CHAPTER XLV

WHEN Consuelo recovered the use of her faculties, finding herself seated upon a hard bed, and not yet able to raise her eyelids, she endeavoured to collect her thoughts. But the prostration had been so complete that her powers returned but slowly; and as if the sum of the fatigues and emotions which she had latterly experienced had surpassed her strength, she tried in vain to remember what had happened to her since she left Venice. Even her departure from that adopted country, where she had passed such happy days, appeared to her like a dream; and it was a solace (alas, too fleeting!) to her to be able to doubt for an instant her exile, and the misfortunes which caused it. She therefore imagined that she was still in her poor chamber in the Corte Minelli, on her mother's pallet, that after having had a violent and trying scene with Anzoleto, the confused recollection of which floated in her memory, she returned to life and hope on feeling him near her, on hearing his interrupted breathing, and the tender words he addressed to her in a low and murmuring voice. A languishing and delicious joy penetrated her heart at this thought, and she raised herself with some exertion to look at her repentant friend, and to stretch out her hand to him. But she pressed a cold and unknown hand; and in place of the smiling sun, whose rosy brilliancy she was accustomed to see through her white curtain, she saw only a sepulchral light, falling from the roof of a gloomy vault, and swimming in a humid atmosphere; she felt under her arm the rude spoils of savage animals, and amid a horrible silence the pale face of Albert bent toward her like that of a specter.

Consuelo thought she had descended living to the tomb; she closed her eyes, and fell back upon the bed of dried leaves with a deep groan. It was some minutes before she could remember where she was, and to what gloomy host she was confided. Terror, which the enthusiasm of her devotion had hitherto combated and subdued, seized upon her, so that she feared to open her eyes lest she should see some horrible spectacle—the paraphernalia of death—a sepulcher—open before her. She felt something upon her brow, and raised her hand to it. It was a garland of leaves with which Albert had crowned her. She took it off to look at it, and saw a branch of cypress.

"I believed you dead, O my soul, O my consolation!" said Albert, kneeling beside her; "and before following you to the tomb, I wished to adorn you with the emblems of marriage. Flowers do not grow around me, Consuelo. The black cypress offered the only branches from which my hand could gather your coronet of betrothal. There it is; do not despise it. If we must die here, let me swear to you that, if restored to life, I would never have had any other spouse than you; that I die united with you by an indissoluble oath."

"Betrothed! united!" cried Consuelo, casting terrified glances around her; "who has pronounced that decree? who has celebrated that marriage?"

"It is destiny, my angel," replied Albert, with an inexpressible gentleness and sadness. "Think not to escape from it. It is a strange destiny for you, and even more so for me. You forbade me a short time since to search into the past; you prohibited to me the remembrance of those bygone days which are called the night of ages. My being has obeyed you, and henceforth I know nothing of my anterior life. But my present life, I have questioned it, I know it. I have seen it entire with one glance; it appeared to me during the instant in which you reposed in the arms of death. Your destiny, Consuelo, is to belong to me, and yet you will never be mine. You do not love me, you never will love me as I love you. Your love for me is only charity, your devotion only heroism. You are a saint whom God sends, but you will never be a woman to me. I must die, consumed by a love you cannot partake; and yet, Consuelo, you will be my wife as you are now my betrothed, whether we perish now, and your pity consents to give me that title of husband, which no kiss will ever confirm, or whether we again see the sun, and your conscience commands you to accomplish the designs of God toward me."

"Count Albert," said Consuelo, endeavoring to rise from her bed covered with bear-skins, which resembled a funereal couch, "I know not if it be the enthusiasm of a heated imagination, or the continuance of your delirium, which make you speak thus. I have no longer the strength to dispel your illusions; and if they must turn against me—against me, who have come at the peril of my life to succor and console you—I feel that I can no longer contend with you for my life or my liberty. If the sight of me irritates you, and if God abandons me, may His will be done! You, who think you know so many things, do not know how my life has been poisoned, and with how little regret I should sacrifice it."

"I know that you are very unhappy, my poor saint. I know that you wear on your brow a crown of thorns, which I cannot tear away. The cause and the consequences of your misfortunes I do not know, neither do I ask you for them. But I should love you very little, I should be little worthy of your compassion, if from the day when I first met you I had not felt and recognized in you the sorrow which fills your soul and embitters your life. What can you fear from me, Consuelo?—from my soul? You, so firm and so wise, whom God has inspired with words which subdued and restored me in an instant, you must feel the light of your faith and your reason strangely weakened, since you fear your friend, your servant, your slave. Rouse yourself, my angel; look at me. See me here at your feet, and forever, my forehead in the dust. What do you wish—what do you command? Do you wish to leave this place on the instant, without my following you, without my ever appearing before you again? What sacrifice do you exact? What oath do you wish me to take? I can promise you every thing, and obey you in every thing. Yes, Consuelo, I can even become a tranquil man, submissive, and in appearance as reasonable as other men. Should I thus be less repulsive, less terrifying to you? Hitherto I have never been able to do as I wished, but hereafter every thing you desire will be granted me. Perhaps I may die in transforming myself according to your will; but I tell you in my turn that my life has ever been embittered, and that I should not regret losing it for you."

"Dear, generous Albert!" said Consuelo, reassured and greatly affected, "explain yourself more clearly, and let me at last understand the depths of your impenetrable soul. You are in my eyes superior to all other men; and from the first moment that I saw you, I felt for you a respect and a sympathy which I have no cause to conceal. I have always heard it said that you were insane, but I have not been able to believe it. All that has been related to me of you only added to my esteem and to my confidence. Still I could not help seeing that you were overpowered by a deep and strange mental disease. I persuaded myself, presumptuously perhaps, but sincerely, that I could relieve your malady. You yourself have aided in making me think so. I have come to seek you, and now you tell me things respecting myself and you which would fill me with a boundless veneration, if you did not mix up with them strange ideas drawn from a spirit of fatalism which I cannot share. Can I say all without wounding you and making you suffer?"

"Say all, Consuelo; I know beforehand what you have to say."

"Well, I will say it, for I had so promised myself. All those who love you despair of you. They think they must respect, that is to say, spare, what they call your insanity; they fear to exasperate you by letting you see that they know it, lament it, and fear it. For myself, I cannot believe them, and cannot tremble in asking you why, being so wise, you have sometimes the appearance of an insane person; why, being so good, you perform deeds of ingratitude and pride; why, being so enlightened and religious, you abandon yourself to the reveries of a diseased and despairing mind; and lastly, why you are here alone, buried alive in a gloomy cavern—far from your family, who weep and search for you—far from your fellow-men, whom you cherish with an ardent zeal—far from me, too, whom you invoked, whom you say you love, and who has been able to reach you only by miracles of resolution and the divine protection?"

"You ask of me the secret of my life, the solution of my destiny, and yet you know it better than I do, Consuelo. It is from you I expected the revelation of my being, and you question me! Oh! I understand you; you wish to lead me to a confession, to an efficacious repentance, to a victorious resolution. You shall be obeyed. But it is not at this instant that I can know, and judge, and transform myself in this manner. Give me some days, some hours at least, to learn for myself and for you if I am mad, or if I enjoy the use of my reason. Alas! alas! both are true, and it is my misery not to be able to doubt it; but, to know if I must lose my judgment and my will entirely, or if I shall be able to triumph over the demon who besieges me, that is what I cannot do at this instant. Have pity upon me, Consuelo; I am still under the influence of an emotion more powerful than myself. I know not what I have said to you; I know not how many hours you have been here; I know not how you could be here without Zdenko, who did not wish to bring you; I know not even in what region my thoughts were wandering when you first appeared to me. Alas! I know not how many ages I have been shut up here, struggling with unheard-of sufferings against the scourge which destroys me. Even these sufferings I remember no longer when they have passed; there remains in their place only a terrible fatigue, a sort of stupor, a terror which I long to banish. Let me forget myself, Consuelo, if it be only for a few moments; my ideas will become clearer, my tongue will be loosened. I promise, I swear it to you. Let the light of truth beam softly and by degrees on my eyes, long shrouded in fearful darkness and unable to endure the full strength of its rays. You have ordered me to concentrate all my life in my heart. Yes; those were your words; my reason and my memory date no further back than from the moment you spoke them. Well! these words have diffused an angelic calm over my spirit. My heart lives now once more, though my spirit still sleeps. I fear to speak to you of myself; I might wander, and again terrify you by my ravings. I wish to live only in feeling, and it is an unknown life to me; it would be a life or delight if I could abandon myself to it without displeasing you. Ah, Consuelo! why did you tell me to concentrate all my life in my heart? Explain your meaning; let me think only of you, see and comprehend only you—in a word, love you. O my God, I love—I love a living being!—a being like myself! I love her with all the strength of my heart and soul! I can concentrate upon her all the ardor, all the holiness of my affections. It is happiness enough for me to be allowed this, and I have not the madness to ask for more."

"Well, dear Albert, let your wearied soul repose in this sweet sentiment of a peaceful and brotherly tenderness. God is my witness that you can do so without fear and without danger; for I feel a strong and sincere friendship for you—a kind of veneration which the frivolous observations and vain judgments of the world cannot shake. You have become aware, by a sort of divine and mysterious intuition, that my whole life is broken by sorrow; you said so, and it was divine truth which prompted your words. I cannot love you otherwise than as a brother; but do not say that it is charity, pity alone, which influences me. If humanity and compassion have given me courage to come here, sympathy and a heartfelt esteem for your virtues gave me also the courage and the right to speak to you as I do. Banish, therefore, from this moment and forever, the illusion under which you labor respecting your own feelings. Do not speak of love, do not speak of marriage. My past life, my recollections, make the first impossible; the difference in our conditions would render the second humiliating and insupportable to me. By indulging in such dreams you will render my devotion to you rash, perhaps culpable. Let us seal by a sacred promise the engagement which I make, to be your sister, your friend, your consoler, whenever you are disposed to open your heart to me; your nurse, when suffering renders you gloomy and taciturn. Swear that you will not look on me in any other light, and that you will never love me otherwise."

"Generous woman!" said Albert, turning pale, "you reckon largely on my courage, and you know well the extent of my love, in asking of me such a promise. I should be capable of lying for the first time in my life—I could even debase myself so far as to pronounce a false oath—if you required it of me. But you will not require it of me, Consuelo; you know that this would be to introduce a new source of agitation into my life, and into my conscience a remorse which has not yet stained it. Do not be uneasy at the manner in which I love you. First of all I am ignorant of it; I only know that to deprive this affection of the name of love would be to utter a blasphemy. I submit myself to all the rest; I accept your pity, your care, your goodness, your peaceful friendship; will speak to you only as you permit; I will not say a single word which could trouble you, nor give you a single look which could make you veil your eyes; I will not even touch your dress, if you fear being sullied by my breath. But you would be wrong to treat me with such mistrust, and you would do better to encourage in me those gentle emotions which restore us to life, and from which you can fear nothing. I can well understand that your modesty might be alarmed at the expression of a love which you do not share; I know that your pride would reject the marks of a passion which you do not wish either to excite or to encourage. Therefore be calm, and swear without fear to be my sister and my consoler, as I swear to be your brother and servant. Do not ask of me more; I will neither be indiscreet nor importunate. It is sufficient for me that you know you can command me and govern me despotically—not as you would govern a brother, but as you would dispose of a being who has given himself to you entirely and forever."