Consuelo saw no more. At the moment when the candidate, with an uplifted arm, and in a kind of delirium, went towards a low door, the two guards who had not loosed Consuelo, now bore her rapidly away from so terrible a spectacle, and placing the hood over her head, took her through a multitude of windings and detours, to a place where all was silent as possible. There she was restored to light, and she saw herself in the octagonal room where she had overheard the conversation of Trenck and Albert. Every opening now was carefully veiled and shut; the walls and floor were hung with black, and tapers burned in a fashion and arrangement different from that in the chapel. An altar like Mount Calvary, surmounted with three crosses, marked the great fireplace. A tomb on which was placed a hammer and nails, a lance and crown of thorns, was in the centre of the room. Persons clad in black and in masks, knelt or sat on a carpet covered with silver tears. They neither wept nor sighed. Their attitude was that of austere meditation, or mute and silent grief.
The guides of Consuelo made her come to the very side of the coffin, and the men who guarded it having risen and stood at the foot, one of them said—
"Consuelo, you are come to witness the ceremony of a masonic initiation. You have seen an unknown worship, mysterious emblems, funereal images, initiating pontiffs, and a coffin. What do you learn from this scene—from the terrible tests to which the candidate has been subjected, from what has been said to him, and from the manifestations of respect and love around an illustrious tomb?"
"I do not know whether I understood correctly or not," said Consuelo. "This scene troubled me and seemed barbarous. I pitied the recipient, whose courage and virtue were subjected to practical proofs, as if physical courage was a guarantee for moral fortitude. I condemn what I have seen, and deplore the cruel sports of dark fanaticism, or the puerile experiences of an idolatrous creed. I heard obscure enigmas proposed, and the explanations given to the candidate seemed gathered from a gross or distrustful catechism. Yet this bloody tomb, this immolated victim—this ancient myth of Hiram, the divine architect, who was assassinated by his envious and covetous workmen—this sacred word, lost for centuries, and promised to the candidate as the magic key to open the temple to him—all this seems a symbol without grandeur and interest. Why is the fable so badly constructed and so doubtful in its application?"
"What mean you by that? Have you heard the story you speak of, as a fable?"
"I have heard it—long before I read the books I was directed to study during my seclusion—in this manner. Hiram, master-workman of Solomon's Temple, divided his workmen into classes. They had different duties and rewards. Three of the lower grade resolved to obtain the reward reserved to the higher class, and to wrest from Hiram the pass-word, the secret sign which enabled him to distinguish master-workmen from journeymen at pay-day. They watched for him while in the temple alone: and each posting himself at an outlet of the holy place, menaced, struck, and cruelly murdered him, without having been able to discover the sign which was to make them equal to him and his associates—the faithful adepts of the Temple. The friends of Hiram wept over his unhappy lot, and paid almost divine honors to his memory."
"And now, how do you explain that myth?"
"I thought of it before I came hither, and I understand it thus:—Hiram represents the cold intelligence and governmental skill of the old societies, the basis of which were the inequalities of condition and the influence of caste. This Egyptian fable suited the mysterious religion of the Hierophants well enough. The three ambitious men were Indignation, Revolt, and Vengeance. These are, probably, the three inferior grades of the sacerdotal order, who attempted to assume their rights by violence. The murder of Hiram conveys the idea of Despotism powerless and impotent. He died bearing in his breast the secret of subduing man by blindness and superstition."
"Is this the way you really interpret this myth?"
"I have learned from your books, that this was brought from the East by the Templars, and that they used it in their initiations. They must therefore have interpreted it nearly thus. But when they baptised Hiram, Theocracy—and the assassins, Impiety, Anarchy, and Ferocity—the Templars who wished to subject society to a kind of monastic despotism, deplored over Impotence, as represented by the murder of Hiram. The word of their empire—which was lost, and has since been found—was that ofassociation, or cunning, like the ancient city or temple of Osiris. For that reason I am surprised at yet seeing this fable used in your initiations to the work of universal deliverance. I should consider it as only a test of mind and courage."
"Well, we, who did not invent the form of masonry, and who really use them as mere ordeals—we, who are more than masters and companions in this symbolical science, since, having passed through all the masonic grades, we have reached the point where we are no longer masons, as the vulgar understand the order—we adjure you to explain the myth of Hiram, as you understand it, that in relation to your zeal and intellect we may form an opinion which will either stop you here at the door of the true temple, or which will open the door of the sanctuary to you."
"You ask me forHiram's word, the last word. That will not open the gates of the temple to me, for its translation is Tyranny and Falsehood. But I know the true words, the names of the three gates of the divine edifice, through which Hiram's murderers entered, for the purpose of forcing the chief to bury himself beneath the wrecks of his own work—they areLiberty, Fraternity, Equality."
"Consuelo, your interpretation, whether correct or not, reveals to us all your heart. You are, then, excused from the necessity of ever kneeling before Hiram's tomb; neither will you pass through the grade where the neophyte prostrates himself before the tomb of Jacques Molay, the Grand Master and victim of the temple, of the military works and prelate soldiers of the middle ages. You will triumph in this second test as you did in the first. You will discern the false traces of fanatical barbarity, which are now needed as a guarantee to minds which are imbued with the principles of inequality. Remember that in free-masonry, the first grades only aspire to the construction of a profane temple, an association protected by caste. You know better, and you are about to go directly to the universal temple, intended to receive all men associated in one worship and love. Here you must make your last station; you must worship Christ, and recognise him as the only true God."
"You say this to try me." said Consuelo firmly. "You have, however, deigned to open my eyes to lofty truths, by teaching me to read your secret books. Christ is a divine man, whom we revere as the greatest philosopher and saint of antiquity. We adore him as much as it is permitted us to adore the greatest of the masters and martyrs. We may well call him the saviour of men, because he taught those of his day truths they did not comprehend, but which introduced man into a new phase of light and holiness. We may kneel over his ashes to thank God for having created such a prophet—such an example. We however adore God in him, and commit no idolatry. We distinguish between the divinity of revelation and revelation itself. I consent to pay to the emblem of a punishment for ever sublime and illustrious, the homage of pious gratitude and filial enthusiasm. I do not think, however, the last word of revelation was understood and proclaimed by men in Jesus' time, for it has never yet been officially made known on earth. I expect, from the wisdom and faith of his disciples, from the continuation of his work for seventeen centuries, a more practical truth, a more complete application of holy writ to the doctrines of fraternity. I wait for the development of the gospel. I expect something more than equality before God. I wait for and expect it before men."
"Your words are bold, and your doctrines full. Have you thought of them while alone? Have you foreseen the evils your new faith has piled upon your head? Do you know that we are as one to a hundred in the most civilised countries in Europe? Do you know that at the time we live, between those who pay to Jesus, the sublime revealer, an insulting and base veneration, and those almost as numerous who deny even his mission, between these idolaters and atheists, we have no place under the sun, except amid persecutions and jests, the hatred and contempt of the human race? Do you know that in France, at the present moment, Rousseau and Voltaire are almost equally proscribed; yet one is decidedly religious and the other a skeptic? Do you know—and this is far more terrible—that while in exile they mutually proscribe each other? Do you know you are about to return to a world, where all will conspire to shake your faith and break your ideas? Know that you will have to exercise your mission amid suffering, danger, doubt, and deception?"
"I am resolved," said Consuelo, looking down, and placing her hand on her heart. "May God aid me!"
"Well, daughter," said Marcus, who yet held Consuelo's hand, "you are about to be subjected by us to moral sufferings—not to test your truth, for we are satisfied with it, but to fortify it. Not in the calm of repose—not amid the pleasures of the world, but amid grief and tears does faith expand. Have you courage to hear painful emotions, and perhaps to withstand great terror?"
"If it be needful, and if my soul profit by it, I will submit to your pleasure," said Consuelo, with some distress.
"The Invisibles at once began to move the pall and lights from the coffin, which was moved into one of the deep embrasures of the window, and several adepts with iron bars lifted up a round stone in the centre of the pavement of the hall. Consuelo then saw a circular opening large enough to permit one person to pass. The sides, which were of granite, blackened and stained by time, proved that it was as old as any portion of the architecture of the tower. Marcus then, leading Consuelo to the brink, asked her thrice, in a solemn tone, if she was bold enough to descend into the passages of the feudal tower."
"Hear me, my fathers or brothers, for I know not how to speak to you," said Consuelo.
"Call them brothers," said Marcus. "You are here among the Invisibles—your equals, if you persevere for an hour. You will now bid them adieu, to meet them at the expiration of that time, in the presence of the supreme chiefs—of those whose voice is never heard, whose face is never seen, and whom you will call fathers. They are the sovereign pontiffs, the spiritual chiefs and temporal lords of our sanctuary. We will appear before them and you with bare faces, if you have decided to rejoin us at the gate of the sanctuary, having passed that dark and terrible path opening beneath your feet, down which you must walk alone, without any guide but your courage and perseverance."
"I will do so," said the trembling neophyte, "if you desire it. But is this test, which you declare so trying, inevitable? Oh, my brothers, you certainly do not wish to sport with the reason of a woman, already too severely tried, from mere affectation and vanity. To-day you have subjected me to a long fast; and though emotion for several hours relieves us from hunger, I feel myself physically weakened. I know not whether or not I shall succumb to the labors to which you subject me. I care not, I protest to you, if my body suffers and becomes feeble; but would you not fancy mere physical weakness to be cowardice? Tell me you will pardon me for being endowed with a woman's nerve, if, when I regain my consciousness, I show that I have the heart of a man?"
"Poor child," said Marcus, "I would rather hear you own your weakness than seek to dazzle us by intemperate boldness. We will, if you choose, give you a single guide to aid and assist you in your pilgrimage. Brother," said he to Leverani, who had stood at the door during this conversation, with his eyes fixed on Consuelo, "take your sister's hand, and lead her to the general rendezvous."
"And will not you, brother," said Consuelo, "also go with me?"
"That is impossible. You can have but one guide; and the one I have pointed out is the only one I am permitted to give you?"
"I shall have courage enough," said Consuelo wrapping herself in her cloak. "I will go alone."
"Do you refuse the aid of a brother and a friend?"
"I refuse neither his sympathy nor his friendship; but I will go alone."
"Go then, my noble girl, and do not be afraid. She who descended alone the Fountain of Tears—who braved so much danger to discover the secret cavern of Schreckenstein, will be able to pass easily through the recesses of our pyramid. Go, then, as the heroes of antiquity went to seek for initiation amid sacred mysteries. Brothers, give her the cup—that precious relic a descendant of Ziska gave us, in which we consecrate the august sacrament of fraternal communion."
Leverani took from the altar a rudely carved cup of wood, and having filled it, gave it to Consuelo with a piece of bread.
"Sister," said Marcus, "not only pure and generous wine, with white bread, do we offer you to restore your power, but the body and blood of the divine man as he understood it himself; that is to say, the celestial and also earthly sign of fraternal equality. Our fathers, the martyrs of the Taborite church, fancied that the intervention of impious and sacrilegious priests were not so effective as the pure hands of a woman or a child in the consecration of the sacrament. Commune then with us here until you sit at the banquet of the temple, where the great mystery of the supper will be more explicitly revealed to you. Take this cup, and first drink of it. If, when you do so, you have faith, a few drops will be a mighty tonic to your body, and your fervent soul will support you through your trial on its wings of flame. Consuelo having first drank of the cup, returned it to Leverani, who, after tasting it, handed it around to the other brethren. Marcus having swallowed the last drops, blessed Consuelo, and requested the assembly to pray for her. He then presented the neophyte with a silver lamp, and assisted her in placing her feet on the bars of a ladder.
"I need not," said he, "tell you that no danger menaces your life; but remember that you will never reach the door of the temple if you look but once behind as you proceed. You will have several pauses to make at different places, when you must examine all that terrifies you—but do not pause long. As a door opens before you, pass it, and you will never return. This is, as you know, the rigid requirement of the old initiations. You must also, in obedience to the rules of the old rites, diligently nurse the flame of your lamp. Go, my child, and may this idea give you superhuman power, that what you now are condemned to suffer is necessary to the development of your heart and mind in virtue and true faith."
When Marcus had ceased speaking, Consuelo carefully descended the stairs. When she was at the foot, the ladder was withdrawn, and she heard the heavy stones close over the entrance above her.
At first Consuelo, having passed from a room where a hundred torches burned, to a room lighted by a solitary lamp, saw nothing but a kind of mystic light around her, which her eyes could not penetrate. Gradually, however, they became used to darkness; and as she perceived nothing between her and the walls of a room of an octagonal form, like the one she left, she ventured to examine the characters on the wall. This was a solitary and long inscription, arranged in many circular lines around the room, which had no outlet. As she saw this, Consuelo asked herself, not how she could get out of the room, but for what purpose it could have been made. Thoughts of evil which she endeavored to repress, obtruded themselves upon her mind, and they were confirmed by the inscriptions she read, as lamp in hand she slowly walked around the room.
"Look at the beauty of these walls, cut in the rock, twenty-four feet thick, and which have stood for a thousand years uninjured by war, or the efforts of time. This model of architectural masonry was built by the hand of slaves, doubtless to contain the treasures of some mighty lord. Yes, to bury in the depths of the rock, in the bowels of the earth, the treasures of hatred and vengeance. Here twenty generations of men have suffered, wept and blasphemed. Some were innocent—some were heroic—all were victims or martyrs: prisoners of war—serfs who had revolted, or who were too much crushed by taxes to be able to pay more—religious innovators, sublime heretics, unfortunate men, conquered warriors, fanatics, saints, and criminals—men educated in the ferocity of camps to rapine and war, who had in return been subjected to horrible reprisals—such are the catacombs of feudality and military or religious despotism. Such are the abodes that the powerful made for their victims, to stifle their cries, and conceal their existence from the light of day. Here there is no air to breathe, no ray of light, no stone to rest the head—nothing but an iron ring fastened in the wall to hold the chain, and keep them from selecting their resting-place on the damp and icy floor. Here air, light and food are at the disposal of the guards posted in the upper room, where they pleased to open the door for a moment and throw in a morsel of bread to hundreds of victims chained and heaped together on the day after a battle. Often they wounded or murdered each other, and often, yet more horrible, one alone remained, stifled in suffering and despair, amid the loathsome carcases of his companions, and sometimes attacked by the worms before death, and sinking in putrefaction before life had become extinct. Behold! O neophyte, the source of human grandeur, which you perhaps have looked on with envy and admiration. Crushed skulls, human bones, dried and withered tears, blood-spots, are the translations of the coats of arms, if you have such bequeathed you by nobility. This is what should be quartered on the escutcheons of the princes you have served, or aspire to serve, if you be a man of the people. Yes, this is the foundation of noble titles, of the hereditary glory and riches of the world. Thus has been built up a caste, which all other classes of men yet venerate and preserve. Thus have men contrived to elevate themselves from father to son above their fellows."
Having passed thrice around the room, and read this inscription, Consuelo, filled with grief and terror, placed the lamp on the floor, to rest herself. The lonely place was as silent as the grave, and terrible thoughts arose in her mind. Her eager fancy evoked dark visions. She thought she saw livid shadows, covered with hideous wounds, flitting around the hall, and crawling on the floor beside her. She thought she heard their painful sighs, and the rattling of their chains. She evolved the past in her mind, as she had imagined it in the middle ages, and as it continued during the religious wars. She fancied she heard, in the guard-room above, the heavy tread of iron-shod men, the rattling of their pikes, their coarse laughter, their mad songs, their threats and oaths when the victims complaints reached them and interrupted their terrible sleep; for those jailors had slept over their prison, over that unhealthy abyss, whence the miasmata of the tombs, and of hell, were exhaled.
Pale, her eyes staring, her hair erect with terror, Consuelo saw and heard nothing. When she had recalled her own existence, and strove to shake off the chill which had seized her, she saw that a stone had been removed, and that another passage was opened for her. She approached, and saw a narrow and stiff stairway, which she descended with great difficulty, and which ended in another cavern, darker and smaller than the first. When she touched the floor, which was soft, and yielded under her feet, Consuelo put down her lamp, to see if she did not sink in mud. She saw naught hut a fine dust, smaller than the finest sand, containing here and there a broken rib, a piece of a thigh bone, fragments of a skull, a jaw, with teeth yet solid and white, exhibiting youth and power crushed by a violent death. A few skeletons, almost entire, had been taken from the dust, and were placed against the wall. One had been perfectly preserved, and was chained around the waist, as if the prisoner had been condemned to die without being able to lie down. The body, instead of inclining forward, was stiffened and drawn back, with an expression of utter disdain. The ligaments of the body and limbs were ossified. The head was thrown back, and seemed to look at the roof; the teeth, contracted by a last effort, smiled terribly with some outbreak of fanaticism. Above the body the name and story of the prisoner were written, in large red letters, on the wall. He was an obscure martyr of religious persecution, and the last victim immolated in this place. At his feet knelt a skeleton; the head, detached from the vertebræ, lay on the pavement, but the stiffened arms yet embraced the knees of the martyr: this was his wife. The inscription bore, among other details, the following—
"N——died here with his wife, his three brothers, and his two children, because they would not renounce Lutheranism, and maintained, even amid tortures, a denial of the infallibility of the pope. He died erect, without being able to see his family suffering at his feet, on the ashes of his friends and fathers."
Opposite this inscription was thus written—
"Neophyte, the light earth on which you tread is twenty feet deep. It is neither sand nor clay, but the ashes of man. This was the ossuary of the castle. Here were thrown those who died in the grave above, when there was no room. It is all that remains of twenty generations of victims. Blessed and rare are the nobles who can reckon among their ancestors twenty generations of murderers and executioners!"
Consuelo was less terrified at these funereal ensignia than she had been in the jail at the phantoms of her own mind; there is something so grave and solemn in the very appearance of death, though the weakness of fear and the lacerations of pity obscure the enthusiasm and serenity of strong and believing souls. In the presence of these relics, the noble adept of Albert's religion felt respect and charity rather than terror and consternation. She knelt before the martyr's remains, and feeling her moral strength failing, cried, as she kissed the lacerated hand, "Oh, it is not the august spectacle of a glorious destruction which fills us with horror and pity, but the idea of life disputing with the torments of agony. It is the thought of what passes in these broken hearts that fills the souls of those who live with bitterness and terror. You, unfortunate victim, dead, and with your head turned to heaven, are not to be feared, for you have not failed. Your heart has exhaled itself in a transport which fills me with exultation."
Consuelo rose slowly, and with a degree of calmness unloosed the veil which covered the dead bones by her side. A narrow and low door opened before her. She took her lamp, and forbearing to look back, entered a corridor which descended rapidly. On her right and left she saw cells, the appearance of which was entirely sepulchral. These dungeons were too low for one to stand erect, and scarcely long enough for a person to sleep in them. They appeared the work of Cyclops, so massive and so strong was their masonry. They seemed to be intended for dens of wild and savage animals. Consuelo, however, would not be deceived. She had seen the arenæ veronia; she was aware that the tigers and bears kept for the amusements of the circus, for the combats of the gladiators, were a thousand times better furnished. Besides she read over the iron gates that these impenetrable dungeons were appropriated to conquered princes, to brave captains, to the prisoners who were most important from rank and intelligence. Care to prevent their escape exhibited the love and respect with which they had inspired their partisans. There had been stifled the voices of the lions whose roaring had filled the world with terror.
Their power and will had been crushed against an angle in the wall. Their herculian breasts had been burst in aspirations for air at an imperceptible window, cut through a wall twenty-four feet. Their eagle glance was exhausted in seeking for light amid darkness. There were buried alive persons whom they dared not kill by day. Illustrious men, noble hearts, there suffered from the use, and possibly the abuse, of power.
Having wandered for some time amid the dark and damp galleries, Consuelo heard a sound of running water, which reminded her of the terrible cavern of Riesenberg. She was, however, too much occupied by the misfortunes and crimes of humanity, to think of herself. She was forced for a time to pause and go around a cistern on the level of the ground, lighted by a torch she read on a sign-board these words:
"There they drowned them."
Consuelo looked down to see the interior of the well. The water of the rivulet, over which an hour before she had glided so peacefully, fell down into a frightful gulf, and whirled angrily round, as if it was anxious to take possession of a victim. The red light of the resinous torch made the water blood-colored.
At last Consuelo came to a massive door, which she sought in vain to open. She asked if, as in the initiations in the pyramids, she was about to be lifted in the air by invisible chains, while some cavern suddenly opened and put out her lamp. Another terror seized her, for as she walked down the gallery, she saw that she was not alone, though the person who accompanied her trod so lightly that she heard no noise. She fancied that she heard the rustling of a silk dress near her own, and that, when she had passed the well, the light of the torch reflected two trembling shadows on the wall instead of one. Who, then, was the terrible companion she was forbidden to look back on, under the penalty of losing the fruit of all her labors, and never being able to cross the threshold of the temple? Was it some terrible spectre, the appearance of which would have frozen her courage, and disturbed her reason? She saw his shadow no more, but she imagined she heard his respiration near her. She waited to see the terrible door reopen. The two or three minutes which elapsed during this expectation, seemed an age. The mute acophyte terrified her. She was afraid that he wished to test her by speaking, and forcing her by someruseto look back. Her heart beat violently. At last she saw that an inscription above the door was yet to be read:
"This is your last trial, and it is the most cruel. If your courage be exhausted, strike thrice on the left of the door. If not, strike thrice on the right. Remember, the glory of your initiation will be in proportion to your efforts."
Consuelo did not hesitate, but went to the right. One of the doors opened as if of itself, and she went into a vast room, lighted with many lamps. She was alone, and at first could not distinguish the strange objects around her. They were machines of wood, iron, and bronze, the use of which she knew not. Strange arms were displayed on the table, or hung on the wall. For one moment she fancied herself in some museum of weapons, for she saw muskets, cannons, culverins, and a perfect array of the weapons on which those now used are improvements. Care had been taken to collect all the instruments men use in immolating each other. When the neophyte had passed once or twice through the room, she saw others of a more refined character and some more barbarous—collars, wheels, saws, pulleys, hooks—a perfect gallery of instruments of torture—and, above all, a scroll supported by maces, hooks, dentated knives, and other torturing irons. The scroll read—
"They are all precious.—They have been used."
Consuelo felt her strength give way. A cold perspiration rolled down her hair, and her heart ceased to beat. Incapable of shaking off the feeling of horror and the terrible visions that crowded around her, she examined all that stood before her with that stupid curiosity which, when we are terrified, takes possession of us. Instead of closing her eyes, she looked at a kind of bronze bell, the cap of which was immense, and rested on a large body without limbs, yet which reached as low as the knees. It was not unlike a colossal statue, coarsely carved, intended for a tomb. Gradually, Consuelo overcame her torpor, and comprehended that the victim was to be placed beneath this bell. Its weight was so vast that it was impossible to lift it up. The internal body was so immense that motion was impossible. There was no intention of stifling the person put within, for the vizor of the helmet was open at the face, and all the circumference was pierced with little holes, in some of which stilettoes were yet pierced. By means of these cruel wounds they sought to torment the victim so as to wrest from him charges against his relations or friends, or confessions of political or religious faith.[14]On the top of the casque was carved, in the Spanish language—
"Viva la Santa Inquisicion!"
Beneath was a prayer, which seemed dictated by savage compassion, but which perhaps emanated from the hand of the poor mechanic ordered to make the instrument of torture—
"Holy mother of God, have mercy on the sinner!"
A lock of hair, torn out by torture, and which doubtless had been stained with blood, was below this inscription. It had, perhaps, come through one of the orifices which had been enlarged by the daggers. The hairs were grey.
All at once Consuelo saw nothing, and ceased to suffer. Without being informed by any sentiment of physical suffering, she was about to fall cold and stiff on the pavement, as a statue thrown from its pedestal, but, as her head was coming in contact with the infernal machine, she was caught in the arms of a man. This was Leverani.
[14]Any one may see an instrument of this kind, and also a hundred others no less ingeniously constructed, in the arsenal of Venice. Consuelo never saw it, for the interior of the prisons of the Inquisition and the PIOMBE of the ducal palace were never open to the people until the occupation of the city by troops of the French Republic.
[14]Any one may see an instrument of this kind, and also a hundred others no less ingeniously constructed, in the arsenal of Venice. Consuelo never saw it, for the interior of the prisons of the Inquisition and the PIOMBE of the ducal palace were never open to the people until the occupation of the city by troops of the French Republic.
When she revived, Consuelo sat on a purple carpet, covering steps of white marble leading into an elegant portico in the Corinthian style. Two men in masks, whom she concluded by the color of their cloaks to be Leverani and Marcus, sustained, and seemed anxious to restore her. About forty other persons cloaked and masked, the same she had seen around the image of the tomb of Christ, stood in two ranks, and chanted in chorus a solemn hymn, in an unknown language, wearing crowns of roses and palms, and green boughs. The pillars were adorned with festoons of garlands, like triumphal arches, before the closed door of the temple, and above Consuelo. The moon, brilliant and in mid-heaven, illumined the whole white facade; and outside the sanctuary, old yews, cypresses, and pines formed an immense thicket, like a sacred wood, beneath which a mysterious stream, glancing in the silver light of the moon, murmured.
"My sister," said Marcus, aiding Consuelo to rise, "you have passed every test in triumph. Blush not at having failed in a physical point of view, under the pain of grief. Your generous heart was overcome by indignation and pity, at palpable evidences of the crimes and sufferings of man. If you had reached this place unassisted, we would have had less respect for you than now, when we have brought you hither overcome and insensible. You have seen the sacred places of a lordly castle—not of one celebrated above all others by the crimes of which it has been the theatre, but like others whose ruins cover all Europe—terrible wrecks of the vast net with which feudal power enwrapped, during so many centuries, the whole civilised world, and oppressed men with the crime of its awful domination and with the horrors of civil war. These hideous abodes, these savage fortresses, have necessarily served as theatres for all the crimes humanity witnessed before it was enlightened by means of the religious wars—by the toil of sects struggling to emancipate man, and by the martyrdom of the elect to establish the idea of truth.
"Pass through Germany, France, Italy, England, Spain, and the Slavonic countries, and you will not enter a valley or ascend a mountain, without seeing above you the ruin of some imposing tower or castle, or, at least, finding in the grass beneath your feet the vestiges of some fortification. These are the bloody traces of the right of conquest of the people by the patricians. If you explore these ruins—if you look into the soil which has devoured them and which seeks constantly to make them disappear, you will find everywhere traces of what you have found here—a jail, a well for the dead, narrow and dark dungeons for prisoners of importance, a place for silent murder, and on the summit of some huge tower, or in the depth of some dungeon, stocks for rebellious serfs or mutinous soldiers, a gallows for deserters and a stake for heretics. How many have perished in boiling pitch! how many have disappeared beneath the wave! how many have been buried alive! The walls of castles, the waters of rivers and rocky caverns, could they speak, would unfold myriads of crimes. The number is too great for history to enumerate in detail.
"Not the nobles alone, not the patrician races only, have made the soil red with innocent blood. Kings and princes and priests, thrones and churches, were the great causes of the iniquities and the living sources of destruction. Persevering yet melancholy attention has collected in our manor a portion of the instruments of torture used by the strong against the weak. A description of their uses would not be credible; the virtues could scarcely comprehend them; thought refuses to register them. During many centuries these terrible apparatus were used in royal palaces, in the citadels of petty princes, but above all, in the dungeons of the Holy Office. They are yet used there, though but rarely. The Inquisition yet exists: and in France, the most civilised country of the world, the provincial parliament even now burns witches.
"Besides, is royal tyranny now overthrown? Do kings and princes no longer ravage the earth? Does not war desolate opulent cities, as well as the pauper's hut, at the merest whim of a petty prince? Serfdom yet exists in half of Europe. Are not troops yet subjected to the lash and cane? The handsomest and bravest soldiers of the world, those of Prussia, are taught their duty like animals, by beating. Are not the Russian serfs often unmercifully knouted? If the fortresses of old barons are dismantled, and turned into harmless abodes, are not those of kings yet erect? Are they not frequently places where the innocent are confined? Were not you, my sister, the purest and mildest of women, a prisoner at Spandau?
"We knew you were generous, and relied on your character of justice and charity. Seeing you destined, like many who are here, to return to the world, to approach the persons of sovereigns, as you were particularly liable to their influence, it was our duty to put you on your guard against the intoxication of that brilliant and dangerous life. It was our duty to spare you no instructions, not even that of a terrible kind. We appealed to your mind by the solitude to which we doomed you, by the books we gave you. We spoke to your heart by paternal advice, now tender, and now stern. We addressed your vision by experiences of more painful significance than those of the old mysteries. Now if you persist in receiving your initiation, you may present yourself before the incorruptible paternal judges, who now are ready to crown you here, or give you leave to quit us forever."
As he concluded, Marcus pointed to the open door of the temple, above which were written the three words—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—in letters of fire.
Consuelo was physically crushed and weakened to such a degree, that she existed in her mind alone. Standing at the base of a column, she leant on Leverani, but without seeing or thinking of him. However, she had not lost one word said by the initiator. Speechless, pale as a spectre, and with her eyes fixed, she had that wild expression which follows nervous crises. A deep enthusiasm filled her bosom, the feeble respiration of which Leverani could not distinguish. Her black eyes, which fatigue and suffering had caused to sink, glared brightly. A slight compression of her brow evinced deep resolution. Her beauty, which had always seemed gentle and soft, now appeared fearful. Leverani became as pale as the jessamine leaf which the night wind made to quiver on his mistress's brow. She arose, with more power than might have been expected; but at once her knees gave way, and she was almost borne up the steps by him, without the restraint of the arm, which had moved to the neighborhood of her heart, to which it had been pressed, disturbing the current of her thoughts for an instant. He placed between his own hand and Consuelo's, the silver cross, as a token to inform her who he was, and which, like a talisman, had given him such influence over her. Consuelo appeared neither to recognise the token, nor the hand that presented it. Her own was contracted by suffering. It was a mere mechanical pressure, as when on the brink of an abyss we seize a branch to sustain ourselves. The heart's blood did not reach her icy hand.
"Marcus," said Leverani, in a low tone, as the former passed him to knock at the door of the temple, "do not leave us; I fear the test has been too great."
"She loves you," said Marcus.
"Yes—but perhaps she will die!" said Leverani, with a shudder.
Marcus struck thrice at the door, which opened and shut as soon as he had passed in with Consuelo and Leverani. The other brethren remained on the portico, until they should be introduced for the initiation. For between the initiation and the final proofs there was always a sacred conversation between the principals and the candidates. The interior of the temple used for these initiations was magnificently adorned, and decorated between the pillars with statues of the greatest friends of humanity. That of Jesus Christ stood in the centre of the amphitheatre, between those of Pythagoras and Plato; Apollonius of Thyana was next to Saint John; Abeilard by Saint Bernard; and John Huss and Jerome of Prague, with Saint Catharine and Joan of Arc. Consuelo did not pause to attend to external objects. Wrapped in meditation, she saw with surprise the same judges who had profoundly sounded her heart. She no longer felt any trouble, but waited, with apparent calmness, for their sentence.
The eighth person, who sat below the seven judges, and who seemed always to speak for them, addressing Marcus, said—"Brother, whom bring you here? What is her name?"
"Consuelo Porporina," said Marcus.
"That is not what you are asked, my brother," said Consuelo; "do you not see me here as a bride, not as a widow? Announce the Countess Albert of Rudolstadt."
"My daughter," said the orator, "I speak to you in the name of the council. You are known no longer by that name; your marriage has been dissolved."
"By what right? by what authority?" said Consuelo quickly, with sudden emotion. "I recognise no theocratic power. You have yourself told me that you recognised no rights but those I gave you freely, and bade me submit merely to paternal authority. Such yours will not be, if it rescind my marriage without my own or my husband's consent. This right neither he nor I have given you."
"You are mistaken, daughter, for Albert has given us the right to decide on both your fate and his own. You yourself did the same, when you opened your heart, and confessed your love of another."
"I confessed nothing, and I deny the avowal you have sought to wrest from me."
"Bring in the sibyl," said the orator to Marcus.
A tall woman, dressed in white, with her face hid beneath her veil, entered and sat in the middle of the half circle formed by the judges. By her nervous tremor Consuelo recognised Wanda.
"Speak, priestess of truth," said the orator; "speak, interpreter and revealer of the greatest secrets, the most delicate movements of the heart. Is this woman the wife of Albert of Rudolstadt?"
"She is his faithful and respectable wife," said Wanda; "but you must pronounce his divorce. You see by whom she is brought hither. You see that of the children, one who holds her hand, is the man she loves, and to whom she must belong, by the imperscrutable right of love."
Consuelo turned with surprise towards Leverani, and looked at her hand, which lay passive and deathlike in his. She seemed to be under the influence of a dream, and to attempt to awaken. She loosed herself with energy from his embrace, and looking into the hollow of her hand, saw the impression of her mother's cross.
"This is, then, the man I love," said she, with a melancholy smile and holy ingenuousness. "Yes, I loved him, tenderly and sadly; yet it was a dream. I fancied Albert was no more, and you told me this man was worthy of my respect and my confidence. But I have seen Albert. I fancied that I understood from his language that he no longer wished to be my husband, and did not blame me for loving this stranger, whose words and letters filled me with enthusiastic affection. They told me, however, that Albert yet loved me, and relinquished all claim, from an exertion of love and generosity. Why did Albert fancy I would be less magnanimous than himself? What have I done that was criminal, that should induce him to think me capable of crushing his heart by arrogating purely selfish pleasure to myself? No, I will never defile myself by such a crime. If Albert deems me unworthy of him, because I have loved another—if he shrinks from effacing that love, and does not seek to inspire me with a greater, I will submit to his decree—I will accept the sentence of divorce, against which both my heart and conscience revolt; but I will never be either the wife or mistress of another. Adieu, Leverani—or whosoever you be—to whom, in a moment of mad delirium, with fills me with remorse, I confided my mother's cross. Restore me that token, that there may exist between us nothing but the memory of mutual esteem, and the feeling that, without bitterness and without regret, we have done our duty."
"We recognise no such morality, you know," said the sibyl. "We will accept no such sacrifice. We wish to consecrate and purify that love the world has profaned, the free choice of the heart, and the holy and voluntary union of beings loving each other. We have the right to instruct the conscience of our children, to redress errors, to join sympathies, and tear apart the bonds of old society. You can not determine to sacrifice yourself—you cannot stifle the love in your bosom, or deny the truth of your confession."
"What say you of liberty? what say you of love and happiness?" said Consuelo, advancing a step towards the judges, with an outbreak of enthusiasm and a sublime radiation of countenance. "Have you not subjected me to ordeals which have made my cheek pale and my heart tremble? What kind of a base senseless being do you think me? Fancy you that I am capable of seeking personal satisfaction after what I have seen, learned, and know to be the life of men in their earthly affairs? No! neither love, marriage, liberty, happiness, or glory are anything for me, if it be at the expense of the humblest of my fellows. Is it not proved that every earthly pleasure is obtained at the expense of the suffering of another? Is there not something better to do than to satisfy ourselves? Albert thinks so, and I have the right to follow his example. Let me avoid the false and criminal illusion of happiness. Give me toil, fatigue, grief, and enthusiasm. I understand no longer the existence of joy, otherwise than in suffering. I have a thirst for martyrdom, since you have exhibited to me the trophies of punishment. Shame to those who understand their duty, and who yet seek to share earthly happiness and repose. I now know my duty. Oh, Leverani! if you love me after all the ordeals I have gone through, you are mad—you are but a child, unworthy of the name of man—certainly unworthy of my sacrificing Albert's heroic love to you. And you, Albert, if you be here—if you hear me—you should not refuse to call me sister, to offer me your hand, and teach me to walk in the rude pathway that leads me to God."
The enthusiasm of Consuelo had reached the acme, and words did not suffice to express it. A kind of vertigo seized her; and, as happened to the Pythonesses, in the paroxysms of their divine crises, when they uttered cries and strange madness, she manifested her emotion in the manner which was most natural to her. She began to sing in a brilliant voice, and with an enthusiasm at least equal to that she had experienced when she sang the same air in Venice, on the first occasion of her appearance in public, when Marcello and Porpora were present.
"I cieli immensi narronoDel grande Iddio la gloria!"
This melody rushed to her lips, because it was perhaps the mostnaïveand powerful expression ever given to religious enthusiasm. Consuelo, however, was not calm enough to repress and manage her voice, and after the first two lines her intonation became a sob, and, bursting into tears, she fell on her knees.
The invisibles were electrified by her fervor, and sprang to their feet to hear this true inspiration with becoming respect. They descended from their places and approached her; while Wanda, taking her in her arms, placed her in those of Leverani, and said—"Look at him, and know that God permits you to reconcile virtue, happiness, and duty."
Consuelo for an instant was silent, as if she had been wafted to another world. At length she looked on Leverani, whose mask Marcus tore away. She uttered a piercing cry, and nearly died on his bosom as she recognised Albert. Leverani and Albert were one and the same person.
At this juncture the doors of the temple swung open with a metallic sound, and the Invisibles entered, two and two. The magic notes of the harmonica,[15]an instrument newly invented, the vibration of which was an unknown wonder to Consuelo, was heard in the air, and seemed to descend from the dome, which was open to the moon and the night wind. A shower of flowers fell slowly over the happy couple amid this solemn strain. Wanda stood by a tripod of gold, whence her right hand threw brilliant flames and clouds of perfume, while in the left she held the two ends of a chain of flowers and symbolic leaves she had cast around the two lovers. The invisible chiefs, their faces being covered with their long red drapery, with chaplets of the oak and accacia around their brows, stood up to receive the brothers as they passed by them, with a bow of veneration. The chiefs had the majesty of the old Druids, but their hands, unstained by blood, were opened to bless alone, and religious respect replaced the terror of old creeds. As the initiated appeared before the venerable tribune, they took off their masks, to salute the unknown with a bare brow. The latter were known to them only by acts of clemency and justice, paternal love and wisdom. Faithful to the religion of an oath, they did not seek to penetrate the mysterious veils. Certainly, though themselves unaware, the adepts knew these magi of a new religion, for they mingled with them in society, and, in the very bosom of their assemblies, were the best friends and confidants of the major portion of them—perhaps of each individual. In the practice of their religion the priest was always veiled, like the oracle of ancient days.
Happy childhood of innocent creeds, quasi fabulous dawn of sacred conspiracies, enwrapped in the night of ages, and decked with poetical uncertainty! though the space of scarcely one century separates us from these Invisibles, their existence to the historian is enigmatical. Thirty years after theilluminatiassumed those powers of which the vulgar were ignorant, and finding their resources in the inventive genius of the chiefs, and in the tradition of the secret societies of mystic Germany, terrified the world by the most formidable and vast political conspiracy that ever existed. For a moment it shook the throne of every dynasty, and finally succumbed, bequeathing to the French revolution an electric current of sublime enthusiasm, ardent faith, and terrible fanaticism. Half a century before those days marked out by fate, and while the gallant monarchy of Louis XV., the philosophical despotism of Frederick II., the skeptic and mocking loyalty of Voltaire, the ambition and diplomacy of Maria Theresa, and the heretical toleration of Gangarelli, seemed to promise to the world a season of decrepitude, antagonism, chaos, and dissolution, the French revolution fermented and germinated in the dark. It existed in minds which werebelievingalmost to fanaticism, under the form of one dream of universal revolution. While debauchery, hypocrisy, and incredulity ruled the world, a sublime faith, a magnificent revelation of the future, profound systems of organization, perhaps wiser than our Fourierism and Saint-Simonism, already realised in some rare groups the ideal conception of a future society diametrically opposed to what covers and hides their actions in history.
Such a contrast is one of the most prominent features of the eighteenth century, which was too full of ideas, and of intellectual labor of all kinds, for its synthesis to be made even yet, with clearness and profit, by the historians and philosophers of our own days. The reason is, there is a mass of contradictory documents, uninterpreted facts, not perceived at first, sources of information disturbed by the tumult of the century, and which must be purified before a solid bottom can be found. Many energetic laborers have remained obscure, bearing to the tomb the secret of their mission—so many dazzling glories absorbed the attention of their contemporaries, so many brilliant feats even now absorbed the retrospective attention of critics. Gradually, however, light will emanate from chaos; and if our century sum up its own deeds, it will also chronicle those of its predecessor—that vast logogriph, those brilliant nebulæ, where there is so much cowardice combined with grandeur, ignorance with knowledge, light with error, incredulity with faith, pedantry with mocking frivolity, superstition with lofty reason. This period of a hundred years saw the reigns of Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Pompadour, Peter the Great, Catharine II., Maria Theresa and Dubarry, Voltaire and Swedenborg, Kant and Mesmer, Rousseau and Dubois, Schroeffer and Diderot, Fenelon and Law, Zinzendorf and Liebnitz, Frederick II. and Robespierre, Louis XIV. and Philip Egalité, Marie Antoinette and Charlotte Corday, Weishaupt, Babœf and Napoleon—a terrible laboratory, where so many heterogeneous forms have been cast into the crucible, that they vomited forth, in their monstrous ebullition, a torrent of smoke, amid which we yet walk, enveloped in darkness and confused images.
Consuelo and Albert, as well as the Invisible chiefs and the adepts, were yet farther than we are from understanding it; they had no very lucid idea of the result of the changes and the turmoil into which they were anxious to precipitate themselves, with the enthusiastic hope of completely regenerating society. They fancied themselves on the eve of an evangelical republic, as the disciples of Jesus fancied he was about to establish an earthly power. The Taborites of Bohemia fancied themselves on the eve of a paradisiac condition; and the French Convention thought their armies about to commence a march of propagandism over the globe. Without this mad confidence, where would be great devotion? and without great folly, where would be great results? But for the Utopia of the divine revealer Jesus, where would be the idea of human fraternity? But for the contagious ecstacies of Joan of Arc, would we now be Frenchmen? But for the noble chimeras of the eighteenth century, would we have the first notions of equality? This mysterious revolution which the sects of the past had dreamed of, and which the mystic conspirators of the last century had vaguely foretold, fifty years before, as an era of renovation, Voltaire, the calm philosophical head of his day, and Frederick II., the great realiser of logical and cold power, did not anticipate. The most ardent and the wisest were far from reading the future. Jean Jacques Rousseau would have repudiated his own book, had he seen the mountain in a dream, with the guillotine glaring above it. Albert of Rudolstadt would have become again the lethargic madman of the Giants' Castle if the bloody glories, followed by Napoleon's despotism, and the restoration of the ancientrégime, followed by the sway of the vilest material interests, had been revealed to him; or he fancied that he toiled to overthrow, at once and for ever, scaffolds and prisons, castles and convents, banks and citadels.
These noble children dreamed, and maintained their dream with all the power of their souls. They no more belonged to their century than did the shrewd politicians and wise philosophers. Their ideas of the future were not more lucid than those of the latter. They had no idea of that great unknown thing which each of us decks with the attributes of our own power, which deceives us all while it confirms us. Our children see it clad in a thousand dyes, and each keeps a shred for his own imperial toga. Fortunately, every century sees it more majestic, because each produces more persons to toil for its triumph. As for the men who would tear off the purple and cover it with eternal mourning, they are powerless, because they do not comprehend it. Slaves to the actual and present, they are ignorant that the immortal has no age, and that he who does not fancy it as it may be to-morrow, does not see it as it should be to-day.
At that moment Albert—enjoying completely restored health, and joyous in the possession of Consuelo's undivided affection—felt so supremely elated that there was some danger of his reason reeling from excess of happiness.
Consuelo stood at last before him, like the Galatea of that artist, beloved by the gods, waking at once to life and love. Mute and collected, her face beaming with a celestial glory, she seemed, for the first time in her life, completely and unmistakably beautiful, because for the first time she really loved. A sublime serenity shone on her brow, and her large eyes became moist with that voluptuousness of the soul, of which that of the body is but a reflection. She was thus beautiful merely because she did not know what was passing in her heart and over her face. Albert existed for her alone, or rather she did not exist except in him; and he alone seemed worthy of entire respect and boundless admiration. He was transformed, and, as it were, wrapped in supernatural admiration when he saw her. She discovered in the depth of his glance all the solemn grandeur of the bitter troubles he had undergone, though they had left no trace of physical suffering. There was on his brow the placidity of a resuscitated martyr, who sees the earth made red by his blood, and a heaven of infinite rewards open to him. Never did an inspired artist create a nobler ideal of a hero or a saint, in the grandest days of ancient or Christian art.
All the Invisibles, filled with admiration, paused, after having formed a circle around them, and for some moments abandoned themselves to the contemplation of this pair, so pure in the eyes of God, and so chaste before man. More than twenty vigorous male voices sang, to a measure of ancient lore and style—"O Hymen! O Hymene!" The music was Porpora's, the words having been sent to him with orders for an epithalamium on the occasion of an illustrious marriage. He had been well paid, without being aware to whom he was under obligations. As Mozart, just before he died, was to receive the sublimest inspiration for a requiem mysteriously required, old Porpora regained all his youthful genius to write an epithalamium the poetic mystery of which had aroused his imagination. In the very first passage, Consuelo remembered her old master's style, and looking around, she sought for her adopted father among the choristers. Among those who were its interpreters, Consuelo recognised many friends—Frederick Von Trenck, Porporino, Young Benda, Count Golowkin, Schubert, the Chevalier D'Eon, (whom she had met at Berlin, but of whose sex she, like all Europe, was ignorant,) the Count St. Germain, the Chancellor Coccei, (husband of Barberini,) the bookseller Nicolai, Gottlieb, (whose voice predominated above all the others,) and Marcus, whom a gesture of Wanda pointed out to her, and whom, from some instinctive sympathy, she had recognised in her guide, and who discharged the functions of putative father or sponsor. All the Invisibles had opened and thrown back on their shoulders their long melancholy robes, and a neat white costume, which was elegant and simple, relieved by a chain of gold, to which hung the insignia of the order, gave to the whole scene the appearance of a festival. Their masks hung around their wrists, ready to be replaced at the slightest signal of the watcher, who was on the dome of the edifice.
The orator who communicated between the adepts and chief of the order, unmasked, and came to wish the couple happiness. This was the Duke of ****, who had consecrated his enthusiasm and immense fortune to the undertaking of the Invisibles. He was owner of their place of meeting, and at his house Wanda and Albert had frequent interviews, unseen by any profane eyes. This house was also the head-quarters of the operations of the chief of the order, though there were other places at which there were smaller gatherings. Initiated into all the secrets of the order, the duke acted with and for them. He did not betray their incognito, but assumed all the dangers of the enterprise, being himself their visible means of contact with the members of the association.
When Albert and Consuelo had exchanged the gentle evidence of joy and affection with their brethren, all took their places, and the duke having resumed his functions of brother orator, thus spoke, as with crowns of flowers they knelt before the altar:—
"Very dear and beloved children—In the name of the true God—all power, love, and intelligence; and after him, in the name of the three virtues which reflect divinity in the human soul, Activity, Charity, and Justice, translated in effect by our formula,Liberty, Fraternity,andEquality; finally, in the name of the tribunal of the Invisibles, devoted to the triple duty of zeal, faith, and study—that is, to the triple search of the three divine moral and political virtues—Albert Podiebrad, Consuelo Porporina, I pronounce the ratification and confirmation of the marriage already contracted before God and your kindred, and before a priest of the Christian religion, at the Giants' Castle, 175—. Three things however were wanting: first, the absolute wish of the wife to live with the husband, seeminglyin extremis; second, the sanction of a moral and religious society received and acknowledged by the husband; third, the consent of a person here present, the name of whom I am not permitted to mention, but who is closely bound to one of the party by the ties of blood. If now these three conditions be fulfilled, and neither of you have aught to object, join your hands, and, rising, call on heaven to testify to the liberty of your act and the holiness of your love."
Wanda, who continued unknown among the brothers of the order, took the hands of the two children. An impulse of tenderness and enthusiasm made all three rise, as if they had been but one.
The formulæ of marriage were pronounced, and the simple and touching rite of the new church performed quietly but fervently. This engagement of mutual love was not an isolated part amid indifferent strangers who were careless of what passed. Those present were called to sanction the religious consecration of two beings bound together by one faith. They extended their arms over the couple and blessed them; then, taking hold of each other's hands, they made a living circle, a chain of paternal love, swearing to protect and defend their honor and life, to preserve them as much as possible from seduction and persecution, on all occasions and under all circumstances: in fine, to love them purely, cordially, and seriously, as if they were united to them by name and blood. The handsome Trenck pronounced this formula for all the others, in elegant and simple terms. He then added, as he spoke to the husband—
"Albert, the profane and guilty law of old society, from which we separate ourselves, some day to lead it back to us, wills that the husband impose fidelity on his wife by humiliation and despotic authority. If she fail, he must kill his rival; he has even the right to kill his wife; and this is called washing out the stain of his honor in blood. In the blind and corrupt world, every man is the enemy of happiness thus savagely and sternly guarded. The friend, the brother even, arrogates to himself a right to wrest honor and happiness from his friend or brother; or, at least, a base pleasure is experienced in exciting his jealousy and sowing distrust and trouble between him and the object of his love. Here, you know that we have a better understanding of honor and family pride. We are brothers in the sight of God; and any one who would look impurely on the wife of his brother has in his heart already committed the crime of incest."
All the brothers, moved and excited, then drew their swords, and were about to swear to use their weapons on themselves, rather than violate the oath they had just sworn at Trenck's dictation.
The sibyl—agitated by one of those enthusiastic impulses which gave her so much influence over their imaginations, and which often modified the opinions and decisions of the chiefs themselves—broke the circle, and rushed into the midst. Her language, always energetic and burning; her tall form, her floating drapery, her thin frame trembling yet majestic, the convulsive tremor of her ever veiled head, and withal, a grace which at once betokened the former existence of beauty which moves the mind when it ceases to appeal to the senses;—in fine, even her broken voice, which at once assumed a strange expression, had conspired to make her a mysterious being, and invested her with persuasive power and irresistible prestige.
All were silent to hear the voice of her inspiration. Consuelo was perhaps more moved than others, because she was aware of her singular story. She asked herself, shuddering with strange emotion, if this spectre, escaped from the tomb, really belonged to the world, and if, after having spoken, she would not disappear in the air, like the flame on the tripod, which made her appear so blue and transparent.
"Hide from the light these affirmations," said Wanda, with a shudder. "They are impious oaths when what is invoked is an instrument of hatred and murder. I know the old world attached the sword to the side of all reputed free, as a mark of independence and virtue. I well know that, in obedience to the ideas you have here preserved in spite of yourselves, the sword is the symbol of honor—that you deem you make holy engagements when, like citizens of old Rome, you swear on the sword. But here you would profane a solemn vow. Swear, rather, by this flame and tripod—the symbol of life, light, and divine love. Do you yet need emblems and visible signs? Are you yet idolators? Do the figures around this temple represent aught but ideas? O! swear rather by your own sentiments, by your better instincts, by your own heart; and if you dare not swear by the living God, the true, eternal, and holy religion, swear by pure humanity, by the glorious promptings of your courage, by the chastity of this young woman and her husband's love—swear by the genius and beauty of Consuelo, that your desire, that even your thoughts will never profane this holy arc of matrimony, this invisible and mystic altar on which the hand of an angel engraves the vow of love.
"Do you know what love is?" said the sibyl, after having paused for an instant, in a voice which every moment became more clear and penetrating. "If you did, oh! you venerable chiefs of our order and priests of our worship, you would never suffer that formula, which God alone can ratify, to be pronounced before you; and which, consecrated by men, is a kind of profanation of the divinest of mysteries. What power can you give to an engagement which in its very nature is miraculous? Yes, the confounding of two wills in one is in itself a miracle, for every heart is in itself free by virtue of a divine right. Yet when two souls yield and become bound to each other, their mutual possession becomes sacred, and as much a divine right as individual liberty. You see this is a miracle—that God reserves its mystery to himself, as he does that of life and death. You are about to ask this man and woman if during their lives they will belong respectively to each other. Their fervor is such that they will reply, 'Not only for life, but forever.' God then inspires them, by the miracle of love, with more faith, power, virtue, than you can or dare to ask. Away, then, with sacrilegious oaths and gross laws. Leave them their ideal, and do not bind them to reality by chains of gold. Leave the care of the continuation of the miracle to God. Prepare their souls for its accomplishment; form the ideal of love in them; exhort, instruct; extol and demonstrate the glory of fidelity, without which there is no moral honor, no sublime love. Do not come between, however, like Catholic priests, like magistrates, to interfere by the imposition of an oath. I tell you again, men cannot make themselves responsible, or be guardians of the perpetuity of a miracle. What know you of the secrets of the Eternal? Have we already penetrated the temple of the future, in that celestial world where, beneath sacred groves, man will converse with God as one friend does with another? Has a law for indissoluble marriage emanated from the mouth of God? Have his designs been proclaimed on earth? Have you, children of men, promulgated this law unanimously? Have the Roman pontiffs never dissolved marriage? They call themselves infallible! Under the pretext of the nullity of certain engagements, have they not pronounced real divorces, the scandal of which history has preserved in its records? The Christian societies, the reformed sects, the Greek church, following the example of the Mosaic dispensation, and all ancient religions, frankly introduced divorce into modern law. What then becomes of the holiness and efficacy of a vow to God, when it is maintained that man can release us from it? Touch not love by the profanation of marriage. You cannot stifle it in pure hearts. Consecrate the conjugal tie by exhortations, by prayers, by a publicity which will make it respectable, by touching ceremonies. You should do so, if you be our priests—that is to say, our aids, our guides, our advisers, our consolers, our lights. Prepare souls for the sanctity of a sacrament; and, as a father of a family seeks to establish his children in positions of prosperity, dignity, and security, occupy yourselves—our spiritual fathers—assiduously in fixing your sons and daughters in circumstances favorable to the development of true love, virtue, and sublime fidelity. When you shall have analysed them by religious ordeals, and ascertained that in their mutual attraction there is neither cupidity, vanity, nor frivolous intoxication, nor that sensual blindness that is without ideality—when you have convinced yourselves that they appreciate the grandeur of their sentiments, the holiness of their duty, and the liberty of their choice, then permit them to endow each other with their own inalienable liberty. Let their families, their friends, and the vast family of the faithful, unite to ratify this sacrament. Attend to my words! Let the sacrament be a religious permission, a paternal and social permission, an encouragement, an exhortation to perpetuate the engagement. Let it not be a command, an obligation, a law, with menaces and punishments—a forced slavery, with scandal, prisons and chains if it be violated; for in this way you would reverse the whole miracle in all its entirety accomplished on earth. Eternally fruitful providence—God, the indefatigable dispenser of grace, always will conduct before you young, fervent, and innocent couples, ready to bind themselves for time and eternity. Your anti-religious law and your inhuman sacrament will always abrogate the effect of grace in them. The inequality of conjugal rights between the sexes—impiety made venerable by social laws—the difference of duty in public opinion—all the absurd prejudices following in the wake of bad institutions, will ever extinguish the faith and enthusiasm of husband and wife. Those who are most sincere, who are most inclined to fidelity, will be the first to grow sad, and become terrified at the duration of the engagement, and thus disenchant each other. The abjuration of individual liberty is in effect contrary to the will of nature and the dictates of conscience when men participate in it, for they oppress it with the yoke of ignorance and brutality. It is in conformity with the will of generous hearts, and necessary to the religious instincts of strong minds, when God gives us the means to contend against the various snares man has placed around marriage, so as to make it the tomb of love, happiness, and virtue, and a "sworn prostitution," as our fathers the Lollards, whom you know and often invoke, called it. Give to God what is God's, and take from Cæsar what is not his."
"And you, my children," said she, turning towards Albert and Consuelo, "you, who have sworn to reverence the conjugal tie, did not, perhaps, know the true meaning of what you did. You obeyed a generous impulse, and replied with enthusiasm to the appeal of honor. That is worthy of you, disciples of a victorious faith! You have performed more than an act of individual virtue—you have consecrated a principle without which there can be neither chastity nor conjugal fidelity.
"O love! sublime flame—so powerful and so fragile, so sudden and so fugitive! light from heaven, seemingly passing through our existence, to die before we do, for fear of consuming and annihilating us, we feel you are a vivifying fire, emanating from God himself, and that whoever would fix it in his bosom and retain it to his last hour, always ardent, always in its pristine vigor, would be the happiest and noblest of men. Thus the disciples of the ideal will always seek to prepare sanctuaries for you in their bosoms, that you may not hasten to return to heaven. But alas! you whom we have made it a virtue to honor, have declined to be renewed at the dictate of our institutions, and have remained free as the bird of the air, capricious as the flame on the altar. You seem to laugh at our oaths, our contracts and our will. You fly from us in spite of all we have invented to fix you in your manners. You no longer inhabit the harem, guarded by the vigilant sentinels which Christian society places between the sentence of the magistrate and the yoke of public opinions. Whence, then, comes your inconstancy and your ingratitude? Oh! mysterious influence! oh, love! cruelly symbolised under the form of an infant and blind god! what tenderness and what contempt inspire human hearts you enkindle with your blaze; and whom you desert, leaving them to wither amid the anguish of repentance, and, more frightful yet, of disgust! Why is it that man kneels to you in every portion of the globe—that you are exalted and deified—that divine poets call you the soul of the world—that barbarous nations sacrifice human victims to you, precipitating wives on the fire at the husband's funeral—that young hearts call you in their gentlest dreams, and that old men curse life when you abandon them to the horror of solitude? Whence comes that adoration—sometimes sublime, sometimes fanatical—which has been decreed you from the golden infancy of humanity to our age of iron, if you be but a chimera, the dream of a moment of intoxication, an error of the imagination, excited by the delirium of the sense. Ah! it is not a vulgar instinct, a mere animal want. You are not the blind child of Paganism, but the true son of God, and very essence of the divinity. You have not yet revealed yourself to us, except through the mist of errors; and you would not make your abode among us, because you were unwilling to be profaned. You will return to us, as in the days of the fabulous Astrea, as in the visions of poets, to fix your abode in our terrestrial paradise, when we shall, by our sublime virtues, have merited the presence of such a guest. How blessed then will this abode be to man! and then it will be well to have been born."
"We will then be brothers and sisters, and unions, freely contracted, will be maintained by your own power. When, in place of this terrible contest, whose continuance is impossible—conjugal fidelity being forced to resist infamous attempts at debauch, hypocritical seduction or mad violence, hypocritical friendship and wise corruption—every husband will find around him chaste sisters, himself the jealous and delicate guardian of the happiness of a sister confided to him as a companion; while every wife will find in other men so many brothers of her husband, proud of her happiness and protectors of her peace; then the faithful wife will no longer be the fragile flower that hides herself to maintain the treasures of her chastity, often a deserted victim, wasting in solitude and tears, unable to revive in her husband's mind the flame she has preserved in purity in her own. The brother then will not be forced to avenge his sister, and slay him she loves and regrets, in obedience to the dictates of false honor. The mother will not tremble for her daughter, nor the child blush for its parent. The husband then will be neither suspicious nor despotic; and, on her part, the wife will escape the bitterness of the victim and the rancor of the slave; atrocious suffering and abominable injustice will cease to sully the peace of the domestic hearth. It may be some day, that the priest and the magistrate, relying with reason on the permanent miracle of love, will consecrate in God's name indissoluble unions, with as much wisdom and justice as they now ignorantly display impiety and folly.
"But these glorious days are not yet come. Here, in this mysterious temple, where we are now united in obedience to the evangelists, three or four in the name of the Lord, we can only dream of divinest joys. It is an oracle which then escapes from their bosoms. Eternity is the ideal of love, as it is of faith. The human soul never comes nearer to the apex of its power and lucidity than in the enthusiasm of a great love. Thealwaysof lovers is an eternal revelation, a divine manifestation, casting its sovereign light and blessed warmth over every instant of their union. Woe to whoever profanes this sacred formula! He falls from grace to sin—extinguishes the faith, power and light in his heart."