CHAPTER XLIX

CONSUELO, a prey to violent delirium, was struggling in the arms of two of the most vigorous maid-servants of the house, who could hardly prevent her from throwing herself out of bed. Haunted, as happens in certain cases of brain fever, by phantoms, the unhappy girl endeavored to fly from the visions by which she was assailed, and imagined she saw, in the persons who endeavored to restrain and relieve her, savage enemies or monsters bent upon her destruction. The terrified chaplain, who every moment feared to see her sink under her sufferings, was already repeating by her side the prayers for the departing, but she took him for Zdenko chanting his mysterious psalms, while he built up the wall which was to inclose her. The trembling canoness, who joined her feeble efforts with those of the other women to hold her in bed, seemed to her the phantom of the two Wandas, the sister of Ziska and the mother of Albert, appearing by turns in the grotto of the recluse and reproaching her with usurping their rights and invading their domain. Her delirious exclamations, her shrieks, and her prayers, incomprehensible to those about her, had all a direct relation to the thoughts and objects which had so violently agitated and affected her the night before. She heard the roaring of the torrent, and imitated with her arms the motion of swimming. She shook her dark, disheveled tresses over her shoulders, and imagined she saw floods of foam falling about her. She continually saw Zdenko behind her, engaged in opening the sluice, or before her, making frantic efforts to close the path. She talked of nothing but water and rocks, with a continued throng of images which caused the chaplain to shake his head and say: "What a long and painful dream! I cannot conceive why her mind should have been so much occupied of late with that cistern; it was doubtless a commencement of fever, and you see that in her delirium she always recurs to it.

Just as Albert entered her room, aghast, Consuelo, exhausted by fatigue, was uttering only inarticulate sounds terminating at intervals in wild shrieks. The frightful adventures she had undergone, being no longer restrained by the power of her will, recurred to her mind with frightful intensity. In her delirium she called on Albert with a voice so full and so vibrating that it seemed to shake the whole house to its foundations; then her cries died away in long-drawn sobs which seemed to suffocate her, although her haggard eyes were dry and absolutely blazing with fever.

"I am here! I am here!" cried Albert, rushing toward the bed. Consuelo heard him, recovered all her energy, and imagining that he fled before her, disengaged herself from the hands that held her, with that rapidity of movement and muscular force which the delirium of fever gives to the weakest beings. She bounded into the middle of the room, her hair disheveled, her feet bare, her form wrapped in a thin white night-dress, which gave her the appearance of a specter escaped from the tomb; and just as they thought to seize her again, she leaped with the agility of a wild-cat upon the spinet which was before her, reached the window, which she took for the opening of the fatal cistern, placed one foot upon it, extended her arms, and again calling on the name of Albert, in accents which floated out on the dark and stormy night, was about to dash herself down, when Albert, even more strong and agile than she, encircled her in his arms, and carried her back to her bed. She did not recognize him, but she made no resistance, and ceased to utter his name. Albert lavished upon her in Spanish the tenderest names and the most fervent prayers. She heard him with her eyes fixed, and without seeing or answering him; but suddenly rising and throwing herself on her knees in the bed, she began to sing a stanza of Handel's Te Deum, which she had recently read and admired. Never had her voice possessed more expression and brilliancy; never had she been more beautiful than in that ecstatic attitude, her hair flowing, her cheeks lighted up with the fire of fever, and her eyes seeming to pierce the heavens opened for them alone. The canoness was so much moved that she knelt at the foot of the bed and burst into tears; and the chaplain, notwithstanding his want of sympathy, bent his head and felt penetrated with a sentiment of pious respect. Hardly had Consuelo finished the stanza, when she uttered a deep sigh, and a holy rapture shone in her countenance. "I am saved!" cried she, and she fell backward, pale and cold as marble, her eyes still open, but fixed and motionless, her lips blue and her arms rigid. A momentary silence and stupor succeeded to this scene. Amelia, who, erect and motionless at the door of her chamber, had witnessed the frightful spectacle without daring to move a step, fainted away with terror. The canoness and the two women ran to help her. Consuelo remained pale and motionless, resting upon Albert's arm, who had let his head fall upon the bosom of the dying girl, and appeared scarcely more alive than herself. The canoness had no sooner seen Amelia laid upon her bed, than she returned to the threshold of Consuelo's chamber. "Well, Mr. Chaplain?" said she, dejectedly.

"Madam, it is death!" replied the chaplain, in a hollow voice, letting fall Consuelo's arm, the pulse of which he had been examining attentively.

"No, it is not death! no! a thousand times no!" cried Albert, raising himself impetuously. "I have consulted her heart better than you have consulted her arm. It still beats; she breathes—she lives. Oh! she will live! It is not thus, it is not now, that her life is to end. Who is bold and rash enough to believe that God had decreed her death? Now is the time to apply the necessary remedies. Chaplain, give me your box of medicines. I know what is required, and you do not. Wretch that you are, obey me! You have not assisted her; you might have prevented this horrible crisis, you did not do it; you have concealed her illness from me; you have all deceived me. Did you wish to destroy her? Your cowardly prudence, your hideous apathy, have tied your tongue and your hands! Give me your box, I say, and let me act."

And as the chaplain hesitated to trust him with medicines, which in the hand of an excited and half frantic man might become poisons, he wrested it from him violently. Deaf to the observations of his aunt, he selected and himself poured out doses of the most powerful and active medicines. Albert was more learned on many subjects than they supposed, and had practiced upon himself, at a period of his life when he had studied carefully the frequent disorders which affected his brain, and he knew the effects of the most energetic stimulants. Actuated by a prompt judgment, inspired by a courageous and resolute zeal, he administered a dose which the chaplain would never have dared to recommend. He succeeded, with incredible patience and gentleness, in unclosing the teeth of the sufferer, and making her swallow some drops of this powerful remedy. At the end of an hour, during which he several times repeated the dose, Consuelo breathed freely; her hands had recovered their warmth, and her features their elasticity. She neither heard nor felt any thing yet; but her prostration seemed gradually to partake more of the nature of sleep, and a slight color returned to her lips. The physician arrived, and seeing that the case was a serious one, declared that he had been called very late, and that he would not be answerable for the result. The patient ought to have been bled the day before; now the crisis was no longer favorable. Bleeding would certainly bring back the paroxysm. That was embarrassing.

"It will bring it back," said Albert; "and yet she must be bled."

The German physician, a heavy, self-conceited personage, accustomed, in his country practice, where he had no competitor, to be listened to as an oracle, scowlingly raised his heavy eyes toward the person who thus presumed to cut the question short.

"I tell you she must be bled," resumed Albert, firmly. "With or without bleeding the crisis will return."

"Excuse me;" said Doctor Wetzelius; "that is not so certain as you seem to think." And he smiled in a disdainful and sarcastic manner.

"If the crisis do not return, all is lost," repeated Albert; "and you ought to know it. This stupor leads directly to suffusion of the brain, to paralysis and death. Your duty is to arrest the malady, to restore its intensity in order to combat it, and in the end to overcome it, If it be not so, why have you come here? Prayers and burials do not belong to you. Bleed her, or I will."

The doctor well knew that Albert reasoned justly, and he had from the first the intention of bleeding; but it was not expedient for a man of his importance to determine and execute so speedily. That would have led people to conclude that the case was a simple one and the treatment easy, and our German was therefore accustomed, on the pretense of serious difficulties and varying symptoms, to prolong his diagnosis, in order to secure in the end for his professional skill a fresh triumph as if by a sudden flash of genius, and to hear himself thus flattered, as he had been a thousand times before: "The malady was so far advanced, so dangerous, that Doctor Wetzelius himself did not know what to determine; no other than he would have seized the moment and divined the remedy. He is very prudent, very learned, very firm. He has not his equal, even in Vienna."

"If you are a physician, and have authority here," said he, when he saw himself contradicted and put to the wall by Albert's impatience, "I do not see why I should have been called in, and I shall therefore leave the room."

"If you do not wish to decide at the proper time, you may retire," said Albert.

Doctor Wetzelius, deeply wounded at having been associated with one of the fraternity who treated him with so little deference, rose and passed into Amelia's room to attend to the nerves of that young lady, who impatiently called him, and to take leave of the canoness; but the latter prevented his sudden retreat.

"Alas, my dear doctor," said she, "you cannot abandon us in such a situation. See what heavy responsibility weighs on us. My nephew has offended you, but you should not resent so seriously the hastiness of a young man who is so little master of himself."

"Was that Count Albert?" asked the doctor, amazed. "I should never have recognized him. He is so much altered!"

"Without doubt, the ten years which have elapsed since you saw him have made a great change in him."

"I thought him completely cured," said the doctor, maliciously; "for I have not been sent for once since his return."

"Ah! my dear doctor, you are aware that Albert never willingly submitted to the decisions of science."

"And now he appears to be a physician himself!"

"He has a slight knowledge of all sciences, but carries into all his uncontrollable impatience. The frightful state is which he has just seen this young girl has agitated him terribly, otherwise you would have seen him more polite, more calm, and grateful to you for the care you bestowed on him in his infancy."

"I think he requires care more than ever," replied the doctor, who, in spite of his respect for the Rudolstadt family, preferred afflicting the canoness by this harsh observation, to stooping from his professional position, and giving up the petty revenge of treating Albert as a madman.

The canoness suffered the more from this cruelty, that the exasperation of the doctor might lead him to reveal the condition of her nephew, which she took such pains to conceal. She therefore laid aside her dignity for the moment to disarm his resentment, and deferentially inquired what he thought of the bleeding so much insisted on by Albert.

"I think it is absurd at present," said the doctor, who wished to maintain the initiative, and allow the decision to come perfectly free from his respected lips. "I shall wait an hour or two; and if the right moment should arrive sooner than I expect, I shall act; but in the present crisis, the state of the pulse does not warrant me taking any decisive step."

"Then you will remain with us? Bless you, excellent doctor!"

"When I am now aware that my opponent is the young count," replied the doctor, smiling with a patronizing and compassionate air, "I shall not be astonished at any thing, and shall allow him to talk as he pleases."

And he was turning to re-enter Consuelo's apartment, the door of which the chaplain had closed to prevent Albert hearing this colloquy, when the chaplain himself, pale and bewildered, left the sick girl's couch, and came to seek the physician.

"In the name of Heaven! doctor," he exclaimed, "come and use your authority, for mine is despised, as the voice of God himself would be I believe, by Count Albert. He persists in bleeding the dying girl, contrary to your express prohibition. I know not by what force or stratagem we shall prevent him. He will maim her, if he do not kill her on the spot, by some untimely blunder."

"So, so," muttered the doctor, in a sulky tone, as he stalked leisurely toward the door, with the conceited and insulting air of a man devoid of natural feeling, "we shall see fine doings if I fail in diverting his attention in some way."

But when they approached the bed, they found Albert with his reddened lancet between his teeth; with one hand he supported Consuelo's arm, while with the other he held the basin. The vein was open, and dark-colored blood flowed in an abundant stream.

The chaplain began to murmur, to exclaim, and to take Heaven to witness. The doctor endeavored to jest a little to distract Albert's thoughts, conceiving he might take his own time to close the vein, were it only to open it a moment after, that his caprice and vanity might thus enjoy all the credit of success. But Albert kept them all at a distance by a mere glance; and as soon as he had drawn a sufficient quantity of blood, he applied the necessary bandages, with the dexterity of an experienced operator. He then gently replaced Consuelo's arm by her side, handing the canoness a vial to hold to her nostrils, and called the chaplain and the doctor into Amelia's chamber.

"Gentlemen," said he, "you can now be of no further use. Indecision and prejudice united paralyze your zeal and your knowledge. I here declare that I take all the responsibility on myself, and that I will not be either opposed or molested in so serious a task. I beg therefore that the chaplain may recite his prayers and the doctor administer his potions to my cousin. I shall suffer no prognostics, nor sentences of death around the bed of one who will soon regain her consciousness. Let this be settled. If in this instance I offend a learned man—if I am guilty of culpable conduct toward a friend—I shall ask pardon when I can once more think of myself."

After having thus spoken in a tone, the serious and studied politeness of which was in strong contrast with the coldness and formality of his words, Albert re-entered Consuelo's apartment, closed the door, put the key in his pocket, and said to the canoness: "No one shall either enter or leave this room without my permission."