Chapter III: Part 3

It was easy to gain the ear of Routemberg, through the woman he worshipped. Through her insinuations, and the graver representations of His Excellency's confessor, (who knew the value of Wharton's gold,) the minister was made to suspect much dangerous matter in Ripperda's complicated influence at Vienna. Claudine d'Ettrees accused him of more sway with the Empress, than was consistent with her high station; that his designs in marrying a prince of Spain, to the heiress of the empire, were very apparent; while a secret connection he had with the leader of the Bavarian faction, was totally inexplicable. To circumvent his prime movement, the confessor gave hints of the wisdom of uniting the Arch-duchess to a prince, whose interests must be wholly German; and Francis of Lorraine, a ward of the Emperor, and who was just returning from his travels in Italy, was suggested as the properest person. Routemberg detested Ripperda; and gave such efficient credence to every representation, that he beset the Emperor night and day, till he brought him to accord with all his new views.

Proof was given to him, of Elizabeth having admitted Ripperda to private political discussions in the Altheim apartments. Also, that her daughter was desperately attached to Louis; and that the worst consequences might be anticipated from the ambition of the father, and the power of the son, when the innocent Princess should be entirely in their hands; as must be the case, should she marry the man she abhorred, and be continually in the society of the man she preferred, and who had an interest in preserving the preference.

Wharton had recently seen the Prince of Lorraine at Venice. And the circumstance which inspired the idea of his supplanting the Spanish match, was a general resemblance in his person, countenance, and manner, to him who now filled the heart of the youthful Princess. The Duke found no difficulty in awakening the wishes, which were necessary to his scheme, in the mind of young Lorraine. His ambition was easily aroused, to aspire to the heiress of an empire; and his imagination was not displeased with the picture Wharton drew of his proposed bride.

"In your progress," rejoined the Duke, "you may consult me, as the ancient heroes did their gods; but I must be equally invisible."

Every impression was made on the Emperor's mind, that Wharton desired. And to carry forward his measures against the Spanish minister, and his Empress, without a chance of impediment, Charles kept all that had been discovered to him, locked in his own breast.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, was filled with alarms respecting her daughter's unhappy infatuation. Her former placid temper had changed to irritability; and her conduct at times became so strange and desponding, the anxious mother was in hourly fear of her doing something rash with regard to Louis. Since the departure of Otteline, by unlucky accident, she had met him twice alone in the Altheim boudoir; and her repugnance to the Prince of Spain seemed so to encrease, the Empress saw no resource, but to hasten the day of affiance.

The Emperor was no sooner informed of her intentions; than he made a feint of sparing his daughter's feelings during the preparations; and took her with him to pass the intermediate time at the summer palace.

Elizabeth had always intended that the marriage of her favourite should be solemnized the morning of the day in which the young bridegroom was appointed to represent Don Carlos at the Imperial altar. Louis had always understood this; and she feared to give his dislike of Otteline such advantage, as to yield him opportunity to retract his engagement, should she reserve no great political object to hold him in check. In this dilemma, she determined to throw herself upon his honour; and from her knowledge of his romantic generosity, she thought she could easily bring him to pledge it; and then she believed Otteline secure.

She told him she was anxious to comply with a private letter from the Queen of Spain, to hasten the union between her son and the princess; and she would do so, provided he would promise to perform his engagement with Otteline as soon as she should arrive. Isabella had already implied her consent, though its formalities were yet to be declared. On the strength of this, and his father's granted approbation, Elizabeth demanded of him to say that he would marry Otteline, on any day she would name; and on such a pledge, the Empress would rest on his good faith, and the betrothment should proceed. All hope of escaping this hated union had long been over with Louis; and on Elizabeth representing that some strange clouds had lately hung over her husband's brow, which might burst, she knew not where, to the subversion of all the Spanish plans, the young patriot was the more readily persuaded to give the word of honour she required.

"But," added Louis, with a smothered sigh; "in the august ceremony of next week, I conjure Your Majesty not to command me to be proxy!"

The Empress turned round.

"De Montemar! That is a bold petition. By what presumption, dare you offer it to the mother of the Arch-duchess Maria Theresa?"

"Her Highness is young, and fearful of the engagements to which that rite will bind her; and, as, in spite of myself, my heart will dare to compassionate even a Princess, in a moment of such aweful responsibility, I dread my weakness might dishonour the solemnity."

"And you have no weakness, but compassion for your future Princess?" asked Elizabeth, turning her Pallas-like eyes, full upon him.

Louis felt their appeal; and while a blush of mingled sensibility and modesty, coloured his manly cheek, he laid his hand on his breast and answered, "None; on the life I would dedicate to her service, and to that of her illustrious mother!"

The Empress turned from him, and walked up the room. Her own discretion seconded his plea; and when she approached him again, it was with a gracious countenance, and to say that his petition should be considered with indulgence.

But when the Emperor returned with his daughter from the Luxemburg, a competitor, more formidable than the image of de Montemar had taken its station in the breast of the young Princess. The Prince of Lorraine had been introduced to her rescue, in a contrived moment of danger on the lake; and, in the confusion of fear, believing her preserver to be Louis, she had thrown herself in speechless gratitude upon his bosom. Her father, approaching, explained to her, that he who had saved her from a watery grave, was Francis of Lorraine; and every day afterwards, during her residence at the Luxemburg, she gladly admitted him to her presence. The young Prince was of the same age with Louis; and possessed so much of his grace of mind, as well as person, that he had no difficulty (by tender and unobtrusive attentions,) in transforming her fanciful attachment to De Montemar, into a grateful passion for himself.

The understanding of Maria Theresa was beyond her years; but it was tinctured by the systems of expediency amongst which she had imbibed her education. She was therefore prepared to sustain her part in the drama Routemberg was bringing on the _tapis_. Her father, apparently moved by her abhorrence of the Spanish Prince, and her predilection for the German one, sanctioned their mutual vows; but engaged her to keep the whole affair secret from her mother, until he could find a safe opportunity of breaking with the Spaniard. He exhorted her to persist in refusing her presence on the proposed day of betrothment; he would secretly support her resistance; and throw obstacles in the way of the Empress's measures, until all should be obtained from Spain, and they might finally throw off the mask.

The resolute opposition which Elizabeth now met with from her, who had, hitherto, appeared like a drooping lilly, yielding unresistingly to the heavy shower that bowed her to the earth, amazed and perplexed her. As Charles had been careful to conceal his daughter's interviews with the Prince of Lorraine, and Francis did not come to Vienna; the Empress could trace no cause for this extraordinary change: and when she talked to her husband, of Maria Theresa's stubborn refractoriness, he coldly replied--

"The Marquis de Montemar has been admitted too familiarly to her presence. He is, as seeming fair, as his father: he may be equally false." Surprised at this unexpected, and, she was sure, unprovoked aspersion on the Duke, the Empress cautiously took up the defence of his unswerving truth.

"He is unworthy your confidence;" replied the Emperor, "for, after all his affected hostility to Wharton, as the instigator of every vexatious act from the Bavarian conspiracy, I have discovered from unquestionable evidence, that he has secret intelligence with him. On what subjects, ambition, boundless and wild as his own, can alone guess. Look to his son, Elizabeth, and to our daughter."

Charles would not explain farther, and left the Empress in encreased perplexity.

In vain she interrogated her daughter; in vain she insisted on her union with Don Carlos: she was resolute in not answering a word to any of the charges her mother put to her, as the reason for her refusal. When the Empress was angry, Maria Theresa remained sullenly firm; when her mother was tender and imploring, the hapless Princess wept in silence, but would not yield.

One morning Elizabeth entered her daughter's apartment, with a determination not to leave it, until she had brought her to the point, whence, she was resolved there should be no escape. She spoke, persuaded, threatened, implored; but the Princess was more obstinate than ever; though, so agitated by her mother's language, that she fell back in hysterical emotion into her chair. The violence of her disorder discomposed her dress, and the vest of her robe bursting open, the eye of her mother caught the glitter of something like the setting of a picture. With an immediate impulse she snatched it from the bosom of her daughter; and beheld, what she believed, the portrait of de Montemar.

Her eyes, for a moment, fixed themselves with a horrid conviction of a wide and nameless treachery. She looked from the picture to her daughter, with a frightful glare, in their before mild aspect. Maria Theresa, alarmed out of her hysterics, had sprung from her seat, and stood before her mother, with her hands clasped, in speechless supplication.

"And when did he give you this?" demanded Elizabeth, in a hollow, and almost suffocated voice.

The Princess dropped, trembling on her knees, without power of utterance; for, not aware of her mother's mistake, she thought the discovery of the Prince's picture in her breast, had betrayed the secret of her father: and, on its preservation, he had taught her to believe, entirely depended her future happiness.

"Theresa, I command you, to confess to me, the whole of de Montemar's treachery. When did he dare to give you this?--and--unhappy, degenerate girl! how did you dare to give the encouragement, to warrant such treasonable presumption?"

Every word that now fell from the agitated Empress was balm to the affrighted nerves of her daughter. Her father's secret was then safe; and, still retaining her humble position, she said in faultering accents; "Spare, de Montemar, my gracious mother! As I hope to see heaven, he is guiltless of all my offences against you. But ask me no more--I dare not answer it."

"He has bound you by a vow! or, you, wretched dupe, have disgraced your sex----"

The mother's lips could not finish the charge she was about to put upon her innocent child. She paused, and threw herself into a chair; for her own heart recollected its youthful and chaste admiration of the father of this very de Montemar, and she burst into tears. The picture fell to the floor. Theresa looked where it lay, but forbore to touch it. Her heart was softened at her mother's silent tears; and her own trickling down her cheeks, she ventured to take the Empress's hand, and put it to her lips. Elizabeth pressed the filial hand that trembled in her's; and then Theresa faintly articulated,--

"Oh, my mother! release me from this horrid betrothment, and you shall know every thought and deed of this agonized heart!"

The Empress dried the tears from her eyes, and turning gently on her child,--"I pity you, Theresa," said she, "but I can do no more. You are born a princess; and your inevitable fate is to marry, not where your inclinations may prompt, but where the interests of your country dictate. Your birth-right gives you a sceptre, ordains you to be the dispenser of good or evil, to millions of dependent subjects; and you have nothing to do with love, with private, selfish joys. We, that are born to such destinies, must forswear the one, or resign the other."

"Then let the Electress of Bavaria take the reversion of the German empire!" exclaimed the Princess, ardently, "let me resign all state and power, and only make me the happy wife of ----"

She checked herself, and buried her head in her mothers lap.

"Of him you must never see again!" returned the Empress, rising from her seat, and kissing the burning forehead of her daughter as she replaced her in her chair.

"I pardon your youth and innocence; and yet, was it innocence to forget the claims of Otteline upon his heart? Oh, my child, how deep must have been his wiles! That unblushing face of falsehood; that affected champion of honour! Never, never, will I forgive him. Theresa, you have seen de Montemar for the last time, till you are the wife of his prince."

As she spoke, she moved back, and found something under her foot. She stepped aside. It was the portrait which she had crushed, crystal and ivory, into one shattered mass. The half-smothered cry of Theresa at the sight of the destruction, and the tears which gushed from her eyes, as, she involuntarily sprung forward to save the obliterated relics, confounded and penetrated her mother. While she hung, weeping, over them, the Empress drew a troubled sigh, and quitted the apartment.

In passing to her own chamber she met the Emperor, and, in the agitation of her maternal fears, told him all that had passed. Her heated prepossession changed the tacit acquiescence of her daughter, in the portrait having been that of Louis, into a positive confession that it was so. Charles was rather surprised at so direct a falsehood from his daughter; but as it was to maintain his secret, he rather wondered at her presence of mind, than blamed its obliquity.

The Empress talked herself into every suspicion of Louis's arts towards the Princess, and insulting coldness to his own affianced bride. While the Emperor stimulated her wrath, he tried to spread it from the son to the father, by new insinuations against the sincerity of both. He dwelt upon certain documents he possessed, that the quarrel at the Cardinal's, was concerted between Ripperda and Wharton, to blind the French minister, who had suspected their private friendship. He also mentioned the stolen glances which the Electress of Bavaria was often observed to give to de Montemar; and that he generally replied to them in the same clandestine way. It had been noticed in the _Prato_; and particularly at the assemblies of the Countess Lichtenstein, where, one night, the Electress evidently dropped her fan before him, that he might take it up; and, as he presented it, she closed her hand over his as she received it,--"and gave it a quick pressure, and a glance," continued the Emperor, "that pretty plainly declared they were no strangers." The Empress listened to all with greedy, because prejudiced attention. But nothing of the information affected her with regard to Ripperda; a partial spirit presided in her mind, when he was accused; and she would believe nothing of such aimless treachery. Of Louis she now entertained the very worst opinion; and she determined to send for him immediately, and tax him at once with all that she had heard, against both his father and himself.

Charles remarked, that he knew from one or two of his young chamberlains, that Louis's profligacy was equal to his talents; that he was a constant frequenter of the most dissipated circles in Vienna; and therefore, he intimated the impropriety of committing the reputation of the Arch-duchess, by even implying to so vain and unprincipled a young man, the least hint of her preference for him; or allowing the possibility of his daring to turn an eye of passion upon her. Elizabeth saw the delicacy of this caution; and while she consented to restrict her reproaches to political subjects alone, she determined to revenge herself on his presumption and duplicity, by precipitating the marriage she knew he abhorred.

CHAP. VII.

While this was passing at the palace, dispatches arrived from Madrid. On breaking the seals of the packet of the latest date, Louis perceived that the Queen supposed the Arch-duchess was now the betrothed of her son, for it contained congratulatory letters on the event. But, there was also another which might not be quite so pleasing to Elizabeth, although Louis felt it came too late for him. He received copies, of what were inclosed for the Imperial pair; and this one was from Isabella to the Empress, retracting any consent she might have implied, to the Marquis de Montemar's marriage with Countess Altheim. It was written with apologies, and regrets for the necessity, but it was positive. Ripperda accompanied this unexpected refusal, with a laboured epistle to his imperial friend. He excused the Queen's changed sentiments, by pleading a great point which she hoped to gain, by uniting his son in a different direction. With sincerity, he expressed his own distress, at being obliged to yield his wishes in favour of the Empress's beautiful _protegée_, to the duty he owed his sovereign; but, he concluded, with repeating, that in all essential circumstances, Elizabeth should find she had put no vain trust in Ripperda.

After all the polite cunning of Isabella's letter, and the hard-wrung finesse of her minister's, it was easy to discern that truth was conveyed in neither.

The fact was simply this:--De Patinos's correspondence with his friends at Madrid, and the whisperings of Orendayn, when he arrived there, had gradually made their way to the Queen, with insinuations and representations of the Empress's personal power over the Duke and his son. So much was said, that her jealousy was at last excited, to check it from proceeding further; and to try how far it could cope with her own influence in the same quarter, she told Ripperda her intentions that Louis should break with the Countess Altheim, and marry one she should hereafter name. Not suspecting her motive, he represented the hazard of putting so great an affront on the favourite of the Empress. Isabella was a passionate woman; and, when self-will urged her, she often acted as pertinaciously against her judgment, as against her counsellors. On this subject, she would hear no reasoning; no representation of the vexatious resentments that might be anticipated from Elizabeth. The more he dwelt on the Empress's mortification, the more she was resolved to excite it. She felt something of female vanity, as well as sovereign pride, in this opportunity of shewing her rival Elizabeth, that she could make Ripperda sacrifice his early friend's wishes to his new mistress's commands.

Isabella was peremptory, and the dispatch was sent off; and with additional triumph too, for letters had arrived from Vienna to some of the attendants at court, mentioning the departure of a messenger to Madrid with accounts of the royal betrothment. In vain Ripperda protested against acting on such vague information; or indeed, on any information that did not come in the regular official train. Isabella laughed at his fears, and derided the idea that a rupture between his son and the favourite of the Empress, could have any effect on the marriage of her son, with the heiress of the Empire.

The messenger set off, and the issue soon followed.

While Louis was reading these dispatches, he received a summons from Elizabeth, to attend her immediately. He took the packet that was for Her Majesty, and proceeded to the Altheim apartments. The Empress was there, but she hardly noticed him when he entered the room. She had caught a glimpse of his face as he approached; and the sight of its seeming nobleness incensed her the more against his actual dishonour.

She gave no credence to the story that had been told her of his father's insincerity. She knew the slanderous inventions of envy, and she confided, without a shadow of doubting, in the friend she had trusted from her youth. But for the delinquency of his son, she had ocular demonstration; and her indignation was hardly to be repressed.

Louis presented the Queen's and his father's letters. Elizabeth commanded him to read them. He obeyed without remark, though with an unsteady voice, as he uttered communications he knew were so hostile to her expectation. She listened in speechless amazement, first to the one and then to the other. When he had finished, she took them from his hand, and turning them round in agitated silence, examined their seals and writing.

"It is his hand!" cried she, in a tone, from which the convictions in her bosom had rifled all its sweetness. Then turning to Louis, with all her lately suppressed wrath, flashing from her eyes, "It is meet that a false tongue should have read such false language! Louis de Montemar you are a traitor to me and mine, and your father is the same. He abets his treacherous son, to the ruin of a name, of fifty years' unblemished honour."

Louis was not less astonished at this charge, than the Empress had been at the communication which aroused it. But attributing her displeasure, to a suspicion that he had wrought on his father to influence the Queen to prevent his marriage, after the momentary shock of his, first surprise, he calmly and respectfully answered her;--"that he was as faithful to all his bonds, made under the sanction of Her Majesty, as he believed, were the dictates of his father's heart. He regarded his promises to her, and his engagements to the Countess Altheim, as now too sacred to be broken by him, even at the command of his sovereign."

"Indeed?" Answered Elizabeth, hardly attempting to conceal her scornful doubt of his sincerity.

Her manner amazed him; it was so unlike the aspect of fair interpretation, with which she usually discussed a dubious subject.

"And you will marry the Countess Altheim?" continued she.

"Assuredly, Madam."

"And knowing my affection for her, you will generously leave her with me? You will follow the suite of my daughter to Spain, and you will become the bosom Counsellor of the wife of your Prince? I apprehend your honour and your loyalty?"

She paused, and fixed her eyes on the calm astonishment of his. There was a haughty condemnation in her looks, he could not misunderstand; but still he was at a loss to account for the origin of so unmerited a judgment; and with the confident appeal of an unburthened conscience, he entreated to be told how he had incurred the displeasure he read in her words and manner.

She too well remembered the Emperor's caution to explain the offence, though the resentment of a suffering mother could not be entirely repressed. She cast down her indignant eyes, and with petrifying coldness replied:

"_Your_ offence is of no moment. The shadow of an eclipse, which leaves no stain on the fair disk it would have darkened! But your father! He cannot start from his sphere, without troubling nations, and quenching his own rays, which should have shone to eternity!"

While the Empress spoke of Ripperda, it was rather to utter the lamentations of her heart, over the dereliction of the coadjutor in whom she gloried; than addressing his son, who, she now thought, too worthless for remonstrance. She sat for a few minutes, looking abstractedly down, grasping the letter she had received. He did not interrupt her reverie. Conscious of no blame in himself; and equally convinced of his father's uprightness; with patient respect, he awaited her further explanation. At last she looked towards him, with an austere, but calm countenance. She opened her charge against the Duke, by repeating what the Emperor had told her of the pretended exchange of insults between Wharton and Ripperda at the table of Giovenozzo. She avowed that she had repelled the story as a slander; but the letter she held in her hand, proved that Ripperda could surrender her dearest wishes, to his own fancied interests. She warmed in resentment, as she dwelt on his base compliance with the caprice of Isabella.

"One failure in fidelity," continued she, "is a sufficient earnest.--I believe the rest."

As the Empress had proceeded in her allegation, Louis's countenance brightened at the unfounded tale; and, without reserve, he unfolded to her all his father's hostility to Wharton: all at least, that he knew; for he was yet ignorant that the contention at the Cardinal's had ended in bloodshed. He spoke of his own attachment to the English Duke; but, that by the commands of his father, he had passed him by as a stranger, and was admonished never to consider him as a friend. Having exacted such a sacrifice from his son; and politically opposed every measure of Wharton's during his life; was it credible, that he would now stake the grand objects of his existence, by forming a clandestine union with a man, with whom he had no common interest, and whose personal self he determinately hated?

"If my father ever had a sin in his son's eyes," continued Louis, "it was, and is the inveteracy of that hatred."

During this defence, the Empress frequently shook her head; and when it was finished, she rose from her chair.

"It will not do!" said she, "I see the brink on which I stood, and the consequences must come."

"Madam," replied Louis, "I conjure you, by the completion of your own object, in supporting my father in his labours for the peace of Europe; I conjure you, not to permit the accusations of real traitors, to turn your confidence from as true a benefactor of the human race, as ever devoted his life to man! Their tongues, when credited by your ears, are of more mortal stroke, than all the daggers which struck at him under the garb of the Sieur Ignatius."

"And what is your tongue? Dissembling de Montemar!" cried she, "had you been true, those words, that voice, would have been evidence to out-weigh a multitude. But you are false;--and your father suffers by his advocate."

"In what am I false?" cried Louis, "not in affirming my father's integrity; for I am ready to seal my evidence with my blood!--Not in re-affirming my resolution to marry the Countess Altheim; for I am ready to pass through the ceremony, whenever Your Majesty commands!--But I should be false, indeed, were I to say, that I performed my hard-wrung word of honour, with my heart as well as my hand."

"Then you dare avow----?" demanded the Empress, turning rapidly towards him, and then checking herself.

"No more than what I once presumed to tell Your Majesty, on the same knee, with which I now bend before this incomprehensible displeasure. I then said, and I now repeat, that, finding all her principles discordant to mine, it is her own exaction, and my honour alone, that compels me to make her my wife. Truth urges me to this last avowal; and self-defence, that her benefactres may judge if he can be false, who redeems his honour at the price of his happiness."

"Happiness! honour!" cried the Empress, and she laughed bitterly; "young hypocrite, I penetrate all thy artifice!--But if you can have a hope, that I shall pardon what _I know_, meet my Otteline at the altar on the very day she returns from Brunswick. Treat her with the duties of a husband, and the respect due to my friend; and once more the name of de Montemar may be heard by me without detestation."

With these words the Empress turned away, and left the chamber. Louis returned home, appalled and distressed, by the scene which had just passed. He saw there were charges against himself in her bosom, which she did not chuse to deliver; to rest under them might be dangerous; and how could he confute what she disdained to utter?

CHAP. VIII.

In the midst of this confusion of mind, he arrived at the _Palais d'Espagne_, and was immediately involved in a host of perplexing discussions. Ministers and messengers awaited him in various apartments. As supereminent talent, united with virtue and power, has a force almost omnipotent; the powers of Europe, who aimed at aggrandisement by dishonest policies and aggression, dreaded the master-hand of the new minister of Spain.

This was a fact, enforced on Louis, in each succeeding audience; but while the remonstrances, and even threats of the representatives of these princes, assailed him in their different hours of conference; other applicants, in the shape of consuls and agents passing to various countries, spoke of the Spanish trade, which now embraced the habitable globe; and added to the account, that while the sun of Ripperda's glory thus spread its rays over the whole earth; warming, cheering, and fructifying to the distant poles; he turned his careful eye, with all a parent's interest, to the internal policy of Spain.

By his exhortations and his example, he persuaded the grandees to come down from their sterile heights of indolent enjoyment; to disperse their riches by the patronage of genius; and to excite the people to industry by generously rewarding its labours. As for the people themselves, they whom the unworked-for golden tides from America had gradually sunk into stupid pride, and at last left to squallid poverty, he aroused them from their lethargy and laziness, by appearing to take pleasure in their interests; by visiting them in their towns and villages; and stimulating them to bring prosperity to them all, by the active labours of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce.

For nearly two centuries the Spanish people had been a nation of drones; they were now become a common-wealth of bees, and the hive filled with honey. The origin of the change was honoured as a god; and while,

"He raised his voice, and stretched his sceptred hand,"

perhaps he sometimes forgot that he yet was mortal.

But there is a pinnacle of human success and of human opinion, on which human foot was never yet permitted to rest. He who has attained it grows giddy, and the fiercest winds are summoned to blow him from his eminence. Man's enthusiasm in praise of a fellow mortal, is soon damped by the original sin of his nature--rebellious pride! and where he cannot find a mote in the eye he once thought omniscient, he will fancy a beam; and proclaiming the discovery, the supposed blind guide is at once thrust into utter darkness.

Such spirits were now at work against Ripperda, both in Spain, and in the rival countries; and their labour in undermining, and laying trains, was equal to the great object of their overthrow. Routemberg in the German Court, and de Castallor, (the father of de Patinos,) in the Spanish, permitted neither sun nor stars to set upon a pause in their deep and dangerous machinations. Their agents were indefatigable and subtle; and as they were various, and apparently insignificant, the work moved onward as surely as invisibly, to the object of its aim.

The Empress was now assailed, daily and hourly, with information, which none would have dared to hint, had she not betrayed to her husband, some signs of doubting the perfect sincerity of Ripperda. A thousand things were brought forward to prove his entire devotion to his new country; the devotion indeed, of ambition; for it was made apparent to her, that he was now its actual sovereign. Philip was a puppet in his hand; and the queen, who had exalted Ripperda to such despotic power, was to be propitiated, by every sacrifice to her caprice. One of her humours was to unite the son of her minister, with a niece of the widowed Queen of Saint Germain's. It was represented to Elizabeth, that Ripperda had sanctioned the pragmatic deed, not so much to gratify her, as to flatter the ambition of Don Carlos, in making him the husband of the future Empress; and that his reconciliation to Duke Wharton, who was alike the emissary of the Stuart, and of the Bavarian factions, might now be accounted for: though the termination of such complicated and opposing views were certainly beyond calculation. These, and other innuendoes, and references to the remaining articles, public and private, of the late treaty, were amply descanted on; and the misled and irritated Elizabeth, (the more irritated, on account of her personal regard for Ripperda,) was wrought to so high a pitch of indignation, that she did not deign to answer either his, or the queen's letters on the premature congratulation and withdrawn consent.

She resolved to harass them on one object, and to disappoint them in the other; and while she countermanded the preparations for the betrothment of her daughter, she hurried every arrangement for the marriage of her favourite. From the hour of her last interview with Louis, she never admitted him to her presence; but she wrote to Otteline to hasten her return to Vienna, although she knew her venerable father lay at that time at the point of death.

Elizabeth now took as much pains to proclaim the intended union of Countess Altheim, with the son of the Duke de Ripperda, as she had before been cautious to conceal it. The astonishment it excited, broke out in wonder from some, and lamentations from others. It was the conversation of every circle; and discussed according to the dispositions, or views of the speakers. Princess de Waradin wept over her disappointed wishes for her daughter; and Countess Lichtenstein railed at the mortification of hers. The women, in general, were incensed at such a triumph, for a woman they despised; and the men smiled on each other, at the young minister's folly. Count Sinzendorff alone felt no surprise; for he had seen Louis's entanglement, from the moment he knew of his renewed visits at the Altheim apartments. He, therefore, did as he said; made no further observation, but conducted himself to his young friend with grave distance. Louis, understood it; and durst not, then, offer an apology, by revealing the truth. Now, the Empress had declared it; and Louis felt, that all knew his shame, in having pledged himself to the most venal, most contemned woman, in the German Empire!

Letters arrived from Otteline, which told her patroness that her invalid was no more; and that a certain day should see her at the feet of her mistress. Elizabeth suppressed the death of the old man, resolved that nothing should delay the ceremony which should make Louis her favourite's vassal for life; and the only time she condescended to notice him before the arrival of his bride, was to name the day, and command him to prepare for his nuptials. He bowed in silence, and she passed on.

He had written a distinct account to his father, of the Empress's charges against him, and of her inexplicable conduct to himself; he had also enforced the necessity of fulfilling their mutual engagements to Countess Otteline; and affirmed his own intention of immediately obeying the commands of Elizabeth to that effect. Having dispatched this letter, he prepared to go through the unavoidable sacrifice with propriety and composure of heart; and he determined to act by her with forbearance and kindness, though he felt that it was to a living death he was consigning that heart; he was preparing himself, as one wedding the cold tenant of the grave.

From meditations such as these, he walked abroad into the open air of a retired glade, diverging from the gardens of the _Palais d'Espagne_, towards the Danube. The evening gale was fresh and cheering, but still the load was on his soul; no breeze could waft it hence, no sigh could shake it from its deep adhesive lodgement.

"I contemned love!" said he, to himself; "I despised the tranquil and blissful joys of heart meeting heart, in the tender and pure relation of wedded affections. I must aspire to the agitating transports of self-devotion, in scenes of sacrifice and peril! I must be all for glory, or be nothing! And now, I bleed in soul, for glory, and the result of this proud, unnatural heart, will be nothing! O, no; the worm is there that never dies! The consciousness of having taken to my bosom, a creature I despise; a woman, whom the world derides; and who paralizes every feeling within me, of father, husband, friend. Yes, ennobling love, honourable marriage," cried he, "you are revenged!"

He went on, ruminating on the vain shadow, into which his over-heated ambition to act and to be distinguished, had involved him. He had been bewildered in its intricacies,--but not intimidated by its thunderings and its lightnings; he had pressed forward in the visionary atmosphere, till the gulph met him; and, alas, in what early youth did it betray him to this deep destruction!

He was returning homewards through an umbrageous aisle of chesnuts, which led by the backs of the superb gardens, when he saw Duke Wharton turn suddenly into the same avenue. There was not a creature in it but themselves. Wharton and he were approaching each other; but the Duke was walking musing forward, without raising his eyes, as in the abstraction of thought, he was dashing away the pebbles in his path, with the point of his sword.

The instant Louis beheld him, Elizabeth's accusations against his father rushed to his mind; but their confutation came in the same moment. He remembered how his father had execrated this noble enemy, even at the time he declared his worth. He remembered his father had acknowledged to him that the wine he drank at the Cardinal's had affected him as wine never did before, and maddened his blood. In this mood, he pressed insult upon Wharton, and Wharton revenged himself, by screening his adversary from blame, and apologizing as the offender! Ripperda, having brought himself to relieve his proud sense of obligation, by this avowal to his son, had commanded his silence on the subject for ever; but the remembrance was anchored in his heart.

At sight of this generous enemy, this faithful friend, how could he restrain the grateful impulse to fling himself into his arms! Wharton was alone; no one was near to report the momentary recognition!

"Duke Wharton!" cried he.

Wharton looked up, and, for an instant, around; his face lightened with the flash of joyful surprise, and opening his arms, Louis did indeed throw himself into them.

"Oh, this hug!" cried the Duke, as he strained him to his bounding heart; "it is the resurrection of confidence in man. You are true, and it matters not who is false." "True! for ever true!" cried Louis, grasping the hand of his friend with unutterable feelings. In proportion to his conviction, that love would henceforth be denied him, his sensibilities pointed all to friendship; and poured into that sacred flame the collected blaze.

"I needed these honest throbs to tell me so!" replied Wharton, "but the world has _reported and slandered_ Louis de Montemar, as I once prophesied."

"Oh, Wharton, how much is on my soul, that you have so generously endured for me and mine! Again and again, I have turned from you, when that soul followed you. I fled from you in the palace; but you know that my residence at Vienna was then to be concealed. I treated your clinging friendship with harshness, and yet you pardoned me; you risqued your safety, to preserve myself and the Sieur Ignatius from danger. And when wine had unselfed my noble father, you received his passionate insults with forbearance and forgiveness! Wharton, had I a thousand hearts, they should be yours, for this unconquered friendship."

"And had I as many, dear de Montemar, to transfer into your breast, they would be insufficient to repay the life you saved to me, in that of Maria of Bavaria."

The Duke then hastily recapitulated the Electress's account of the transaction, and her increased gratitude for his having maintained it so profound a secret. Louis listened with pleasure, and dwelt with delight on the interesting Princess and her son. Wharton smiled at his animation: and, with all his former sparkling archness, softly repeated,--

"Dum tu, Lydia, Telephi
Cervicem roseam, & cerea Telephi
Laudas Brachia, væ meum
Fervens difficili bile tumet jecur."

Louis smiled also; but it was accompanied by a mantling cheek. The praises of women might now have passed unnoticed, from their familiarity; and, in general, it would have been so, but he respected the Electress, and admiration from her recalled the blush of modest consciousness. The Duke intimated a possibility of contriving a meeting between her, Louis, and himself, at her villa on Mount Calenberg.

"I have much to say to you, de Montemar," added he, "much of importance. That rare voice of thine has conjured a devil out of Philip Wharton; and now you must have the arcana of his heart."

Louis looked on him, and grasped his hand; "and could you, indeed, doubt me?"

"I will tell you more anon," replied Wharton; "come to-morrow night, at ten o'clock, to Mount Calenberg. There will be no danger in such a place, but much mystery, and, added he, with gaiety,---

"As veiled charms are fairest,
So stolen joys are dearest."

Before Louis could answer in the negative, he heard voices in the adjoining garden. The friends were standing close to the wall; but on these sounds they moved away; and a key presently turned in the door.

"You come?" cried Wharton, as his hand gave the pressure of farewell.

"Impossible," returned Louis.

Wharton stood for a moment.

"You must," cried he, "since she will dare it! But there can be no discovery."

"I dare not, for my life and honour."

"For your father's life and honour, you must dare every thing! _Osez_ is my badge, and you will be wise to make it yours."

Wharton uttered this with a peculiar force of voice, and aweful expression in his countenance. Louis was thunderstruck: and yet, how could his father be involved in Wharton's demand? He was in Spain, and no longer in danger from his former enemies! "My father's honour forbids my compliance," replied he; "I dare not go to the Electress's villa; I dare not meet, even you, by design."

The garden door at that moment opened, and a bevy of persons issued from it. Wharton dropped the hand of his friend. "Faithless, deluded de Montemar!" cried he; and breaking away, the friends mutually disappeared.

CHAP. IX.

The influence of Ripperda over the minds of the King and Queen of Spain had reached its acmé. Isabella's enthusiasm for the new minister was more like passion than patronage; and Philip's deference to him possessed all the fanatic zeal of the devotee who worships the object he has beatified. The King believed he had converted Ripperda to the Catholic faith, and he exulted in the reclaimed heretic as a future saint.

The minister's eye kept steady to one point; to raise the country he governed, to the utmost pinnacle of earthly grandeur. But his manner of conducting his projects, and demeaning himself after their accomplishment, had suffered a rapid and extraordinary change since he returned from Vienna. During his voyage from Genoa to Barcelona he was attacked by a delirious fever, in consequence of the wound he had received in his rencontre with the banditti of the Appenines. It seemed to have jarred his nerves and affected his temper; or rather to have taken off the curb which his self-control had hitherto kept on the motions of his passions; but this alteration did not appear at first. His habits of universal suavity prevailed for a time, until he launched so deeply into business, as to forget all minor considerations in its great results. He became not merely zealous, but impetuous in the prosecution of his objects; not merely determined on a point, but dogmatical in its assertion. He did not now persuade the Lords of the Council, by his always subduing eloquence; but he commanded from the consciousness of mental superiority, and the conviction of his power to execute all his designs. The pride of the Grandees was incensed, and the precipitation with which he urged forward all degrees of persons, rather offended than served them. There is a restiveness in human nature that resists compulsion, even to its own manifest advantage.

Ripperda saw no will but his own; he was sure of its great purpose, and, therefore, stopped not to solicit the good from others, he believed he could do more shortly himself. He went careering forward to his point, overturning and wounding; but as he speeded on, he left a train of enemies behind.

Even the King and Queen began to start from the patriotic despot they had raised. Enamoured of his vision of happiness for Spain, he snatched the prerogative too openly from their hands, and conceded privileges to the people, novel to the Spanish laws. He dared to oppose the extirpating power of the inquisition, by protecting certain Jewish merchants from its fangs; and this being represented to Philip, as a proof of his being a heretic in his heart, the monarch considered it unanswerable, and determined to watch him narrowly. His most active enemy with the Queen was Donna Laura; her nurse and confidant, an old Italian, totally abandoned to avarice. Being irritated by his late disdain of propitiating her as formerly, by successive magnificent presents; she sold her interest in another quarter, and studied day and night to destroy him in the favour of her mistress. She knew where Isabella was particularly vulnerable; her vanity as a woman; and the crafty dame had many stories to recount of Ripperda's early devotion to Elizabeth. She insinuated, that it was rather to be near her than to negociate for Spain, that he so willingly consented to go to Vienna in disguise; and she easily corroborated her assertion, by turning Isabella's attention to his gradually changing manner since his return. But Isabella did not require to be reminded of the cessation of his homage. Ripperda had lately omitted all those gallant attentions, which spoke the lover, who may only dare to devote his heart and his life to the pure object of his wishes, while she moves above him in unsullied light, like Cynthia in her distant heavens.

Without adulation of this kind, Isabella could not exist; and it never came so sweet from any lips as those of Ripperda; it never beamed with so graceful a homage from other eyes. It was her delight to mingle politics and chivalric devotion, in their long conferences. It was her triumph, in the crowded court, to see his eyes fixed alone on her; and to behold herself envied by her ladies as a woman, as much as she was respected by them as their Queen. But when the change took place; and, regardless of these useful arts, he became absorbed in his duties; then, Laura taught her to believe he thought only of Elizabeth.

His enemies in the cabinet were quick to perceive when their devices had taken effect on the King and Queen. Amongst the most formidable of these illustrious conspirators, was the hoary headed Marquis de Grimaldo, whose disgrace had preceded Ripperda's taking the supreme chair. The old Grandee held a strict watch over his successor's proceedings; and made it the business of his life to collect observations on his minutest actions, and to misrepresent, or aggravate them, to the ears of jealous Majesty. The Marquis de Castallor, who had lost the office of Secretary at War, when the new minister absorbed it in his ample grasp, joined with Grimaldo, heart and hand, to overthrow his Colossal power. To this end they spread a distorted epitome of his favourite views, amongst their retainers. These disseminated them to the people, with proper commentaries, in dark hints and distant observations. Ripperda was talked of as the son of a rebel; one who had been born in a heretic country, and educated in its faith; who had embraced the true church, merely from ambition; who was depriving the Grandees of their privileges; and devising plans to reduce the gentlemen of Spain to the rank of bourgeois and slaves, by turning them to bodily labour and mechanic trades, and abridging them of their evening siesta and morning revels under the shade of their groves.

While the fortress was undermining at home, they were not idle, who were preparing to storm it from abroad. France, saw with apprehension, His Catholic Majesty drawing such strict bonds with the house of Austria. The States General were alarmed at the treaty of commerce. England proclaimed a rough indignation at the demand for Gibraltar, which Austria had made in behalf of Spain. And, it being reported amongst the nations, that Ripperda's views were to compel by force, what he could not obtain by negociation, his overthrow was considered a common cause. The various silent armaments, which commenced on this resolution, were represented in appalling colours to Philip; and as the Court of Austria so slowly performed its part in the treaty, his apprehensions were more easily awakened. The insincerity and insult of this delay were doubled in effect by the private correspondence of De Patinos to his father, who spoke mysteriously of the determination of Charles's cabinet, from some hidden cause, not to perform any more of their engagements.

Louis, meanwhile, unconscious of the storm that was circling round his father's head in Spain, was stemming his way through the traversing movements of his enemies at the Austrian Court. He contended firmly for his political objects, but resigned himself with desperate despair, to the current which bore his private happiness to destruction. He had obeyed an intimation from the Empress, that Countess Altheim was arrived, and prepared to name the day and hour for their nuptials; and he went to her apartments to receive the abhorred appointment from herself. She met him with all her smiles; for the memento of the lowlines of her origin, presented to her in the domestic scene she had just left, stimulated her joy at the prospect of being elevated out of these humbling impressions, by the pomp of an illustrious marriage. She had just quitted the bed of death, had just closed the eyes of a respectable parent; and yet had vanity so steeled her soul to every feeling of filial nature, that, banishing all, as a thing with which she had no concern, she turned alone to views of splendid rivalry: and, when Louis appeared, exultation in the full Court of the Empress swam before her eyes with his entering form.

With unaffected rapture, she met his ceremonious salute, and softly whispered, as his cold cheek touched hers, that she knew the object of his visit. It was soon discussed. For Louis had hardly repeated in words, what his promise to Elizabeth extorted, before her ready favourite named the evening of the following day. He felt the paleness of his countenance spread to his heart; and, without pulsation in his veins, his lips parted in a vacant smile; and he suffered the glowing hand she had put into his, to remain unnoticed in his motionless grasp.

At this moment, the Empress entered; and Otteline prevented any involuntary exhibition of her resentment at the frozen demeanor of her lover, by rising hastily, and as hastily informing Her Majesty that she had obeyed her commands in naming her nuptials for the morrow. Elizabeth read the despair of his countenance, as he started from his seat at her approach; and, triumphing in her victory, she seemed in that hour to forget all her inexplicable coldness, and to be as gracious as ever. She embraced Otteline; and gave him her hand to kiss, with repeated expressions of future confidence in the husband of her friend.

The marriage was to be solemnised with unexampled magnificence in the chapel of the palace; and the equipage which was to convey the favourite to her husband's residence, was to be the gift of her patroness. Louis summoned himself as well as he could, to perform that with cheerfulness, which it was right to do at all; and, he conducted himself, during the remainder of the interview, with respect to his future bride, and extorted gratitude to her mistress.

The remainder of the day was passed in his official duties; but when evening came, he could not endure his own thoughts; the anticipations of to-morrow sickened and distracted him; and he rushed out, to fly himself, and the image of her who had blighted all his prospects.