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 of all this will be a mysterious novel.”  The mysterious novel was the Comtesse de Rudolstadt.  Consuelo, who through her marriage with Albert is now Comtesse de Rudolstadt, continues her European tour.  She reaches Berlin, and we find her at the Court of Frederick II.  We now have Voltaire, La Mettrie, the Sans-Souci suppers, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and the occult sciences.  Frederick II sends Consuelo to prison.  There appears to be no reason for this, unless it be that in order to escape she must first have been imprisoned.  Some mysterious rescuers take a great interest in Consuelo, and transport her to a strange dwelling, where she has a whole series of surprises.  It is, in fact, a sort of Palace of Illusions.  She is first in a dark room, and she then finds herself suddenly in a room of dazzling light.  “At the far end of this room, the whole aspect of which is very forbidding, she distinguishes seven personages, wrapped in red cloaks and wearing masks of such livid whiteness that they looked like corpses.  They were all seated behind a table of black marble.  Just in front of the table, and on a lower seat, was an eighth spectre.  He was dressed in black, and he, too, wore a white mask.  By the wall, on each side of the room, were about twenty men in black cloaks and masks.  There was the most profound silence.  Consuelo turned round and saw that there were also black phantoms behind her.  At each door there were two of them standing up, each holding a huge, bright sword."(37)

     (37) Comtesse de Rudolstadt.

She wondered whether she had reached the infernal regions, but she discovered that she was in the midst of a secret society, styled the Invisibles.  Consuelo is to go through all the various stages of the initiation.  She first puts on the bridal dress, and after this the widow’s weeds.  She undergoes all the various trials, and has to witness the different spectacles provided for her edification, including coffins, funeral palls, spectres and simulated tortures.  The description of all the various ceremonies takes up about half of the book.  George Sand’s object was to show up this movement of secret societies, which was such a feature of the eighteenth century, and which was directed both against monarchical power and against the Church.  It contributed to prepare the way for the Revolution, and gave to this that international character and that mystic allure which would otherwise have been incomprehensible.