The Countess of Rudolstadt

THE COUNTESS OF RUDOLSTADT (1843) by George Sand is the sequel to her romantic masterpiece CONSUELO, a glorious story of true love, the creative force, and a personal crossroads of choices. Consuelo, now an operatic diva at the court of Frederick II of Prussia, and suspected by many to be his mistress, leads a chaste, uninspired and dreary life at court. Her vocal performances, though still brilliant, have lost their divine inspiration, for she grieves in secret the mysterious loss of her occult love. But innocent Consuelo's trials have just begun. Pursued by the subtle yet relentless attentions of the king, drawn into a courtly intrigue that involves political conspiracies among princes, court sorcerers and charlatans, dangerous secret societies, mesmerizing personages such as the Count de Saint Germain, and another elusive and even more mysterious stranger who bears a striking resemblance to someone else, Consuelo finds her freedom and her very self in grave peril. Throughout these tribulations, her greatest choice will follow her always. For Consuelo must still earn, by means of suffering and Herculean tests of loyalty, the two things that she has not yet achieved -- the understanding of earthly truth and the culmination of sacred love.