Chapter IV: Part 4

He hurried to the _Hotel d'Ettrées_; but the scenes of careless gaiety he saw there, seemed only to chafe his mind. The sight of young men of his own years; some, with similar pursuits, moving on with honour; and others, worthlessly wasting their time; but all, free and untortured by bonds like his; barbed him to the quick: and he was hurrying from the splendid mockery, when in the outward saloon, which was almost solitary, he was met by the Countess Claudine. She accosted him with wonder at his early flight. In his eagerness to escape, he made some senseless excuse. Laughing, she put her fair hand upon his arm, and told him a little more civility to her, and a little less impatience towards his intended bride, would, at that moment, be more becoming, in the representative of the most gallant nation in Europe! Louis rallied himself to reply in her own way; and putting her arm through his, she drew him back into the rooms. In her brilliant discourse, so sparkling with wit, so exquisite in sentiment, she united all the varied powers of "_Bland Aspasia, and the Lesbian Maid_;" and Louis felt grateful for the lively interest with which she, evidently tried to amuse him, during the long protracted evening. But ere they parted, while she was walking with him down an illuminated and solitary avenue of orange-trees that led from the supper-room, she contrived to let him know that every body wondered at his having persuaded Countess Altheim to so indecorous a step, as to meet him at the nuptial altar before the ashes of her father had been consigned to the grave. Louis repelled this charge from himself; and declared his belief that Claudine had received wrong information respecting the death of Monsieur de Blaggay, as it had never been intimated to him. His fair companion shook her head, and while she turned her full bright eyes upon his face, she calmly said:

"Were you convinced of this fact, would you marry the woman who could commit so unfeeling a sacrilege on the memory of her parent?"

Louis could make only one answer, and he did it with downcast eyes. "These are questions, Madam, to which I can give no reply. At this moment, I consider Countess Altheim as having every claim on me; and her character is under my protection."

"Generous, de Montemar!" replied Claudine, "How have you been entangled in this engagement! I see your heart, and I urge no more. But forgive me, that I lament such a destiny for such a man? Had all men your honour----"

She interrupted herself with a convulsive sigh, and wringing, rather than pressing the hand she had unconsciously snatched, she parted from him. Louis disbelieved the story of Monsieur de Blaggay's death; but he was affected by the manner of his accomplished informer; and slowly withdrawing through the now almost deserted rooms, mused on the variety of human misery.

CHAP. X.

When that sun arose, which, he believed, was to set on him a completed wretch, he turned from its beams with a loathing sense of what his vain credulity and headlong passion had brought upon him; a joyless youth, an old age of desolation! How different from his home of Lindisfarne! But he could not bear the reflection, and with fevered impatience, he hurried through the business of the morning.

At three o'clock, just as he had shut himself into his study, to brood over his last hours of liberty; and to consecrate them to the unburthening of his full soul to his venerable uncle, in a letter, which, while he wrote, he thought it would be cruelty to send; a billet was brought him from the Empress: it contained these lines:

"A circumstance, which shall be explained hereafter, delays your nuptials. Otteline is gone for a few days to the Luxemburg to join my daughter. Tomorrow, at noon, be in the boudoir, and you will meet Elizabeth."

This was heaven's reprieve to Louis; suspension was life, and with almost hope of some unlooked-for escape, he repaired in the evening to the Chateau de Phaffenberg. His object in visiting that lonely habitation, was to consult papers that remained there, on a dispatch he was making up for Sweden.

While the gorgeous sun-set, by which he had extracted the memorandums, dissolved into a bloomy twilight; and the soft moon was rising in silvering glory over the hills, Louis felt the soothing aspect of nature; and gliding through the garden door, which stood half open, he stood for a moment viewing the scene before him.

"How beautiful is nature!" exclaimed he, "how unobtruse her loveliness, how guileless all her charms!"

He gently descended the steps of the terrace. All was still. Not a zephyr ruffled the leaf of a rose, and a soft breathing fragrance bathed his reposing senses. He walked on, and thought of the rapt liberty of the soul in the sweet serenities of beautiful solitude. No rebellious feeling of any kind then agitated his placid bosom; every passion was at rest,--his ambition slept in its thorny bed, and his remembrances of Otteline were quenched in the gentle dews of a resigned spirit. Such power has the divine hand of Nature on the son that loves her! and thus did he glide along, with the ethereal temper of his soul beaming in every feature, like the reflected face of heaven.

In this blessed calm, his meditations had ascended far above this sublunary world, when he observed a man spring off the battlements into the garden, from the very quarter where he had once clambered himself. A second glance, recognised the figure of Duke Wharton, who, immediately, hastened towards him. An exulting smile was on his countenance, as he hailed him in his approach.

"This is safer ground than the _Horti Adonidis_, I fixed for our conference!" cried he, "no envious demon would ever think of tracing Philip Wharton to so desolate a region as this!"

"I have found it a garden of peace," replied Louis, putting out his hand to Wharton with glad surprise; "and, were it not for fear of the consequence of this rash seeking me, I should call it the garden of happiness too!"

"De Montemar," cried his friend, "it does not become friendship like ours, to be always fearing consequences, and skulking past each other, as if our meetings had guilty errands. How different are you in this detested court of finesse, from the free-hearted, independent De Montemar, who won my soul on his unbondaged native mountains! Louis, where is that open eye, that open heart? that fearless, brave, uncuirassed bosom? All that you can gain in Vienna or at Madrid, is not worth one of those proofs of manhood!"

Louis turned on him a countenance, in which all that Wharton had conjured up in that noble soul, shone bright in the moon-light.

"If I have fear, it is to do wrong; and that is no change of my nature. If I shroud my heart, it is from them who cannot understand it; if I shroud my eye, it is from them who are not worthy to read my thoughts; and for my shut bosom, Wharton, would it gratify you, to hear it was unlocked to fools? You have the key of it, my friend! A triangle encases my heart," continued he, with one of his wonted smiles; "and you have one of its sides."

Wharton pressed his hand.

"Then Cæsar has quite forgiven Brutus?"

"What could I not forgive him?" replied Louis. All the trust of his partial and enthusiastic heart, spoke in those words; and he thought within himself,--"Oh, that I might give my whole life to filial love and friendship!" As the hopeless wish passed through his soul, the _iron entered_ with it, but did not pass away.

They walked together to a recess in the garden, where they sat down under the full radiance of the unclouded moon.

"De Montemar," said Wharton, "this hour is portentous. Hear me to an end; and you will then have an ample reply to your question, of why I so named your father, when you broke from me in the avenue."

Louis was ready to listen; and his friend unfolded to him a scene in the German court, which petrified him with astonishment, and made him indeed maintain a breathless silence during the recital. He displayed the insincere character of the Emperor, and explained his manoeuvres in delaying the fulfilment of the great articles of the treaty, and only executing the small, while he managed to draw every resignation from the Spanish side. He imparted to Louis the secret arrangement between Charles and the Prince of Lorraine; (though he withheld his own share in the transaction) and shewed that the Arch-duchess was never intended, by her father, to be the wife of Don Carlos. He also declared that the Emperor derided the investiture he had sent to the Spanish Prince, with the remark, when he signed it, that "swords would cut through parchments." But the worst information was to come. He knew that a plan was laid, to accomplish the political ruin of the Duke de Ripperda, and by that achievement at once obliterate every engagement that was made through him.

At this intimation Louis was all ear: For, during the varied disclosure, he could connect its details with circumstances which had embarrassed his diplomatic proceedings; and internal evidence stamped the veracity of every assertion of his friend.

Wharton then explained the Empress's change towards Ripperda; in the first instance, from her womanly jealousies respecting the Queen of Spain, and now rendered complete, by her giving belief to the calumnies of his rivals. She secretly abetted the Emperor's duplicity; and only waited the completion of Louis's marriage with her heartless favourite, to dare her former friend in the face of Europe. Louis's brain was in a whirl. He could not doubt the proofs Wharton gave him of the facts; but in the midst of a son's bitter anathemas against the faithless Elizabeth and her deceitful husband, he yet found comfort in asserting the adherence of his own sovereigns, to their chosen minister.

"You cannot judge of his security there," replied Wharton, "till you know the machinery his enemies mean to move in that quarter."

And then he urged Louis to the necessity of obtaining this information; and taking the sort of glorious revenge on the whole of the proud conspirators, as would confound them, and excite the admiration of all honest men. The information lay in the power of one who could furnish him with the names of persons in Austria and Spain, who were sworn to compass the ruin of Ripperda. But could the conspiracy be declared, with its train of signatures, before it took effect, the eyes of the public would be opened, and the Spanish Minister secured.

Louis declared his eagerness to seek such information at any hazard. "But how is it to be obtained?" cried he.

"A bribe!" answered Wharton.

"The means are base as our enemies!"

"When a besieged city suspects a mine, do not the inhabitants dig underground, and meet their enemy at his work?"

"Poniards to poniards!" returned Louis with a cheerless smile.

"Even so," answered Wharton, "shall I give your invisible friend _carte blanche_?"

"Grant him every thing in my name," replied Louis, "which can be done with honour. This conspiracy must be in my possession, before another sun sets over my head."

"Then in this spot to-morrow evening, at the same hour," returned Wharton, "you shall see me again; and with a document, that may free you from another thraldom. I have my hand on many springs; and one has started a true image of your Otteline, sculptured by herself; she dare not forswear her work, and when it confronts her, if you will, you are free."

"Nothing can free me there," replied Louis.

"Why, you would not hug your chains?"

"No; but they will clasp me until death. I am bound to her by every tie of honour."

"Shew her, what I will bring you to-morrow night, and your honour will release you."

"There is but one thing, that could release me!" cried Louis, the ingenuous suffusion of virtue mantling his face; "Is it any charge, any proof, of her dishonour?" Wharton laughed.

"If you mean by _dishonour_, a breach of truth, of honesty, of delicacy, of every principle respectable to man, and graceful in woman; you know, she is dishonoured below contempt. But if you restrict it, to the sense in which it is commonly applied to the angelic sex, I am not prepared to answer. She may be as chaste as unsunned snow, she is certainly as cold: but for warm, inspiring virtue! she knows it not, and she will wither it in every bosom to which she clings."

Louis's hand was now pressed on his aching forehead. The Duke continued.

"See, what she has done with the noble hearted Empress! And did you know the effects of her example on the innocent Maria Theresa; how that young creature conceals her love for the Prince of Lorraine, under the appearance of a passion for you--."

"Impossible!" interrupted Louis. "It is the fact," replied Wharton, "and on this argument, Elizabeth accuses you of aspiring to her daughter, and urges your marriage with the favourite against every opposition."

A strange emotion shook the frame of Louis: he saw the net which the villainy of man and woman had coiled around his father and himself, and starting from his seat, he exclaimed:

"Wharton, my only friend! Bring me the double documents; and I will save my father and myself, or fall with him at once, into the interminable ruin!"

"To-morrow night, then," cried Wharton, "you shall be master of your fate."

Louis clasped the Duke in his arms; who, as he felt the full heart of this anxious son throbbing against his side, said in a cheering voice--"Courage, de Montemar! These conspiring fiends have not yet found Jove's thunderbolt. Pay his ransom, and not a point of thy father's glory shall suffer by their shears."

"Nothing, under heaven, can rob him of the glory of his virtues," replied Louis; "but by your aid, my tried, my faithful Wharton, he shall not lose even an earthly ray. May the Providence which brought me such a friend, and fastened my soul to him; may it bless your exertions in this crisis of our fate!"

A burning crimson flushed over the cheek of Wharton, as Louis uttered this ardent appeal to friendship and to Heaven.

"Hero-fashion?" cried the Duke, "mingle prayer with warfare! But thy orison is for a graceless,--and half at least will be dispersed in empty air."

"I will stand the hazard!"

Again they embraced, and separated.

CHAP. XI.

Had not Louis been forwarned by Wharton, and enabled to compare what he saw, with what he heard, the events of the succeeding day were calculated to lull him to security.

Elizabeth explained the delay of his marriage; and it was what the Countess d' Ettrees had intimated, the death of Monsieur de Blaggay having transpired. The Empress took upon herself the previous concealment of the event; alledging to Louis, that she had done it, to suffer no further impediment in the way of a ceremony so essential to the happiness of her friend. She then insinuated, to her almost silent auditor, what a proof she would regard it of his general devotion to her, if he would urge Otteline, and petition the Emperor, to permit the celebration of the marriage on the eighth day after the funeral solemnity.

Louis ventured to say, that after so awful an event, the haste she recommended, would seem so irreverent in the eyes of the world, he could not persuade himself to commit such an outrage on propriety, unless he might at the same time present some adequate apology to society for his breach of its laws. While he spoke, it occurred to him, how he might shew his innocence with regard to Maria Theresa, without implicating even her happiness; (for he was well assured, that what he was going to demand, would not be granted;) and he added, that he would make his petition to the Emperor, provided Her Majesty would consent that the Arch-duchess should be affianced on the same day. Elizabeth started at this unexpected request; but, whatever were its motive, she thought she could put it to silence for ever; and with a well-feigned graciousness, replied, "yes; if you will stand the proxy!"

"I am ready Madam,--for I have sufficiently experienced the folly of my presuming to decline it."

Baffled by this prompt assent; and astonished at the calmness with which he continued to enforce the remonstrances of Spain on this head, and on other delays of the Austrian cabinet,--she listened to him to the end; and then rising from her chair, fixed her eyes on him, and said.--

"Had I required any thing more to assure me of the nature of the man, who has so coolly and comprehensively argued all these points; I should find it in that coolness and those arguments on one of them. Marquis I will reply to these subjects hereafter."

During his interviews with the different ministers, this day, he could not but wish to have had a window in their breasts, to read who amongst them were the enemies of his father. Observation on men, however, had given him knowledge sufficient, to guess that the most obsequious, the fullest in smiles and complacency, and the most elaborate in compliment to the supreme minister in Spain, were the persons whose names were most likely to be found in the confederation against him. The president of the council, the crafty and luxurious Routemberg, overpowered him with assurances of his peremptory demands on the executive government for the fulfilment of every article in the treaty; and, but for the information of Wharton, he should have quitted the chamber in the fullest confidence of his father's entire influence in the Austrian cabinet. The same game of finesse was played at his own table; for there De Patinos had for some time assumed an air of civility. But Louis could not trust the Spaniard's lurking and fierce eye; neither could he relish the sycophants, who followed the tone of their leader; yet he was polite to all: and a common observer would not have guessed that treachery was on the one side, and antipathy on the other. Louis had no suspicions mingled with his dislike; for he could not suppose that young men, domesticated at his table, and sanctioned by his father's patronage, could be cloaking a hidden arm to stab him to the heart.

Notwithstanding these numerous avocations, the hours seemed to move on leaden pinions till the sun set, and he descried the moon's fair cressent silvering the gilded doom of Saint Michael's church. Then was the moment of his appointment with, he believed, the only bosom which beat true to him, in that wide metropolis; the only tongue that spoke to him without guile; the only hand that would venture to shield his father from the professing friends, who, like those who slew his great ancestor, the Prince of Orange; pressed on him with caresses, to destroy him more securely.

On the answer which Wharton was to bring him from the too well-informed oracle of all this evil, depended the success of the conspiracy, or its failure! In short, in a few minutes, he might have the safety of his father, and the preservation of Europe in his hand. He could not disconnect these two ideas in his mind; and when they were united with the magnanimous friendship of Wharton, hope in that union silenced every argument to fear.

The friend in whom he trusted did not make the heart sick by delay. He was mounting the parapet, at the moment Louis appeared on the terrace.

"Brother of my soul!" cried the latter, as their hands met; "to meet you thus, labouring for me and mine; proving the nobleness of that misjudged spirit!--I would endure again, all the pain your information gave me last night, to purchase to my father and my uncle, conviction of this unexampled friendship!"

"Root the conviction in your own heart, de Montemar, and I care not who plucks at the branches."

Louis urged his friend to the history of his embassy; and Wharton told him, he had seen the written memorandum of the whole scheme against his father. He informed him, there were persons at the Austrian court that were to accuse Ripperda to the king of Spain, of a plan of self-aggrandizement as bold as it was dangerous. He was to be represented as playing a double game at Vienna and at Madrid; and that the interests of both nations were alternately to bend, according to the veering of his own personal views. He was to be charged with clandestine communications with France and Portugal; and of being the secret instigator of the late attempt to poison his royal master. His object in so nefarious an act, was supposed to be the certainty he had of being dictator of the kingdom, while under the sceptre of a minor. In short, every wild, preposterous, and sanguinary instigation of ambition, was to be alleged against him. The charges were to be supported at Madrid, by a powerful majority of grandees; and should the scheme go on, there could be no doubt of the impeachment of Ripperda under a cloud of false witnesses; and most probably, the perpetration of some iniquitous sentence against his life. The signatures at the bottom of this memorandum, were hidden from Wharton's view, when he was allowed to read it.

"For," added he, "the possessor will reveal them to no eyes but your own. However, I read enough in the body of the document, to see that Charles and Elizabeth, and her kinsman of England, are deep in the plot."

The suspense with which Louis listened to this perfidious confederation, was almost insufferable.

"And this it is," exclaimed he, "to put our trust in princes!--Ungrateful, treacherous Elizabeth!"

Wharton seized the moment of speechless indignation which followed this agonized apostrophe; and pourtraying in vivid colours, the utter selfishness of Charles and the house of Brunswick, he urged Louis, by every consequent argument, to abjure the worthless cause; and to take a powerful and noble revenge, by embracing that of legitimacy, in the rights of the Electress in Germany, and those of James Stuart, in the land of his maternal ancestors.--The reasoning of Wharton was forcible and clear, full of energy and conviction, and an eloquence, that might have charmed an angel from its orb, '_to list his sweet and honey'd sentences_.'

He urged, that the discovery of the plot to the King and Queen of Spain, before it could be brought to bear against Ripperda, would give him just the advantage of turning a full charged battery upon the enemy who had planted it for his destruction.--In that instant of proved fidelity to the royal pair, and in their proud shews of perfect confidence in him, he might change their politics from the north to the south pole.--A word from him to Philip, would revoke his guarantee to the pragmatic sanction; the Electress's son would have a direct path to the throne on the death of the Emperor; and a brave army of Spaniards would put Philip in possession of Gibraltar. While this was transacting on the continent, England itself might shrink under the foot of Ripperda; for Wharton intimated, that by the armed assistance of some powers, whose politics he had turned into the same direction, it would be no difficult achievement to replace James Stuart on the throne of his ancestors. "Here, Louis de Montemar", exclaimed the Duke, "is a revenge worthy the descendant of heroes and of sovereigns! Though you wear not crowns, you may dispense them; and Cæsar can do no more!"

Louis grasped the hand of his friend.--"Oh, Wharton! I am weary of sovereigns, and crowns, and sceptres. They are the price of men's souls; of all their earthly happiness, of all their future felicity!--Talk not to me of embracing the cause of any one of them. When I clasp the splendid nothings, they crumble into dust in my hands."--

Louis walked forward with a rapid pace. His soul was tossed on the billows of a tempestuous ocean, in the midst of which he saw his father perishing.--He stopped abruptly. "But where is this document?--How can I obtain it?"

"It is yours, on a condition; and with it the implement of your release from Otteline!" "I care not for my own release, but for my father! my betrayed, my virtuous father!--Name the condition."

Wharton did not answer immediately, but walked a few moments by the side of his friend, with his eyes bent downwards; then, looking suddenly up, while the bright moon shone full upon his varying countenance, he gaily said:--

"Is there any thing it is possible for me to propose, that could move you to precipitate yourself over that stone wall, as you did from the rocks of Bamborough?"

"No;" replied Louis, with a wan and wintery smile; "nothing that you would propose."

"Having met my novice at the Eleusinian mysteries," cried Wharton laughing, "I marvel I should seem to question his initiation!--The way is now plain before us.--Go with me to-night, when that blabbing duenna in the sky is gone to bed, and you shall have the whole policy of Austria in your bosom."

"Where?" said Louis, not understanding the Duke, and strangely doubtful of his manner.

"That disclosure is beyond my credentials. But when you are there, the awful secret of conspiracy will not be revealed in caverns, dungeons, and darkness. You will find a place to take the grateful soul, and lap it in Elysium!"

The pulse in Louis's temples beat hard; yet he was determined not to anticipate, but make Wharton explain himself.

"I do not understand you; who is it I am to see?"

"A woman; a lovely, fond woman!"

The manner of his saying this, was a stroke, like that of an iron rod on the heart of his friend; and he cast the hand from him, that clasped his arm.

"What, for another leap?" cried the Duke; "but you are out of practice, and may break more necks than your own!"

"And what is my resource?" desperately demanded Louis.

"A simple one; to smile upon a woman. A pleasant one; to be beloved by one who can fix no bonds on you but those of love, while she bestows herself upon you, and gives you the life and honour of your father!"

"With the loss of my own, and the perdition of my soul! Is this the alternative I expected to hear from the lips of my only friend, in this fearful extremity of my fate!"

Louis had covered his raging temples with his hand, and he hastened forward with distracted swiftness.

"De Montemar! This is folly or deception," cried Wharton. "There are virtues for every season of life; and I thought you had been made sensible that it is the privilege of manhood to make all nature subservient to his interest and his pleasure. What took you, night after night, to the scenes in which I have met you? Anchorites are not accustomed to pay those courts a second visit; and you are not the better in my honest eyes, for preserving the cowl, when I know its vows have been broken?"

Louis knew that he had deserved this inference; and he inwardly reproached his father's policy, in thinking it wisdom to incur such suspicion on his blameless life. How would the involuntary accusation have been embittered, had he known that the Empress drew the same conclusion! He would then have doubly felt, that his sacrifice to such vile appearance, instead of propitiating his rivals, had dishonoured him with his friends, and become an instrument in the hands of his enemies. Humbled to the soul, he merely replied.

"Wharton, you injure me."

"It may be so; and I am sorry for it," answered the Duke, "though I cannot guess how. I offer you the sublime duty of rescuing your father from treason; and the enjoyment of a banquet, rifled from the sanctuary of your deadliest foe! Can you be a man, and proof against such sweet revenge?"

Louis strode on in perturbed silence. Wharton continued his arguments with vehemence and subtle consistency, on the supposition that he must admit his friend's repugnance to be sincere. Still, Louis did not reply; but proofs of his contending soul convulsed the features his agitated hand tried to conceal. The Duke, as well as his friend, had much at stake in bringing this part of his negociation to bear. He tried the effect of ridicule on the wretched and despairing Louis; and to one of his arguments, he at last extorted a reply.

"I will not purchase even the life of my father, by my own conscious guilt. If I am proof against my own heart, in so dear a cause, shall I not be proof against the poor allurements of vanity and sense? And are such arguments yours? Oh, Wharton! I cannot call that peculiarly manly, which are the peculiar pursuits of the lowest of our species. Any man may succumb to his appetites and his passions! You say most men do; and that you, even you, sometimes find it policy and pastime to follow in the track!" He paused, and then added with a piercing look, and a smile of despair, "what, if the boy de Montemar has ambition to go beyond ye!"

"Yes; I know you do not want ambition," replied the Duke, with an answering smile, "I remember, some dozen months ago, with that same eagle glance, you likened yourself to Ammon's godlike son! He did not reject the flaming brand that fired the palace of his enemies, nor the lovely Thais that presented it!"

"Wharton," said Louis, looking on him with severity, "had Clytus been such a counsellor, he would have deserved the javelin of his friend?"

"My breast is ready," cried the Duke, "if thou hast the heart to throw it!"

"I would I could, and cut away the worser part of thine!" answered Louis, "I have seen more of it to-night, than I wish to remember."

"But what message," returned Wharton, "am I to remember, to carry to her, who is awaiting your slow appearance? Is she to give you herself, your father's safety, and your own freedom? Or, do you reject all? For _all_ you must accept, or none; and then the scrupulous de Montemar, may go wash his hands of the name he has consigned to infamy; and beatify the paternal head he relinquishes to the block!"

This demand was made with scornful seriousness; with a ruthless application to the feelings of a son. Louis felt the firm collectiveness of a man determined to live or die by one line of action. He turned on Wharton with a fixed eye.

"Tell her," returned he, "that father and son may perish together; that their names may be followed by falsehood to the scaffold and the grave; but I never will purchase exemption from any one of these evils, by the prostitution of my heart and my conscience to vice in man or woman!"

Wharton grasped his arm.

"What superstition is this? What madness?--This message would undo you!"

"With whom, Wharton?"

"With the woman you scorn. Her revenge would exasperate your enemies!"

"Let it!" returned Louis, "since she has bereft me of my friend.--Wharton, we are no more to each other!"

"De Montemar?"

"In my extremest need, when I threw myself on your breast for counsel and for aid; when I believed you Heaven's delegated angel, to save my father and myself; you would have betrayed him to the dishonour of being bought by the guilt of his son; you would have betrayed me to hell's deepest perdition!"

As Louis spoke with the stern calmness of a divorced heart, Wharton became other than he had ever seen him. With the fires of resentment flashing from his resplendent eyes, he too collected the force of his soul in the mightiness of a last appeal. He spoke with rapidity for many minutes. He repeated, and redoubled his arguments; and then he added in a calmer voice:

"My heart is a man's heart, and therefore is sensible to this stroke from ungrateful friendship. But you now know that I can shame your superstition, by bearing insult upon insult, when my patience may recall you to yourself!"

"I am recalled to myself," returned Louis; "my superstition is, to depend on God alone for the preservation of my father. If he fall, God has his wise purpose in the judgement, and I shall find resignation. For you, Wharton--that I have loved so long and so steadily--there may be a pang there--when he I trusted above all men, has proved himself my direst enemy!"

"Your enemy, de Montemar? your direst enemy? The words have passed your lips, were engendered in your heart, and my ears have heard them! It is easier to hate, than to love; to discard a friend, than to accept a mistress; to plunge into the gulph of ruin, than to avoid it through a path of happiness! Madman! Did I not pity the folly I marvel at, I would rouse you by a tale. But no more. When you next hear of, or see Philip Wharton, you will understand the import of your own words.--You shall know what he is, when he proclaims himself the enemy of Ripperda and de Montemar!"

Louis stood immoveable, with his eyes on the ground, while Wharton vehemently uttered this denunciation. He remained some time, like a pillar transfixed in the earth, after the Duke had disappeared. The first thing that recalled him to motion, was the profound stillness around, after the sounds of that voice, which till now, was ever to him the music of heaven. The horrible conviction of all that had passed, pressed at once upon his soul; the dear and agonizing remembrance of how he had loved him; and raising his arms to the dark heavens with a fearful cry of expiring nature, he threw himself upon the ground.

The falling dew, and the howling wind raised him not from that bed of lonely despair. And when he did leave the dismal scene of this last act of his miseries, it was like the spectre of the man who had entered it.

CHAP. XII.

Wharton left Vienna, the morning after his separation from Louis in the garden of the chateau. From that day, Louis moved through his duties like a man in a dream. He had dispatched a special courier to his father, with as much of the conspiracy, as he had collected from his now estranged friend; and he confessed how the whole might have been in his possession, could he have brought his conscience to accord with the condition.

Hoping that even this obscure intimation might be some beacon to his father; himself went perturbedly on; racked with suspence, and feeling alone and unarmed amidst a host of ambushed foes. Except when obliged to go abroad on business, he shut himself within the walls of his house; for he now doubted every man who approached him; and the specious courtesies of women were yet more intolerable.

The Empress did not condescend to intimate how she had considered his proposition respecting the ceremony of her daughter; but she sent her chamberlain to inform him, that the Emperor had fixed the day of her favourite's nuptials, when they should be solemnized in a private manner. Louis loathed the very characters of Otteline's name; and shuddered at any new bonds to a society, associated to him with every disastrous remembrance. His soul was stricken; and the evils which appeared in visionary approach before his father's path, and his own, seemed too big for conflict. He felt he could have sustained the fiercest fields of war; could have died with an upward eye, and an exulting spirit on its honourable bed. But to be a hero under the attacks of the coward breath of man; to stand before an obloquy that threatened the annihilation of his father's glory, and his own respected name; was more than he dared to contemplate: and in appalled expectation, he mechanically prepared to obey the unwelcome behests of Elizabeth.

He was giving his slow orders to a _maitre d'hotel_ respecting some arrangements for his future bride, when a letter was put into his hands, which had come by a circuitous route from Sardinia; and which he ought to have received a month or two ago. It was from Don Ferdinand d'Osorio. Until the public reception of Ripperda at Vienna, Don Ferdinand was ignorant where to address the cousin of his beloved Alice; and to express, what he felt, his sense of the justice of her appeal against his extorted bonds; and to acknowledge the delicacy with which Louis had seconded her remonstrances. When he heard that the Marquis de Montemar was in Germany with his father, he lost no time in writing; and entrusted his letter to a Sardinian gentleman going to Vienna. But the traveller took a wide tour; and did not bring the letter to its destination until two months after its date.

Louis dismissed his servant, and breaking the seal, read as follows:--

"_My dear de Montemar_,

"I should be ashamed to confess the justice of all your remarks on my
conduct with regard to your sweet cousin, my ever-beloved Alice, could
I not at the same time assure you that I have obeyed her wishes to the
fullest extent, and followed your advice implicitly. I have written to
her, and to Mrs. Coningsby; and she is perfectly free: every bond is
relinquished, but that of the heart. If her's be as firm as mine, we
may confidently await the holy vows, which, I trust, will yet unite
us.

"You must have seen enough of my excellent father, to know that
he has one error amongst his many perfections; and that it is an
irreconcileable abhorrence of the Protestant religion. However,
though I should despair of ever bringing him to tolerate its tenets,
I have a hope of compassing his consent to my marriage with its
gentle professor. Marcella, my only, and very dear sister, (and
who was intended from her cradle for a nunnery,) must assist me in
this project. She loves me ardently; and her power with my father,
except on one point, is almost omnipotent. It is this point, on which
I ground my proceedings: she must obey him; and may gratify her
enthusiastic nature, by serving me against herself. Her doom, poor
girl! is rather a hard one, as it was absolutely fixed before she was
born. My father's youthful passions, (which are now hushed to such
monastic stillness!) were the cause of her dedication. I will tell
you the story; and then you may judge of my chance of success through
her means.

"When my father was a young man, his character was too much like my
own, self-willed and impetuous; and in affairs of love, as you will
see by the sequel, he was even more determined than his son. At an
early age, he acquired a great reputation in the army; and at the
conclusion of the war in Italy, went on a party of pleasure to Vienna;
then the gayest city in the world.

"During the reign of the Austrian monarchs in Spain, many of our
grandees intermarried with the German nobility. It so happened between
our family and that of the Austrian Sinzendorff's. My father, then
full of life and enterprize, went to the old Count Sinzendorff's. The
present Chancellor of that name was then young and thoughtless; and
boasted to his cousin, of the great beauty of his youngest sister;
who his family had chosen to sacrifice to the fortunes of the elder
branches, by consigning her to a nunnery at the age of nineteen.--My
father accompanied Sinzendorff to the convent, where they passed
some hours with the beautiful novice; for she had yet four months
of probation, before she was to pronounce the irrevocable vows.
Suffice it to say, a mutual passion was conceived between the two
cousins, and my father persuaded her to elope with him.--They fled
into Switzerland, where they were married. In the course of time,
absolution for the sacrilege was obtained from the Pope; but my father
could never obtain it from himself.--His wife's first and second
children died in the birth. They were both daughters. He believed it
a judgment on his crime, and tried to reconcile offended heaven, by
making a vow, that should his next infant be spared, and of the same
sex; and he live to the appointed period, he would dedicate it to a
monastic life, at the same age in which he seduced her mother from
the altar. The next child was myself. Two or three more infant deaths
intervened before the birth of Marcella. But from the hour in which
she saw the light, and continued to live, a golden crucifix was hung
to her neck, and she was always addressed by the name of the little
nun.

"As she grew in beauty and sweetness, my mother regretted the
determined immolation of her child; but my father would listen to
no pleadings, to spare such variety of excellence to the world. He
demanded the sacrifice for the appeasing of his conscience; and poor
Marcella, though educated with all the accomplishments of her sex,
and full of as many graces as ever charmed in woman, silently awaited
her gloomy destiny. I remember having often seen my father stand
impenetrable to my mother's reproaches for consigning all this youth
and loveliness to the cloister, and then he has calmly answered:--

"Antoinetta, I have covered the blameless offering with all these
garlands, to render her a more costly sacrifice at my hands; to make
my heart drop blood when she is led to the altar; and then, your sin
and mine, my erring wife, may find a veil!

"My mother doated on my sister, and she could not see the justice
of expiating her own offence, by the misery of her child.--In this
spirit, she too, made a vow; and that was, never to be separated from
her daughter, till her father's cruel dedication shut her from the
world. By a most unhappy fatality, the governess my mother engaged
for Marcella when a child, was the widow of one of the illustrious
cavaliers who came to the continent, with your James II. She was a
learned and a pious woman, and brought up my sister in all her own
principles.--My father led too busy a life, to investigate deeper
than the fruits; and those, he said were good. But a year ago, the
English lady died; and on her death-bed, she declared herself a
Protestant! In short, Marcella had been too long under her tuition,
to become a willing _devotee_ to the monastic rites of the Romish
Church. A superstitious horror of this discovery prevented my father
questioning her on the subject; but he proposed her immediate removal
to a convent. My mother opposed her vow to his; not to suffer her
child to leave her, till the time of her being professed.--Marcella
cast herself on her knees, and implored, by every thing sacred in
earth and heaven, that her father would not compel her to take vows
against which her soul revolted. She engaged to live a life of
celibacy; and never to see any persons but her own family; if he would
spare her those dreadful oaths, and allow her to remain for ever with
her mother. But in the essential point, my mother and sister pleaded
in vain. He granted her continuance at home, till the year of her
noviciate; but that year must come, and it will commence next January.

"Being aware, from my father's pertinacity on these subjects, that
if my sister does not then resign herself to her fate, she will be
dragged to meet it, (though he would rather purchase her free consent
at any price;) I determined on trying to turn her sad destiny to my
happiness. When I pledged my faith to your dear cousin, I did it
under a belief that I could persuade Marcella to do that willingly,
which she knows she must do, even under violence. I want her to make
my father's sanction to my marriage with Alice, the condition of her
performing all his vows, without further hesitation!

"On my return from Lindisfarne, (without then venturing to open my
whole mind to her on the subject,) I prepared the way, by describing
the dear family at the pastorage, in such colours as to excite her
particular interest for the fair and tender Alice. My mother's
gratitude was eloquent towards Mr. Athelstone and Mrs. Coningsby; and
again and again she wished to see the latter and her daughters in
Spain, that she might repay them in some sort, for their cares of her
son.

"My father and I soon came to Sardinia on public affairs; but we
return to Spain in the autumn. I shall then unbosom myself to
Marcella; and, I doubt not, she will concede that to my happiness,
which, should she withhold it, would only leave me to misery, without
prolonging the time of her own liberty.

"At present she is leading an almost monastic life; and the difference
cannot be great, whether it be past in a real cell amongst the
Ursulines, and daily cheered by visits from her mother; or in a
cloistered apartment at home, which is fitted up with every similar
austerity, and has no advantage but the nominal distinction of being
in her father's house.

"I hope every thing from Marcella's _free consent_, and consequent
influence with my father; and, when it is given, dear de Montemar, (if
you are not too absorbed in politics and Imperial favour, to continue
your interest in the happiness of faithful love!) you shall hear again,
from your sincerely obliged friend,

"Sardinia. _Ferdinand d'Osorio._"

Louis closed the letter, with every warm wish for the happiness of his endeared Alice; but while he joined the man she loved, in the heartfelt orison, he could not but regret the strain of selfishness he saw throughout his character. He hardly pitied the amiable Marcella, in the destiny she appeared to deprecate, and to which her brother so coolly rivetted her reluctant hands, while he pretended to deplore her fate. In the state Louis was in, between man's perfidy and woman's wiles, any refuge from the world, seemed a heaven to him. The passions and opinions of youth are in extremes; all delight, or all misery; all virtues, or all crimes; no happiness but in rapture; no grief but in despair. But Louis's griefs were now heavy enough, not to need the overcharging of fancy; and when he thought of all that he had suffered since his last fearful meeting with Wharton in the garden, he could not but exclaim,

"Oh, that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away, and be at rest!"

He was scared from the world by its vices; and sometimes longed to repose his wearied spirit in the grave. But he was now only entered into the lists; the contest was only begun; and he must brace his sinews to continue the combat, for which his ambitious soul had panted while he lay in the peacefulness of his native home!

On the very morning, whose evening was to see him perform his extorted vows, to her who had once been the object of d'Osorio's passion, two couriers arrived from Spain. The one was Castanos, who came to Louis; the other was from the Marquis de Castellor, and went direct to Count Routemberg.

The volcano had burst; and all the power, and all the honours of Ripperda were swept away! De Castellor was now in his seat; and when Castanos came off; the Duke was stunned into stupor, overcome by the illimitable ruin.

Of the particulars of the catastrophe, Louis did not hear, till he could question Castanos; for the Spaniard, knowing the tidings of the packet he brought, had presented it in silence and withdrew. Louis opened it impatiently; and took out his father's letter. He could hardly expect it to be an answer to his warning epistle, for the time appeared too short for an interchange of messengers; but eager to know the complexion of things in Spain, he broke the seal. The letter was brief, and scarcely legible; but it was sufficient to announce the completion of his worst fears: that his father was no more the minister of Spain; that he was abandoned by the King; insulted by the nobles; and outraged with every species of ingratitude by the people he had served to his own overthrow!

The bolt was then fallen! And, every hand in which his father trusted, had assisted to launch it!

Louis was transfixed with the letter in his hand. Now it was, that he saw the world unmasked before him; now it was, that he saw the views of life unveiled; now it was, that all creation seemed to pass from before him with a frightful noise, and he stood alone in chaos. The smiling face of man was blotted out; gratitude, virtue, were annihilated; and life had no longer an object! What had his father been? All that was noble and disinterested. What had he done for Spain? Redeemed her from poverty, contempt, and suffering; to riches, honour, and happiness. And what was his reward? He was cast, like the reprobate angel from on high, and trampled upon by his conquerors, as though his actions had been like him he resembled in his fall!

How long he sat in motionless, sightless gaze, upon the fatal letter, he knew not; but he was aroused by the entrance of his secretary, who informed him Count Sinzendorff awaited him in the next chamber.

Louis saw he was now called upon to breast the first wave that was to break on him from the deluge which had overwhelmed his father. He rallied his mental strength; and, looking upwards, to implore the staying hand from above, he proceeded with the composure of inevitable ruin, to the presence of the Chancellor. The virtuous statesman advanced to meet him, while his countenance proclaimed that he knew all, and sympathized with its victim.

Their conference was short; but it implied to Louis, that his delegated reign, as well as that of his father, was at an end. Sinzendorff had been in the Imperial cabinet, when Routemberg laid his dispatches before the Emperor; and to spare the upright son of Ripperda, some rude disclosure of their contents, the Chancellor took upon himself to inform him, that he was to transfer his portfolio to the Count de Monteleone, who had just arrived at Vienna.

On Louis thanking the minister for his generous interference, Sinzendorff took his hand.

"I will always bear my testimony to the fair dealing of the son, and to the disinterested conduct of the father, though we should never meet again."

Even while the words were on the lips of the chancellor, a message arrived from the Empress to Louis, to hasten his attendance at the Altheim apartments.--He smiled gloomily, in answer to Sinzendorff's smile of dubious meaning.

"I had forgotten!" said the chancellor, "you have yet a fair bond to Vienna; and this need not be a parting day."

"It is a portentous day, of most unpropitious nuptials!" replied Louis, hardly knowing what he uttered; "but every day, and every where, I must be honoured in the approbation of Count Sinzendorff."

The hour was beyond the time in which he ought to have been in the imperial boudoir, to await the hand of his intended bride. What change in her wishes, his changed fortune might produce, he thought not of. In a postscript to his father's letter, he had found hastily written:

"Events prove that you have done right with regard to the Empress's friend, if she is now your wife." This approbation, was a new bond on the sacrifice; and he threw himself into his carriage, to obey the peremptory summons of Elizabeth!

All was solitude in the first three chambers of the Altheim apartments. As he hurried forward with the desperate step of a man, who had lost so much that the last surrender was a matter of no moment, he saw the Empress in the fourth; but she sat alone. Louis bowed at the entrance, and again as he drew near. She was pale as himself; and did not look up while she addressed him.

"You are come, thus tardily, to ratify your vows? To redeem your pledged honour?"

"I come to obey Your Majesty's commands," replied he.

"Your vows may be returned to you;" answered Elizabeth, "but the honour that was never your's, cannot be redeemed." "Dare I say," replied Louis, "that I do not understand Your Majesty?"

"And yet the words are plain," returned she, "they are to tell you, that low as Ripperda has fallen, he never can reach the depths of his son."