The Countess von Rudolstadt

by George Sand

  While she was talking, the princess went pale. Her voice grew weaker and weaker, then died. With her eyes bulging in a blank stare, she remained motionless, mute, and livid, having lost consciousness. Porporina, frightened, helped Mme von Kleist unlace her corset and carry her to bed, where she recovered her spirits a bit and went on muttering unintelligible things.

  “This will pass, thank Heaven,” said Mme von Kleist. “When she’s in control of herself again, I’ll call her maids. As for you, dear child, it is absolutely imperative that you go to the music room and sing for the walls, rather the ears of the anteroom. For without fail the king will learn of your visit, and it must not seem that you and the princess were occupied with anything other than music. The princess will be indisposed, which will help conceal her joy. She must not seem to know a thing about Trenck’s escape, and the same goes for you. The king certainly knows about it by now. He’ll be in a foul mood, entertaining horrible suspicions about every living soul. Be careful, very careful. If he finds out that you’re the one who delivered this letter to the princess, we’re both lost. In this country women, just as well as men, are sent to the fortress. And they are deliberately forgotten, just the same as men; they die there, just the same as men. Now that you’ve been warned, adieu. Go sing, then leave without fuss or mystery. We won’t see you again for at least a week, in order to divert any suspicions. You may count on the princess’s gratitude. She is magnificent and knows how to compensate dedication. . . .”

  “Alas, Madame!” Porporina said in a sad voice, “you think that you have to use threats and promises with me? I’m sorry you think so!”

  Worn out from all the violent emotions she had just shared, and still feeling ill from her own shock the evening before, Porporina nonetheless sat down at the harpsichord and began to sing. Behind her there opened a door so silently that it escaped her notice. All of a sudden she saw in an adjacent mirror the king standing right beside her. She started and wanted to get up, but the king, pressing the ends of his bony fingers down on her shoulder, forced her to sit and continue. She obeyed most reluctantly, uneasily. Never had she felt less inclined to sing, never had she found Frederick’s presence more chilling, more contrary to musical inspiration.

  “Sung to perfection,” said the king after her piece. While singing she had been terrified to see him tiptoe up behind the half-open door of his sister’s bedroom to eavesdrop. “Yet I’m sorry to say that this beautiful voice is not at its best this morning. You should have rested, instead of yielding to the odd whimsy of Princess Amalia, who summons you in order not to listen to you.”

  “Her Royal Highness was suddenly taken ill,” she replied, frightened by the king’s somber, worried look, “and I was ordered to keep on singing to distract her a bit.”

  “I assure you that it’s a waste of energy. She’s not listening to you one whit,” said the king curtly. “She’s in there whispering with Mme von Kleist, as though nothing at all had happened. Since that’s the case, we can certainly whisper together here, without worrying about the two of them. The illness doesn’t look serious to me. I think that in this category your sex goes very quickly from one extreme to the other. Last night everyone thought you were dead. Whoever would have thought that you’d be here this morning looking after my sister and entertaining her? Now, would you please tell me what on earth you’re doing here all of a sudden?”

  Porporina, stunned by the question, prayed for inspiration.

  “Sire,” she replied, striving for confidence, “I scarcely know the answer to that myself. This morning I was asked to give her this score. I thought I ought to bring it here myself and was meaning to leave my music in the anteroom and go right back home. Mme von Kleist caught sight of me. She mentioned my name to Her Highness, who was apparently curious to see me up close. I was forced to go in. Her Highness asked me about the style of several pieces of music. Then, when she felt ill, she ordered me to perform this piece for her while she was taking to her bed. And now, if I may go to the rehearsal . . .”

  “It’s not yet time,” said the king. “I don’t know why you’re burning to run along when I want to chat with you.”

  “I always fear being out of place in the presence of Your Majesty.”

  “You have no common sense, my dear.”

  “All the more reason, Sire!”

  “You shall stay,” he said, forcing her to sit back down at the piano and remaining on his feet facing her.

  Then he added, fixing on her a gaze half-paternal, half-inquisitorial, “Is it true, everything you’ve just told me?”

  Porporina overcame her horror of lying. She had often told herself that she would be sincere with the terrifying man on her own account but tell a lie if it were ever a question of his victims’ welfare. Now she was suddenly facing that moment of crisis in which the master’s kindliness could turn to fury, which she would have gladly suffered rather than to stoop to dissimulation. Yet Trenck’s fate and that of the princess depended on her wits and presence of mind. Calling the skill of the actress to her aid, she smiled knowingly and withstood the king’s eagle eye, which looked more like a vulture’s just then.

  “Well,” asked the king, “why don’t you answer me?”

  “Why does Your Majesty wish to frighten me by pretending to doubt what I’ve just said?”

  “You don’t seem at all frightened. On the contrary, I find your gaze quite bold this morning.”

  “Sire, one only fears what one hates. Why do you want me to fear you?”

  Frederick bristled with armor like a crocodile so as not to be moved by this reply, the most flirtatious he had thus far obtained from Porporina. As was his habit, he immediately changed the subject, which is a great art, more difficult than one would think.

  “Why did you faint on stage yesterday evening?”

  “Sire, that’s the least of Your Majesty’s worries and my own secret.”

  “So what did you have for breakfast this morning to be taking such a perky tone with me?”

  “I took a breath from a certain flask that filled me with confidence as to the kindness and justice of the one who brought it to me.”

  “Ah! so you took that for a declaration?” said Frederick icily, with cynical contempt.

  “Thank God, no!” she replied, with a very sincere shudder of fear.

  “Why do you say Thank God?”

  “Because I know that Your Majesty only makes declarations of war, even to the ladies.”

  “You’re neither the Czarina nor Maria Theresa. What kind of war can I have with you?”

  “The kind a lion has with a gnat.”

  “And what gnat has been biting you, for you to cite such a fable? The gnat killed the lion, harassed him to death.”

  “It was no doubt a poor lion, irascible and therefore weak. So I couldn’t have been thinking of that fable.”

  “But the gnat was grimly determined and had a nasty sting. Perhaps the fable suits you well!”

  “Does Your Majesty think so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sire, are you lying?”

  Frederick seized her wrist and convulsively squeezed it to make a bruise. There was anger and love in this bizarre gesture. Porporina’s face did not change. The king looked at her red, swollen hand and added, “You’ve got courage!”

  “No, Sire, but I don’t pretend to lack courage, like everyone in your entourage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That one often plays dead so as not to be killed. If I were you, I wouldn’t like people to be so terrified of me.”

  “Who are you in love with?” asked the king, once again changing the subject.

  “With no one, Sire.”

  “That being the case, why do you have attacks of nerves?”

  “That doesn’t concern the destiny of Prussia, and consequently the king doesn’t care to know the answer to that question.”

  “So you think that it is the king speaking to you right now?”

  “T
hat would be impossible to forget.”

  “Yet that’s what you must resolve to do. Never will the king speak to you; it’s not the king’s life you saved, Mademoiselle.”

  “But I haven’t seen Baron von Kreutz again around here.”

  “If that’s a reproach, it wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t the king who went to inquire about your health yesterday, but Captain Kreutz.”

  “The distinction is too subtle for me, Captain.”

  “Well, try and learn. Here, when I put my cap on like that, a little to the left, I’ll be the captain; when it tips to the right, I’ll be the king; and according to who I am, you’ll be Consuelo or Signorina Porporina.”

  “I see, Sire. Well, that I can’t do. Your Majesty is free to be two, or three, or a hundred different people. I only know how to be one.”

  “You’re lying! You wouldn’t talk to me on stage in front of your fellow performers as you’re doing right now.”

  “Sire, don’t be too sure!”

  “Well, you’re certainly full of the devil today.”

  “That’s because Your Majesty’s cap is neither to the right nor the left, and I don’t know to whom I’m speaking.”

  Overwhelmed by the attraction he felt to Porporina, especially at that moment, the king lifted his hand to his cap in a playful, genial way and tipped it so far down over his left ear that his terrifying face looked comical. He was doing his best to act like a mere mortal and a king on vacation, but all of a sudden he remembered that his purpose in coming here was not to take his mind off his worries, but to fathom the secrets of the Abbess of Quedlinburg. He peevishly whipped the cap off his head and dropped his smile. Furrowing his brow, he got up and said to the girl, “Stay here, I’ll be back for you.”

  And he went into the bedroom of the princess, who trembled awaiting his visit. Mme von Kleist, having seen the king chatting with Porporina, had not dared leave her mistress’s side. She had made futile attempts to hear their conversation, but not having been able to catch a single word because of the dimension of the rooms, she was more dead than alive.

  As for Porporina, she shuddered at the thought of what was going to happen. Usually solemn and respectfully sincere with the king, she had just coerced herself to distract him, by means of coquetries somewhat contrived, from the dangerous interrogation he was starting to put her through. She had hoped to divert him altogether from torturing his poor sister. Frederick, however, was not a man to depart from his plan, and the poor creature’s efforts failed in front of the despot’s single-mindedness. She commended Princess Amalia to God, for she understood that the king was forcing her to stay there in order to compare her explanations with those being prepared in the next room. The great care with which he closed the door behind him on his way in there only confirmed her in this opinion. So she spent an uncomfortable quarter of an hour waiting, agitated with a bit of fever, frightened by the scheme in which she found herself involved, and unhappy with the role she was being made to play. With horror she recalled the insinuations that were beginning to come at her from all directions regarding the king’s possible love for her and the sort of agitation that he himself had just betrayed in that respect with his strange behavior.

  Chapter VI

  Yet, my God! the cunning of the most terrifying Dominican who ever served as a great inquisitor, what chance does it stand against three women when love, fear, and friendship inspire them all to the same end? Frederick tried everything, but nothing worked, neither friendly endearments, nor provocative irony, nor surprise questions, nor feigned indifference, nor indirect threats. Mme von Kleist and Amalia explained Consuelo’s presence in the princess’s suite in absolutely the same terms that Consuelo had so felicitously improvised. This explanation was the most natural, the most plausible. Putting everything down to chance is the best way. Chance says nothing and issues no contradictions.

  Worn out fighting, the king gave up, or changed tactics, for he suddenly exclaimed, “And Porporina, whom I’m forgetting in all this! Dear little sister, since you’re feeling better, have her step in. Her chatter will entertain us.”

  “I feel like a nap,” replied the princess, fearing a trap.

  “Well then, wish her good day and dismiss her yourself.”

  With these words, the king got to the door ahead of Mme von Kleist, opened it himself, and called in Porporina.

  But instead of sending her away, he on the spot began a dissertation on German and Italian music. Once that subject had been exhausted, he suddenly exclaimed, “Ah! Signora Porporina, here’s a bit of news I was forgetting to tell you, something that will certainly please you: your friend, Baron von Trenck, is no longer in prison.”

  “Which Baron von Trenck, Sire?” she asked with cunning ingenuousness. “I know two of them, and they’re both in prison.”

  “Oh! Trenck the Pandur will perish in Spielberg. It’s the Prussian Trenck who has escaped.”

  “Well, Sire,” replied Porporina, “as for me, I’m grateful to you. That was a fair and generous act on Your Majesty’s part.”

  “Much obliged for the compliment, Mademoiselle. What do you think, my dear sister?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked the princess. “I was half asleep and didn’t hear you, brother.”

  “I’m talking about your protégé, the handsome Trenck, who has gone over the walls at Glatz.”

  “Ah! Good for him,” said the princess with great composure.

  “Bad for him,” the king said curtly. “His case was coming up for study, and perhaps he could have cleared himself of the charges against him. His escape amounts to a confession of his crimes.”

  “If that’s so, I forsake him,” said Amalia still impassive.

  “Mademoiselle Porporina will persist in defending him, I’m sure,” Frederick continued. “I can see it in her eyes.”

  “I can’t believe that he’s a traitor,” she said.

  “Especially when the traitor is so handsome? Do you know, sister, that Mademoiselle Porporina is very close to Baron von Trenck?”

  “May that do her a lot of good,” Amalia said in a chilly voice. “If the man is disgraced, I nevertheless advise her to forget him. Now I wish you good day, Mademoiselle, for I feel very tired. Please come back in a few days to help me read that score. It looks quite beautiful.”

  “You’re fond of music again?” asked the king. “I thought you had forsaken it altogether.”

  “I want to try and get back to it, and I hope, brother, that you’ll agree to come help me. People say that you’ve made great progress, and now you’ll give me lessons.”

  “We’ll both take lessons from the signora. I’ll bring her over.”

  “Fine. That will be delightful.”

  Mme von Kleist escorted Porporina back to the anteroom. Soon she was all alone in long hallways, knowing none too well how to get out of the palace and scarcely remembering how she had come in.

  As the king’s household was managed with the strictest economy, to say the least, one did not run across many footmen in the castle. Not finding a single one to give her any directions, Porporina began wandering aimlessly through the vast, dreary manor.

  Preoccupied by what had just transpired, shattered with exhaustion, her stomach empty since the night before, Porporina felt very light-headed, but, as sometimes happens in such a case, a sickly excitement nevertheless sustained her physical strength. She walked haphazardly, faster than her normal pace. Pursued by her own thoughts, a source of strange torment since the evening before, she completely forgot where she was, lost her way, passed through hallways and courtyards, retraced her steps, climbed up and down stairs, crossed several people without thinking of asking them where to go, and finally found herself, as if on the far side of a dream, at the entrance of a huge hall filled with a motley collection of strange objects. On the threshold a solemn, polite figure gave her a very courteous greeting and invited her in.

  Porporina recognized the very learned academician Stoss, t
he conservator of the castle’s library and curio collection. Several times he had brought her precious manuscripts of Protestant music from the early Reformation, treasures of calligraphy with which he had enriched the royal holdings, so that she could read through them. When he learned that she was seeking a way out of the palace, he immediately offered to see her home. Yet he so earnestly begged her to take a look at the precious collection entrusted to his care, in which he took such legitimate pride, that she could not refuse a tour leaning on his arm. Easily entertained like all those with artistic constitutions, she was soon more interested than she had thought herself disposed to be. She became totally absorbed by an object to which the most worthy professor particularly insisted on drawing her attention.