Chapter III: Part 3

Elizabeth smiled as she said this, but remarked no further. It was enough for her fair confidant; who, if her soul possessed any passion, did not scruple to own it was ambition. To gratify this, she had given her blooming beauties, at the age of seventeen, to the superannuated Count Altheim; a man of high family and great riches, but who had long survived every faculty, but that of dotage on any pretty face that would endure the incense of an habitual idolater of youth and beauty. At that early age, she had been sent for by the Empress, who loved her, from her having been the only daughter of the respectable woman who had been her nurse; and in consequence of which the pretty Otteline had been brought up as the favourite play-thing of the Princess; but the gracious Elizabeth soon regarded her with the tenderness of a sister; and on the death of the venerable mother, embraced the opportunity to have the companion of her youth brought to Vienna. Otteline de Blaggay was many years younger than her Imperial mistress, and far transcended that beautiful Princess in every personal grace. But as the prejudice in favour of high birth is so great in Austria, that a mis-alliance is considered as indelible a disgrace, as a moral dishonour; none of all the illustrious courtiers who contemplated, and sighed for the possession of the lovely Otteline, ever thought of making her the sharer of his rank. A thousand gay adventurers pressed forward, to gratify their passion for beauty, and to excite an interest in their behalf with the Empress, by making her favourite their wife. But Otteline knew herself to be despised, though worshipped. And as rank was all she wanted, to set her in every respect above the women who envied her charms, and therefore looked with double contempt on her untitled name, she resolved to marry for rank, and for nothing else. Within a few months after her arrival, the old Count Altheim became infatuated with her beauty; and, intoxicated by her smiles, dared every obloquy to raise her to the station her lofty spirit seemed so calculated to dignify. The Empress felt the situation of her favourite, and, having joyfully pronounced her consent; the no less delighted Otteline gave her hand to the Count in a splendid espousal, at which, not merely her patroness, but all the Imperial family were present.

While the fond husband lived, his young Countess was the brightest, the loveliest, the proudest of the court. Elizabeth exulted in the homage the haughty Austrians were at length obliged to pay her _eléve_ and country-woman; and to render it more complete, she determined that an application to the Countess should be the only avenue to her Imperial favours. But the Count died; and according to the law at Vienna, that on the death of her husband, the wife loses whatever rank she may have acquired by her marriage; the Countess Altheim, though a richly endowed widow, found herself at once thrown back into all her former insignificance. This reverse was doubly galling, since she had been on the heights of consideration; and had trod that elevated path with a step not much less imperial than that of the Empress herself. To be contemned now, was mortification almost to madness. But the beautiful mourner had lived too long in courts, to permit her rivals to perceive the complete victory events had given them over her. Affecting a wish for retirement after the death of so adoring a husband, she lived secluded for a time; loftily leaving that world, she was aware, would have scornfully excluded her: and when the assumption of inconsolable grief was no longer feasible, Elizabeth appointed her to the high office of presiding governess over the Arch-Duchess Maria-Theresa. This afforded her a dignified plea for still abstaining from the assemblies of the court; though in private parties she sometimes permitted herself to be seen. Yet this was a rare indulgence;--that the novelty of her unequalled charms, whenever she did appear, might continue to give her successive triumphs over the envy of her proud rivals;--and the effect was ever what she expected. She was then twenty-six, and though in the meridian of her beauty, she foresaw that the time approached when she must resign this, her sole sceptre of power, to some younger hand. What then should she be? She could not endure to dwell upon the answer; and again turned her views to some elevating alliance. To think of another Austrian connection, would have been waste of time, and a hopeless speculation. She must direct her attention to some of the numerous noblemen from foreign countries, who visited Vienna. This plan was hardly determined on, before the arrival of the Marquis Santa Cruz gave the wished-for victim to her ambition in the person of his son Don Ferdinand d'Osorio.--Young, handsome, susceptible, and of high rank! It was an opportunity not to be neglected; and a few interviews with him at the _petits soupés_ of the Baroness Hermanstadt, put to flight every remembrance of the dove-eyed beauties he had so lately sighed for in the groves of Italy. Lost in the blaze of her attractions, he soon lived only in her presence; and drew from her a confession, that she awaited his father's consent alone to become his bride. But she was a Protestant, and she was of ignoble birth; two disqualifications, which the Marquis's bigotry of faith and of ancestry could not be brought to excuse. In anguish and hope, Ferdinand flew to the feet of his adored Otteline, and implored her to give him her hand, in spite of his inexorable father.--She knew the degrading consequence of such a compliance. She saw the point to which the passions of Ferdinand were hurrying his reason; and to throw it at once on that dreadful extremity; and by that phrenzy of despair alarm the Marquis, and compel him to save the senses of his son, by consenting to the marriage; to do this, she exasperated the agonies of her lover's mind, by appearing to regard the proposal for a clandestine union, as an insult from himself. When she allowed herself to be convinced of the contrary, still her indignation continued, though directed to a different object; and she declared, that her wounded honour could never be appeased, nor would she consent to see Don Ferdinand again, till he should bring her the Marquis's only adequate apology for the disgrace he had presumed to attach to her alliance.

Ferdinand departed from her, almost insane; and in that condition threw himself upon the mercy of his father. But the good Catholic, and Spanish Grandee, was not to be moved. And the frantic lover, being denied admittance at the door of his proud mistress, he flew to unburthen his distracted soul to their mutual friend, the Baroness Hermanstadt.

The narrative that follows is of more common, than agreeable detail. The Baroness was one of those women who are a blot on their own sex, and a blight to all of the other on whom they fix their rapacious eyes. Abandoned to ostentatious expence, no means were rejected, by which she could gratify the vanity her own fortune could not supply; and while her friend looked abroad for an ennobling alliance, to give her rank, she laid snares for dishonourable engagements, to furnish her with gold. Her iniquitous proceedings had hitherto been so warily managed between herself and her dupes, that no one else suspected her of error.--She was generally received in the first circles of Vienna, and hence had a wider field from which to select her victims. The thoughtless expenditure of the son of Santa Cruz, had for some time tempted her rapacity; and the opportunity presented itself of making it all her own. She was an elegant woman, and an animated companion; and soon made the distracted Ferdinand forget the pretended disdain of managing ambition, in the delusions of practised art and soothing flattery. Intoxicated with what he believed her generous oblivion of herself, in voluntarily sacrificing every duty to her newly-avowed passion for him; he was-only awakened from his trance of vice, by the information that her husband, a rough Hungarian General, was returning from his post on the Turkish frontiers. She would gladly have exchanged this poor and rugged hero, for the soft prodigal, she had bereft of his better reason; and she made the proposal to him:--To fly with him, before the Baron could arrive; and that henceforth their fates should be one. As she clung round him, making the insiduous proffer, a gleam from his long banished reason seemed to visit him from on high; he shrunk with horror from an everlasting engagement with such a woman. Though the slave of her allurements, she was not the mistress of his soul, and he dared to deny her. Then all her assumed persuasiveness was cast aside. She insisted on flight, with a vehemence that turned her passionate love to threatening fury; and closed with holding a pistol to her head, to extort his assent, or to end her existence. He wrested the weapon from her hand; and oppressed with his own bitter consciousness, left her in a storm of frantic upbraidings, to the care of her confidential maid.

From this disgraceful connection, it was, that the Marquis Santa Cruz had borne away his son. As soon as the extraordinary disorder of Ferdinand, and consequent enquiries, had made the Marquis aware of these circumstances, he saw the necessity of hurrying him away from the machinations of a wicked woman, too well practised in the ruin of the youthful mind; and too ready to make the credulous Ferdinand a lasting prey.

Meanwhile, the disappointed Countess Altheim, foiled by her perfidious friend and versatile lover, broke with the one, and really disdained the other. And though she never condescended to enquire about either, after the double desertion was known to her beyond a doubt; yet she was not insensible to some feeling of gratified revenge, when she heard that Ferdinand had abandoned her rival, and left the country.

The Marquis hastened with his remorseful son, to Holland and to England. But the pangs of his repentance had not struck at the root of his crime. He mourned the act of guilt, not the empassioned nature which impelled it. He cursed the hour in which he had ever met with the Baroness Hermanstadt; but he did not condemn the headlong impetuosity with which he yielded to every impulse of self-gratification. The only son of his parents, and heir to immense revenues in both hemispheres, he had been indulged in every wish, till he believed he had no duty in life but to enjoy all its blameless pleasures. But when personal gratification is the principle of existence, the boundary between innocence and transgression is often invisible. Ferdinand had more than once trembled on it. He had now overleaped it.--And though racked with self-abhorrence at what he had done; and hoping, by deeds of penance to repass it; yet he fostered in his heart the passions which had betrayed him: and even found a new temptation for their excesses, in the land of his penitential pilgrimage. By a strange coincidence of fate, while he was sowing tares in the happy fields of Lindisfarne, Countess Altheim was preparing a similar attempt on the peace of its darling Louis.

The beautiful Otteline was as widely different from the character of her false friend, as unsunned snow from the molten lava of Vesuvius. She sought for nothing in her union with Ferdinand, but the rank he would bestow on her. His riches and his love were alike indifferent to her. And when she turned her eyes on the handsome secretary of Ignatius, she had no other idea in her meditated attack on his heart, but what aimed at sharing a birthright, which the Empress had assured her, would exceed her proudest wishes. Notwithstanding her incapability of loving, and indeed of feeling any emotion but those connected with her ambition and its disappointments; she was so keen an observer, and so fine an actress, that he must have had an _Ithuriel_ eye, who could have distinguished the counterfeit from the real, in her pretensions.

Having made her first advances on Louis, by a retreating manoeuvre, she perceived that her personal charms had made their intended impression; and that she had only to produce the graces of her conversation, to complete the conquest. On subjects of general taste, she was mistress; and in every department of human knowledge that belongs to worldly wisdom, she was perfectly informed. If sympathy did not give her anticipation of her lover's thoughts, self-interest endowed her with tact to glide into his opinions; and she did this so adroitly, as to make her echo appear the leading voice:--Her accomplishments were likewise brought into play; and the Empress did not disdain to partake the management. Once or twice, she detained the Arch-dutchess and her governess in the room, to call forth some natural or acquired charm in the beautiful instructress; and when the blushing Countess withdrew, Her Majesty usually made some observation on the inimitable perfections of her character, and the engaging modesty by which they were so constantly veiled.

In one of these interviews, when Louis was gazing with his soul in his eyes after the departing steps of the too exquisite Otteline, the Empress, with a peculiar smile, ejaculated,--"She has lately become enamoured of politics.--And should she negociate for herself, adieu my right in her possession!"

Louis felt himself turn pale, but he did not reply.--Though his Imperial Inquisitor thought his looks were sufficiently expressive, she was determined to carry away a direct avowal; and with a little archness, she added, "But you, perhaps, doubt her powers?"

He coloured as he replied: "I believe the Countess Altheim may command just what she pleases." "Indeed!" cried the Empress, "then you must not be my minister. If she negociate against me, I see where my interest would be."

Elizabeth smiled again, and with an expression that Louis could not resolve into any positive meaning;--but it was unpleasant to him, and gave him an impression of being played upon. A confused recollection of the Sieur's exordium against the power of beauty, suddenly occurred to him; and with rather a more offended air than is often ventured to an Empress, he said; "believing that the Countess Altheim would always please to command what is right, I did not suppose her influence could ever be actuated against the interests of Your Majesty."

The soft colour on Elizabeth's cheek, mounted to a proud crimson. The words were compliment, but the manner reproof. She regarded the audacious speaker with a look of astonishment. His eyes were now directed to the ground. She felt she had been reproved; and by a youth! a boy! The son of a man, who, if her confidant and coadjutor, she was also his! and, from circumstances, so much more in her power, than she in his; that, at any moment she could ground his chariot in the quicksands; and give him a fall as deep, as that which had sunk for ever the fortunes of his predecessor, the great Alberoni!--And yet the son of this man, so perilously placed, so dependant on her will, durst presume to be offended with an innocent freedom she had condescended to take with his feelings!--He had dared to imply to her, that she had trifled with him beneath her dignity; and still he stood before her with a mien of more true respect, than any she was accustomed to meet from the most obsequious of her vassals!

With a haughty swelling at her heart, the Imperial Elizabeth ran through the first of these suggestions, but as she contemplated the countenance of the speaker, so noble, so modest; she found a more ingenuous sentiment arise. She had then, for the first time in her life, beheld the unveiled face of simple truth! the situation was strange to her; but there was a charm even in the novelty: and again smiling, but with an air in which all the distance of her rank was conveyed, she graciously said, "there was something besides compliment in that speech of your's, de Montemar; but I forgive you." She stretched out her hand to him, in sign of full pardon; and as he respectfully touched it with his lip, she added, "you would make a better counsellor than a courtier; but if you mean to be a statesman, you must unite both."

He bowed as she turned away; and said to himself, "then I must mean to be, what I never can be. If the world is not to be governed without the moral degradation of its governors, my ambition to be a ruler must follow Orlando's wits to the moon!"

Gracious as the Empress looked and spoke, he yet saw that he had been on the verge of giving her mortal offence. His Pastor-uncle had often told him, the atmosphere of courts was cold, in proportion to their elevation: it was as withering to every honest demonstration of the heart, as the icy peaks of the glaziers, to the verdure which would flourish in the vallies! Louis did not then quite believe the representation; but he now remembered the lesson, and sighed to find it true.

Musing on the causes and consequences of so unnatural a state of moral existence, he passed hastily through the galleries. The day was unusually warm for the season, and the heat of the stoves made the unventilated air so oppressive, that absorbed in thought, he unconsciously complied with his bodily feeling; and, with his cap still in his hand, he allowed his pelisse to fall open from his figure, as he hastened down the passages. As he turned into an obscure lobby, by which he avoided the public guard-room, he passed the bottom of a flight of steps. Two persons were coming out of a door at the top. He did not observe the circumstance, so profound was his reverie, till he heard the voice of Wharton exclaiming, "'tis he, by Heaven!"

Without a moment's hesitation, Louis sprang forward; but not to meet his friend. He disappeared from the passage, at the very instant he heard the Duke throw himself over the rails of the stair, and call in louder accents, "De Montemar! De Montemar! Stop, for God's sake! It is Wharton who calls you!"

But Louis continued to fly, and Wharton to pursue, till the former abruptly turning through a small postern into the street, darted into his carriage; which always awaited him at this obscure entrance. It was just wheeling into the mob of attending equipages, when he beheld the Duke issue from the gate, and stand gazing around in search of his faithless friend!

"Faithless, I am not, dear, insulted Wharton!" cried Louis, aloud, though unheard by him he apostrophised. "But you have seen me desert you! Fly you, in spite of the sacred adjuration with which you would have recalled me! Oh, what do you now think of ungrateful de Montemar?"

At that moment he saw the Duke strike his forehead, as in the vexation of disappointment; and in the next, the turn of the carriage snatched him from his sight.

Louis now began to arraign his own carelessness, in having erred so unpardonably against warning, as to permit any abstraction of mind to divert him from the indispensible concealment of his person. Angry with himself, and vexed to the soul that his negligent reverie had so immediately incurred the evil most deprecated by Ignatius, the wormwood in his heart for a moment distilled over every other object, and with a bitterness unusual to him, he exclaimed, "Why did I forget that a man sworn to politics, has immolated body and mind? Neither love nor friendship, nor the reasoning faculty, are for him. She is his deity, and must command all his thoughts! Had I properly recollected this detested creed, coiled like Satan in his serpent-train, I might have passed through the dust, unnoticed by the erect eyes of Duke Wharton!"

Perhaps, the consciousness that his own nature had caught some of this abhorrent system of disguise, excited temper, as well as regret, in this moody exclamation! His soul was naturally brave and frank; but the mysterious language of the Sieur had touched him with a kind of superstitious dread on certain points; and he now shrunk from mentioning this rencontre to any one. He knew it would fill Ignatius with alarm for their secret; and in the present state of his slowly-closing wounds, all agitation was dangerous. To name it to the Empress, might not only re-awaken her suspicions of the Duke, but excite her to precautions hostile to his safety. Louis thought, and re-thought over these circumstances; and, as his perturbed feelings subsided, and gave him clearer judgment, he fully determined on silence. He flattered himself that no ill could proceed from this concealment; and while he resolved to be more circumspect in future, he believed that Wharton was incapable of any act which could implicate his friend, and might be justly feared. He did not hope that the Duke could suppose that either now, or on the Danube, he had mistaken any other person for him. He might have been persuaded to say the mistake was probable; but Louis could not believe the possibility of his having ever thought so. For, could any one make him think he had not seen Wharton on the Danube; that he had not heard his voice calling on him through the passages of the palace?

"Oh, no," cried he, "there is an identity which never can deceive the heart! You know that it was Louis de Montemar you saw, that it was Louis de Montemar who fled you! But a day will come, I trust, when you may know all; or at least, when you shall see cause to grant to me, that I could not do otherwise: and that one essential in true friendship, is sometimes to confide, even against the evidence of our own senses."

With that romantic faith, Louis had confided in the purity of Wharton's attachment; and he believed that Wharton would not be less generous to him. But Louis was enthusiastic, and judged men with that deference to oral wisdom, which hangs on the precept of virtue, as if it were virtue's self. He was yet practically ignorant, that a man's taste for moral excellence might be as exquisite as that which modelled the life of Addison; and his conduct be as foreign from his theory, as that which debased the genius of Richard Savage. Hence, Louis formed his opinion of his fellow-creatures, rather from the sentiments he heard them utter, than from the actions he was told they performed. He could not be mistaken in the one; misrepresentation, or misapprehension of motives, might pervert the other; and thus he more often made a good sentiment the commentary on a dubious action, than tried the principles of the sentimentalist, by the rectitude of his conduct. Indeed, he was not thus liberal, merely from never having supposed the absurdity of men admiring a principle they are determined never to adopt; but from an ingenuous pleader in his own breast, whose still small voice continually whispered to him, "Why should I conceive the worst of others, when my own conduct so often falls short of my best intentions! nay, frequently turns so blindly aside, that I wonder to find myself in the midst of errors, when I most intended to do the perfect right! But the heart's weakness, the impatience of the will, the frowardness of the temper! how can I feel these within me, and not judge with charity of appearances in others?"

"And you, dear Wharton," cried he, "are now called on to judge me charitably. To believe any thing of me, but that I could treat you thus, from the dictates of my own will."

How Wharton did judge of the conduct of Louis de Montemar, after events were to prove. Louis was right in believing him sure of his friend's identity, both on the Danube and in the palace gallery. But in the first instance, as he saw him no more, he supposed that some cause must have hurried him from Vienna; and he did not think it worth while to press the matter on those who denied it. But now, that he had not only seen him again, but seen him fly his sight and his voice! Here indeed, Wharton could hardly credit his senses. And he was still standing in the porch, gazing after the various passing carriages, when the companion he had broken from in his pursuit, rejoined him.

He enquired of the Duke, who the person could be, he was so eager to overtake; and remarking on the oddity of so determined an avoidance, exclaimed, "He must have been gone in an instant; for though I heard your exclamation, I never saw to whom it was made."

"Then I have probably been racing after a ghost," replied Wharton, stifling his chagrin under a gay laugh; "but if it have aught of mother-earth about its airy sides, I will grapple with it yet."

His companion replied in the same strain, observing, that had it not been for the over-topping figure of the Duke, he might have had a glimpse of the nimble-footed apparition. But soon observing that the curved brow of Wharton did not well agree with the merriment on his lip, the gentleman looked more serious, and again asked the name of the fugitive. Perceiving that his companion had not attended to the words of his exclamation, whatever he had done to its sound, the Duke carelessly answered, "It matters not; he is only a scape-goat, with more sins on his foolish head than he thinks of!"

"But his flight vexes you?"

"Because he is so good as to bear away my sins on his pate, and I am not in a humour to be tired of their company."

"He is your confessor then, and was flying from his duty?"

"You have it," returned the Duke, in a low whisper; "and for my conscience's sake, without further comment, let us allow him to go to the devil!" The gentleman shook his head incredulously; but added, laughing, "I am too good a catholic to pry into mysteries, sacred or profane." And Wharton, seeing he suspected some affair of gallantry, with a glance to corroborate the idea, laughed also, and passed to another subject.

CHAP. VI.

Whether Duke Wharton disdained to mention again the name of the friend who had unquestionably fled him, or how it happened that no notice transpired of this second rencontre, Louis could not determine; but as several days passed without receiving any intimation of it at the palace, he hoped it was buried in the mind of the Duke; and that only between themselves it would hereafter be mentioned.

The Sieur was still a prisoner in his cell. The more eager he became to resume his diplomatic duties, the more his recovery was retarded. Twice in the course of a fortnight, the anxiety of his mind had inflamed his wounds to jeopardy. Louis said every thing that cheering anticipations could devise, to assuage this impatience. But his own perseverance in his double, nay treble duty, at the college, the palace, and the chateau, did most to satisfy the Sieur, by proving that he had not employed an inefficient agent.

Couriers arrived, and were dispatched, with propositions and acquiescences, which every time brought the grand object nearer to a close; and Louis's encreasing labours were rewarded every day by the sunny smiles of the bewitching Otteline. The Empress seemed to have forgotten what had passed between herself and the young secretary, respecting her; and the favourite herself, as if unconscious of having been referred to, continued to him those ineffable attentions of eye and ear, which, without a word, are the most eloquent language of the soul. He saw her beautiful, had witnessed her accomplished; from the Empress he heard of her endearing virtues; and under such impressions he hourly felt the influence of her magnetic looks, of the gently struggling sighs which were breathed near him, as she bent at his side, to perform any little task appointed by her smiling mistress.

He had conceived a high idea of the virtuous female character, from his sweet cousins, the companions of his youth; and loving them with a brother's pride, whenever the image of a more exclusive attachment would obtrude itself upon his fancy, it always arrayed itself in a form beauteous as theirs; and united all their endearing qualities in the visionary claimant on his heart. But amongst the daughters of peer or commoner, who added to the winter festivities of Morewick-hall, or welcomed bright summer on the rocks of Lindisfarne, no such miracle of a romantic brain ever presented itself. Many of them were fair, amiable, and engaging; but all were inferior in some indispensible grace, to the noble Cornelia or gentle Alice: and when those charming sisters continued to rally him on his invulnerable heart, he would plead guilty to the charge; declaring it was all divided between fraternal love for them, and, he trusted, some future friendship with a brother mind of his own sex.

The month he passed in the highlands of Scotland, made him believe that he had found this treasure in the accomplished Wharton. The Duke courted his confidence. And from one so full of every elevated sentiment, of every enchanting gaiety, of every demonstration of regard, could he withhold it? No; he loved him, as he was afterwards too well inclined to adore the resistless Otteline, with all his imagination, all the ardour of restrainless enthusiasm.

His _beau ideal_ of the female form was far surpassed by what he saw in his first interview with the Countess Altheim; and the image of perfect beauty being once impressed on his senses, it was easy to stamp belief on every shew of its intellectual loveliness. At first, he regarded her faultless lineaments, with little more than the same delighted taste with which he used to gaze on the admirable forms from Italy, which embellished the galleries of Bamborough. But when those eyes, so beautiful in themselves, were turned on him with a glance that conveyed her soul to his, then the ethereal fire seemed to have shot from heaven on the fair statue, and he felt its electricity in every vein.

One morning, after the Empress had retired from the saloon, Louis remained, by her orders, to make minutes of some particulars in their discussion. The Countess Altheim sat near him, awaiting the memorandum she was to convey to her mistress. He pursued his task with a diligence, neither his employer, nor her favourite desired; but he began to tremble on meeting the eyes which now so kindly beamed on him; and, inexplicably, (as were the feelings with which he enjoyed and dreaded their powerful appeals to his sensibility,) he shrunk with alarm at the most distant whisper of his heart, that _now he loved_!

While he still sat, busily writing, with his eyes rivetted to the paper; and the fair Otteline's on him, with a look that was almost indignant at his perverse industry; the door opened, and a lady, in deep mourning, and half fainting, was supported into the room by an attendant of the same sex. The Countess was transfixed to her seat. But at sight of a woman in such a state, Louis forgot at once the _Imperial boudoir_ and his own secret visits there, and hastened to her assistance. The Countess recovered her presence of mind in the same instant, and approached the invalid; but she had glanced her eyes on Louis as he drew near, and had already accepted the use of his arm. Between him and the other lady she was conducted to a sofa. In a voice of profound respect, but with evident vexation, the Countess enquired how her Imperial Highness had been affected, and how those apartments were so fortunate as to be honoured by her presence? The attendant lady answered for her mistress, who still leaned her head on the shoulder of Louis, that she was returning from a visit to the Arch-duchess Maria Theresa, when becoming suddenly faint, she turned into the Altheim gallery, in hopes of meeting the Countess, and obtaining some _eau de Cologne_.

The anticipated restorative was immediately produced; and the Princess, having taken some, soon after re-opened her eyes; and relinquished her hold on her respectful supporter. Her lady-attendant and the Countess vied with each other in felicitations on her recovery; and while the latter was pressing the use of several pungent essences, Louis, who hoped his assistance had passed unnoticed, was gliding out of the room: but the still languid invalid caught a glimpse of his retreating figure, and abruptly interrupting the Countess, requested her to call her friend back, as she wished to thank him for his services.

Otteline obeyed; though he saw by her altered countenance, it was with reluctance; however, he turned to the soft summons of her voice, and approached the sofa with a modest bow. The Princess directed her large dark eyes upon the figure and face of Louis; both of which surprised her, as they were strange to the court, and yet possessed _un air distingué_ too pre-eminent, she was sure, to belong to any man attending there in a dependant quality.

"Sir," said she, "your politeness has been very useful to me; and I desire to know to whom I am obliged."

He bowed, but it was in confusion.--He felt that his tongue would blister, in uttering the first falsehood, he had even implied, in his life. Supposing that this disordered silence arose from a flattering awe of herself, Her Highness turned with a smile to the Countess, and demanded of her, the name of her friend.

"The Chevalier de Phaffenberg," replied the favourite with a rising colour.

"Phaffenberg!" repeated the Princess, "I thought that noble family was extinct.--Of which of the brothers, Ernest or Rudolph, is he the son?"

Her eyes addressed the question to Louis; but his confusion encreased, and he did not look up to meet them. He even made a step towards the door; so incapable was he of supporting the representation of the Countess, by any direct deception from his own lips. She did not observe his changing complexion in vain; and bending to the illustrious questioner, whispered something in her ear. Her Highness more than smiled as she listened; she laughed, and nodded her head in sign that she understood her; then turning to Louis, again addressed him.

"Chevalier, I will not detain you longer. Your politeness would honour the best blood in Germany; and I shall be happy in having an opportunity of proving that I think so. You know where to find me, and may any day call upon my best power to do you service."

Grateful for being released from farther enquiries, Louis bowed again respectfully to the Princess, but still in silence, and hastened from the apartment.

On his return to the Sieur, he refrained from chafing his present anxious state, by setting him on the rack to guess who this lady might be, who had so unluckily surprised his secretary in the Empress's _boudoir_; and whether the accident would be productive of vexation to their proceedings, or die away, a mere indifferent circumstance. On the illustrious invalid herself, Louis would not have cast a second thought, after he had rendered the assistance due to her sex and her indisposition: but his gratitude towards the prompt attention, or rather intuitive knowledge of his feelings, evinced by the Countess, kept the whole scene in his mind during the night; and filled him with impatience for the morning, when he might, silently at least, intimate to her some perception of the gratefulness which possessed him.

He went earlier than usual to the palace, on the succeeding day, both to make his apology to the Empress for having left her memorandum unfinished; and in hopes of having a few minutes, in which to imply to the amiable favourite, the sentiment with which her goodness had inspired him. But it could only be implied generally; to particularize the obligation, would be to betray that he was other than the Chevalier Phaffenberg: then why did he wish to find her alone? He had no distinct apprehension, why this hope speeded him forward; only, he certainly felt a warmth in his bosom, while meditating on the past scene, more congenial to his nature, than all the raptures her various graces had before awakened. The promptitude with which she gave his supposed name, and the delicacy with which she had perceived his repugnance to answer the Princess, and had screened him from further interrogation; appeared to him a testimony of quick interest in his feelings, a reading of his mind, a sympathy with its thoughts, that demanded his utmost gratitude:--but it had obtained something more. He sighed as he approached the palace, and said to himself, "Such kindness speaks to me of home; of dear, distant Lindisfarne,

"Where heart met heart, reciprocally soft,
Each other's pillow, to repose divine!"

As he wished, he found. The lovely Otteline was alone, but in a mood of unusual pensiveness.--She was leaning her head upon her arm, when he entered; and there was a flush about her beautiful eyes, as if she had been weeping. She started on seeing him, and rising hastily, as if to disguise the chagrin which hung on her brow, said two or three gay words of welcome.

The discordant expressions in her face did not escape the watchful eye of growing passion. He ventured to utter a fear, that she was not well; or that something had happened to disturb her tranquillity.

"Nothing," replied she.

He looked incredulous; and she added with a smile, and a sigh, "Chevalier, if you would preserve your quiet, never enquire into the caprices of a woman."

"Then it is the caprice of some woman, which now disturbs yours?" exclaimed he, "Is it possible that the Empress can have given pain to one she so entirely loves?" "Not the Empress," replied the Countess eagerly, as if in haste to exonerate her benefactress; "she is all graciousness. But the Electress of Bavaria! She you so unfortunately assisted yesterday in this room; it is from her, that I have met with insult."

"Insult!" re-echoed Louis, "Impossible to you!"

"I wish it were so," replied the Countess; "but many causes make me an object of envy to that malicious Princess; and now she has triumphed."

"Again, I must say, impossible!" cried he, "for how can she, or any woman, triumph over the Countess Altheim?--Your virtues----"

"They are my own," interrupted she, casting down her eyes; "but my reputation is not; and yesterday put that into her power."

Some apprehension of what the Countess would not add, gleamed upon her auditor. "How?--Why?" cried he.

She looked up in graceful disorder, and evidently assuming vivacity, said with a sportive smile, "Chevalier, you are alarmed! But, indeed, it is without reason.--Believe it, my caprice, if you like; and let us dismiss the subject! It is doubling vexation to impart it."

This generous sentiment excited him the more to persevere in knowing the cause of her ill-disguised distress; and with encreased earnestness he conjured her, only to satisfy him on what she meant by saying, that yesterday had put her reputation in the power of the Electress of Bavaria?

With mingled seriousness and badinage, the Countess attempted to put him from his question; but it was done in a way rather to stimulate, than to allay his suspicion that he was concerned in her vexation; and therefore, he thought himself bound in honour, as he was impelled by his heart, to press an explanation.

"I was a weak creature," returned she, "to drop any thing of all this folly to you; for, indeed, you will think it nonsense when you hear it!--Only a woman's delicacy is so very sensitive."

"Try me," replied Louis, forcing an answering smile.

"Then be the consequence on your own obstinate head!" said she, with a glance of tender archness; but immediately casting down her eyes, as if she feared they had told too much; in the same gay tone she continued.

"On my mentioning to my Imperial mistress, the mal-a-propos indisposition of the Electress of Bavaria, Her Majesty commanded me to go the same night, and make the Electress a visit of enquiries. I found Her Highness without trace of illness, in her customary violent spirits, and eager to seize on any new subject for mirth. I had hardly delivered my message, before she began to rally me on your account; and asked so many questions respecting the object of your presence in my apartments; and, indeed, about your family and views in life, that I absolutely was lost in confusion."

The Countess paused for Louis's reply; but he was incapable of making one; and only answered her kindled cheeks, with a crimson deeper than her own. She had glanced on his countenance, and in softer accents resumed.

"I might have extricated myself from the volatile Electress, had not my embarrassment been instantly observed by that mischievous Duke Wharton; who stood by laughing all the time, and prompting his only too well inclined mistress."

A new apprehension shot into the mind of Louis; and instinctively keeping his eyes directed to the floor, he said, with a half smile, "and what did Duke Wharton prompt?"

Had he ventured one glance upward, he would have seen the eyes of the Countess rivetted upon every feature of his face, with a steady investigation of what they might betray; while the managed tones of her voice spoke only the accents of half discovered tenderness; or, more often, the apparent assumption of a gay contempt of the raillery she described.

"He was alone with the Electress, when I was announced;" replied she, "and that gave Her Highness a hint to begin my persecution, by affecting to whisper him, that my intrusion would tell no tales, as she had surprised me that very morning _tête a tête_ with----I will not repeat the silly names of gallantry she called you; but they excited the curiosity of the Duke: and then she described your person as accurately as if she had been a sculptor. As her Highness proceeded in her details, I thought Wharton had lost his wits; and when she summed up her account, with naming you as the Chevalier de Phaffenberg, he fell into a convulsion of laughter that amazed her as well as myself.

"Then began such cross questionings and remarks; such banter from the Duke; such broad surmise from the Electress; that, as I would not betray the secret of my Imperial mistress, by acknowledging your visits are to her, (for visits, Duke Wharton has discovered them to be!) I was obliged to assent to Her Highness's jeering insinuations in another quarter.

"At first I combated her charge," added the Countess, perceiving something in the countenance of Louis, that partook more of rising displeasure, than of gratified emotion; "I attempted to speak of your presence having been merely accidental; but Duke Wharton, with a sly laugh exclaimed, _I am a star-gazer, Lady; and know that fate, not chance, guides this son of Latona, by noon-tide, and the glimpse of the moon, to a certain palace!--But what his errand is, I am too discreet to whisper._"

Convinced that Wharton had, indeed, recognised him in the Electress's description; and, indignant that the friend, from whom he expected nothing but generosity, should thus play with a situation he must see was meant to be concealed; Louis replied with resentful scorn. "But you treated such light impertinence, with the disdain it merited?"

"I tried to do so," returned she, seeming to relapse into painful seriousness; "but the raillery of the Duke, and the knowledge he shewed of your movements, alarmed me for the secret of the Empress; and then the cruel alternative! the Electress casting all those visits to my account, with insinuations----I cannot speak them."

Her eye had caught the flashing light of her auditor's, and abruptly stopping, she covered her face with her hands. He stood motionless with indignation. At last forcing words from his quivering lip, he exclaimed; "Madam, I conjure you, tell me how the Electress, how Duke Wharton, could dare to couple your reputation and my presence with slander! and at all hazards I will disprove it."

"Oh, no;" returned she, "you must not disprove, what duty to my Imperial mistress would not allow me to deny."

Louis did not believe he had heard her distinctly,--he told her so. But she repeated what she had said; assuring him, with encreased agitation, that where she so entirely loved, as she did the Empress, her life was the least sacrifice she would make to preserve her interests. He gazed on her with doubtful admiration.

"But to be silent at an aspersion on your fair name! that, Madam," cried he, "can never be a duty in your sex. A man may redeem himself from obloquy, a woman never can! and, if I am implicated in sullying your honour, I repeat again, I will disprove the slander at the peril of my life."

"That can only be done between man and man;" said the Countess, in a collected voice; though inwardly alarmed for the consequence of a duel between her lover and the Duke. "And here the provocation came from the opposite sex. Duke Wharton merely amused himself with my confusion, after the Electress had presumed to make her charge. But were it otherwise, a violent assertion of my honour is beyond your power. Your life, Chevalier," added she, raising her eyes to his face, "is your own to give! but not the safety of the Sieur Ignatius; not the honour of the Baron de Ripperda; not the future happiness, public and private, of the Empress Elizabeth! These, and the other momentous interests you are so well aware of, all depend upon keeping secret from the Electress of Bavaria and her counsellors, the purport of your visits to these apartments. You could be admitted but for one of two reasons: to me, or to the Empress. And when hardly pressed by Her Highness last night; to avoid the treason of betraying my mistress, I was obliged,----" she turned away her blushing face as she added, "not merely, not to deny, but to sanction the suspicion, which caused the tears in which you surprised me."

Louis stood paralyzed at this last disclosure. But when he saw that tears flowed afresh from her eyes, and streamed down her flushed cheeks, as she moved from him to leave the room; he flew towards her, and catching her by the gown, implored her, in an agitated voice, to stop and hear him. She turned on him with a look of gentle reproach, of dissolving tenderness, that bereft him at once of all consideration; and what he said, what he avowed, he knew not, till he found her hand clasped to his lips, and heard her say--"After this, I need not blush to turn my eyes on the only way that can now redeem my name!" She spoke with an enchanting smile, and added, "It will disprove the slanderous part of our adversary's accusation, without betraying our cause; or risking a life, perhaps too precious to me!"

Before he could reply, she heard the steps of Elizabeth in the adjoining chamber; and sliding her hand from his impassioned grasp, disappeared through the conservatory. He was in so much agitation when the Empress entered, that she perceived it; and guessing the cause, did not notice it; but, wishing her favourite full success in this her own peculiar affair, she dismissed that of politics in a very few words; and graciously received Louis's excuse for the unfinished minutes of the day before. As he proceeded to the Chateau, where he was to complete some transcripts before he returned to the College he tried to think on what had passed, but all within him was in tumult. The hours of his labour, and of his meditation, were the same; he could not tranquillize the strange whirlwind of emotions which raged in his mind. He recalled, again and again, before the tribunal of his judgment, the particulars of the scene which had just passed; but they appeared in such broken apparitions, that he could reduce nothing to certainty, nothing on which he could lay his hand, and say, "It is so."

At one moment, indignation fired him against the part Duke Wharton had taken in it; and, in the next, he arraigned the wayward fate, which had compelled him to merit all the Duke's resentment, by his own apparently insulting conduct in the palace gallery.--Then his imagination, all in a blaze, ran over the celestial charms of the exquisite creature, whose unreceding hand he had pressed to his lips--to his heart! He felt her eye-beams still agitating its inmost recesses; but he did not feel that heart quite consent to his often-repeated exclamation--"She loves me--and I am happy!" He did not feel that instant union of spirits; that ineffable communion of heart with heart, and soul with soul, which he had ever believed the pledge of mutual love:--That mystery of the soul, which, even in earth, asserts its immortal nature! The beautiful Otteline was still a beautiful surface to him; an idol to be adored. But he found not that sense of perfect sympathy, shooting from her dear presence through all his being, which would make him cry aloud, "I love her, and her alone!"

Dissatisfied with himself for this fastidiousness, when he ought to have been all transport, he turned to the hour of meeting the Sieur, with the feelings of a man in a dream, from which he was doubtful that he would not be glad to awake.

CHAPTER VII.

When Louis entered the cloister which led to the Sieur's apartment, he met Martini hurrying towards him.

"Well arrived, Signor!" cried he, "I was coming to the Chateau in quest of you. There is a noble bustle in my master's chamber."

"By your countenance, no ill news?" said Louis, though not unapprehensive that some mischievous consequence had transpired from his unfortunate surprisal by the Electress of Bavaria.

"Not that I know of," cried Martini; "but a little motion more than ordinary always makes me merry. I love stirring, gloriously! And my master and a _booted-and-spurred_ have been at high words these two hours." With nothing so much in his mind, as some anticipated exposure from the malice of the Electress, Louis proceeded to the chamber with a more eager step than inclination. He found the Sieur on his couch, with the table before him spread with opened packets, and a person standing beside him in the dress of a courier. At some distance stood two other travellers. The courier was talking in Italian with great earnestness. Ignatius listened with his usual lofty attention: but when his vigilant eye caught the figure of Louis advancing from behind a dark curtain which divided the apartment, he put up his hand with an air of authority to the speaker, who instantly became silent.

"Louis," said the Sieur, addressing his pupil in German, "here is news from Madrid, to raise me from the tomb; had the poniards of my enemies been keen enough to have laid me there!--France, whose bonds were so ruinously dear to the heart of the King of Spain, has cut the cord herself; and, by a stroke of insult, for which even his partiality cannot find an excuse."

Louis's heart was lightened of the apprehensions with which he had entered; and, with glad congratulations, reflected the unusual animation which shone in the eyes of Ignatius. The Sieur then ordered the courier to retire with Martini, who would take care of him, until he could see him again. The other two travellers also obeyed the beckon of his hand; and in Spanish, he directed them likewise, to put themselves under the protection of the Italian valet.