this woman the wife of Albert of Rudolstadt?"

"She is his faithful and respectable wife," said Wanda; "but you must pronounce his divorce. You see by whom she is brought hither. You see that of the children, one who holds her hand, is the man she loves, and to whom she must belong, by the imperscrutable right of love."

Consuelo turned with surprise towards Leverani, and looked at her hand, which lay passive and deathlike in his. She seemed to be under the influence of a dream, and to attempt to awaken. She loosed herself with energy from his embrace, and looking into the hollow of her hand, saw the impression of her mother's cross.

"This is, then, the man I love," said she, with a melancholy smile and holy ingenuousness. "Yes, I loved him, tenderly and sadly; yet it was a dream. I fancied Albert was no more, and you told me this man was worthy of my respect and my confidence. But I have seen Albert. I fancied that I understood from his language that he no longer wished to be my husband, and did not blame me for loving this stranger, whose words and letters filled me with enthusiastic affection. They told me, however, that Albert yet loved me, and relinquished all claim, from an exertion of love and generosity. Why did Albert fancy I would be less magnanimous than himself? What have I done that was criminal, that should induce him to think me capable of crushing his heart by arrogating purely selfish pleasure to myself? No, I will never defile myself by such a crime. If Albert deems me unworthy of him, because I have loved another--if he shrinks from effacing that love, and does not seek to inspire me with a greater, I will submit to his decree--I will accept the sentence of divorce, against which both my heart and conscience revolt; but I will never be either the wife or mistress of another. Adieu, Leverani--or whosoever you be--to whom, in a moment of mad delirium, with fills me with remorse, I confided my mother's cross. Restore me that token, that there may exist between us nothing but the memory of mutual esteem, and the feeling that, without bitterness and without regret, we have done our duty."

"We recognise no such morality, you know," said the sibyl. "We will accept no such sacrifice. We wish to consecrate and purify that love the world has profaned, the free choice of the heart, and the holy and voluntary union of beings loving each other. We have the right to instruct the conscience of our children, to redress errors, to join sympathies, and tear apart the bonds of old society. You can not determine to sacrifice yourself--you cannot stifle the love in your bosom, or deny the truth of your confession."

"What say you of liberty? what say you of love and happiness?" said Consuelo, advancing a step towards the judges, with an outbreak of enthusiasm and a sublime radiation of countenance. "Have you not subjected me to ordeals which have made my cheek pale and my heart tremble? What kind of a base senseless being do you think me? Fancy you that I am capable of seeking personal satisfaction after what I have seen, learned, and know to be the life of men in their earthly affairs? No! neither love, marriage, liberty, happiness, or glory are anything for me, if it be at the expense of the humblest of my fellows. Is it not proved that every earthly pleasure is obtained at the expense of the suffering of another? Is there not something better to do than to satisfy ourselves? Albert thinks so, and I have the right to follow his example. Let me avoid the false and criminal illusion of happiness. Give me toil, fatigue, grief, and enthusiasm. I understand no longer the existence of joy, otherwise than in suffering. I have a thirst for martyrdom, since you have exhibited to me the trophies of punishment. Shame to those who understand their duty, and who yet seek to share earthly happiness and repose. I now know my duty. Oh, Leverani! if you love me after all the ordeals I have gone through, you are mad--you are but a child, unworthy of the name of man--certainly unworthy of my sacrificing Albert's heroic love to you. And you, Albert, if you be here--if you hear me--you should not refuse to call me sister, to offer me your hand, and teach me to walk in the rude pathway that leads me to God."

The enthusiasm of Consuelo had reached the acme, and words did not suffice to express it. A kind of vertigo seized her; and, as happened to the Pythonesses, in the paroxysms of their divine crises, when they uttered cries and strange madness, she manifested her emotion in the manner which was most natural to her. She began to sing in a brilliant voice, and with an enthusiasm at least equal to that she had experienced when she sang the same air in Venice, on the first occasion of her appearance in public, when Marcello and Porpora were present.

"I cieli immensi narrono Del grande Iddio la gloria!"

This melody rushed to her lips, because it was perhaps the most _naïve_ and powerful expression ever given to religious enthusiasm. Consuelo, however, was not calm enough to repress and manage her voice, and after the first two lines her intonation became a sob, and, bursting into tears, she fell on her knees.

The invisibles were electrified by her fervor, and sprang to their feet to hear this true inspiration with becoming respect. They descended from their places and approached her; while Wanda, taking her in her arms, placed her in those of Leverani, and said--"Look at him, and know that God permits you to reconcile virtue, happiness, and duty."

Consuelo for an instant was silent, as if she had been wafted to another world. At length she looked on Leverani, whose mask Marcus tore away. She uttered a piercing cry, and nearly died on his bosom as she recognised Albert. Leverani and Albert were one and the same person.