“I call you Consolation, because a consolation has been promised to my desolate life, and because you are that consolation which God at last grants to my solitary and gloomy existence.  Consuelo!  If you leave me, my life is at an end, and I will never return to earth again!” Saying this he fell at her feet in a swoon; and the two girls, terrified, called the servants to carry him to his room and restore him to consciousness.  But hardly had Albert been left alone before his apartment was empty, and he had disappeared.

Days passed, and the anxiety at the castle remained unrelieved.  It was not the first time Albert had disappeared, but now his absence was longer than usual.  Consuelo found out the secret of his hiding-place—­a vaulted hall at the end of a long gallery in a cave in the forest was Albert’s hermitage, and a secret passage from the moat of the castle enabled him to pass unseen to his solitude.  She traced him to the chamber in the recesses of the cavern.

Already Consuelo had discovered the two natures in Albert—­the one wise, the other mad; the one polished, tender, merciful; the other strange, untamed and violent She saw that sympathy and firmness were both needed in dealing with this lonely and unfortunate man—­sympathy with his religious mysticism, and firmness in urging him not to yield to the images of his mind.

That Albert was in love with her, Consuelo understood; but to his pleadings she had but one answer: 

“Do not speak of love, do not speak of marriage.  My past life, my recollections, make the first impossible.  The difference in our conditions would render the second humiliating and insupportable to me.  Let it be enough that I will be your friend and your consoler, whenever you are disposed to open your heart to me.”

And with this Albert, for a time, professed to be content.  So determined was he, however, to win Consuelo’s heart, that he readily obeyed her advice, and even promised never to return to his hermitage without first asking her to accompany him.

Gentle old Count Christian himself came later to plead his son’s cause with Consuelo.  Amelia and her father had left the Castle of the Giants, and Christian realised how much Consuelo had already done for the restoration of his son’s health.

“You were afraid of me, dear Consuelo,” said the old man.  “You thought that the old Rudolstadt, with his aristocratic prejudices, would be ashamed to owe his son to you.  But you are mistaken, and I go to bring my son to your feet, that together we may bless you for extending his happiness.”

“Oh, stop, my dear lord!” said Consuelo, amazed.  “I am not free.  I have an object, a vocation, a calling.  I belong to the art to which I have devoted myself since my childhood.  I could only renounce all this—­if—­ if I loved Albert.  That is what I must find out.  Give me at least a few days, that I may learn whether I have this love for him within my heart.”