CHAPTER LVI

ALBERT at first played several of those ancient canticles whose authors are now either unknown or forgotten in Bohemia, but of which Zdenko had preserved the precious tradition, and the text of which the count had found by dint of study and meditation. He was so imbued with the spirit of these compositions, barbarous at the first glance, but profoundly touching and truly beautiful to an enlightened and serious taste, and had made himself so familiar with them, as to be able to improvise on them at length, mingling with them his own ideas, then resuming and developing the original idea, and again giving way to his own inspiration, all without changing the original austere and striking character of these ancient productions by his ingenious and learned interpretation. Consuelo had determined to listen to and retain these precious specimens of the popular genius of ancient Bohemia; but all her endeavors soon became impossible, as much from her musing mood as the vague impression which the music itself produced.

There is a species of music which maybe termed natural, because it is not the production of science and reflection, but rather of an inspiration which escapes from the trammels of rules and conventions. Such is popular music, that of the peasants in particular. What glorious poetry appears, lives, and dies, as it were, among them, without ever having been correctly noted down, or appearing in any regular form! The unknown artist, who improvises his rustic ballad while he tends his flocks or drives the plow—and such exist even in the most prosaic countries—can rarely be induced to give a form to his fugitive ideas. He communicates it to others, children of nature like himself, and they chant it from hamlet to hamlet, from hut to hut, each one according to his taste. It is for this reason that these songs and pastoral romances, so lively and simple, or so tender in sentiment, are for the most part lost, and have never lasted more than one century. Educated musicians will not trouble themselves to collect them. The most part despise them, for want of an intelligence and sentiment sufficiently elevated to comprehend them; others are turned aside by the difficulties they encounter in their search for the true and real version, with which perhaps the author himself was unacquainted, and which certainly was not acknowledged as an invariable type by its numerous interpreters. Some have changed it through ignorance; others have developed, modified, or embellished it by their superior taste and intelligence, because cultivation has not taught them to repress their natural impulses. They do not know that they have transformed the primitive work, and their candid hearers are no more aware of it than themselves. The peasant neither examines nor compares. When Heaven has made him a musician, he sings after the fashion of the birds, the nightingale especially, whose improvisation is endless, though the elements of her song be the same. Moreover, the genius of the people is unbounded. It is needless to register its productions, which, like those of the earth they cultivate, are unceasing; it creates every hour, like nature, which inspires it.5

Consuelo had all the candor, poetry, and sensibility in her composition which are requisite to comprehend and love popular music. In this she proved that she was a great artist, and that the learned theories which she studied had in no respect impaired the freshness and sweetness which are the treasures of inspiration and the youth of the soul. She had sometimes whispered to Anzoleto, so that Porpora could not hear, that she loved several of the barcaroles sung by the fishermen of the Adriatic, better than all the science of Padre Martini and Maestro Durante. Her mother's songs and boleros were a source of poetic life from which she never wearied in drawing inspiration. What impression then must the musical genius of the Bohemians—that pastoral, warlike, fanatic people, grave and mild in the midst of the most potent elements of activity—have produced upon her! Such characteristics were at once striking and new to her. Albert performed this music with rare perception of the national spirit, and of the pious and energetic feelings in which it originated. He combined in his improvisation the profound melancholy and heart-rending regret with which slavery had imbued his soul and that of his people; and this mingling of sorrow and bravery, of exultation and depression, these hymns of gratitude united with cries of distress, pictured in the deepest and most lively colors the sorrows of Bohemia and of Albert.

It has been justly said, that the aim of music is to awaken feeling. No other art so reveals the sublime emotions of the human soul; no art so depicts the glories of nature, the delights of contemplation, the character of nations, the whirl of passion, and the cry of suffering. Hope, fear, regret, despair, devotion, enthusiasm, faith, doubt, glory, peace—all these, and more, music gives us, and takes away from us again, according to its genius and our own capacity. It presents things in an entirely new and original aspect, and without being guilty of the puerilities of mere sound, and the imitation of external noises, it suffers us to perceive, through a dreamy haze which enhances and ennobles them, the exterior objects to which it transports our imagination. Certain anthems will evoke the gigantic phantoms of ancient cathedrals, allow us to penetrate into the secret thoughts of their constructors, and of those who, kneeling within their holy precincts, utter their hymns of praise to God. Those who are able to express simply and powerfully the music of different nations, and know how to listen to it as it deserves, need not to make a tour of the world in order to behold different nations, to visit their monuments, to read their books, or to traverse their plains, their mountains, their gardens, and their wildernesses. A Jewish air at once transports us into the synagogue; a pibroch conveys us to the Highlands of Scotland; while all Spain is revealed to us by a melody of that fair land. Thus have I been many a time in Poland, Germany, Naples, Ireland, India; and thus have I come to be better acquainted with the inhabitants of these countries than if I had known them for years. It required but an instant to transport me there and make me a sharer in all their thoughts and emotions. I identified myself with every phase of their existence by studying their music and making it my own.

Consuelo gradually ceased to hear Albert's violin. Her soul was rapt, and her senses, closed against all outward objects, awoke in another world, to traverse unknown regions inhabited by a new race of beings. She beheld, amidst a strange chaos at once horrible and magnificent, the spectral form of the heroes of old Bohemia; she heard the mournful clang of bells, while the formidable Taborites descended from their fortified mounts, lean, half-clad, bloody and ferocious. Then she beheld the angels of death assembled in the clouds, the cup and sword in their hands. Hovering in a compact troop over the heads of the prevaricating pontiffs, she saw them pour out upon the accused earth the vial of divine wrath. She fancied she heard the rushing of their wings, and the dropping blood which extinguished the conflagration lighted by their fury. Sometimes it was a night of terror and gloom, wherein she heard the sobs and groans of the dying on the field of battle. Sometimes it was a glowing day, of which she could hardly bear the splendor, in which she saw the thundering chariot of the Terrible Blind Man, with his helmet and his rusty cuirass, and the gore-stained bandage which covered his eyes. Temples opened of themselves as he approached; monks fled into the bosom of the earth, carrying away their relics and their treasures in a corner of their robes. Then the conquerors brought feeble old men, mendicants covered with sores like Lazarus; madmen who ran singing and laughing like Zdenko; executioners stained with blood, little children with pure hands and angel looks, amazons carrying torches and bundles of pikes, and seated them round a table, while an angel radiant with beauty, like those which Albert Durer has introduced into his apocalyptic compositions, presented to their greedy lips the wooden cup, the chalice of forgiveness, of restoration, and of sacred equality. This angel re-appeared in all the visions that floated around Consuelo. She saw him, the beautiful one, the sorrowful, the immortal, proudest among the proud. He bore along with him his broken chains; and his torn pinions dragging on the ground betrayed tokens of violence and captivity. He smiled compassionately on the men of crime, and pressed the little children to his bosom.

Excited, fascinated, she darted toward him with open arms while her knees bent under her. Albert let fall his violin, which gave out a plaintive sound as it fell, and received the young girl in his arms while he uttered a cry of surprise and transport. It was he whom Consuelo had listened to and looked at, while dreaming of the rebellious angel—his form, his image which had attracted and subdued her—it was against his heart that she had come to rest her own, exclaiming in a choking voice—"Thine! thine! Angel of Grief, thine and God's forever!"

But hardly had Albert's lips touched hers, than a deadly chill and scorching pain ran through limb and brain. The illusion, so roughly dissipated, inflicted so violent a shock upon her system that she felt as if about to expire, and extricating herself from the arms of the count, she fell against the bones of the altar, which gave way with a frightful crash. Seeing herself covered with these dread remains, and in the arms of Albert, who gazed on her with surprise and alarm, she experienced such dreadful anguish and terror that, hiding her face in her disheveled hair, she exclaimed with sobs: "Away! away! in the name of Heaven—light! air! O God, rescue me from this sepulcher, and restore me to the light of the sun!"

Albert, seeing her pale and delirious, darted toward her, and would have lifted her in his arms to extricate her from the cavern. But in her consternation she understood him not, and, abruptly rising, she began to fly recklessly toward the recesses of the cavern, without giving any heed to the obstacles by which she was beset, and which in many places presented imminent danger.

"In the name of God," said Albert, "not that way! Death is in your path! Wait for me!"

But his cries only served to augment Consuelo's terror. She bounded twice over the brook with the lightness of a roe, and without knowing what she did. At last, in a gloomy recess planted with cypress, she dashed against a sort of mound, and fell with her hands before her on earth freshly turned up.

This shock made such an impression upon her that a kind of stupor succeeded to her terror. Suffocated, breathless, and not well comprehending what she felt, she suffered the count to approach. He had hastened after her, and had had the presence of mind in passing to seize one of the torches from the rocks, in order to light her along the windings of the stream in case he should not overtake her before she reached a spot which he knew to be deep, and toward which she appeared to direct her course. The poor young man was so overwhelmed by such sudden and contrary emotions, that he dared not speak to her, nor even offer her his hand. She was seated on the heap of earth which had caused her to stumble, and dared not utter a word, but confused, and with downcast eyes, she gazed mechanically upon the ground. Suddenly she perceived that this mound had the form and appearance of a tomb, and that she was really seated on a recently made grave, over which were strewed branches of cypress and withered flowers. She rose hastily, and with fresh terror which she could not conquer, exclaimed, "Oh, Albert, whom have you buried here?"

"I buried here what was dearest to me in the world before I knew you," replied Albert, with the most painful emotion. "If I have committed an act of sacrilege during my delirium, and under the idea of fulfilling a sacred duty, God will, I trust, pardon me. I shall tell you another time what soul inhabited the body which rests here. At present you are too much agitated, and require the fresh air. Come, Consuelo, let us leave this place, where you made me in one moment the happiest and most miserable of men."

"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed, "let us go hence. I know not what vapors are rising from the earth, but I feel as if I were about to die, and as if my reason were deserting me."

They left the cavern together without uttering another word. Albert went first, stopping and holding down his torch before each stone, so that his companion might see and shun it. When he was about to open the door of the cell, a recollection occurred to Consuelo, doubtless in consequence of her artistic turn of thought, though otherwise seemingly out of place.

"Albert," said she, "you have forgotten your violin beside the spring. This admirable instrument, which caused me emotions hitherto unknown, I could not consent to abandon to certain destruction in this damp place."

Albert made a gesture indicating the little value he now attached to any thing beside Consuelo. But she insisted. "It has caused me much pain," said she, "nevertheless——"

"If it has caused you only pain, let it be destroyed," said he, with bitterness. "I never wish to touch it again during my life. Oh! I have been too late in destroying it."

"It would be false were I to say so," replied Consuelo, whose respect for the musical genius of the count began to revive. "I was too much agitated, that is all, and my delight changed into anguish. Seek it, my friend; I should wish to put it in its case until I have courage to place it in your hands and listen to it again."

Consuelo was affected by the look of satisfaction which the count gave her as he re-entered the grotto in order to obey her. She remained alone for a few moments, and reproached herself for her foolish fears and suspicions. She remembered, trembling and blushing as she did so, the delirium which had cast her into his arms; but she could not avoid admiring the respect and forbearance of this man, who adored her, and yet who did not take advantage of the opportunity to speak of his love. His sad and languid demeanor plainly indicted that he hoped nothing either from the present or from the future. She acknowledged his delicacy, and determined to soften by sweetest words their mutual farewell on leaving the cavern.

But the remembrance of Zdenko was fated to pursue her like a vengeful shadow, and force her to accuse Albert in spite of herself. On approaching the door, her eyes lighted on an inscription in Bohemian which she could easily decipher, since she knew it by heart. Some hand, which could be no other than Zdenko's, had traced it with chalk on the dark deep door: "May he whom they have wronged——." The rest was unintelligible to Consuelo, but the alteration of the last word caused her great uneasiness. Albert returned, grasping his violin, but she had neither courage nor presence of mind to assist him as she had promised. She was impatient to quit the cavern. When he turned the key in the lock, she could not avoid placing her finger on the mysterious word, and looking interrogatively at her host.

"That means," said Albert, with an appearance of tranquility, "may the acknowledged angel, the friend of the unhappy——"

"Yes, I know that; and what more?"

"May he pardon thee!"

"And why pardon?" she replied, turning pale.

"If grief be pardonable," said the count, with a melancholy air, "I have a long prayer to make."

They entered the gallery, and did not break silence until they reached the Monk's Cave. But when the light of day shed its pale reflection through the foliage on the count's features, Consuelo observed the silent tears flow gently down his cheeks. She was affected, yet when he approached with a timid air to carry her to the entrance, she preferred wetting her feet rather than permit him to lift her in his arms. She alleged his fatigue and exhaustion as a pretext for refusing, and already her slippers were moistened, when Albert exclaimed, extinguishing his torch:

"Farewell, then, Consuelo! I see your aversion, and I must return to eternal night, like a specter evoked for a moment from the tomb, only to inspire you with fear."

"No! your life belongs to me," exclaimed Consuelo, turning and stopping him; "you made an oath never to enter this cavern without me, and you have no right to withdraw it."

"And why do you wish to impose the burthen of life on a phantom? A recluse is but the shadow of a man, and he who is not loved, is alone, everywhere and with every one."

"Albert! Albert! you rend my heart! Come, take me away. In the light of day I shall perhaps see more clearly into my own destiny."