gher kind to Amelie--_her_ slave,
conqueror, tormentor, and in the long-run husband? He is perhaps the
most intolerable hero[181] ever designed as a gentleman by a novelist
who has been classed as great, and who certainly has some qualities
necessary to greatness. In reading about him vague compunctions even
come over the mind at having spoken harshly of Stenio and Trenmor.
Stenio was always a fool and latterly a cad; Trenmor first a brute and
then a bore. Albert is none of these (except perhaps the last), but he
is madder than the Mad Hatter and the March Hare put together, and as
depressing as they are delightful. He has hallucinations which
obliterate the sense of time in him; he thinks himself one of his
ancestors of the days of Ziska; he has second sight; he speaks Spanish
to Consuelo and calls her by her name when he first sees her, though he
has not the faintest _sane_ idea who she is or whence she comes; and he
reduces his family to abject misery by ensconcing himself for days in a
grotto which can be isolated by means of a torrent turned on and off at
pleasure by a dwarf gipsy called Zdenko, who is almost a greater
nuisance than Albert himself. Consuelo discovers his retreat at the risk
of being drowned; and various nightmarish scenes occur, resulting in the
slight return to sanity on Albert's part involved in falling in love
with her, and a very considerable advance towards _in_sanity on hers by
falling in love with him. But perhaps this give-and-take of lovers may
seem attractive to some. And when after a time we get into mere
hocus-pocus, and it seems to Consuelo that Albert's violin "speaks and
utters words as through the mouth of Satan," the same persons may think
it fine. For myself, I believe that without fatuity I may claim to be,
if not a _visionnaire_ (perhaps that also), at least a lover of visions,
and of Isaiah and Ezekiel and the Revelation. Dante, Blake, Shelley, the
best of Lamennais and the best of Hugo excite in me nothing but a
passionate reverence. I can walk day-long and night-long by Ulai and
Chebar and Lethe-Eunoe and have no thought of sneer or slumber, shrug or
satiety. But when you ask me to be agitated at Count Albert of
Rudolstadt's violin ventriloquising Satan I really must decline. I do
even remember the poor creature Paul de Kock, and would fain turn to one
of the things he was writing at this very time.

[Sidenote: Recovery; but not maintained quite to the end.]

_Consuelo_ is a