"You lift a burden off my breast," said Porporina, "and a black veil from my heart. It seems to me that I am born again, and awake from a painful sleep. Thanks are due to you for this explanation. I am not mad, then; I have no visions, and will not be afraid of myself. See what the human heart is," added she, after a moment of reverie. "I regret my fear and weakness. In my extravagance, I persuaded myself that Albert was not dead, and that one day, after having, by terrible apparitions, made me expiate the wrong I had committed, he would return, without a cloud, and without resentment. Now, I know that Albert sleeps in the tomb of his ancestors, and that he will not recover. That death will not relax its prey, is a terrible certainty."
"Could you entertain any doubt? Well! there is some happiness in being mad: for my own part, I had not hoped Trenck would leave the Silesian dungeons yet; it was possible, and has occurred."
"Were I to tell you, my beautiful Amelia, all the fancies to which my poor soul abandoned itself, you would see that in spite of the improbability, they were not impossible. Lethargy, for instance, Albert was liable to it. But I will not call back those conjectures. They injure me too much, now that the form I took for Albert is that of a chevalier of industry."
"Trismegistus is not what he is supposed to be. One thing, however, is certain, and that is, he is not Count Rudolstadt. Many years ago I knew him, and apparently, at least, he is a diviner. Besides, he is not so like Count Rudolstadt as you fancy. Supperville is too skillful a physician to bury a man in a lethargy. He, too, does not believe in ghosts, and has observed differences you did not."
"I would be so pleased to see Trismegistus again," said Consuelo in a tone of deep reverie.
"You will not, perhaps, see him soon," said the princess, very coldly. "He has gone to Warsaw, having left the very day you saw him in the palace. He never remains more than two days at Berlin. He will, however, certainly return during the ear----"
"But, if it should be Albert?" said Consuelo.
"Beyond all doubt," said she, "fate condemns me to have as friends either male or female fools. One of you fancies my sorcerer her husband, the Canon Von Kleist, and the other her deceased husband, the Count of Rudolstadt. It is well that I have a strong head, otherwise I would fancy he was Trenck, and no one knows what would happen. Trismegistus is a poor sorcerer not to take advantage of all these mistakes. Porporina, my beautiful, do not look at me with an expression of such consternation. Resume your presence of mind. How can you fancy that if Count Albert has recovered from lethargy so strange a thing would have been known? Have you, too, kept up no correspondence with the family?"