Consuelo Read online

  CONSUELO

  GEORGE SAND

  This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Barnes & Noble, Inc.

  122 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10011

  ISBN: 978-1-4114-3550-6

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER XXXI

  CHAPTER XXXII

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  CHAPTER XXXV

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  CHAPTER XL

  CHAPTER XLI

  CHAPTER XLII

  CHAPTER XLIII

  CHAPTER XLIV

  CHAPTER XLV

  CHAPTER XLVI

  CHAPTER XLVII

  CHAPTER XLVIII

  CHAPTER XLIX

  CHAPTER L

  CHAPTER LI

  CHAPTER LII

  CHAPTER LIII

  CHAPTER LIV

  CHAPTER LV

  CHAPTER LVI

  CHAPTER LVII

  CHAPTER LVIII

  CHAPTER LIX

  CHAPTER LX

  CHAPTER LXI

  CHAPTER LXII

  CHAPTER LXIII

  CHAPTER LXIV

  CHAPTER LXV

  CHAPTER LXVI

  CHAPTER LXVII

  CHAPTER LXVIII

  CHAPTER LXIX

  CHAPTER LXX

  CHAPTER LXXI

  CHAPTER LXXII

  CHAPTER LXXIII

  CHAPTER LXXIV

  CHAPTER LXXV

  CHAPTER LXXVI

  CHAPTER LXXVII

  CHAPTER LXXVIII

  CHAPTER LXXIX

  CHAPTER LXXX

  CHAPTER LXXXI

  CHAPTER LXXXII

  CHAPTER LXXXIII

  CHAPTER LXXXIV

  CHAPTER LXXXV

  CHAPTER LXXXVI

  CHAPTER LXXXVII

  CHAPTER LXXXVIII

  CHAPTER LXXXIX

  CHAPTER XC

  CHAPTER XCI

  CHAPTER XCII

  CHAPTER XCIII

  CHAPTER XCIV

  CHAPTER XCV

  CHAPTER XCVI

  CHAPTER XCVII

  CHAPTER XCVIII

  CHAPTER XCIX

  CHAPTER C

  CHAPTER CI

  CHAPTER CII

  CHAPTER CIII

  CHAPTER CIV

  CHAPTER CV

  CHAPTER CVI

  CONCLUSION

  CHAPTER I

  "YES, yes, young ladies; toss your heads as much as you please; the wisest and best among you is——But I shall not say it; for she is the only one of my class who has a particle of modesty, and I should fear, were I to name her, that she should forthwith lose that uncommon virtue which I could wish to see in you——"

  "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,"

  sang Costanza, with an air of effrontery.

  "Amen!" exclaimed all the other girls in chorus.

  "Naughty man!" said Clorinda, pouting out her pretty lips, and tapping with the handle of her fan the wrinkled and bony fingers which the singing-master had left stretched on the keys of the silent instrument.

  "Go on, young ladies—go on," said the old professor, with the resigned and submissive air of one who for forty years had had to suffer for six hours daily the airs and contradictions of successive generations of female pupils. "It is not the less true," added he, putting his spectacles into their case, and his snuff-box into his pocket, without raising his eyes toward the angry and mocking group, "that this wise, this docile, this studious, this attentive, this good child, is not you, Signora Clorinda; nor you, Signora Costanza; nor you, either, Signora Zulietta; neither is it Rosina; and still less Michela——"

  "In that case, it is I!"

  "No; it is I!"

  "By no means; it is I!"

  "'Tis I!"

  "'Tis I!" screamed out all at once, with their clear and thrilling voices, some fifty fair or dark-haired girls, darting like a flock of sea-birds on some poor shell-fish left stranded by the waves.

  The shell-fish, that is to say, the maestro—and I maintain that no other metaphor could so well express his angular movements, his filmy eyes, his red-streaked cheeks, and more especially the innumerable stiff, white and pointed curls of his professional wig—the maestro, I say, forced back three times upon his seat, after having risen to go away, but calm and indifferent as the shell-fish itself, rocked and hardened by the storms, had long to be entreated to declare which of his pupils deserved the praises of which he was usually so sparing, but of which he now showed himself so prodigal. At last, yielding as if with regret to the entreaties, which his sarcasms had provoked, he took the roll with which he was in the habit of marking the time, and made use of it to separate and range in two lines his unruly flock. Then, advancing with a serious air between the double row of these light-headed creatures, he proceeded toward the organ-loft, and stopped before a young person who was seated, bent down, on one of the steps. She, with her elbows on her knees, and her fingers in her ears, in order not to be distracted by the noise, and twisted into a sort of coil like a squirrel sinking to sleep, conned over her lesson in a low voice, so as to disturb no one. He, solemn and triumphant, with leg advanced and outstretched arm, seemed like the shepherd Paris awarding the apple, not to the most beautiful, but to the wisest.

  "Consuelo! the Spaniard!" exclaimed all the young choristers, struck at first with the utmost surprise, but almost immediately joining in a general burst of laughter, such as Homer attributes to the gods of Olympus, and which caused a blush of anger and indignation on the majestic countenance of the professor.

  Little Consuelo, with her closed ears, had heard nothing of this dialogue. Her eyes were bent on vacancy, and, busied with her task, she remained some moments unconscious of the uproar. Then, perceiving herself the object of general attention, she dropped her hands on her knees, allowed her book to fall on the floor, and, petrified with astonishment not unmixed with fear, rose at length and looked around in order to see what ridiculous person or thing afforded matter for such noisy gaiety.

  "Consuelo," said the maestro, taking her hand without further explanation, "come, my good child, and sing me the 'Salve Regina' of Pergolese, which thou hast learned but a fortnight, and which Clorinda has been studying for more than a year."

  Consuelo, without replying and without evincing either anger, shame, or embarassment, followed the singing-master to the organ, where, sitting down, he struck with an air of triumph, the key-note for his young pupil. Then Consuelo, with unaffected simplicity and ease, raised her clear and thrilling voice, and filled the lofty roof with the sweetest and purest n
otes with which it had ever echoed. She sang the 'Salve Regina' without a single error—without venturing one note which was not perfectly just, full, sustained, or interrupted at the proper place; and following with unvarying precision the instructions which the learned master had given her, fulfilling with her clear perceptions his precise and correct intentions, she accomplished, with the inexperience and indifference of a child, that which science, practice, and enthusiasm had not perhaps done for the most perfect singer. In a word, she sang to admiration.

  "It is well, my child," said the good old master, always chary of his praise. "You have studied with attention that which you have faithfully performed. Next time you shall repeat the cantata of Scarlatti which I have taught you."

  "Si, Signor Professor," replied Consuelo—"now may I go?"

  "Yes, my child. Young ladies, the lesson is over."

  Consuelo placed in her little basket her music and her crayons, as well as her black fan—the inseparable companion alike of Spaniard and Venetian—which she never used, although she never went without it. Then, disappearing behind the fretwork of the organ, she flew as lightly as a bird down the mysterious stairs which led to the body of the cathedral, knelt for a moment in crossing the nave, and, when just on the point of leaving the church, found beside the font a handsome young man who, smiling, presented the holy water to her. She took some of it, looking at him all the time with the self-possession of a little girl who knows and feels that she is not yet a woman, and mingling her thanks and her devotional gesture in so agreeable a fashion that the signor could not help laughing outright. Consuelo began to laugh likewise, but, all at once, as if she had recollected that some one was waiting for her, she cleared the porch and the steps in a bound, and was off in a twinkling.

  In the meantime, the professor again replaced his spectacles in his huge waistcoat pocket, and thus addressed his silent scholars:

  "Shame upon you, my fair pupils!" said he. "This little girl, the youngest of you all—the latest comer in the class—is the only one of you capable of executing a solo. Even in the choruses, no matter what errors are made on every side of her, I always find her firm and steady as a note of the harpsichord. It is because she has zeal, patience, and—what you will never have, no, not one of you—a conscience!"

  "Ah! now the murder is out," cried Costanza, as soon as the professor had left the church. "He only repeated it some thirty-nine times during the lesson, and now, I verily believe, he would fall ill if he did not get saying it the fortieth."

  "A great wonder, indeed, that this Consuelo should get on!" exclaimed Zulietta; "she is so poor that she must work to learn something whereby to earn her bread."

  "They tell me her mother was a gipsy," said Michelina, "and that the little one sang about the streets and highways before she came here. To be sure, she has not a bad voice; but then she has not a particle of intelligence, poor child! She learns merely by rote; she follows to the letter the professor's instructions—and her lungs do the rest."

  "If she had the best lungs in the world, and the best brains into the bargain," said the handsome Clorinda, "I would not give my face in exchange for hers."

  "I do not know that you would lose so much," replied Costanza, who had not a very exalted opinion of Clorinda's beauty.

  "She is not handsome either," said another; "she is as yellow as a paschal candle. Her great eyes say just nothing at all, and then she is always so ill dressed! She is decidedly ugly.

  "Poor girl! she is much to be pitied—no money—no beauty!"

  Thus finished the praises of Consuelo. They comforted themselves by their contemptuous pity for having been forced to admire her singing.

  CHAPTER II

  THE scene just related took place in Venice about a hundred years ago, in the church of the Mendicanti, where the celebrated maestro Porpora had just rehearsed the grand vespers which he was to direct on the following Assumption-day. The young choristers whom he had so smartly scolded were pupils of the state schools, in which they were instructed at the expense of government and afterwards received a dowry preparatory to marriage or the cloister, as Jean Jacques Rousseau, who admired their magnificent voices at the same period and in the same church, has observed. He mentions the circumstance in the charming episode in the eighth book of his "Confessions." I shall not here transcribe those two admirable pages, lest the friendly reader, whose example under similar circumstances I should certainly imitate, might be unable to resume my own. Hoping, then, that the aforesaid confessions are not at hand, I continue my narrative.

  All these young ladies were not equally poor. Notwithstanding the strictness of the administration, it is certain that some gained admission, to whom it was a matter of speculation rather than necessity to receive an artistic education at the expense of the republic. For this reason it was that some permitted themselves to forget the sacred laws of equality, thanks to which they had been enabled to take their seats clandestinely along with their poorer sisters. All, therefore, did not fulfil the intentions of the austere republic respecting their future lot. From time to time there were numbers who, having received their gratuitous education, renounced their dowry to seek a more brilliant fortune elsewhere. The administration, seeing that this was inevitable, had sometimes admitted to the course of instruction the children of poor artists, whose wandering existence did not permit them a long stay in Venice. Among this number was the little Consuelo, born in Spain, and arriving from thence in Italy by the route of St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Mexico, Archangel, or any other still more direct after the eccentric fashion of the Bohemians.

  Nevertheless, she hardly merited this appellation; for she was neither Hindoo nor gipsy, and still less of any of the tribes of Israel. She was of good Spanish blood—doubtless with a tinge of the Moresco; and though somewhat swarthy, she had a tranquillity of manner which was quite foreign to any of the wandering races. I do not wish to say any thing ill of the latter. If I had invented the character of Consuelo, I do not pretend that I would have traced her parentage from Israel, or even further; but she was altogether, as everything about her organization betrayed, of the family of Ishmael. To be sure I never saw her, not being a century old, but I was told so and I cannot contradict it. She had none of the feverish petulance, alternated by fits of apathetic languor, which distinguishes the zingarella; neither had she the insinuating curiosity nor the frontless audacity of Hebrew mendicancy. She was calm as the water of the lagunes, and at the same time active as the light gondolas that skimmed along their surface.

  As she was growing rapidly and as her mother was very poor, her clothes were always a year too short, which gave to her long legs of fourteen years' growth, accustomed to show themselves in public, a sort of savage grace which one was pleased and at the same time sorry to see. Whether her foot was large or not, it was impossible to say, her shoes were so bad. On the other hand, her figure, confined in narrow stays ripped at every seam, was elastic and flexible as a palm-tree, but without form, fulness, or attraction. She, poor girl! thought nothing about it, accustomed as she was to hear herself called a gipsy and a wanderer by the fair daughters of the Adriatic. Her face was round, sallow, and insignificant, and would have struck nobody, if her short thick hair fastened behind her ears, and at the same time her serious and indifferent demeanor, had not given her a singularity of aspect which was but little attractive. Faces which do not please at first, by degrees lose still more the power of pleasing. The beings to whom they belong, indifferent to others, become so to themselves, and assume a negligence of aspect which repels more and more. On the contrary, beauty observes, admires, and decks itself as it were in an imaginary mirror which is always before its eyes. Ugliness forgets itself and is passed by. Nevertheless, there are two sorts of ugliness: one which suffers, and protests against the general disapprobation by habitual rage and envy—this is the true, the only ugliness. The other, ingenuous, careless, which goes quietly on its way, neither inviting nor shunning comparisons, and which wins t
he heart while it shocks the sense—such was the ugliness of Consuelo. Those who were sufficiently generous to interest themselves about her, at first regretted that she was not pretty; and then, correcting themselves, and patting her head with a familiarity which beauty does not permit, added—"After all, you are a good creature;" and Consuelo was perfectly satisfied, although she knew very well that that meant, "You are nothing more."

  In the meantime, the young and handsome signor who had offered her the holy water at the font, stayed behind till he had seen all the scholars disappear. He looked at them with attention, and when Clorinda, the handsomest, passed near him, he held out his moistened fingers that he might have the pleasure of touching hers. The young girl blushed with pride, and passed on, casting as she did so one of those glances of shame mixed with boldness, which are expressive neither of self-respect nor modesty.

  As soon as they had disappeared in the interior of the convent, the gallant patrician returned to the nave, and addressed the preceptor, who was descending more slowly the steps of the tribune.

  "Corpo di bacco! dear maestro," said he, "will you tell me which of your pupils sang the 'Salve Regina?'"

  "And why do you wish to know, Count Zustiniani?" said the professor, accompanying him out of the church.

  "To compliment you on your pupil," replied the patrician. "You know how long I have attended vespers, and even the exercises; for you are aware what a dilettante I am in sacred music. Well, this is the first time that I have heard Pergolese sung in so perfect a manner, and as to the voice, it is the most beautiful that I have ever listened to.

  "I believe it well," replied the professor, inhaling a large pinch of snuff with dignity and satisfaction.

  "Tell me then the name of this celestial creature who has thrown me into such an ecstasy. In spite of your severity and your continual fault-finding, you have created the best school in all Italy. Your choruses are excellent, and your solos very good; but your music is so severe, so grand, that young girls can hardly be expected to express its beauties."

  "They do not express them," said the professor mournfully, "because they do not feel them. Good voices, God be thanked, we do not want; but as for a good musical organization, alas, it is hardly to be met with!"