Chapter XLI

At this juncture the doors of the temple swung open with a metallic sound, and the Invisibles entered, two and two. The magic notes of the harmonica,[15] an instrument newly invented, the vibration of which was an unknown wonder to Consuelo, was heard in the air, and seemed to descend from the dome, which was open to the moon and the night wind. A shower of flowers fell slowly over the happy couple amid this solemn strain. Wanda stood by a tripod of gold, whence her right hand threw brilliant flames and clouds of perfume, while in the left she held the two ends of a chain of flowers and symbolic leaves she had cast around the two lovers. The invisible chiefs, their faces being covered with their long red drapery, with chaplets of the oak and accacia around their brows, stood up to receive the brothers as they passed by them, with a bow of veneration. The chiefs had the majesty of the old Druids, but their hands, unstained by blood, were opened to bless alone, and religious respect replaced the terror of old creeds. As the initiated appeared before the venerable tribune, they took off their masks, to salute the unknown with a bare brow. The latter were known to them only by acts of clemency and justice, paternal love and wisdom. Faithful to the religion of an oath, they did not seek to penetrate the mysterious veils. Certainly, though themselves unaware, the adepts knew these magi of a new religion, for they mingled with them in society, and, in the very bosom of their assemblies, were the best friends and confidants of the major portion of them--perhaps of each individual. In the practice of their religion the priest was always veiled, like the oracle of ancient days.

Happy childhood of innocent creeds, quasi fabulous dawn of sacred conspiracies, enwrapped in the night of ages, and decked with poetical uncertainty! though the space of scarcely one century separates us from these Invisibles, their existence to the historian is enigmatical. Thirty years after the _illuminati_ assumed those powers of which the vulgar were ignorant, and finding their resources in the inventive genius of the chiefs, and in the tradition of the secret societies of mystic Germany, terrified the world by the most formidable and vast political conspiracy that ever existed. For a moment it shook the throne of every dynasty, and finally succumbed, bequeathing to the French revolution an electric current of sublime enthusiasm, ardent faith, and terrible fanaticism. Half a century before those days marked out by fate, and while the gallant monarchy of Louis XV., the philosophical despotism of Frederick II., the skeptic and mocking loyalty of Voltaire, the ambition and diplomacy of Maria Theresa, and the heretical toleration of Gangarelli, seemed to promise to the world a season of decrepitude, antagonism, chaos, and dissolution, the French revolution fermented and germinated in the dark. It existed in minds which were _believing_ almost to fanaticism, under the form of one dream of universal revolution. While debauchery, hypocrisy, and incredulity ruled the world, a sublime faith, a magnificent revelation of the future, profound systems of organization, perhaps wiser than our Fourierism and Saint-Simonism, already realised in some rare groups the ideal conception of a future society diametrically opposed to what covers and hides their actions in history.

Such a contrast is one of the most prominent features of the eighteenth century, which was too full of ideas, and of intellectual labor of all kinds, for its synthesis to be made even yet, with clearness and profit, by the historians and philosophers of our own days. The reason is, there is a mass of contradictory documents, uninterpreted facts, not perceived at first, sources of information disturbed by the tumult of the century, and which must be purified before a solid bottom can be found. Many energetic laborers have remained obscure, bearing to the tomb the secret of their mission--so many dazzling glories absorbed the attention of their contemporaries, so many brilliant feats even now absorbed the retrospective attention of critics. Gradually, however, light will emanate from chaos; and if our century sum up its own deeds, it will also chronicle those of its predecessor--that vast logogriph, those brilliant nebulæ, where there is so much cowardice combined with grandeur, ignorance with knowledge, light with error, incredulity with faith, pedantry with mocking frivolity, superstition with lofty reason. This period of a hundred years saw the reigns of Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Pompadour, Peter the Great, Catharine II., Maria Theresa and Dubarry, Voltaire and Swedenborg, Kant and Mesmer, Rousseau and Dubois, Schroeffer and Diderot, Fenelon and Law, Zinzendorf and Liebnitz, Frederick II. and Robespierre, Louis XIV. and Philip Egalité, Marie Antoinette and Charlotte Corday, Weishaupt, Babœf and Napoleon--a terrible laboratory, where so many heterogeneous forms have been cast into the crucible, that they vomited forth, in their monstrous ebullition, a torrent of smoke, amid which we yet walk, enveloped in darkness and confused images.

Consuelo and Albert, as well as the Invisible chiefs and the adepts, were yet farther than we are from understanding it; they had no very lucid idea of the result of the changes and the turmoil into which they were anxious to precipitate themselves, with the enthusiastic hope of completely regenerating society. They fancied themselves on the eve of an evangelical republic, as the disciples of Jesus fancied he was about to establish an earthly power. The Taborites of Bohemia fancied themselves on the eve of a paradisiac condition; and the French Convention thought their armies about to commence a march of propagandism over the globe. Without this mad confidence, where would be great devotion? and without great folly, where would be great results? But for the Utopia of the divine revealer Jesus, where would be the idea of human fraternity? But for the contagious ecstacies of Joan of Arc, would we now be Frenchmen? But for the noble chimeras of the eighteenth century, would we have the first notions of equality? This mysterious revolution which the sects of the past had dreamed of, and which the mystic conspirators of the last century had vaguely foretold, fifty years before, as an era of renovation, Voltaire, the calm philosophical head of his day, and Frederick II., the great realiser of logical and cold power, did not anticipate. The most ardent and the wisest were far from reading the future. Jean Jacques Rousseau would have repudiated his own book, had he seen the mountain in a dream, with the guillotine glaring above it. Albert of Rudolstadt would have become again the lethargic madman of the Giants' Castle if the bloody glories, followed by Napoleon's despotism, and the restoration of the ancient _régime_, followed by the sway of the vilest material interests, had been revealed to him; or he fancied that he toiled to overthrow, at once and for ever, scaffolds and prisons, castles and convents, banks and citadels.

These noble children dreamed, and maintained their dream with all the power of their souls. They no more belonged to their century than did the shrewd politicians and wise philosophers. Their ideas of the future were not more lucid than those of the latter. They had no idea of that great unknown thing which each of us decks with the attributes of our own power, which deceives us all while it confirms us. Our children see it clad in a thousand dyes, and each keeps a shred for his own imperial toga. Fortunately, every century sees it more majestic, because each produces more persons to toil for its triumph. As for the men who would tear off the purple and cover it with eternal mourning, they are powerless, because they do not comprehend it. Slaves to the actual and present, they are ignorant that the immortal has no age, and that he who does not fancy it as it may be to-morrow, does not see it as it should be to-day.

At that moment Albert--enjoying completely restored health, and joyous in the possession of Consuelo's undivided affection--felt so supremely elated that there was some danger of his reason reeling from excess of happiness.

Consuelo stood at last before him, like the Galatea of that artist, beloved by the gods, waking at once to life and love. Mute and collected, her face beaming with a celestial glory, she seemed, for the first time in her life, completely and unmistakably beautiful, because for the first time she really loved. A sublime serenity shone on her brow, and her large eyes became moist with that voluptuousness of the soul, of which that of the body is but a reflection. She was thus beautiful merely because she did not know what was passing in her heart and over her face. Albert existed for her alone, or rather she did not exist except in him; and he alone seemed worthy of entire respect and boundless admiration. He was transformed, and, as it were, wrapped in supernatural admiration when he saw her. She discovered in the depth of his glance all the solemn grandeur of the bitter troubles he had undergone, though they had left no trace of physical suffering. There was on his brow the placidity of a resuscitated martyr, who sees the earth made red by his blood, and a heaven of infinite rewards open to him. Never did an inspired artist create a nobler ideal of a hero or a saint, in the grandest days of ancient or Christian art.

All the Invisibles, filled with admiration, paused, after having formed a circle around them, and for some moments abandoned themselves to the contemplation of this pair, so pure in the eyes of God, and so chaste before man. More than twenty vigorous male voices sang, to a measure of ancient lore and style--"O Hymen! O Hymene!" The music was Porpora's, the words having been sent to him with orders for an epithalamium on the occasion of an illustrious marriage. He had been well paid, without being aware to whom he was under obligations. As Mozart, just before he died, was to receive the sublimest inspiration for a requiem mysteriously required, old Porpora regained all his youthful genius to write an epithalamium the poetic mystery of which had aroused his imagination. In the very first passage, Consuelo remembered her old master's style, and looking around, she sought for her adopted father among the choristers. Among those who were its interpreters, Consuelo recognised many friends--Frederick Von Trenck, Porporino, Young Benda, Count Golowkin, Schubert, the Chevalier D'Eon, (whom she had met at Berlin, but of whose sex she, like all Europe, was ignorant,) the Count St. Germain, the Chancellor Coccei, (husband of Barberini,) the bookseller Nicolai, Gottlieb, (whose voice predominated above all the others,) and Marcus, whom a gesture of Wanda pointed out to her, and whom, from some instinctive sympathy, she had recognised in her guide, and who discharged the functions of putative father or sponsor. All the Invisibles had opened and thrown back on their shoulders their long melancholy robes, and a neat white costume, which was elegant and simple, relieved by a chain of gold, to which hung the insignia of the order, gave to the whole scene the appearance of a festival. Their masks hung around their wrists, ready to be replaced at the slightest signal of the watcher, who was on the dome of the edifice.

The orator who communicated between the adepts and chief of the order, unmasked, and came to wish the couple happiness. This was the Duke of ****, who had consecrated his enthusiasm and immense fortune to the undertaking of the Invisibles. He was owner of their place of meeting, and at his house Wanda and Albert had frequent interviews, unseen by any profane eyes. This house was also the head-quarters of the operations of the chief of the order, though there were other places at which there were smaller gatherings. Initiated into all the secrets of the order, the duke acted with and for them. He did not betray their incognito, but assumed all the dangers of the enterprise, being himself their visible means of contact with the members of the association.

When Albert and Consuelo had exchanged the gentle evidence of joy and affection with their brethren, all took their places, and the duke having resumed his functions of brother orator, thus spoke, as with crowns of flowers they knelt before the altar:--

"Very dear and beloved children--In the name of the true God--all power, love, and intelligence; and after him, in the name of the three virtues which reflect divinity in the human soul, Activity, Charity, and Justice, translated in effect by our formula, _Liberty, Fraternity,_ and _Equality_; finally, in the name of the tribunal of the Invisibles, devoted to the triple duty of zeal, faith, and study--that is, to the triple search of the three divine moral and political virtues--Albert Podiebrad, Consuelo Porporina, I pronounce the ratification and confirmation of the marriage already contracted before God and your kindred, and before a priest of the Christian religion, at the Giants' Castle, 175--. Three things however were wanting: first, the absolute wish of the wife to live with the husband, seemingly _in extremis_; second, the sanction of a moral and religious society received and acknowledged by the husband; third, the consent of a person here present, the name of whom I am not permitted to mention, but who is closely bound to one of the party by the ties of blood. If now these three conditions be fulfilled, and neither of you have aught to object, join your hands, and, rising, call on heaven to testify to the liberty of your act and the holiness of your love."

Wanda, who continued unknown among the brothers of the order, took the hands of the two children. An impulse of tenderness and enthusiasm made all three rise, as if they had been but one.

The formulæ of marriage were pronounced, and the simple and touching rite of the new church performed quietly but fervently. This engagement of mutual love was not an isolated part amid indifferent strangers who were careless of what passed. Those present were called to sanction the religious consecration of two beings bound together by one faith. They extended their arms over the couple and blessed them; then, taking hold of each other's hands, they made a living circle, a chain of paternal love, swearing to protect and defend their honor and life, to preserve them as much as possible from seduction and persecution, on all occasions and under all circumstances: in fine, to love them purely, cordially, and seriously, as if they were united to them by name and blood. The handsome Trenck pronounced this formula for all the others, in elegant and simple terms. He then added, as he spoke to the husband--

"Albert, the profane and guilty law of old society, from which we separate ourselves, some day to lead it back to us, wills that the husband impose fidelity on his wife by humiliation and despotic authority. If she fail, he must kill his rival; he has even the right to kill his wife; and this is called washing out the stain of his honor in blood. In the blind and corrupt world, every man is the enemy of happiness thus savagely and sternly guarded. The friend, the brother even, arrogates to himself a right to wrest honor and happiness from his friend or brother; or, at least, a base pleasure is experienced in exciting his jealousy and sowing distrust and trouble between him and the object of his love. Here, you know that we have a better understanding of honor and family pride. We are brothers in the sight of God; and any one who would look impurely on the wife of his brother has in his heart already committed the crime of incest."

All the brothers, moved and excited, then drew their swords, and were about to swear to use their weapons on themselves, rather than violate the oath they had just sworn at Trenck's dictation.

The sibyl--agitated by one of those enthusiastic impulses which gave her so much influence over their imaginations, and which often modified the opinions and decisions of the chiefs themselves--broke the circle, and rushed into the midst. Her language, always energetic and burning; her tall form, her floating drapery, her thin frame trembling yet majestic, the convulsive tremor of her ever veiled head, and withal, a grace which at once betokened the former existence of beauty which moves the mind when it ceases to appeal to the senses;--in fine, even her broken voice, which at once assumed a strange expression, had conspired to make her a mysterious being, and invested her with persuasive power and irresistible prestige.

All were silent to hear the voice of her inspiration. Consuelo was perhaps more moved than others, because she was aware of her singular story. She asked herself, shuddering with strange emotion, if this spectre, escaped from the tomb, really belonged to the world, and if, after having spoken, she would not disappear in the air, like the flame on the tripod, which made her appear so blue and transparent.

"Hide from the light these affirmations," said Wanda, with a shudder. "They are impious oaths when what is invoked is an instrument of hatred and murder. I know the old world attached the sword to the side of all reputed free, as a mark of independence and virtue. I well know that, in obedience to the ideas you have here preserved in spite of yourselves, the sword is the symbol of honor--that you deem you make holy engagements when, like citizens of old Rome, you swear on the sword. But here you would profane a solemn vow. Swear, rather, by this flame and tripod--the symbol of life, light, and divine love. Do you yet need emblems and visible signs? Are you yet idolators? Do the figures around this temple represent aught but ideas? O! swear rather by your own sentiments, by your better instincts, by your own heart; and if you dare not swear by the living God, the true, eternal, and holy religion, swear by pure humanity, by the glorious promptings of your courage, by the chastity of this young woman and her husband's love--swear by the genius and beauty of Consuelo, that your desire, that even your thoughts will never profane this holy arc of matrimony, this invisible and mystic altar on which the hand of an angel engraves the vow of love.

"Do you know what love is?" said the sibyl, after having paused for an instant, in a voice which every moment became more clear and penetrating. "If you did, oh! you venerable chiefs of our order and priests of our worship, you would never suffer that formula, which God alone can ratify, to be pronounced before you; and which, consecrated by men, is a kind of profanation of the divinest of mysteries. What power can you give to an engagement which in its very nature is miraculous? Yes, the confounding of two wills in one is in itself a miracle, for every heart is in itself free by virtue of a divine right. Yet when two souls yield and become bound to each other, their mutual possession becomes sacred, and as much a divine right as individual liberty. You see this is a miracle--that God reserves its mystery to himself, as he does that of life and death. You are about to ask this man and woman if during their lives they will belong respectively to each other. Their fervor is such that they will reply, 'Not only for life, but forever.' God then inspires them, by the miracle of love, with more faith, power, virtue, than you can or dare to ask. Away, then, with sacrilegious oaths and gross laws. Leave them their ideal, and do not bind them to reality by chains of gold. Leave the care of the continuation of the miracle to God. Prepare their souls for its accomplishment; form the ideal of love in them; exhort, instruct; extol and demonstrate the glory of fidelity, without which there is no moral honor, no sublime love. Do not come between, however, like Catholic priests, like magistrates, to interfere by the imposition of an oath. I tell you again, men cannot make themselves responsible, or be guardians of the perpetuity of a miracle. What know you of the secrets of the Eternal? Have we already penetrated the temple of the future, in that celestial world where, beneath sacred groves, man will converse with God as one friend does with another? Has a law for indissoluble marriage emanated from the mouth of God? Have his designs been proclaimed on earth? Have you, children of men, promulgated this law unanimously? Have the Roman pontiffs never dissolved marriage? They call themselves infallible! Under the pretext of the nullity of certain engagements, have they not pronounced real divorces, the scandal of which history has preserved in its records? The Christian societies, the reformed sects, the Greek church, following the example of the Mosaic dispensation, and all ancient religions, frankly introduced divorce into modern law. What then becomes of the holiness and efficacy of a vow to God, when it is maintained that man can release us from it? Touch not love by the profanation of marriage. You cannot stifle it in pure hearts. Consecrate the conjugal tie by exhortations, by prayers, by a publicity which will make it respectable, by touching ceremonies. You should do so, if you be our priests--that is to say, our aids, our guides, our advisers, our consolers, our lights. Prepare souls for the sanctity of a sacrament; and, as a father of a family seeks to establish his children in positions of prosperity, dignity, and security, occupy yourselves--our spiritual fathers--assiduously in fixing your sons and daughters in circumstances favorable to the development of true love, virtue, and sublime fidelity. When you shall have analysed them by religious ordeals, and ascertained that in their mutual attraction there is neither cupidity, vanity, nor frivolous intoxication, nor that sensual blindness that is without ideality--when you have convinced yourselves that they appreciate the grandeur of their sentiments, the holiness of their duty, and the liberty of their choice, then permit them to endow each other with their own inalienable liberty. Let their families, their friends, and the vast family of the faithful, unite to ratify this sacrament. Attend to my words! Let the sacrament be a religious permission, a paternal and social permission, an encouragement, an exhortation to perpetuate the engagement. Let it not be a command, an obligation, a law, with menaces and punishments--a forced slavery, with scandal, prisons and chains if it be violated; for in this way you would reverse the whole miracle in all its entirety accomplished on earth. Eternally fruitful providence--God, the indefatigable dispenser of grace, always will conduct before you young, fervent, and innocent couples, ready to bind themselves for time and eternity. Your anti-religious law and your inhuman sacrament will always abrogate the effect of grace in them. The inequality of conjugal rights between the sexes--impiety made venerable by social laws--the difference of duty in public opinion--all the absurd prejudices following in the wake of bad institutions, will ever extinguish the faith and enthusiasm of husband and wife. Those who are most sincere, who are most inclined to fidelity, will be the first to grow sad, and become terrified at the duration of the engagement, and thus disenchant each other. The abjuration of individual liberty is in effect contrary to the will of nature and the dictates of conscience when men participate in it, for they oppress it with the yoke of ignorance and brutality. It is in conformity with the will of generous hearts, and necessary to the religious instincts of strong minds, when God gives us the means to contend against the various snares man has placed around marriage, so as to make it the tomb of love, happiness, and virtue, and a "sworn prostitution," as our fathers the Lollards, whom you know and often invoke, called it. Give to God what is God's, and take from Cæsar what is not his."

"And you, my children," said she, turning towards Albert and Consuelo, "you, who have sworn to reverence the conjugal tie, did not, perhaps, know the true meaning of what you did. You obeyed a generous impulse, and replied with enthusiasm to the appeal of honor. That is worthy of you, disciples of a victorious faith! You have performed more than an act of individual virtue--you have consecrated a principle without which there can be neither chastity nor conjugal fidelity.

"O love! sublime flame--so powerful and so fragile, so sudden and so fugitive! light from heaven, seemingly passing through our existence, to die before we do, for fear of consuming and annihilating us, we feel you are a vivifying fire, emanating from God himself, and that whoever would fix it in his bosom and retain it to his last hour, always ardent, always in its pristine vigor, would be the happiest and noblest of men. Thus the disciples of the ideal will always seek to prepare sanctuaries for you in their bosoms, that you may not hasten to return to heaven. But alas! you whom we have made it a virtue to honor, have declined to be renewed at the dictate of our institutions, and have remained free as the bird of the air, capricious as the flame on the altar. You seem to laugh at our oaths, our contracts and our will. You fly from us in spite of all we have invented to fix you in your manners. You no longer inhabit the harem, guarded by the vigilant sentinels which Christian society places between the sentence of the magistrate and the yoke of public opinions. Whence, then, comes your inconstancy and your ingratitude? Oh! mysterious influence! oh, love! cruelly symbolised under the form of an infant and blind god! what tenderness and what contempt inspire human hearts you enkindle with your blaze; and whom you desert, leaving them to wither amid the anguish of repentance, and, more frightful yet, of disgust! Why is it that man kneels to you in every portion of the globe--that you are exalted and deified--that divine poets call you the soul of the world--that barbarous nations sacrifice human victims to you, precipitating wives on the fire at the husband's funeral--that young hearts call you in their gentlest dreams, and that old men curse life when you abandon them to the horror of solitude? Whence comes that adoration--sometimes sublime, sometimes fanatical--which has been decreed you from the golden infancy of humanity to our age of iron, if you be but a chimera, the dream of a moment of intoxication, an error of the imagination, excited by the delirium of the sense. Ah! it is not a vulgar instinct, a mere animal want. You are not the blind child of Paganism, but the true son of God, and very essence of the divinity. You have not yet revealed yourself to us, except through the mist of errors; and you would not make your abode among us, because you were unwilling to be profaned. You will return to us, as in the days of the fabulous Astrea, as in the visions of poets, to fix your abode in our terrestrial paradise, when we shall, by our sublime virtues, have merited the presence of such a guest. How blessed then will this abode be to man! and then it will be well to have been born."

"We will then be brothers and sisters, and unions, freely contracted, will be maintained by your own power. When, in place of this terrible contest, whose continuance is impossible--conjugal fidelity being forced to resist infamous attempts at debauch, hypocritical seduction or mad violence, hypocritical friendship and wise corruption--every husband will find around him chaste sisters, himself the jealous and delicate guardian of the happiness of a sister confided to him as a companion; while every wife will find in other men so many brothers of her husband, proud of her happiness and protectors of her peace; then the faithful wife will no longer be the fragile flower that hides herself to maintain the treasures of her chastity, often a deserted victim, wasting in solitude and tears, unable to revive in her husband's mind the flame she has preserved in purity in her own. The brother then will not be forced to avenge his sister, and slay him she loves and regrets, in obedience to the dictates of false honor. The mother will not tremble for her daughter, nor the child blush for its parent. The husband then will be neither suspicious nor despotic; and, on her part, the wife will escape the bitterness of the victim and the rancor of the slave; atrocious suffering and abominable injustice will cease to sully the peace of the domestic hearth. It may be some day, that the priest and the magistrate, relying with reason on the permanent miracle of love, will consecrate in God's name indissoluble unions, with as much wisdom and justice as they now ignorantly display impiety and folly.

"But these glorious days are not yet come. Here, in this mysterious temple, where we are now united in obedience to the evangelists, three or four in the name of the Lord, we can only dream of divinest joys. It is an oracle which then escapes from their bosoms. Eternity is the ideal of love, as it is of faith. The human soul never comes nearer to the apex of its power and lucidity than in the enthusiasm of a great love. The _always_ of lovers is an eternal revelation, a divine manifestation, casting its sovereign light and blessed warmth over every instant of their union. Woe to whoever profanes this sacred formula! He falls from grace to sin--extinguishes the faith, power and light in his heart."

"Albert," said Consuelo, "I receive your promise, and adjure you to accept mine. I feel myself under the power of a miracle, and the _always_ of our brief lives does not resemble the eternity for which I give myself to you."

"Sublime and rash Consuelo," said Wanda, with a smile of enthusiasm, which seemed to pass through her veil, "ask God for eternity with him you love, as a recompense of your fidelity to him in this brief life."

"Ah! yes," said Albert, lifting his wife's hand, clasped in his own, to heaven, "that is our end, hope, and reward--to love truly in this phase of existence, to meet and unite in others. Ah! I feel that this is not the first day of our union--that we have already loved, and loved in other lives. Such bliss is not the work of chance. The hand of God reunites us, like two parts of one being inseparable in eternity."

After the celebration of the marriage, though the night was far advanced, they proceeded to the final initiation of Consuelo in the order of the Invisibles, and, then, the members of the tribunal having dispersed amid the shadows of the holy wood, soon reassembled at the castle of fraternal communion. The prince (_Brother Orator_) presided, and took care to explain to Consuelo the deep and touching symbols. The repast was served by faithful domestics, affiliated with a certain grade of the order. Karl introduced Matteus to Consuelo, and she then saw bare his gentle and expressive face; she observed with admiration that these respectable servants were not treated as inferiors by their brothers of the other grades. No personal distinction separated them from the higher grades of the order, of whatever rank. The _brother servitors_, as they were called, discharged willingly the duty of waiters and butlers. It was for them to make all arrangements for the festivity, as being best prepared to do so; and this duty they considered a kind of religious observance--a sort of eucharistic festival. They were then no more degraded than the Levites of a temple who preside over the details of sacrifice. When they arranged the table, they sat at it themselves, not at peculiar isolated places, but in chairs retained among the others for them. All seemed anxious to be civil to them, and to fill their cups and plates. As at masonic banquets, the cup was never raised to the lip without invoking some noble idea, some generous sentiment, some august patronage. The cadenced noises, the puerile conduct of the freemasons, the mallet, the jargon of the toasts, and the vocabulary of tools, were excluded from this grave yet costly entertainment. The servitors were respectful without constraint, and modest without baseness. Karl sat during one of the services between Albert and Consuelo. The latter saw with emotion that besides his sobriety and good behavior, he had made progress in healthy religious notions, by means of the admirable education of sentiment.

"Ah, my friend," said she to her husband, when the deserter had changed his place, and her husband drew near to her, "this is the slave beaten by the Prussian corporals, the savage woodman of Boehmer-wald, and the would-be murderer of Frederick the Great. Enlightenment and charity have in a few days converted into a sensible, pious, and just man, a bandit, whom the precocious justice of nations pushed to murder, and would have corrected with the lash and gallows."

"Noble sister," said the Prince, who had placed himself on Consuelo's right, "you gave at Roswald, to this mind crazed by despair, great lessons on religion and prudence. He was gifted with instinct. His education has since been rapid and easy; and when we've essayed to teach him, his reply was, 'So the signora said.' Be sure the rudest men may be enlightened more easily than is thought. To improve their condition--to inoculate them with self-respect by esteeming and encouraging them, requires but sincere charity and human dignity. You see that as yet they have been initiated merely in the inferior degrees. The reason is, we consult the extent of their minds and progress in virtue when we admit them into our mysteries. Old Matteus has taken two degrees more than Karl; and if he does not pass those he now occupies, it is because his mind and heart can go no farther. No baseness of extraction, no humility of condition, will ever stop them. You see here Gottlieb the cobbler, son of the jailer at Spandau, admitted to a grade equal to your own, though in my house, from habit and inclination, he discharges his subordinate functions. His imagination, fondness for study and enthusiasm for virtue--in a word, the incomparable beauty of soul inhabiting that distorted body, renders him almost fit to be treated, in the interior of the temple, as a brother and as an equal. We had scarcely any ideas and virtues to impart to him. On the contrary, mind and heart were too teeming, and it became necessary to repress them and soothe his excitement, treating at the same time the moral and physical causes which would have led him to folly. The immorality of those among whom he lived, and the perversity of the official world, would have irritated without corrupting him. We alone, armed with the mind of James Boehm and the true explanation of his sacred symbols, were able to undeceive and convince him, and to direct his poetic fancy without chilling his zeal and faith. Remark how the cure of his mind has reacted on his body, and that he has regained health as if by magic. His strange face is already transformed."

After the repast they resumed their cloaks, and walked along the gentle slope of the hill, which was shaded by the sacred wood. The ruins of the old castle, reserved for ordeals, was above it; and gradually Consuelo remembered the path she had passed so rapidly over, on a night of storm, not long before. The plenteous stream--which ran from a cavern rudely cut in the rock, and once reserved for superstitious devotion--murmured amid the undergrowth towards the valley, where it formed the brook the prisoner in the pavilion knew so well. Alleys covered by nature with fine sand, crossed under the luxuriant shade where the various groups met and talked together. High barriers, but which did not intercept the river, shut in the enclosure, the kiosque of which might be considered the study. This was a favorite retreat of the duke, and was forbidden to the idle and indiscreet. The servitors also walked in groups around the barriers, watching to prevent the approach of any _profane_ being. Of this there was no great danger. The duke seemed merely occupied with masonic mysteries; as was the case, in a manner. Free masonry was then tolerated by the law and protected by the princes who were, or thought themselves, initiated in it. No one suspected the importance of the superior grades; which, after many degrees, ended in the tribunal of the Invisibles.

Besides, at this moment the ostensible festival which lighted up the façade of the palace too completely absorbed the attention of the numerous guests of the prince, for any to think of leaving his brilliant halls and the new gardens, for the rocks and ruins of the old park. The young Margravine of Bareith, an intimate friend of the duke, presided over the honors of the entertainment. To avoid appearing, he had feigned sick, and after the banquet of the Invisibles supped with his numerous guests in the palace. As she saw the glare of the lights in the distance, Consuelo, who leaned on Albert's arm, remembered Anzoleto and accused herself innocently in presence of her husband, who charged her with having become too ironical and stern to the companion of her childhood. "Yes, it was a guilty idea, but then I was most unhappy. I had resolved to sacrifice myself to Count Albert, and the malicious and cruel Invisibles again cast me into the arms of the dangerous Leverani. Wrath was in my heart; gladly I met him from whom I was to separate in despair, and Marcus wished to soothe my sorrow by a glance at the handsome Anzoleto. Ah! I never expected to be so indifferent to him. I fancied I was about to be doomed to sing with him, and could have hated him for thus depriving me of my last dream of happiness. Now, my friend, I could see him without bitterness and treat him kindly; happiness makes us so merciful. May I be useful to him some day, and inspire him with, a serious love of art, if not virtue."

"Why despair? Let us wait for him in the scene of want and misery. Now, amid his triumphs, he would be deaf to the voice of reason. Let him lose his voice and his beauty, and we will take possession of his soul."

"Do you take charge of this conversion, Albert?"

"Not without you, my Consuelo."

"Then you do not fear the past?"

"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!"_

[Footnote 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.]