CHAPTER XLVIII

IN the meantime the Canoness Wenceslawa, after spending half an hour at her devotions, ascended the staircase, and according to her custom devoted the first care of the day to her dear nephew. She approached the door of his chamber, and bent her ear to the keyhole, though with less hope than ever of hearing the slight noise which would announce his return. What was her surprise and her joy on distinguishing the regular sound of his breathing during sleep? She made a great sign of the cross, and ventured to unlatch the door and enter gently on tiptoe. She saw Albert peacefully slumbering in his bed, and Cynabre curled up on a neighboring arm-chair. She did not wake either of them, but ran to find Count Christian, who, prostrate in his oratory, prayed with his accustomed resignation that his son might be restored to him, either in heaven or upon earth.

"My brother," said she to him in a low voice, and kneeling beside him, "cease your prayers, and search your heart for the most fervent thanksgiving. God has heard you."

There was no need that she should explain herself further. The old man, turning toward her, and meeting her little sparkling eyes, animated with a profound and sympathetic joy, raised his shriveled hands toward the altar, and cried with a smothered voice: "O my God, Thou hast restored to me my son!"

Then both simultaneously began to recite in a low voice alternate verses of the beautiful song of Simeon—"Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace."

They resolved not to awaken Albert. They summoned the baron, the chaplain, and all the servants, and devoutly heard mass, and returned thanksgiving in the chapel of the château. Amelia learned the return of her cousin with sincere joy; but she considered it very unjust that in order to celebrate this event piously she should be obliged to undergo a mass during which she had to stifle many yawns.

"Why has not your friend, the good Porporina, joined with us in thanking Providence?" said Count Christian to his niece, when the mass was ended.

"I have tried in vain to awaken her," replied Amelia. "I called her, shook her, and used every means; but I could not succeed in making her understand, or even open her eyes. If she were not burning hot, and red as fire, I should think her dead. She must have slept very badly last night, and she certainly has a fever."

"Then the sweet girl is ill!" returned the old count. "My dear Wenceslawa, you should go and administer such remedies as her condition may require. God forbid that so happy a day should be saddened by the suffering of that noble girl!"

"I will go, my brother," replied the canoness, who no longer said a word nor took a step respecting Consuelo without consulting the chaplain's looks. "But do not be uneasy, Christian; it will be of no consequence. The Signora Nina is very nervous; she will soon be well."

"Still, is it not a very singular thing," said she to the chaplain an instant after, when she could take him aside, "that this girl should have predicted Albert's return with so much confidence and accuracy? Dear chaplain, possibly we have been mistaken respecting her. Perhaps she is a kind of saint who has revelations."

"A saint would have come to hear mass, instead of having the fever at such a moment," objected the chaplain with a profound air.

This judicious remark drew a sigh from the canoness. She nevertheless went to see Consuelo, and found her in a burning fever, accompanied by an unconquerable lethargy. The chaplain was called, and declared that she would be very ill if the fever continued. He questioned the young baroness as to whether her neighbor had not passed a very disturbed night.

"On the contrary," replied Amelia, "I did not hear her move. I expected from her predictions and the fine stories she has been telling for some days past, to have heard the sabbat danced in her apartment. But the devil must have carried her a great ways off, or she must have had to deal with very well-educated imps, for she did not move, so far as I know, and my sleep was not disturbed a single instant."

These pleasantries appeared to the chaplain to be in very bad taste; and the canoness, whose heart made amends for the failings of her mind, considered them misplaced at the bedside of a friend who was seriously ill. Still she said nothing, attributing her niece's bitterness to a too well-founded jealousy, and asked the chaplain what medicines ought to be administered to the Porporina.

He ordered a sedative, which they could not make her swallow. Her teeth were locked, and her livid lips rejected all liquid. The chaplain pronounced this to be a bad sign. But with an apathy which was unfortunately too contagious in that house, he deferred until a second examination the judgment he should have pronounced upon the patient. "We will see; we must wait; we can decide on nothing as yet;" such were the favorite sentences of the tonsured Esculapius. "If this continues," repeated he, on quitting Consuelo's chamber, "we must consider about the propriety of calling in a physician, for I would not take upon myself the responsibility of treating an extraordinary case of nervous affection. I will pray for this young lady, and perhaps in the state of mind which she has manifested during these last few days, we must expect from God alone assistance more efficacious than that of art."

They left a maid-servant by the bedside of Consuelo, and went to prepare for breakfast. The canoness herself kneaded the sweetest cake that had ever been produced by her skillful hands. She flattered herself that Albert, after his long fast, would eat this favorite dish with pleasure. The lovely Amelia made a toilet charming in its freshness, hoping that her cousin might feel some regret at having offended and irritated her, when he saw her so bewitching. Every one thought of preparing some agreeable surprise for the young count, and they forgot the only one who ought to have interested them—the poor Consuelo—to whom they were indebted for his return, and whom Albert would be impatient to see again.

Albert soon awoke, and instead of making useless attempts to recall the occurrences of the preceding night, as was always the case after those fits of insanity which drove him to his subterranean abode, he promptly recovered the recollection of his love, and of the happiness which Consuelo had bestowed upon him. He rose quickly, dressed and perfumed himself, and ran to throw himself into the arms of his father and his aunt. The joy of those good relatives was at its height when they saw that Albert had full possession of his reason, that he had a consciousness of his long absence, and that he asked their forgiveness with an ardent tenderness, promising never again to cause them so much trouble and uneasiness. He saw the transports excited by his return to the knowledge of the reality; but he remarked the care they persisted in taking to conceal his situation from him, and he was somewhat humbled at being treated like a child, when he felt that he had again become a man. He submitted, however, to this punishment—too trifling in proportion to the evil he had caused—saying to himself that it was a salutary warning, and that Consuelo would be pleased at his comprehending and accepting it.

As soon as he was seated at table, in the midst of the caresses, the tears of happiness, and the earnest attention of his family, he anxiously looked around for her who had now become necessary to his life and his peace. He saw her place empty, and dared not ask why the Porporina did not appear. Still the canoness, who saw him turn his head and start every time the door opened, thought herself obliged to relieve him from all anxiety by saying that their young guest had slept badly, that she was now quiet, and expected to keep her bed a part of the day.

Albert knew very well that his liberator must be overpowered by fatigue, and yet terror was depicted on his countenance at this news. "My dear aunt," said he, no longer able to restrain his emotion. "I think that if the adopted daughter of Porpora were seriously indisposed, we should not all be here at table, quietly engaged in eating and talking."

"Comfort yourself, Albert," said Amelia, reddening with vexation, "Nina is busy dreaming of you, and predicting your return, which she awaits, sleeping, while we here celebrate it in joy."

Albert turned pale with indignation, and darting a withering glance at his cousin, "If any one here has slept during my absence," said he, "it is not the person whom you name, who should be reproached with it; the freshness of your cheeks, my fair cousin, testifies that you have not lost an hour of sleep during my absence, and that you have at this moment no need of repose. I thank you with all my heart, for it would be very painful for me to ask your forgiveness, as I do that of all the other members and friends of my family."

"Many thanks for the exception," returned Amelia, crimson with anger; "I will endeavor always to deserve it, by keeping my watchings and anxieties for some one who will feel obliged for them, and not turn them into a jest."

This little altercation, which was by no means a new thing between Albert and his betrothed, but which had never been so bitter on either one side or the other, threw an air of gloom and restraint over the rest of the morning, notwithstanding all the efforts which were made to divert Albert's attention.

The canoness went to see her patient several times, and found her each time more feverish and more oppressed. Amelia, whom Albert's anxiety wounded as if it had been a personal affair, went to weep in her chamber. The chaplain ventured so far as to say to the canoness that a physician must be sent for in the evening, if the fever did not abate. Count Christian kept his son near him, to distract his thoughts from an anxiety which he did not comprehend, and which he believed still to be the result of disease. But while chaining him to his side by affectionate words, the good old man could not find the least subject for conversation and intimacy with that spirit which he had never wished to sound, from the fear of being conquered and subdued by an intellect superior to his own in matters of religion. It is true that Count Christian called by the names of madness and rebellion, that bright light which pierced through the eccentricities of Albert, and the splendor of which the feeble eyes of a rigid Catholic could not endure; but he resisted the feeling which impelled him to question him seriously. Every time he had tried to correct his heresies, he had been reduced to silence by arguments full of justice and firmness. Nature had not made him eloquent. He had not that ease and animation which maintains a controversy, and still less that charlatanism of discussion which, in default of logic, imposes by an air of science and pretended certainty. Simple and modest, he allowed his lips to be closed; he reproached himself with not having turned his younger days to better account, by studying those profound arguments which Albert opposed to him; and certain that there were, in theological science, treasures of truth by means of which one more learned and skillful than himself could have crushed Albert's heresy, he clung to his shaken faith, and in order to excuse himself from acting more energetically, took refuge in his ignorance and simplicity, and thereby emboldened the rebel, and did him more harm than good.

Their conversation, interrupted twenty times by a kind of mutual fear, and twenty times resumed with effort on both sides, at last failed of itself. Old Christian fell asleep in his arm-chair, and Albert left him to go and obtain information respecting Consuelo's condition, which alarmed him the more, the more they tried to conceal it from him.

He spent more than two hours wandering about the corridors of the château, watching for the canoness and the chaplain on their passage to and fro to ask them for news. The chaplain persisted in answering him concisely and briefly; the canoness put on a smiling face as soon as she perceived him, and affected to speak of other things, in order to deceive him by an appearance of security. But Albert saw that she began to be seriously alarmed, and that she continually made more and more frequent visits to Consuelo's chamber, and he remarked that they did not fear to open and close the doors every moment, as if that sleep, which they pretended was quiet and necessary, could not be disturbed by noise and agitation. He ventured so far as to approach that chamber into which he would have given his life to penetrate for a single instant. The entrance was through another room, which was separated from the corrider by two thick doors through which neither sight nor sound could penetrate. The canoness, remarking this attempt, shut and locked both, and no longer visited the patient except by passing through Amelia's chamber, which was adjoining, and where Albert would not have sought information without extreme repugnance. At last, seeing him exasperated, and fearing the return of his disease, she ventured on a falsehood; and while asking forgiveness of God in her heart, she announced to him that the invalid was much better, and that she promised to come down and dine with the family.

Albert did not mistrust his aunt's words, whose pure lips had never sinned against truth so openly as they had just done; and he rejoined the old count, praying with fervor for the hour which was to restore to him Consuelo and happiness.

But the hour struck in vain. Consuelo did not appear. The canoness, making a rapid progress in the art of lying, told him that she had risen, but that she found herself still somewhat weak, and preferred dining in her apartment. She even pretended to send up choice portions of the most delicate dishes. These artifices triumphed over Albert's terror. Although he experienced an overpowering sadness, and as it were a presentiment of some misfortune, he submitted, and made great efforts to appear calm.

In the evening, Wenceslawa came with an air of satisfaction which was hardly at all assumed to say that the Porporina was better; that her skin was no longer burning; that her pulse was rather weak than full, and that she would certainly pass an excellent night. "Why then am I frozen with terror, notwithstanding these good tidings?" thought the young count, as he took leave of his relatives at the accustomed hour.

The fact was that the good canoness, who, notwithstanding her emaciation and deformity, had never been ill in her life, understood nothing of the maladies of others. She saw Consuelo pass from a fiery redness to a livid paleness, her feverish blood congeal in her arteries, and her chest, too much oppressed to be raised under the effort of respiration, appear calm and motionless. For an instant she thought her relieved, and had announced this news with a childlike confidence. But the chaplain, who was rather better informed, saw plainly that this apparent repose was the forerunner of a violent crisis. As soon as Albert had retired, he gave the canoness notice that the hour had come to send for a physician. Unfortunately the city was far distant, the night dark, the roads detestable, and Hans very slow, notwithstanding his zeal. The storm rose, the rain fell in torrents. The old horse which carried the aged servant stumbled twenty times, and finished by losing himself in the woods with his terrified rider, who took every hill for the Schreckenstein, and every flash of lightning for the flaming flight of an evil spirit. It was not till broad daylight that Hans again found the road. With the speediest trot into which he could urge his steed, he approached the town, where he found the physician sound asleep; the latter was awakened, dressed himself slowly, and at last set out. Four and twenty hours had been lost in deciding upon and effecting this step.

Albert tried in vain to sleep. A burning anxiety and the fearful noises of the storm kept him awake all night. He dare not come down, fearing again to scandalize his aunt, who had lectured him in the morning on the impropriety of his continual presence near the apartment of the two young ladies. He left his door open, and heard frequent steps in the lower story. He ran to the staircase; but seeing no one, and hearing nothing more, he tried to take courage and to place to the account of the wind and the rain, the deceitful noises which had terrified him. Since Consuelo had requested it, he nursed his reason and his moral health with patience and firmness. He repelled his agitations and fears, and strove to raise himself above his love by the strength of that love itself. But suddenly, in the midst of the rattling of the thunder and the creaking of the old timbers of the château, which groaned under the force of the hurricane, a long, heart-rending cry ascended even to him, and pierced his bosom like the stroke of a poniard. Albert, who had thrown himself all dressed upon his bed with the resolution of going to sleep, bounds up, rushes forward, clears the staircase with the speed of lightning, and knocks at Consuelo's door. Silence once more reigned. No one came to open it. Albert thought he had dreamed again; but a second cry, more dreadful, more piercing than the first, rent his heart. He hesitates no longer, rushes down a dark corridor, reaches the door of Amelia's chamber, shakes it and announces himself by name. He hears a bolt shot, and Amelia's voice imperiously orders him to begone. Still the cries and shrieks redouble. It is the voice of Consuelo, who is suffering intolerable agony. He hears his own name breathed with despair by those adored lips. He pushes the door with rage, makes latch and lock fly, and thrusting aside Amelia, who plays the part of outraged modesty on being surprised in a damask dressing-gown and lace cap, pushes her back upon her sofa, and rushes into Consuelo's apartment, pale as a specter, his hair erect with terror!