CHAPTER XXXIV

SEVERAL days passed over without their hearing any news of Count Albert; and Consuelo, to whom this position of things appeared dismal in the extreme, was astonished to see the Rudolstadt family bear so frightful a state of uncertainty without evincing either despair or even impatience. Familiarity with the most cruel anxieties produces a sort of apparent apathy, or else real hardness of heart, which wounds and almost irritates those minds whose sensibility has not yet been blunted by long-continued misfortune. Consuelo, a prey to a sort of nightmare in the midst of these doleful impressions and inexplicable occurrences, was astonished to see that the order of the house was hardly disturbed, that the canoness was equally vigilant, the baron equally eager for the chase, the chaplain regular as ever in the same devotional exercises, and Amelia gay and trifling as usual. The cheerful vivacity of the latter was what particularly offended Consuelo. She could not conceive how the baroness could laugh and play, while she herself could hardly read or work with her needle. The canoness, however, employed herself in embroidering an altar front for the chapel of the castle. It was a masterpiece of patience, exquisite workmanship, and neatness. Hardly had she made the tour of the house, when she returned to seat herself at her work, were it only to add a few stitches, while waiting to be called by new cares to the barns, the kitchens, or the cellars. One should have seen with how much importance these little concerns were treated, and how that diminutive creature hurried along, at a pace always regular, always dignified and measured, but never slackened, through all the corners of her little empire; crossing a thousand times each day in every direction the narrow and monotonous surface of her domestic domain. What also seemed strange to Consuelo was the respect and admiration which the family and country in general attached to this indefatigable housekeeping—a pursuit which the old lady seemed to have embraced with such ardor and jealous observance. To see her parsimoniously regulating the most trifling affairs, one would have thought her covetous and distrustful; and yet on important occasions she displayed a soul deeply imbued with noble and generous sentiments. But these excellent qualities, especially her maternal tenderness, which gave her in Consuelo's eyes so sympathizing and venerable an air, would not of themselves have been sufficient in the eyes of the others to elevate her to the rank of the heroine of the family. She required, besides, the far more important qualification of a scrupulous attention to the trifling details of the household, to cause her to be appreciated for what she really was, notwithstanding what has been said, a woman of strong sense and high moral feeling. Not a day passed that Count Christian, the baron, or the chaplain, did not repeat every time she turned her back, "How much wisdom, how much courage, how much strength of mind does the canoness display!" Amelia herself, not distinguishing the true and ennobling purpose of life, in the midst of the puerilities which, under another form, constituted the whole of hers, did not venture to disparage her aunt under this point of view, the only one that, in Consuelo's eyes, cast a shadow upon the bright light which shone from the poor and loving soul of the hunchback Wenceslawa. To the zingarella, born upon the highway and thrown helpless on the world, without any other master or any other protection than her own genius, so much care, so much activity and intensity of thought to produce such miserable results as the preservation and maintenance of certain objects and certain provisions, appeared a monstrous perversion of the understanding. She, who possessed none and desired none of the world's riches, was grieved to see a lovely and generous soul voluntarily extinguish itself in the business of acquiring wheat, wine, wood, hemp, cattle, and furniture. If they had offered her all these goods, so much desired by the greater part of mankind, she would have asked, instead, a moment of her former happiness, her rags, the clear and lovely sky above her head, her fresh young love and her liberty upon the lagunes of Venice—all that was stamped on her memory in more and more glowing colors, in proportion as she receded from that gay and laughing horizon to penetrate into the frozen sphere which is called real life!

She felt her heart sink in her bosom when at nightfall she saw the old canoness, followed by Hans, take an immense bunch of keys, and make the circuit of all the buildings and all the courts, closing the least openings, and examining the smallest recesses into which an evildoer could have crept; as if no one could sleep in security within those formidable walls, until the water of the torrent, which was restrained behind a neighboring parapet, had rushed roaring into the trenches of the château, while in addition the gates were locked and the drawbridge raised. Consuelo had so often slept, in her distant wanderings by the roadside, with no covering save her mother's torn cloak thrown over her for shelter! She had so often welcomed the dawn upon the snowy flagstones of Venice, washed by the waves, without having a moment's fear for her modesty, the only riches she cared to preserve! "Alas!" said she, "how unhappy are these people in having so many things to take care of! Security is the aim of their pursuits by day and night, and so carefully do they seek it, that they have no time to find or enjoy it." Like Amelia, therefore, she already pined in her gloomy prison—that dark and somber Castle of the Giants, where the sun himself seemed afraid to penetrate. But while the young baroness only thought of fêtes, of dresses, and whispering suitors, Consuelo dreamed of wandering beside her native wave-washed shores—a thicket or a fisher-boat for her palace, the boundless heavens for her covering, and the starry firmament to gaze on!

Forced by the cold of the climate and the closing of the castle gates to change the Venetian custom which she had retained, of watching during a part of the night and rising late in the morning, she at last succeeded, after many hours of sleeplessness, agitation, and melancholy dreams, in submitting to the savage law of the cloister, and recompensed herself by undertaking, alone, several morning walks in the neighboring mountain. The gates were opened and the bridges lowered at the first dawn of day, and while Amelia, secretly occupied in reading novels during a part of the night, slept until awakened by the first breakfast bell, Porporina sallied forth to breathe the fresh air and brush the early dew from the herbage of the forest. One morning as she descended softly on tiptoe, in order to awaken no one, she mistook the direction she ought to take among the numberless staircases and interminable corridors of the château, with which she was hardly yet acquainted. Lost in a labyrinth of galleries and passages, she traversed a sort of vestibule, which she did not recognize, imagining she should find an exit to the garden by that way. But she merely reached the entrance of a little chapel built in a beautiful but antique style, and dimly lighted from above by a circular window of stained glass in the vaulted ceiling, which threw a feeble light upon the center of the pavement, and left the extremities of the building in mysterious gloom. The sun was still below the horizon, and the morning gray and foggy. At first Consuelo thought herself in the chapel of the château, where she had heard mass the preceding Monday. She knew that the chapel opened upon the gardens; but before crossing it to go out, she wished to honor the sanctuary of prayer, and knelt upon the first step of the altar. But, as it often happens to artists to be preoccupied with outward objects in spite of their attempts to ascend into the sphere of abstract ideas, her prayer could not absorb her sufficiently to prevent her casting a glance of curiosity around her; and she soon perceived that she was not in the chapel, but in a place to which she had not before penetrated. It was neither the same shrine nor the same ornaments. Although this unknown chapel was very small, she could hardly as yet distinguish objects around her; but what struck Consuelo most was a marble statue kneeling before the altar, in that cold and severe attitude in which all figures on tombs were formerly represented. She concluded that she was in a place reserved for the sepulchers of some distinguished ancestors, and, having become somewhat fearful and superstitious since her residence in Bohemia, she shortened her prayer and rose to retire.

But at that moment when she cast a last timid look at the figure which was kneeling ten paces from her, she distinctly saw the statue unclasp its hands of stone, and slowly make the sign of the cross, as it uttered a deep sigh.

Consuelo almost fell backward, and yet she could not withdraw her haggard eyes from that terrible statue. What confirmed her in the belief that it was a figure of stone was that it did not appear to hear the cry of terror which escaped from her, and that it replaced its two large white hands one upon the other, without seeming to have the least connection with the outer world.