Chapter XXXI

The seven were there, as when she had first seen them, mute, masked, and impenetrable as phantoms. The eighth, who had then spoken to Consuelo, and seemed to be the interpreter of the council and initiator of adepts, thus spoke to her:--

"Consuelo, you have passed through the tests to which we have subjected you with satisfaction. We can grant you our confidence, and are about to prove it."

"Listen!" said Consuelo. "You think me free from reproach; yet I am not. I have disobeyed you. I left the retreat you assigned me."

"From curiosity?"

"No."

"Will you tell us what you learned?"

"What I have learned is purely personal. Among you is a confessor, to whom I can and will reveal all."

The old man rose and said--

"I know all. This girl's fault is trivial. She knows nothing that you wish her to be ignorant of. The confidence of her thoughts is between her and me. In the interim, use the present moment to reveal to her what she should know. I will vouch for her in all things."

The initiator then said, after he had looked towards the tribunal, and received a token of assent--

"Listen to me! I speak in the name of all you see. It is their spirit, and, so to say, their breath, which inspires me. I am about to expound their doctrine to you.

"The distinctive character of the religions of antiquity is, that they have two faces--one exterior and public, the other inward and secret; the one is the spirit, the other the form or letter. Behind the material or grosser symbol is the profound sense, the sublime idea. Egypt and India, the great types of ancient religions, mothers of true doctrines, offer this duality of aspect in the highest degree. This is the necessary and fatal sign of the infancy of societies, and of the miseries attached to the development of the genius of man. You have recently learned in what consisted the great mysteries of Eleusis and Memphis, and now you know why divine science, political and social, concentrated with the triple religions, military and industrial, in the hands of the hierophants, did not descend to the lowest grades of the ancient societies. The Christian idea, surrounded in the word of its revealer by transparent and pure symbols, was granted to the world to communicate to the popular mind a knowledge of truth and the light of faith. Theocracy, though the inevitable abuse of religions established in times of trouble and danger, soon came to veil doctrine again, and in doing so changed it. Idolatry reappeared with the mysteries, and the painful expansion of Christianity; the hierophants of Apostolic Rome lost by divine punishment the divine light, and fell into the darkness into which they sought to plunge men. The development of the human mind then worked in a course altogether different to the past. The temple no longer was, as of yore, the sanctuary of truth; superstition and ignorance, the gross symbol, the dead letter, sat on altars and thrones. The spirit at last descended to minds which had been very degraded. Poor monks, obscure doctors, humble penitents, virtuous apostles of the primitive church made the secret and persecuted religion the asylum of the unknown truth. They sought to declare to the people the religion of equality, and in the name of Saint John preached a new religion--that is to say, a more free interpretation, and, at the same time, a bolder and purer one than that of the Christian revelation. You know the history of their labors, of their combats, and martyrdoms; you know the sufferings of nations, their ardent inspirations, their lamentable decay, and proud revival; and that amid efforts successively terrible and sublime, their heroic perseverance put darkness to flight and discovered the path to God. The time is near when the veil of the temple will be removed forever, and when the masses will fill the sanctuaries of the sacred arch. Then symbols will disappear, and access to truth will not be guarded by the dragons of religious despotism. All will be able to approach God with all the power of their souls. No one will say to his brother, 'Be ignorant, and bow down;' but on the other hand, 'Open thine eyes and receive the light.' Any man, on the contrary, will be able to ask aid from his neighbor's eye, heart, and arm, to penetrate the arcana of sacred science. That day has not yet come, and we are able to see merely the glimmer of its dawn trembling on the horizon. The duration of the secret religion is endless, the task of mystery is not yet fulfilled. We are as yet shut up in the temple, busy in forging arms to push aside the enemies who interpose between nations and ourselves, and must yet keep our doors closed and our words secret, that the holy ark may not be wrested from us after it has been saved with such trouble, and kept for the common good of mankind.

"You are now received into the new temple: this temple, however, is yet a fortress, which, for centuries, has held out for liberty without being able to gain it. War is around us. We wish to be liberators, though as yet we are but combatants. You are come to share a fraternal communion, the standard of safety, the toil for liberty, and, perhaps, too, to die with us in the breach. This is the destiny you have selected, and, perhaps, will die without having seen the gage of victory float above your head. Yet, in the name of St. John, do you call men to the crusade. We yet invoke a symbol; we are the heirs of the Johannites of old; the unknown, mysterious, and persevering preservers of Wickliffe, of Huss, and of Luther: like them, we wish to enfranchise the human race; but, like them, are not free ourselves; and walk, perhaps, to the sacrifice.

"The strife, however, has changed ground, and the nature of its arms. We yet brave the dark rigor of laws; we expose ourselves yet to proscription, misery, and death--for the ways of tyranny are unchangeable. We no longer invoke material revolt, the bloody cause of the cross and sword: our warfare is intellectual as our mission. We appeal to the mind. Not with the armed hand can government be overturned or built up; sustained, as they now are by physical force. We wage a slower, more mute, and profound warfare--we attack the heart. We destroy the very foundations, by destroying the blind faith and idolatrous respect they inspire.

"We cause to penetrate everywhere, even into courts, and the troubled and fascinated minds of princes and kings, what as yet none dare call the poison of philosophy: we destroy all mere prestige. We throw from the summit of our fortress the burning shot of ardent truth and implacable reason against every throne. Doubt not but that we will conquer. In how many days--in how many years, we know not. Yet our undertaking is so old, has been conducted with such faith, and stifled with such little success, that it cannot fail. It has become immortal in its nature as the deathless boons it has sought to conquer. Our ancestors began, and each generation dreamed of its completion. Did we not entertain some hope of it ourselves, our zeal would become exhausted and less efficacious: but if the spirit of doubt and irony which now rules the world should prove to us, by its cold calculation and overpowering logic, that we pursue a dream not to be realized until centuries have passed, our conviction in the holiness of our cause would not be shaken, and though we toiled with more effort and grief, we would toil, at least, for men yet to be born. Between us and the men of past and future generations, is a religious tie, so strict and firm that we have almost stifled the selfish and personal portion of human nature. This the vulgar will not understand; yet there is in the pride of nobility something not unlike the old hereditary religious enthusiasm. The great sacrifice much to glory, to make themselves worthy of their ancestors, and to bequeath something to posterity. We, architects of the true temple, have made many sacrifices to virtue, to continue the work of our masters and to make laborious apprentices. In spirit and in heart we live at once in the past, the present, and the future. Our predecessors and successors are as much _we_ as ourselves are. We believe in the transmission of life, of sentiments, and of generous instincts in the soul, as nobles believe in the purity of blood in their veins. We go farther; we believe in the transmission of life, individuality, soul, and the very body; we feel ourselves fatally and providentially called to continue the work of which we have already dreamed, have always pursued, and advanced from century to century. There are some amongst us who have carried the contemplation of the past so far as almost to have lost sight of the present. This is the sublime fever, the ecstacy of saints and prophets, for we have both, and, perhaps, also our mad and visionary men. Whatever, though, may be the wanderings or the sublimity of their transport, we respect their inspiration, and among us Albert the _seer_ and the ecstatic has found brothers filled with sorrow for his sorrow, and admiration for his enthusiasm. We also believe in the sincerity of the Count of St. Germain, who by others is thought an impostor or a madman. Though his ideas of a period inaccessible to human memory, have a character calmer, more precise and perhaps more inconceivable than Albert's ecstasies, they, too, have a character of good faith and lucidness at which it is impossible for us to laugh. We have among us many other enthusiasts--mystics, poets, men of the people, philosophers, artists, and ardent sectarians, grouped beneath the banner of different chiefs. We have Boehmists, Theosophists, Moravians, Hernhuters, Quakers, even Pantheists, Pythagoreans, Xerophagists, Illuminati, Johannites, Templars, Millenarians, Joachimites, &c. All these old sects, though not developed as they were at the period of their closing are yet existing, and, to a great degree, not modified. Our object is to reproduce at one era all the forms which the genius of innovation has assumed successively in past centuries, relative to religious and philosophical thought. We therefore gather our agents from these various groups, without requiring identity or precepts, which in our time would be impossible. It is enough that they are ardent for reformation, to admit them into our ranks. All our science of organization consists in selecting actors only from those who have minds superior to scholastic disputes, to whom the passion for truth, the search after justice, and the instinct of moral beauty are more powerful than family habits and sectarian rivalry. In other respects, it is not so difficult as it is imagined, to make the most dissimilar things work in concert, for their dissimilarity is more apparent than real. In fact, all heretics (and I use this word with respect) agree in one principal point, that of the destruction of mental and physical tyranny, or, at least, a protest against them. The antagonisms which have hitherto prevented the fusion of all these generous but useless rivalries, are derived from self-love and jealousy, the inherent vices of the condition of man, and a fatal counterpoise to progress. In managing these susceptibilities, by permitting every communion to preserve its teachers, its conductors, and its rights, it is possible to constitute, if not a society, at least an army, and I have told you we are an army marching to the conquest of a promised land, of an ideal society. At the point where human society now stands, there are so many shades of individual character, so many gradations in the conception of the true, so many varied aspects and ingenious manifestations of the nature of man, that it is absolutely necessary to leave to each the conditions of his moral life and power of action.

"Our work is great--our task is immense. We do not wish to found merely an universal empire, or a new order, on equitable bases, but we desire to establish a religion. We are well aware that the one is impossible without the other. We have, therefore, two modes of action: one material--to undermine and subvert the old world by criticism, by ridicule, by the Voltairian philosophy, and by all that is connected with it. The formidable union of all the bold minds and strong passions hurries our march in that direction. Our other mode of action is entirely spiritual; it has to do with religion, and with the future. The _elite_ of intelligences and of virtues assist us in our incessant labors. The ground-work of the Invisibles is a concilium which the persecution of the official world prevents from being publicly assembled, but which ceaselessly deliberates, and, under the same inspiration, toils in every part of the world. Mysterious communications bring forth the grain as it ripens, and seed, too, for the field of humanity, as we cut it from the grass. In this subterranean toil you may participate, and we will tell you how, when you shall have accepted our offers."

"I do accept," said Consuelo, firmly, and lifting up her hands, as if to swear.

"Do not promise hastily, woman with generous instincts and enterprising soul. You have not, perhaps, all the virtues such a mission requires. You have passed through the world--you have already tasted the ideas of prudence, of what is called propriety, discretion, and good conduct----"

"I do not flatter myself that I have," said Consuelo, smiling, with modesty and pride.

"Well, you have learned, at least, to doubt, to discuss, to rail, to suspect."

"To doubt, it may be. Remove suspicion, which was not a part of my nature, and which has caused me much suffering, and I will bless you. Above all, remove all doubt of myself, for that feeling makes me powerless."

"We can remove doubt only by developing our principles. To give you material guaranties of our sincerity and power, is impossible; on that point we will do no more than we have hitherto. Let the services we have rendered you suffice: we will always aid you when an occasion occurs, but will not initiate you into the mysteries of our thought and action, except in the particular matter we confide to you. You will not know us, you will never see our faces. You will never know our names, unless some great interest force us to infringe and violate the law which makes us unknown and invisible to our disciples. Can you submit, and yield yourself blindly to men, who to you never will be anything but abstract beings, living ideas, aiders, and mysterious advisers."

"Vain curiosity alone could impel me to wish to know you in any other manner. I hope this puerile sentiment never will take possession of me."

"This is not a matter of curiosity, but of distrust. Your reasoning will be founded on the logic and prudence of the world. A man is responsible for his actions--his name is either a warrant or a warning, his reputation either sustains or contradicts his actions. Remember, you can never compare the conduct of any one of us with the precepts of the order. You must believe in us as in saints, without being aware whether we are hypocrites or not. You may see injustice emanate from our decisions--even perfidy and apparent cruelty. You can no more control our conduct than our intentions. Are you firm enough to walk with your eyes closed on the bank of an abyss?"

"In the practical observance of Catholicism, I have done so from my very childhood," said Consuelo, after a moment's reflection. "I have opened my heart, and abandoned the charge of my conscience to a priest, whose features were hid by the grating of the confessional, of whose name and tenor of life I was ignorant. I saw in him only the priest. The man was nothing. I was the servant of Christ, and did not care for the minister. Think you this is at all different?"

"Lift up your hand, then, if you are resolved to persist."

"Listen," said Consuelo. "Your answer will determine my life; but permit me to question you for the first and last time."

"You see! Already you hesitate, and look for guaranties elsewhere than in impulse, and the anxiety of your heart to possess the idea of which we speak. Yet go on; your question, perhaps, may give us information in relation to your disposition."

"My question is simply this: Is Albert initiated in your secrets?"

"Yes."

"Without any restriction?"

"Without any restriction."

"And toils with you?"

"Say rather that we toil with him. He is one of the lights of our council, perhaps the purest and most divine."

"Why did you not tell me this before? I would not have hesitated a moment. Lead me whithersoever you will. Dispose of my life. I am yours, and I swear it."

"Then lift up your hand. On what do you swear?"

"On Christ, the image of whom I see here."

"What is Christ?"

"The divine _idea_ revealed to man."

"And is this divine idea revealed in all the evangelists?"

"I think not, but it is all contained in the spirit of the evangelists."

"We are satisfied with your answers, and receive the oath you have taken. Now we will teach you your duties to God and us. Learn then, in the first place, the three words which are the secret of our mysteries, and which to many who are affiliated with us, are revealed with much precaution and delay. You do not require a long apprenticeship, yet some thought is needed to make you comprehend all their significance. These words are, _Liberty, Fraternity_, and _Equality._ This is the mysterious and profound formula of the creed of the Invisibles."

"They contain all the mystery?"

"They seem to contain none; but examine the condition of society, and you will see, that to men used to be governed by despotism, inequality, and antagonism, it is either an education, a conversion, or a whole revelation that enables them thoroughly to comprehend the social necessity and moral obligation of this triple precept--_liberty, equality, fraternity._ The small number of enlightened minds, of pure hearts, which protest naturally against the disorder and injustice of tyranny, at once appreciate the secret doctrine. Their progress is rapid, for it is only necessary to teach them the modes of application which we have discovered. To the greater number, to men of the world, to courtiers and nobles, imagine with what care and precaution the sacred formula of the _immortal work_ must be given. It must be surrounded with symbols and concealment. It is necessary to explain to them that we speak only of fictitious liberty, and restraint on the exercise of individual thought--of relative equality, extended merely to the members of our association, and practicable only in secret and benevolent meetings--of a romantic fraternity, agreed to between a certain number of persons, and restricted to fugitive services, a few good works, and to mutual aid. To these slaves of habit and prejudice, our mysteries are but the statutes of heroic orders, revived from ancient chivalry, and impeaching the constituted authorities in no manner, bringing no relief to the miseries of the people. They reach only the insignificant grades, the degrees of frivolous science or common-place precedence. For them there is a series of whimsical initiations, which gratify their curiosity, without elevating their minds."

"Of what use are they?" asked Consuelo, who listened attentively.

"To protect and countenance those who comprehend and know," said the initiator. "This will be explained to you. Europe (Germany and France especially) is filled with secret societies, subterranean laboratories, in which is being prepared a great revolution, the crater of which is France or Germany. The key to it is in our hands: we seek to retain the direction of all associations, without the knowledge of a majority of the members, and unknown to the separate organizations. Though as yet our object be not attained, we have established a position everywhere, and the most eminent of the affiliated of those societies are our friends, and assist our efforts. We will introduce you into these sacred sanctuaries, into these profane temples, for corruption and frivolity also have erected their cities, in some of which vice and virtue toil to the same end--reformation, without the evil being aware of its association with the good. Such is the universal law of conspiracies. You will be aware of the secret of the freemasons, a great brotherhood, who, under various forms, and with various ideas, toil to organise the practice and to diffuse the idea of equality. You will receive the degree of all rites, though women are admitted only by adoption, and do not share all the secrets of the doctrines. We will treat you as a man--we will give you the insignia, documents, and all the formula required for the relations we wish you to establish with the lodges, and for the negotiations we wish to carry on with them. Your profession, your wandering life, your talent, the influence of your sex, youth, and beauty, your virtues, your courage, and your propriety fit you for your part, and are sufficient vouchers for you. Your past life, the least details of which we know, suffice to assure us. You have voluntarily undergone more than mysteries _could_ invent, and you have passed them more strongly and victoriously than do their adepts the vain simulacra intended to test their constancy. Moreover, the wife and pupil of Albert of Rudolstadt is our daughter, sister, and equal. Like Albert, we profess to believe in the divine equality of man and woman; forced, however, to confess, from the unfortunate results of the education of your sex, from its social position and habits, the existence of a dangerous volatility and capricious instinct, we cannot carry out this idea in all its extent. We can confide only in a small number of women. Some secrets we will confide to you alone.

"The other secret societies of Europe will be also opened to you by the talisman with which we will invest you. In order that in whatever country you may be, you may aid us and our cause, you will even enter, if it be necessary, into the impure society of the masses, and penetrate the retreats and become the associate of the vicious, the debauched, and the abandoned. To them you will carry reform, and the idea of a pure and better understood _equality._ You will be as unsullied by such a mission, by witnessing the depravity of the high-born and noble, as you have been by the freedom of intercourse which reigns behind the scenes. You will be a sister of charity to the depraved and abandoned. We will also give you the means of destroying the habits which you cannot correct. You will act chiefly on females, and your genius and fame will open the doors of palaces to you. Trenck's love, and our protection, have already unfolded to you the heart of a great princess. You will come in contact with much more illustrious persons in the execution of the duties of your mission, and will use your influence to make them our auxiliaries. The methods to be pursued successfully will be imparted to you in secret communications, and the special education you will receive from us. In every court and in every city of Europe which you may enter, we will provide you friends, brothers, associates, to aid and protect you in the dangers attendant on your mission. Large sums will be confided to you, to aid the unfortunate of our brethren wherever you may meet them, and those who make the _signals of distress_, thus invoking the assistance of our order. You will establish secret societies among women, founded on the principles of our own, but adapted in manners and usage to different countries and classes. You will toil to effect as far as possible the cordial assimilation of the noble lady and the _bourgeoise_--the rich and the tradeswoman--the virtuous matron and the _artiste_ adventuress. _Toleration_ and _benevolence_ will be the formula modified from our more austere rule of _equality_ and _fraternity_, to adapt it to society. You perceive, then, that from the very outset your mission will be glorious to your fame, as well as gentle in its character; yet it is not without danger. We are powerful, but treason may destroy our enterprise, and bury you amid its ruins. Spandau may not be the last of your prisons, nor the passion of Frederick II. the only trial you will be called on to brave. You must be prepared for dangers and difficulties, and consecrated in advance to martyrdom and persecution."

"I am," answered Consuelo, with firmness, at the conclusion of this long charge.

"We are sure of it, and we apprehend nothing from the feebleness of your character but your proneness to despair. From the first moment we must warn you against the chief point of dissatisfaction attached to your mission. The first grades of secret societies, and of masonry in particular, are, as it were, insignificant to us, and serve only to enable us to test the instincts and dispositions of the postulants. The great majority never pass the first grades, where, as I have said, vain ceremonies amuse their frivolous curiosity. To the first grade none are admitted but those from whom much is expected, yet they too are kept for a time comparatively in the dark, and after being thoroughly tested and examined, are allowed to pass the ordeal. Even then the order is but a nursery whence are chosen the most efficient of its members, to be initiated into yet higher grades, who alone possess the power of imparting most important revelations, and you will commence your career with them. The secrets of a master impose high duties, and there terminate the charm of curiosity, the intoxication of mystery, the illusion of hope. The master can learn nothing more, amid enthusiasm and emotion, of the law which transforms the neophyte into an apostle, the novice into a priestess. He must practise by instructing others, and by seeking to recruit, among the poor in heart and feeble in mind, Levites for the sanctuary of our most holy order. There, poor Consuelo, will you learn the bitterness of deceived illusions and the difficult labors of perseverance. You will see, among very many applicants, curious and eager after truth, few serious, sincere, and firm minds--few worthy in heart of receiving, and capable of comprehending. Among hundreds of people some of them using the symbols of equality and affecting the jargon, you will scarcely find one penetrated with their importance, and bold in their interpretation. It will be needful for you to talk to them in enigmas, and play the sad game of deceiving them as to our doctrine. Of this kind are the majority of the princes we enroll under our banner, who are decked with masonic titles that merely amuse their foolish pride, and serve only to guarantee the freedom of motion and police toleration. Some, however, are, and have been, sincere.

"Frederick, called the Great, and certainly capable of being so, was a freemason before he was a king, for at that time liberty spoke to his heart, and equality to his reason. Yet we committed his initiation to shrewd and prudent men, who did not deliver to him the secrets of our doctrine. At the present moment Frederick suspects, watches and persecutes another masonic body, established in Berlin, side by side with the lodge over which he presides, and other secret societies, at the head of which his brother Henry has eagerly placed himself. Yet neither Prince Henry nor the Abbess of Quedlimburg will ever rise higher than the second degree. We know princes, Consuelo, and are aware that neither they nor their courtiers can be fully relied on. The brother and sister of Frederick suffer from his tyranny, therefore they curse it. They would willingly conspire against him to benefit themselves.

"Notwithstanding the eminent qualities of the prince and princess, we will never place the reins of our enterprise in their hands. It is true they conspire: yet they are ignorant how terrible is the work to which they lend the aid of their name, fortune and credit. They imagine that they toil merely to diminish the authority of their master, and paralyse the efforts of his ambition. The Princess Amelia carries her zeal to a kind of republican enthusiasm, and she is not the only crowned head agitated now by a dream of ancient grandeur. All the petty princes of Germany learned the Telemachus of Fenelon by heart during their youth, and now feed on Montesquieu, Voltaire and Helvetius. They do not proceed farther than a certain ideal of aristocratic government, regularly balanced, in which, of course, they would have the best places. You may judge of their logic and good faith by what you have observed of the strange contrast between the actions and maxims, deeds and words, of Frederick. They are all copies more or less defaced, more or little _outré_, of this model of philosophical tyrants. But as they are not absolute, their conduct is less shocking, and might deceive you as to the use they would make of it. We do not suffer ourselves to be deceived. We suffer these victims of _ennui_, these dangerous friends, to sit on symbolical thrones. They imagine themselves to be pontiffs, and fancy they have the key of the sacred mystery, as of yore the chief of the holy empire persuaded himself that he was fictitiously elected chief of the secret tribunal, and commanded the terrible army of the Free Judges; yet we are masters of their power and of every intention of their life; and while they believe themselves our generals, they are our lieutenants; and never, until the fatal day written in the book of fate for their fall, will they know that they have themselves contributed to their own ruin.

"Such is the dark side of our enterprise. One must modify certain laws of a quiet conscience when the heart is open to holy fanaticism. Will you have courage, young priestess of the pure heart and sincere voice, to do so?"

"After all you have told me," said Consuelo, after a moment's silence, "I cannot withdraw. A single scruple might launch me into a series of reveries and terrors which would lead me into difficulty. I have received your stern instructions and feel that I no longer belong to myself. Alas! yes, I own that I will often suffer from the duty I have imposed on myself; for I bitterly regret, even now, that I was forced to tell Frederick a falsehood to save the life of a friend in danger. Let me blush for the last time, as souls pure from all fraud do, and mourn over the decay of the loss of my innocence. I cannot restrain this sorrow, but I will not dwell on cowardly and useless remorse. I can be no longer the harmless, careless girl I was. I have ceased already to be so, since I am forced to conspire against tyrants, or inform on the liberators of humanity. I have touched the tree of science; its fruits are bitter, yet I will not cast them from me. Knowledge is a misfortune; but to refuse to act is a crime, when we _know_ what is to be done."

"Your reply is bold," said the initiator. "We are satisfied with you. To-morrow evening we will proceed with your initiation. Prepare yourself during the day for a new baptism, by meditation and prayer, and by confession, even if your mind be unoccupied by all personal interests."