Chapter IV: Part 4

The room being left to the statesman and his secretary, the Sieur, with a less reserved air, motioned Louis to approach him; and when they were seated, the former opened a circumstantial detail of what had occasioned this abrupt rupture between the courts of Versailles and Saint Ildefonso. During the late regency of the Duke of Orleans, a treaty of marriage had been entered into between the young King of France, Louis XV. and Philip's daughter the Infanta Maria-Anna, then a mere child. According to the custom of the times, she was sent to Paris, to receive an education befitting the future bride of a French Monarch; and, at a certain age she was to be solemnly affianced. On the death of the Duke of Orleans, and the promotion of the Duke of Bourbon to the functions of prime-minister, the cabinet of France seemed to change its measures with regard to Spain; at least encroachments were made, which aroused the suspicions of Philip's Queen; and she tried to awaken the jealousy of her husband against the new minister. Attached to the house from whence he sprung, and inclined to put the best construction on all its actions, it was no easy task to make the royal grandson of Louis the Fourteenth comprehend that the Duke of Bourbon never considered the interest of Spain in his policy. Some transactions, more than dubious in their principle and tendency, at last made King Philip allow a possibility that he might confide too implicitly in his French relations; and, after much argument from the Baron Ripperda, and more entreaty from his Queen, he was at length persuaded to counterpoise the self-aggrandising spirit they had detected, by commencing a secret negociation with Austria. Still, however, habitual partiality to his native country hung about the heart of Philip, and caused great uneasiness in the minds of the Queen and the Baron, under whose auspices the mysterious embassy set forth. As the negociation rapidly proceeded, the King often dropped hints on the consequences of precipitancy; and frequently filled them with alarm, lest he should at last refuse his royal sanction to the completion of their labours, and so involve themselves and their cause in utter infamy.

The Duke of Bourbon was indeed actuated by different principles, both political and personal, from those which had impelled the Duke of Orleans to propose new bonds of alliance between the royal families of France and Spain. He disliked the Spanish marriage altogether; and, besides so many years must elapse before the Infanta could be of age for the espousals; and the health of the anticipated bridegroom was so precarious, it seemed no improbability that his death, in the mean-while, might transfer the royal succession to the house of Orleans. This was an aggrandisement of that ambitious family, which, the no less ambitious Duke of Bourbon could not contemplate with patience; and at this juncture Duke Wharton appeared at his elbow, as if conjured there on purpose to set the two great heads of the House of Bourbon at lasting enmity. He suspected that something clandestine was going on between the courts of Spain and Austria; and he left Vienna for Paris, a few days after his rencontre with Louis de Montemar on the Danube. He revealed to the Duke of Bourbon all that he had discovered; and urged him to save his branch of the royal stock, from being over-topped by that of Orleans or of Spain; by immediately adopting an entire new policy from that of his predecessor. As a first movement, he proposed a marriage for the young King with some Princess of maturer years than the Spanish Infanta. Bourbon readily embraced this suggestion, which had been some time floating in his own mind. And, on the two Dukes consulting who this Princess should be, (each having his own particular reasons), their choice fell on Maria, the daughter of Stanislaus Letzinsky, the ex-king of Poland. Wharton undertook to prepare the mind of His Majesty to accept the alternative; and in the interview, he found that the docile Louis was easily prevailed on to exchange a bride still in the school-room, for a blooming young woman, full of accomplishments and graces.

The views of Wharton in this manoeuvre, were still directed to his favourite project of reinstating the Stuarts. At present, France, and Spain, and Austria, were all equally estranged from their cause. By creating a rupture between the two former powers, he divided their interests; implicated their allies; and necessarily threw France again into the scale of the Stuart and Bavarian claims. Philip had declared himself openly for George of Brunswick; and was on the point of signing the pragmatic sanction; this Wharton knew: and by mixing the adversaries of the latter scheme of succession, with the political rivals of England, he returned to Vienna with a promised accession to his party, that made him omnipotent in the Bavarian councils.

To prevent any opposition to the proposed alliance, from the remonstrances of Spain, as soon as the Duke of Wharton had left Paris, (which he did with the negligent air of a mere visitor to the widowed Queen at St. Germain's;) the Duke of Bourbon pursued the advantage that nobleman had gained for him, and persuaded the King to send the Infanta back to Madrid without any previous notice to her royal parents. She was accompanied by a lady of honour, and an ecclesiastic of high dignity, to be her protectors on the way; and to deliver a suitable apology on the urgency of the case, to the King and Queen of Spain. When the abbot and his young charge were so unexpectedly announced to the presence of the royal pair, the good priest was too much agitated, to fulfil his instructions with the diplomatic dignity he was enjoined. He fell at once on his knees, and declared his errand in confusion and anguish of spirit. The astonishment and grief of Philip shewed itself in silence and tears; but the mortification of his Queen burst into rage and invective. When the abbot offered the letters of explanation, she dashed them out of his hand; and tearing the picture of Louis the Fifteenth from her bracelet, trampled it under her feet. All now was uproar. The French ambassador, and every French consul were ordered to depart the Spanish territories without delay; and when Philip did find words to express his sense of the injury he had received from the hand he most trusted, he declared he never would be reconciled to France, till the Duke of Bourbon should repair to Madrid and ask his pardon on his knees. "Hah!" cried the Queen, "It shall not be long, before that French cyclops finds the arrows of more than one King in his eye!" And, to make good her threat, she immediately dispatched a trusty messenger to Ignatius; giving him full powers to relinquish all the contested points which had retarded the negociation; and at any sacrifice to conclude a marriage between her son Don Carlos, and the Arch-duchess Maria-Theresa, the presumptive heiress to the Imperial Crown. Some other instructions, dear to the policy of Ripperda, were added; which, if brought to bear, would give the preponderance of power, still more to Spain and Austria; and place the French, where she had dashed the portrait of their Monarch, at her feet.

Louis de Montemar passed several hours in close conference with the Sieur Ignatius on these events; on the circumstances which led to them, (though the share Wharton had in the leading movement was not then known;) on the consequent instructions from the Spanish sovereigns; and in settling how much of the whole, Louis was to declare to the Empress and her minister, in making the commanded concessions, so as to appear rather to give than to concede.

"You must manage the preliminaries to-night with Sinzendorf," said the Sieur, "But to-morrow, whether it be to return on my litter or in my hearse, I will see the Empress myself.--When the triumphal arch is ready," added he, with one of those smiles, which visited his dark countenance like the shooting of a star; "the wounded hero is unworthy its honours, that will not venture his life to pass through!"

Louis bowed his assent to the Sieur's observation, with a smile bright as his own; and, soon after, the College bell reminded him that the time of his audience with the Chancellor drew near. On his rising to obey its summons, Ignatius looked up from some letters he was writing, and told him to rejoin him in that chamber the next morning by day-break. "To-morrow," added he, "will epitomise the history of Europe for many a future year; and be the deciding epoch of your destiny."

The usual time of Louis's visit to the Chancellor Sinzendorf was an hour before midnight; immediately after His Excellency had left the card-table of the Emperor. And, as from the intricacy of his new communications with the minister, Louis's present conference was much longer than ordinary, it was an hour beyond midnight before he left the Chancellor's apartments.

Hurrying along, to get out of the interior galleries of the palace at so unseasonable an hour, at an abrupt turning into the large lighted rotunda where most of the passages terminated, he ran violently against a person wrapped in a splendid pelisse. He looked up, to apologize, and beheld Duke Wharton. Louis sprang from the side of the Duke, as if struck back by electricity: but Wharton grasped his arm. With an averted face, and a heart yearning to embrace the friend, whose presence, and whose touch, obliterated all remembrance of resentment, Louis made another ineffectual struggle to break away; but the Duke, in a gaily affectionate voice, exclaimed,--"I have clutched you, Chevalier Phaffenberg! and if you were Chevalier Proteus himself, you should not elude these ten fingers!" As he spoke, he threw his other arm round the waist of his friend, and seized his opposite arm also.

"Release me, Duke Wharton!" cried Louis, fully remembering his double promise to Ignatius and to the Empress, and striving to recall the circumstances at the Electress's, which had excited his indignation:--"This is a liberty----"

"That is nothing between friends," interrupted the Duke, in the same happy tone; "but if we are enemies, I am too old a soldier to release the prisoner, who may only want to cut my throat!"

"Duke Wharton!" returned Louis, fearful of being subdued by accents so eloquent of former confidence; "when you see I would avoid you, this detention is at least ungenerous. By the friendship you claim, and you have; no longer withhold me! one day I will thank you for your forbearance."

"You would thank me for that, to which I make no pretensions! In this life of hard knocks, neither broken heads nor broken hearts can be healed by the promise of an unction. And therefore excuse me, if I do not forbear seizing the present sweetener of the wormwood you cast at me a week or two ago in these passages!"

Louis struggled with his subdued heart, and sighed convulsively, as he unconsciously rested in the arms that held him prisoner.

"You have my creed of defence, in this selfish world!" resumed the Duke, "and so, my dear de Montemar, come with me, and whatever may be your secret services here, they shall be as safe in my breast as in your own."

With a gasping breath, Louis declared he must not remain with him another moment.

"What then, your Pastor-Uncle fears me, even here. He fears the lion, when his lamb is among wolves! I tell you what Louis,--there is more in my heart towards you, than you will believe, or may deserve! But, I repeat, come with me, and you shall have that heart on the table!"

Happy to exonerate his venerable uncle, Louis impetuously declared that his interdict was withdrawn; but that other motives, not then to be explained, rendered a temporary estrangement as compulsory as ever. Wharton exulted in this amnesty from Mr. Athelstone; and urged it, with every argument and device in his magic circlet. He was prevailing, vehement, and gaily reproachful; but, as he persevered in all beyond the usual measure of patience, Louis could not but at last feel such constancy very like persecution; and very unlike what he should have anticipated from the free spirit of the Duke. "But," whispered a monitor within him, "was the Duke's wanton sport with your concealment, when he recognised you, even under a false name, in the discourse at the Electress's; was it consistent with belief in his candour? With his present professions of attachment?"

As Louis stood in his trammelling arms, and with a downward face thought of these things, he became displeased; and, with a firm air, repeated his request to be released. The Duke persisted to hold him fast, with some gay badinage on the coil of the crested dragon; but Louis, determined to be no longer put from his duty, said, even sternly,--"Duke Wharton, let me go? This compulsion is insufferable, I will not be detained."

"De Montemar," returned the Duke, in a solemn voice, immediately releasing one arm, while he still held the other; "I have wrestled thus long with your caprice, to shew you that I had forbearance; but I now read your changeful heart: go where it leads you. I once thought it was devoted to friendship, and to noble sacrifice! But," added he, after a short pause, and with a disdainful smile, "you are not what you were--you cling to the foot of the ladder, I believed you even too proud to mount,--and so I bid you farewell!"

As he spoke, he relaxed his hand from the grasp he held of Louis's arm, and with a smothered sigh, which he sought to hide under a cough, he turned hastily across the corridor. Louis's heart smote him.

"I have been selfish and arrogant! I have been accessible to ill impressions; and, even now, to suspicions of the motives of him, I once so devoutly honoured.--Alas!" said he, to himself, "I have not acted like a friend! I might have broken from him, since duty required it, but I need not thus have wounded him!"

As at one instant of time all these thoughts flashed over his mind, he stood, without attempting to follow his friend; but he could not help exclaiming,--"Wharton!" Wharton still passed on. "He quits me in deserved resentment!" said Louis, his heart overflowing with contrition; and extricating his feet from the spot, where they had seemed rooted, he made two or three swift steps towards him.

"Wharton!" repeated he, when he drew near, "that farewell must not be for ever!"

Wharton turned round with a lofty and serious air;--"and, why should you wish it otherwise?"

"Because," returned Louis, catching his hand, "I value your friendship as my life, but not beyond my honour." Wharton gazed a moment on his agitated countenance. In a softened voice, though yet maintaining his unusual gravity, he replied, "you could not suppose I should ask you to betray that in yourself, which is my own impugnable estate!"

Louis did not speak; but, with bent eyes, to conceal the tears which filled them, pressed the Duke's hand. Wharton returned the cordial re-assurance; and with a smile playing through his seriousness, he added, "and least of all, when one of the dear sex, I have so long adored to my cost, holds your honour in the charming fetters you have just been hugging to your heart!"

Louis dropped the hand he was so affectionately clasping; and exclaimed with energy, "by that honour, I swear that no amorous passion brought me hither to-night!"

"Nor any night? nor any morning?" replied Wharton, with more of his wonted gaiety! "I will believe just what you please; only make me a vow that she shall not absorb you entirely; and, though I admire the lady and love the sex, I will promise never to wish a reversion in my favour!"

Louis was vexed at this wild speech. He saw, that so far from Wharton having a suspicion that political objects employed him at Vienna, he really believed that his friend's visits to the palace were actuated by a passion for the Countess Altheim. Louis could not shut his eyes on another conviction; that the Duke dishonoured the nature of the passion he supposed, by regarding it rather as an affair _pour passer le tems_, than as a serious attachment for life. But, in spite of his admiration of the Countess, and of what had passed between them, he felt an insurmountable repugnance to say in solemn, considered language, that his visits to her were to terminate in an indissoluble union; and, with a sudden bitterness of spirit towards Wharton himself, and the entanglements of his situation, he exclaimed, with a severe look at his friend, "you distract me, by this determination to believe that I am engaged in the sort of connection that my soul abhors."

"And what, dear de Montemar, does your soul abhor?" returned the Duke, drawing his friend's arm within his, and walking with him down the passage; "the connection mine abhors is matrimony; for a young Xantippe, under its privilege, even now clips my sides with her everlasting bonds, like the spikes of a penance-girdle, piercing into my heart."

"By the current of your wild attack," said Louis, with a crimsoned cheek, "I could not have guessed that you meant an attachment which pointed to so serious an end."

"Serious enough, at the best!" replied the Duke, laughing; "and, in my case, I should say it was at the worst; could I not suppose a quality or two even less to my liking, in your fair lady! She is too much of a female Machiavel for my easy nature, and would have me in the state-dungeons before our honeymoon had shot her horns."

Louis was silent, and his heart beat, even audibly, with its contending emotions. Should he speak a word more, he might betray the secret of the Empress,--of the Sieur,--of his father,--of the Sovereign of the country, to which that father had devoted him!

Wharton and he were now at the outward gate of the palace. Louis attempted to withdraw his arm, but the Duke held it fast. "Nay, nay, my eager Lover! you will not find her in the street! you must sup with me to-night."

"Not for the world."

"How?"

"We must part here, dear Wharton, and part friends,--eternal friends! But ask no questions."

"I will be hanged," cried the Duke, "if you are not in such awful mystery that, if you do not go home with me, and let me see that occult soul of thine through the chrystaline of generous Burgundy, I shall believe (added he in a whisper) that you are too well with the Empress herself."

"Wharton!" cried Louis, dashing the Duke from him, "you will make me hate you."

"You dare not for your life and honours, dear petulant boy!" cried the Duke, with a frank-hearted laugh; "and, till we meet in feast or fray, give me thy gauntlet!" He stretched out his hand. Louis regretted the violence with which he had spoken; but feeling the precipice on which he stood, and dreading further detention, he gave his hand with evident hesitation. Wharton shook it with gay cordiality, and said in his kindest accents, "thou faithless one! dost thou suspect I am going to realize the frog and the raven, and tear thee between my beak and claw!"

He then pressed the hand he held, with the warmth of a full heart; and as he felt Louis's shake in the grasp, he added with strong emphasis; "well, haste away! but I would snatch you from the snares which misled my youthful feet, in the paths you have now entered. I would lead you, where you may plant honour, and reap renown. Oh, de Montemar, I would put a royal heart in that breast, whose pulses are fed by the blood of kings!--Start not!--But thou must not grovel, and creep, and follow--where you may rise and lead!--De Montemar, thou art enslaved and mocked.--Come with me, and you are again free."

"Not for the best blood in my heart!" exclaimed Louis, now exulting in his knowledge of the great cause to which he had devoted himself. "You are mistaken Wharton; and again, I must say, farewell!"

"Be it so," returned the Duke, relinquishing his hand; "but you will remember Philip Wharton, when it is out of the power of his irrepressible friendship to extricate the son of the rich, the great, Baron de Ripperda, from the bonds and bondage of a too fair Semiramis and her subtiler confidant!"

Louis now understood that the Duke could not have meant to have referred at all to a political slavery, which his former speech seemed to imply; but that still he intended only to warn him against the vassalage of the heart. Wharton certainly said enough to open the mind of his friend to some suspicion of the perfection of his fair mistress's character; but before he could rally himself to compose some safe answer, the Duke had disappeared into the universal darkness of the outer court.

CHAP. VIII.

The Sieur Ignatius did as he had determined. He went, and alone, to the Empress the following morning. What he had to propose, soon made her call the chancellor to the conference; and during the discussion, the Sieur so ably adapted the mutual pretensions of the rival monarchs, to the eagerness of their consorts to conclude a treaty, that nothing remained to be done, when he left the apartment, but to obtain the Imperial sign manual, to what the Empress and her minister so heartily approved.

As Ignatius put a large casket of golden arguments, for certain members of the council, into the hands of Sinzendorff, Elizabeth promised that the Emperor's decision should be sent to Vienna, as soon as he could collect his counsellors around him at the Luxemburg; to which palace he meant to go next morning, for a few days. Meanwhile she recommended to the Sieur, and through him, to his secretary, that they should keep in strict seclusion; for she apprehended the indiscreet stir which the Queen of Spain had made on the affront put upon her daughter, would excite an immediate attention in the ambassadors at Madrid, to some anticipation of her meditated revenge. All know that the political train laid by these honourable spies of nations, is as subtle as it is long, devious, and invisible; and where suspicion once points, it is but the word of a moment to set the whole in a blaze. To avert such a catastrophe to Isabella's too open threats against France, Ignatius adopted this advice, as it coincided with his own judgment; and, accordingly, he seemed to immure himself as during his wounds; but he was amply occupied in arrangements, which only awaited the fiat of the Emperor, to be brought into immediate action.

During this suspense, Ignatius received accounts from Sinzendorff, which proved the wisdom of their caution. He informed him, that visits at unseasonable hours had been repeatedly exchanged between the French and other foreign ambassadors resident at Vienna; and that he knew, from indisputable authority, that a messenger had arrived from Paris, who was closeted with the French minister for many hours; and that the same night His Excellency was seen, without any of his accustomed attendants, gliding into the palace of the Electress of Bavaria. In another letter, Sinzendorff communicated to the Sieur, that he had certain intelligence of a private supper which had been given the preceding evening in the Electress's _boudoir_; and no women were present but herself and her Lady of the Key; while the men were the French ambassador, the Dutch Minister, a French philosopher from Berlin, the fierce ex-chancellor Count Stahlberg, and the Duke of Wharton. What was the subject of their deliberations, Sinzendorff could give no information; but he did not doubt that it brooded mischief to the present crisis between Austria and Spain.

In Louis's nocturnal visits to the College, he gladly saw that little inconvenience remained to the Sieur from his dangerous attack, excepting incidental head-aches, and the scar on his forehead, which being recently cicatrised, he still covered with a black fillet. The cadaverous hue of his complexion was hardly deepened by his confinement; but Louis occasionally saw a more than common fire flash from his over-shadowed eye, as he accidentally looked up from the papers he scrutinized. During the investigation, he never spoke more than to ask a question, or to give a direction respecting the business on which he was engaged; and generally answered his pupil's respectful adieu for the night, with a silent, though gracious nod.

Louis's long hours of solitude, (for the whole of the Imperial family had accompanied the Emperor to his spring palace;) were passed at the Chateau. And after he had performed his, now brief vocation for the day, he generally read German authors from the Jesuits' library; or walked in the weedy wilderness, which had once been a garden. He now, neither regarded the swift-flowing Danube, nor the gay groups, which on foot or in carriages, appeared in the distance on its margin. His meditations were all self centered; on the past, the present, and the future. Often, during his deep reverie, he wondered at himself, that his mind should wander, and at such a crisis, from the great affair in which he was a sharer. A year ago, had he speculated on what would have occupied his thoughts in so important a political era of his life, he should have said,--"Exultation in the grand results of my father's patriotic genius; and satisfaction that my noviciate talents had been employed in the glorious atchievement!"

But on the reverse, while he sat at the feet of statesmen, and was the agent between negociating sovereigns, he found himself dwelling, hour after hour, on the private feelings of his heart. He was ready to quarrel with himself for this wretched perversity. In the quiet vales of Northumberland, he had lived in the full enjoyment of these feelings; but then his vagrant thoughts refused to dwell on tranquil happiness. He panted for distant realms, fields of toil, of perils, and renown. He was now in the midst of some of these invoked stations for action; and yet his inconsistent spirit would not abide in the scenes it had chosen! His meditations would extricate themselves from their patriotic objects, and with obstinate tenacity fasten themselves on the most selfish considerations:--on the friend he had loved, and had fled from! on the woman, he believed he loved, and yet was glad to fly!

He recalled the several warnings he had received, at home and abroad, against the Duke; but the recollection of the natural and acquired advantages he possessed over all other men he had known, presented themselves of their own accord to Louis; and his spell-bound eyes, not seeing where the scale turned, he dismissed the subject. The image of the fair Otteline glided before his mind's eye, like the descent of Iris from the rainbow: all brilliancy and ambrosial beauty. He had only to articulate her name, to make the pulse pause in his heart, and a dissolving sensibility steal over all his senses.

"And yet," he murmured to himself, "fair as thou art, I feel a chill on my soul, whenever I think of pledging it to thee for ever. Oh, wherefore?" cried he, "she is lovely, she is tender; but she has not that elevated look in those beautiful eyes, which used to mingle my highest thoughts with the soul of Cornelia! She has not that ineffable glance of exclusive affection, which shoots direct to the heart, and kindles a faith there, no doubts can extinguish!"

There was something in the parting words of the Duke, respecting the Empress and her _subtle confidant_, which had adhered to the memory of Louis, and continued to harass him with conjectures. By that confidant, the Sieur Ignatius, or the Countess Altheim, might have been understood; but it could not be the Sieur; as Wharton appeared so unsuspicious of a political errand taking his friend to the palace, that he avowed his belief at once, it was an amatory attraction.

"And was she _subtle_?" Louis's heart revolted at the question; though he could not disguise from his clearer judgment, that she had herself suggested to him the only incontrovertible mode of silencing the scandal, she had thought herself obliged by duty to sanction as a truth.

"It was not what I like," said Louis, trying to excuse her to himself. But had he uttered his own principles upon the subject, he would have said,--"It is what I not merely blame, but shrink from, as an unpardonable dereliction from female modesty!"

But in this case, he thought her zeal for the Empress, and her prepossession in his favour, had obliterated from her mind all consideration of what was due to herself; and the impelling motives made him find an apology and a pardon for the amiable delinquent.

"Yes," cried he, "she sacrificed her native delicacy, in a double respect to the disinterestedness of her attachment. Did I not see the soft lustre of her eyes kindle with the blushes on her cheeks, and look downwards, to conceal the graceful shame, as she insinuated the delightful alternative!"

Louis was now far advanced in persuading himself that all was delightful, which, he believed he was now bound in honour to make his own, whether it were to his wishes or not. "Her conduct could not be _subtility_," continued he, "for she is ignorant that I am the _son of the rich, the great Ripperda_. Oh, Wharton, you wrong her! there is nothing in my apparent present station to make a union with me, an object of interest with the favourite of the Empress of Germany. She must prefer me, for myself alone; and I am a wretch of ingratitude ever to have found it necessary to convince myself by these doubting arguments!"

In the midst of such musings, he was surprised one evening, by Gerard putting into his hand a letter addressed to, "The Chevalier de Phaffenberg." The hand-writing was unknown to him; indeed, evidently a feigned one. He enquired whence it came. Gerard replied, he did not know: but the letter was brought by a man in the dark, who left it without saying a word. Louis broke the seal, and read as follows:--

"The carriage which conveys you to the Jesuits' College will be beset to-night in your usual route through the deserted street of Saint Xavier. The papers, of which you are to be the bearer, will be taken from you. Resistance would be vain, for the assailants are numerous. To avoid the loss of your trust, and perhaps of your life, should your temerity contest the matter, take a different path to-night. But to no one, excepting your friend the Jesuit, mention this warning. Were it suspected, he that writes it, would soon be put beyond the power of repeating the service."

"_Tuesday Evening._" Louis thought of the attempted assassination of Ignatius. The letter he held in his hand was a second confirmation that, notwithstanding the Sieur's severe precautions, the mysterious business of himself and his secretary was so little a secret to its enemies, that they knew exactly where to point even the most iniquitous means, when they thought such expedient to obtain information, or to create preventions. Who the anonymous friend was, who ran the risque implied at the close of the letter, Louis had no hesitation to believe must be the Duke of Wharton; for the Sieur had hinted to him, only the night before, that he knew the Duke was one of a secret committee who sat nightly at the Bavarian apartments. Wharton must then have discovered that his friend's visits to the palace had a higher aim than gallantry; and Louis felt something like a proud satisfaction in the conviction. The letter, he trusted, would be a sufficient pledge to Ignatius of Wharton's fidelity to his friend; and that whatever might be his bonds to a party, they could not tie his faith to connivance with a dishonourable act. This head of the subject being settled in his own mind; and being enabled, by the warning, to avoid the threatened violence; he would have given up his thoughts to the delicious enjoyment of gratefulness to so dear a friend, had he not trembled to think how far the Duke of Wharton's repulsed recognition of him, might have led to so full a discovery respecting the secret movements of the Sieur and himself.

He saw that he must apprise Ignatius of the knowledge his enemies had acquired of his proceedings; and, in doing so, shew the letter he had just received; and, while he declared his belief that Duke Wharton was the friendly writer, be obliged to narrate what he had hitherto concealed:--his meeting, and at last enforced discourse with the Duke. As Louis reflected on the real harmlessness of that discourse; and on the necessity, at the present momentous juncture, to make his guardian master of every circumstance that might bear at all towards it; he felt the folly of his reserve: and though at the time he had persuaded himself that his silence arose from reluctance to agitate needlessly a wounded man, his conscience now accused him of mental cowardice, in shrinking from the pain he anticipated to himself in the torturing discussion.

"In flying one stroke," said he, "I have incurred twenty. Had I spoken at the time, I should only have had to narrate an event which happened without my seeking; and the worst could only have been the Sieur's suspicions of the Duke wishing to draw me to the Bavarian interest. But now, he may see something clandestine in my silence; and at best consider me imprudent and mean, if not absolutely insincere and worthless." Though harrassed by these reflections, he was not negligent of his trust. When he got into the carriage that was to convey him as usual to the College, it was himself only he committed to the casualties of the evening. He did not take one of the papers with him; thinking it possible that the assailants, missing their prey in the old deserted street, would way-lay him (as their emissaries had probably done Ignatius,) in the college porch. The warning-letter, (which he held in his hand, to tear piece-meal should he be attacked;) he thought would fully account to the Sieur for this precaution. Having placed his pistols in his waistcoat, he ordered the coachman to drive to the College by a circuit in an opposite direction from Saint Xavier's; and being obeyed; without any sign of molestation he reached the Jesuit's cell at the accustomed hour.

The result of this dreaded interview with the stern friend of his father, was very different from what Louis had expected. On his entrance, he presented the anonymous warning, as his apology for not having risqued the usual evening quota of state-papers through the threatened danger. Ignatius examined the hand writing and the seal. The former was a cramped text; the latter, a common diapered stamp.

"Who in Vienna can know you, to be thus interested in you, even as the Chevalier de Phaffenberg? You have been seen by none out of the routine of our business; excepting, indeed, that one accidental meeting with the Electress of Bavaria and her attendant! Surely a five minutes' glimpse of your handsome person, Louis," added the Sieur with a half smile, "could not have wrought so potently on the latter lady, as to excite her to such perilous intervention!"

"I am not quite the coxcomb to suppose it," returned Louis with an answering smile, but a flushed cheek, from the consciousness of what he had to confess. Without circumlocution, or reserve, but with eyes cast down, and a varying complexion, he began and continued the whole narration of Duke Wharton's seeing him twice in the galleries of the palace; his escape from him the first time, and the Duke's consequent remarks to the Countess Altheim: but that on their second recontre he had found it impossible to break away, without suffering the conversation, which he now circumstantially repeated.

Ignatius spoke not a word during the agitated recital of his pupil. While making his confession, Louis did not venture to look up under this awful silence; but when he concluded, and his eyes were still riveted to the ground, the Sieur put his hand on his, and said in an emphatic voice--"This honest narrative has established your character with me. I see by your looks, that it is not left to another to lecture you on the danger of your late concealments: I leave you, therefore, in that respect to your own admonitions. But I will not withhold my entire approbation of the dexterity with which you parried every question of that serpent Englishman. Do not frown at the severity of the epithet. Did you know him, as well as he is known at Paris and in this capital, you would not doubt that he has many properties of that wreathing reptile besides his glassy surface!"

"And yet, Sir," cried Louis, "I believe it is he who has ventured his safety to give me this warning!"

"It may be," returned the Sieur, "and he no less a serpent still. But for your escape, and that of the papers, I am obliged to him, and we will dismiss the subject. There is another, on which I must give you a necessary hint; the Countess Altheim."

At that name, the conscious blood rushed into the before-blanched cheek of Louis, and his heart beat with an alarm to which he could assign no cause. The Sieur paused a moment or two, regarding his pupil with a steady look before he went on.

"You have too much of the woman in your face, young man;" said he, "to keep your own secret, however faithful you may be of another's. I see the pretty favourite has gained her point with your heart; but do not allow your lips to commit your honour, till this public affair is finished, and you may consult your father's opinion of such an alliance. A rash step here would offend him for ever."

Louis bowed his acquiescence to this command, but it was not with a constrained air. The Sieur saw that he was grateful for the gentleness with which his confession had been treated, and respectfully obedient to the injunction which concluded the discourse.

Louis returned to the Chateau by the same track he had left it, and therefore reached his home in safety. The next day passed as the former; and having just finished his hermit stroll under the silver light of a bright March moon, he was slowly retracing his steps to the house, when he met Gerard approaching him with information that the Sieur Ignatius awaited him in the saloon. This unexpected visit alarmed Louis. He instantly feared that some fatal turn had taken place with regard to the completion of their labours, and that the Sieur had come to announce it. He hastened however to his summons.

Wrapped as before in his large dark mantle, Ignatius was standing in the middle of the room. The black fillet which pressed down his heavy eye-brows, and the hearse-like plumes that pended over them, cast such flickering shadows over his grey visage, that he seemed to Louis, as he stood in the moon-light, more like the awful spectre of his guardian, than his living self.

Louis thought he saw his fears confirmed. He approached, he drew very near to him, and still the Sieur did not speak. Louis could not bear the suspense, and exclaimed, "Sir, you have ill news to tell me?"

"Look on my face," replied Ignatius, in a tone of voice from which neither good nor evil could be gathered, "and try to read what sort of news the disciplined blood of a tried politician will declare."

Louis fixed his eyes as he was commanded, but it was with apprehension; for he thought this beginning was to prepare him for the ruin of their cause. His eyes shrunk from the proud fire which shone in the steady gaze of the Sieur. It might arise from the pride of triumph, or be the bright emanation of determined fortitude! But the latter idea possessed his pupil. The extent of the misfortune he dreaded to hear; as, again and again he had been warned that his father's honour was involved in the fate of this treaty.

"Speak, dear Sir!" cried he, "I cannot guess what has happened, from your countenance."

"Yet," said Ignatius, "it is easy to interpret what you believe ought to be legible there, from yours! But, Louis de Montemar, if you are to follow your father's career, to this moveless complexion you must come at last. Else, vain will it be to discipline your tongue, if your unmanageable blood betray the story. Know then, that our labours have been successful. The Emperor has given his full consent to every demand of Spain."

"Thank God!" exclaimed Louis, clasping his hands, and dropping into a chair. The Sieur seated himself beside him, and without noticing his emotion, (for all the son was then in Louis's heart) he entered into the details of the business. The Imperial family had returned that morning to Vienna. The Empress immediately summoned Ignatius to attend her. He obeyed; and received from Her Majesty those particulars of the Emperor's assent, which were now recounted to the attentive secretary. The Sieur then added, that after he quitted the palace, he referred for further instructions to a packet which the last dispatch from Spain had brought in the Queen's letter-case; and which being superscribed to himself, with the additional words, "only to be opened in the event of the Emperor acceding to our proposals;" he had laid it aside until the present, which was the appointed moment.

"As the conditions were fulfilled," continued the Sieur, "I broke the seal; and the contents are these. A letter from the King, commanding me to announce to their Cæsarean Majesties the entrance of his ambassador into Vienna, in the course of eight-and-forty hours after the information should be communicated to them. And that ambassador, Louis de Montemar," added Ignatius, "is your father."

Louis sprang from his seat. The Sieur rose also, and continued; "in reward of his high services, the King makes him his representative here, with the restitution of his father's title and honours, and an establishment answerable to all these dignities."

This part of the information, Ignatius addressed to ears that heard him not. The word _father_! that sacred idea, which had so long filled the heart and the hopes of Louis, which had seemed the goal whither all his ambitions and his duties pointed; this holy image had sealed up his sense, only to dwell upon the idea of his expected presence. With the announcement of his near approach, Louis thought of nothing else; and covering his face with his hands, the tears of filial love,--of filial triumph,--of gratitude to heaven, that he should at last behold that honoured countenance, poured from his eyes, and bathed his hands. Ignatius gazed on him,--gazed on his heaving,--his sobbing breast. A tear of sympathy, started into even his Stoic eye, as he turned away, and walked in silence down the room.

It was some minutes before Louis could recall himself from the inward temple of his soul, where his grateful heart had prostrated him before the Giver of all Good. When he looked up, he saw the Sieur at a distance, with his back to him, and leaning near the window which looked towards the Danube. Louis approached him;--"your goodness," said he, "has pardoned a son, shewing some natural emotion at so sudden an intimation of soon seeing the most honoured, the most beloved of parents?"

"Such sins are easily forgiven," returned Ignatius, with downward eyelids. "To-morrow, at this hour, your father will be at the _Palais d'Espagne_; the residence, under the late dynasty, of the Spanish ambassador at Vienna. You must be there to greet him."

Louis's eyes answered in the affirmative, for his lips denied their office; and the Sieur proceeded in his further orders. He said, that circumstances rendered it necessary that he should meet the Duke; therefore, as time pressed, his pupil must perform all that was to be done at the palace; and go that night at ten o'clock to the Chancellor Sinzendorff, and deliver to him those three packets. Ignatius had laid several on the table before the entrance of Louis; which he only just now observed: there were other packets to be presented the same night to the Empress; "of whom," continued the Sieur, "Sinzendorff will see the propriety of requesting an immediate audience, to give you the opportunity of announcing the instant approach of the Duke de Ripperda, as the Spanish ambassador; and, when you do it, Louis, you must intimate that the nomination of the Duke is meant as a peculiar mark of the Spanish King's friendship for their Cæsarean Majesties, in thus parting with a man to do them honour, whose presence is as dear to his heart, as invaluable to his interests."

"This will be a hard trial of my diplomatic skill," rejoined Louis, with a happy smile; "to speak of him only as an ambassador."

"You will not, however, shew yourself his son," replied the Sieur, "if you do not put that restraint upon your feelings. Whatever may be his years, he is yet but a puling boy, who is not master of his face, and the veins which color it. Remember, it is a _man_, I have engaged to present in you to the Duke of Ripperda; and that it is he, who exacts of you to name him this night in the Empress's _boudoir_, with as cool an aspect as if you were announcing the arrival of a perfect stranger."

"Ah, Sir!" exclaimed Louis, "who can name the Duke de Ripperda, with the cool utterance which they might give to almost any other man? Is he not loved every where, where known? And where he is only heard of, is he not universally honoured? And can a son name such a father without emotion? Oh, Sir, send some other messenger, if I am to act an impossibility!"

"Well," replied Ignatius, throwing back his lofty plumes, and drawing his hand over his brow, "do your best in this commission, as you have done in other circumstances of management, and I do not doubt that the father you are so proud of, will be satisfied with his son." "I will do my best," cried Louis, seeing that the Sieur was moving to depart, "and, oh, dearest Sir, tell my revered father how impatient I am to meet him--to kneel at his feet--to be clasped in his arms!"--The last words were hardly articulated, from his encreasing emotion, and as the crowding tears again started to his eyes, he dashed them off:--ere he drew his hand from before them, the Sieur had left the apartment,--and he saw him no more!

When the happy Louis found himself alone, he threw himself into a chair to indulge the luxury of his feelings, to bless the time-honoured name of his father; to weep with mingled recollections over the long interval which had passed since his widowed arms had resigned him, a babe, to the tears of his grandfather, now numbered with the dust. He thought of that good old man's tender care. Of the paternal guardianship of his uncle of Lindisfarne, of his benediction when they parted, and the sacred letter which he put into his hand, as the last legacy of his dying mother. In that, she spoke to her only son, as from her seat in Heaven, exhorting him to love and honour his father, as the object in his heart nearest to his God! The letter, Louis soon drew from the case in which he preserved it; and pressing it to his lips, on his knees, as he would have done her sacred hand, he there uttered the fullness of his heart in vows to obey her behest; and to love that father, on whom his conscious eyes had never rested, with, indeed, a double portion of his spirit, for the sake of that father's own noble nature; and for her's, who had resigned her life, in giving him to existence.

These reflections diffused a holy stillness over the happiness which now occupied the heart of Louis. And as the time approached for the fulfilment of his duty at the palace, he collected the royal packets; and putting them in his bosom, wrapped himself in his cloak; and, as the clock struck ten, he entered the carriage with a blissful serenity over his mind, that seemed to breathe of paradise.

CHAP. IX.

Louis delivered the letters of Ignatius to the Chancellor; and in as few words, and with as much composure as he could command, he announced the near approach of the Spanish ambassador. Sinzendorff fixed his observing glance on the fluttering lip that proclaimed the honoured name, and his doubts were confirmed. He read the letters, and then remarked, that his Imperial master would be particularly gratified by the promptitude of this arrival. The intended ambassador must have been sent forward, to be in readiness, for the proper moment of his official appearance; and this preparation fully proved the King of Spain's honourable dependence on the fair dealing of the cabinet of Austria. Again he fixed his eyes on the face of his self-restrained auditor; and after expressing himself in terms of high respect with regard to the Duke de Ripperda, and applauding the decisive step he had taken, in accepting the embassy, he became fully satisfied that it was the son of the Duke he saw before him. The Chancellor smiled within himself at his own discovery, and at the attempted concealment by the Empress; but without observing on either, he addressed Louis still as the secretary de Phaffenberg, and proposed their going immediately to the Altheim apartments.

"We shall certainly find Her Majesty there;" said he, "for the Emperor passes some hours to-night with his confessor, and the Empress told me she meant to enjoy the time in confidential discourse with Countess Otteline."

Louis followed the statesman to the Imperial _boudoir_; and, as he expected, there he found the gracious Elizabeth and her beautiful favourite in close conference. He announced that the Chevalier was in the anti-room, with a commission from the Sieur Ignatius.

"Something extraordinary, by the hour!" cried the Empress, "but I trust no evil report. I am ready to see him."

Louis entered. He did not look on the side where the Countess stood, but approaching his father's illustrious friends with a steadiness of step that surprized himself; and with less visible emotion than he could have hoped, he delivered to her the message from Ignatius; adding, that the Sieur would have had the honour of declaring it in person, had he not been obliged to pass the night in necessary preliminaries to joining the Embassador, in the morning, at St. Polten. In the evening, he would enter with him into Vienna.

The Empress's bright eyes shot a radiant glance on the modest bend of the young secretary's head, as he concluded; and suddenly clasping the Countess in her arms, she exclaimed,--"_Ave Maria!_ This is the crown of the Incas!" The Countess did not comprehend the fulness of her meaning; neither did Louis quite understand it. Sinzendorff thought, that if disappointment had rendered Isabella rash in her threats, success seemed to have a similar effect on Elizabeth, by inflating her with hopes not less alarming. He believed he read in this extraordinary exclamation, that she anticipated a no small share in the wealth of the new world, by her influence over the promised Embassador; and that she would make the marriage settlement for her daughter, an abundant dowry for herself. Whatever were her thoughts, her face was refulgent with animation; and receiving the packets of Ignatius from the hand of Louis with one of her most gracious smiles, she commanded him to take what entertainment the Countess Altheim would afford him, while she should retire with the Chancellor, to examine the papers in her hand.