reappears, without any one seeing
him go in or out. He believes that he has been Jean Ziska, and this
is probably true. He has been present at events which took place three
hundred years previously, and he describes them. Consuelo discovers
Albert's retreat. It is a cavern hollowed out of a mountain in the
vicinity, which communicates, by means of a well, with his rooms. The
Chateau of Rudolstadt is built on the same architectural plan as Anne
Radcliffe's chateau. After staying for some time in this bewildering
place, Consuelo sets forth once more. She now meets Haydn, goes through
the Bohmer Wald with him, arrives in Venice, is introduced to Maria
Theresa, and is engaged at the Imperial Theatre. She is now recalled to
the Chateau of Rudolstadt. Albert is on his deathbed, and he marries
her _in extremis_, after telling her that he is going to leave her for a
time, but that he shall return to her on earth by a new birth. He, too,
had evidently read Pierre Leroux, and it was perhaps that which had
caused his illness.

_Consuelo_ is a novel of adventures after the style of _Gil Blas_, the
_Vie de Marianne_, and _Wilkelm Meister_. It is a historical novel, for
which we have Joseph Haydn, Maria Theresa, Baron Trenk, and the whole
history of the Hussites. It is a fantastical story with digressions
on music and on popular songs, but running through it all, with the
persistency of a fixed idea, are divagations on the subject of
earthly metempsychosis. Such, then, is this incongruous story, odd and
exaggerated, but with gleams of light and of great beauty, the reading
of which is apt to leave one weary and disturbed.

We meet with Consuelo again in another book. In those days, it was not
enough for a novel to consist of several volumes. People liked a sequel
also. _Vingt ans apres_ was the sequel to _Trois Mousquetaires_, and the
_Vicomte de Bragelonne_ was a sequel to that sequel. Our grandparents
were capable of allowing themselves to be bored to a degree which makes
us ashamed of our frivolity. The _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_ was the sequel
to _Consuelo_. As time went on, Pierre Leroux called George Sand's
attention to the study of freemasonry. In 1843, she declared that she
was plunged in it, and that it was a gulf of nonsense and uncertainties,
in which "she was dabbling courageously."

"I am up to my ears in freemasonry," she writes. "I cannot get away from
the kaddosh, the Rose Croix and the Sublime Scotchman. The result o