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Title: The Pastor's Fire-side Vol. 3 of 4
Author: Jane Porter
Release Date: August 20, 2014 [EBook #46637]
Language: English
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THE
PASTOR'S FIRE-SIDE,
VOL. III.
Printed by A. Strahan,
New-Street-Square, London.
THE
PASTOR'S FIRE-SIDE,
IN FOUR VOLUMES.
BY
MISS JANE PORTER,
AUTHOR OF THADDEUS OF WARSAW, SIDNEY'S APHORISMS,
AND THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS.
I will confess the ambitious projects which I once had,
are dead within me. After having seen the parts which fools
play upon the great stage; a few books, and a few friends,
are what I shall seek to finish my days with.
TWEDDELL.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN,
PATERNOSTER-ROW.
1817.
THE
PASTOR'S FIRE-SIDE.
CHAP. I.
The first thought that occurred to Louis next day, was a wish to
enquire at the door of the Bavarian Palace, after the health of its
noble inmates. The frank and ardent gratitude of the illustrious widow,
had interested his feelings; and, adding to this, the undescribable
attaching quality which lies in an obligation, such as that he had
conferred on the Electress, seemed to draw him towards her with an
irresistible attraction. Benefits and gratefulness, when interchanged
by generous natures, are bonds, garlanded in paradise. They draw, by
invisible cords, but their rivets are eternal. Gratitude looks up with
endearing confidence to the bestower of its good; and the consciousness
of yielding protection, like the divine source of all benevolence,
fills the heart with a sweet tenderness towards its object.
With all this in his thoughts, Louis allowed prudence to put his wishes
to silence; and he left it to accident, to inform him of the health or
indisposition of them he had preserved.
His official duty of this morning passed with a deputation from the
merchants of Ostend. He had received his father's commands to that
purpose, to hold a conference with them respecting the sanction which
the Spanish Monarch had granted to their Indian trade, to the great
umbrage of the mercantile interests of Great Britain and Holland. The
Emperor had insisted on this guarantee of Spain; and the Queen, with
her usual impatience, ordered it to be accorded without reserve. But
Ripperda, when he yielded to the temporary necessity, had guarded it
with a clause in the privileges, to which Charles as well as themselves
continued to object. To know the result of the Spanish minister's
further deliberation was the cause of their present embassy.
When Louis had discussed the affair with the merchants, their president
retired with the young negociator, to sign, in the name of the company,
several papers, which Ripperda had left for that purpose. Louis and he
were then alone. When the merchant had endorsed the deeds, he took two
caskets of different sizes from under his vest.--He unclasped them, and
laid them open on the table. They contained unset jewels, of a value
that seemed incalculable.
"These, my Lord;" said he, "are poor tributes of the high consideration
in which we hold the able conduct of the Duke de Ripperda, and his
secretary of legation, in this troublesome affair. I am empowered by
my colleagues to say, that the larger casket is worth 30,000_l._, and
the lesser, 20,000_l._ But were they millions, they would be inadequate
to repay our boundless obligations to the Ambassador of Spain:--and on
the renewal of our guarantee, every seven years, we will give the same."
This kind of gratitude was so little foreseen by the Duke de Ripperda,
he had not given his son any directions respecting it. Louis did not
feel that he required any:--It was not the gratitude that softened
and subdued his heart. He closed the caskets, and putting them back
into the hands of the merchant.--"Sir," said he, "the Ambassador of
Spain, and his Secretary, are sufficiently repaid for the discharge
of their duties to their country, and to the world in general, by the
approbation and prosperity of those they serve. Rewards of any other
kind, they cannot accept; as they neither understand, nor value them."
The dignity with which Louis said this, as he laid the implied
bribe from his hand, struck the president for a moment speechless;
but hastily recovering himself, he held the caskets forth a second
time, and was opening his lips to enforce their acceptance, when
Louis, rather haughtily, as well as sternly, put out his arm with a
repelling motion, and interrupted him.--But in the moment he spoke,
Orendayn entered the apartment to pass through. Seeing it occupied,
he apologized, and hastily retreated, though not so fast, but his
sordid eye caught the glittering treasure. Louis resumed. "Sir," said
he, "do not irrecoverably offend the son of the Duke de Ripperda, by
shewing him that you have mistaken his father! If either he, or I,
have influence in these affairs, when the guarantee is to be renewed,
we must forget that we have heard of, or seen these caskets, before
we can put our hands to a second grant. You will excuse me now, Sir,
if I withdraw." With the word, he bowed and left him. The confused
merchant gathered up his caskets and his charter, and, with the air of
a culprit, stole out the room.
At the usual hour of stirring abroad, Louis bent his course to the
Princess de Waradin's, to enquire of her health after the late alarm.
As he drove along, he passed the crowded ruins of the Opera-house, now
lying a smoking mass of stone and smouldering timber. He shuddered to
think, but for his perseverance, the amiable boy he had seen, would
have been left a helpless orphan; and the lovely mother, who had led
him to behold her son as he slept, at this moment a blackened corse
under the steaming pile before him. That he had been instrumental in
saving two fellow-creatures, from so horrible a death, dilated his
bosom with aweful gratitude; and when he alighted at the house of the
Princess de Waradin, he sympathised with unaffected piety, in her
thanksgivings to heaven, for the escape of herself and her daughter.
Amelia was indisposed, and in her chamber. Her mother did not lose the
opportunity of enforcing upon Louis, her daughter's conviction, that
she owed the preservation of her life to him. He combated the idea
with frank eagerness, shewing the little share he had in exertions, in
which so many had assisted. But it was useless for him to disqualify
those claims on her gratitude she was determined to think he possessed;
and, insinuating that Amelia alone could repay them, he felt more
embarrassed than gratified with her flattering pertinacity.
The views which the Princess de Waradin had upon Louis, made her use
every maternal art to domesticate him in her family; but the hurrying
vortex into which he was plunged, rendered that impossible. Every
house of consequence at Vienna was open to him; and in all he found
different orders of amusement, according to the character of the
several sets. Though the rank of these circles might be on the same
level, yet the component parts, by an involuntary attraction, formed
themselves into distinct societies, according to their different
degrees of constitutional gaiety, mental qualifications, or hereditary
prejudices. In some, he was wearied by everlasting state ceremonies,
and the stiffness and stupidity inseparable from a superstitious regard
to formalities. In others, he was occasionally entertained, interested,
or disgusted, in proportion as he met with amiable manners, personal
kindness, or riotous excess.
To kill time seemed the great purpose of amusement, in the world to
which he was now introduced. Whether he dined with statesmen, with
military, or with philosophers; though the conversation at table might
be to his soul's content; of "battles fought, and glory won;" of the
"gordian knot" of policy; or the high-reaching thoughts of those who
analyse the universe:--still the evening ended the same. They all
proposed adjourning, some to one place and some to another; and many to
scenes of idle dissipation, against which his taste revolted. However,
he remembered his father's advice, "to wear his own superiority,
meekly!" and seldom refused to accompany them to places, whence he
generally returned wearied, offended, and displeased.
The gambling table; the board spread to excess; the smiles of
meretricious beauty; all were found, in the scenes to which his new
acquaintance introduced him. He thought, "If of such stuff be the
pleasures of young men, it is well they are dissipations of mind, as
well as of time; else, how could reflection bear the retrospect of the
best hours of human life, spent in such base vassalage to the lowest
propensities! It is a disordered state of being, in which nothing
is seen, and felt, and heard, but through the medium of delirium. I
cannot mingle with it; I cannot make this sacrifice of my time and
feelings, even to comply with the wishes of my father."
He wrote to Ripperda, to this effect. But the answer he received, would
not permit him to withdraw. The Duke told him, that he was called
upon to know, and to act with mankind; and how could he do either,
if he only saw them at their hours of form? He must attend them in
the undress of their minds; when the passions unveiled their hearts.
There would then be no need of a window in the bosom, to understand
how each man might be stimulated or restrained. With regard to his own
situation in this crucible of character; as he felt disgust at what was
temptation to others, he ought more readily to submit himself to the
apparent trial.
"You have genius, and distinction sufficient, already," added
Ripperda, "to create jealousy enough. If you have a mind above the
common recreations of man, let that be, I repeat, to the private
satisfaction of your own heart; it will keep your judgment cool, and
your proceedings independent. But while you act with men, and would
incline them to your purpose, you must appear to partake their nature.
Let me hear, when I return, that you go wherever you are invited. Your
companions will be too much absorbed in their own pursuits, to mark
whether you are an actor, or a spectator; but go with them."
Louis compared these principles with that of Wharton, _I mingle with
the dross of the earth, to extract its gold!_ They were the same; they
were specious to the adventurous virtue of youth: and rinding his
partiality to the English Duke, strengthened by this sympathy in maxim
with his father, he more readily determined to struggle against the
delicacy of his taste, and to pass through things so discordant to him,
with sealed ears and eyes. During the lengthened absence of Ripperda,
which was prolonged by the Emperor much beyond the time he proposed;
Louis saw all that a luxurious capital could present to the seduction
of youth and affluence. There were circles of dissipation, of a higher
class than those to which he had first been introduced; and these were
at the houses of a class of nobility, who lived to pleasure alone.
If vice were there, she was arrayed by the graces, with splendor,
and softness, sophistries, and flatteries, to make man forget he was
mortal, and had ought to do in life, but sail with the fabling syrens,
down the silver sea of time. No voice of sorrow was ever heard in its
air; no sigh of care ever breathed on its flowery shores; no tear
ever dimmed the eternal lustre of that sky. Human nature's curse of
travail and woe; man's distresses, and sympathy for pain, were all here
excluded. The blest inhabitants lived for themselves alone; and all
was revelry, from the rising to the setting sun; from moon-light, to
the morning star. But Louis had a heart and a soul, as well as eyes and
ears; and still he found no satisfaction in such waste of enjoyments.
The bosoms that panted there, beat with animal life alone; and the
souls which animated their bodies, were asleep in their vapoury cell.
As he passed through the crowded chambers, in which his spirit felt
a happy solitude, the conversations of Mr. Athelstone often occurred
to him; and he leaned pensively against many a rosy-wreathed arcade,
musing on the prophetic lessons of his earliest friend.
All around was prosperity and enjoyment. But he recollected, that his
uncle had said, "sweet are the uses of adversity!--Bitter to the taste,
but aromatic in effect, they preserve nature from corruption. Man, in
the indolence of repletion, breaks out with infinite disorders; and
like the ocean, whose constant motion keeps its waters pure, requires
exercise of mind and body. If it be not active to good, it will be to
evil, for what lies between is stagnation. Unchanging prosperity cloys
by possession; and the sated spirit looks around for new excitements.
It is then that the passions and the appetites wander abroad in the
stimulating search, and are easily tempted to forbidden paths." The
Pastor of Lindisfarne had once paused on the page of Shakespeare, which
his nephew was reading to his cousins:--
"Yet marked I where the bolt of _Cupid_ fell!
It fell upon a little western flower;
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound;
And maidens call it _Love in Idleness_."
"Not love, my children," cried the venerable instructor; "love was
bestowed by heaven on man, to be a help-mate to his labours. It is
wantonness, that is the offspring of idleness. But the _son of the
bondswoman_, arrays himself like the _heir of promise_, and the sons
and daughters of earth, are a while mocked by his pretensions!"
When Louis saw this scene performed before him, he thought how
melancholy it was to behold the cheat; how wretched to see the
blessings of life transformed into its bane. To view men and women of
rank and talents, and abundant power to become the benefactors and
examples of mankind, immerese all in one broad system of selfishness,
till a dangerous delusion spread over every faculty, and the character
exhibited one mass of sentimental weakness, intemperate passions,
splendid follies, and hardened vice!
In many of these parties, Louis met Duke Wharton; but he never staid
more than a few minutes, though those few were hailed by an adulation
that might have detained a prouder spirit. He ever left sighs behind;
and Louis shared the regret; though still his friend passed him by
unheeding; except, sometimes by a smile from a distance, or a glance of
the eye, as they mingled in the crowd.
By a similar wordless communion, Louis found the impression he had
made on the Electress, was not effaced. In riding through the Prato,
he often met her carriage; and she always leaned forward, with looks
he could not mistake; and when she thought herself unobserved, she
kissed her hand to him, with all the eagerness of suppressed, but
ardent gratitude. He generally gazed wistfully after her carriage;
for the image of Wharton united with her idea. He was her counsellor,
her friend. How great must be her qualities, to have secured such a
distinction!--Louis would not believe that she could have been privy to
the murderous policy of some of her agents: he had seen enough in his
last interview, to excite his fancy to complete the flattering picture;
and where his imagination kindled, his heart was too apt to glow.
Things were in this state, when the Imperial family, and with them the
Duke de Ripperda, arrived suddenly from the country. As soon as he
alighted at his own house, Louis flew to welcome him.
"Follow me," replied the Duke.
Louis saw a contraction on his father's brow, which he noted as a
herald of disagreeable tidings, yet he did not linger in obeying. They
entered the saloon.
"I see you anticipate what I have to tell you," said the Duke. "The
Empress is resolved on your marrying her favourite."
Louis was momentarily shocked by this announcement, but rallying
himself with the hope that he had offended Otteline past forgiveness,
he answered; "could I be weak enough to second the Empress's wishes;
after what I said to Countess Altheim in our last conference, she must
reject me." "If she loved you she would. But as it is all one to her,
by what means she ascends to distinction; she cares not whether it be
on your heart, or over her own delicacy. The Empress, too, forgets
her own consequence, in eagerness to aggrandise her favourite. She
protests that you have given Otteline every proof of attachment; that
circumstances demanded it; and your honour is pledged to redeem the
reputation she has lost on your account."
As his father recapitulated her patroness's discourse, in which, more
earnest than judicious, she allowed too much of the selfish aim in
the views of her friend to be seen; the entire remains of Louis's
infatuation, (which still lurked in the shape of pity), passed away
like a mist; and with faculties, at once cleared from every suggestion
of vanity or tenderness, he strongly declared that he never would
marry Countess Altheim. He allowed, that he had shewn too many signs
of headlong passion; but he repeated, in his extremest phrenzy, he
had warned her that he was at his father's disposal alone: and, for
her reputation being sacrificed, that could be no longer an argument,
since the avowed object of his visits to the Empress would sufficiently
confute the slander grounded on them.
"It must not be avowed that your discovered visits to these apartments
were to the Empress. The Emperor knows that you negociated with
Sinzendorff; but am I to remind you, that should he ever suspect her
private interference in the affair, his latent jealousy would find its
object, and the consequence I need not repeat."
"Then," exclaimed Louis, in a sudden agony of spirit, "I am lost!"
"Not if your father can extricate you," returned the Duke; "but I fear
you must marry her."
Though his heart had just told him the same, the words uttered by his
father were like a death-stroke; and knocking his clenched hand upon
his breast, he groaned aloud.
"De Montemar," said the Duke, "does not the spirit you so devoutly
dedicated to glory, does it not suggest the means of performing this
hard act of duty to your country; and yet not allow it to trouble you
beyond the present hour?"
"Impossible," returned he; "in marrying the Countess Altheim, I shall
marry my disgrace and my abhorrence."
"The act must pass for that of headstrong passion; or, perhaps, a
little more in your own way, as an act of romantic justice to the woman
who has incurred dishonour for your sake.--Passion always finds its
apology with men; so the world may smile, but it will forgive you; and
when she is your wife----"
"My wife! never, never!" interrupted Louis, "my name shall never be
rendered infamous by giving the world to suppose that it was possible
for me to make her my wife, whom even her future husband could
persuade from virtue. How could the Empress sully her matron-lips with
the vile suggestion? I never dishonoured the Countess Altheim, in word
or deed; and I will not act as if I had been such a villain. I will not
brand myself as a seducer, a dupe, or a madman! One of the three he
must be, who unites himself to the reputation she has incurred, by her
own arts and follies alone!"
The Duke permitted him to exhaust himself before he again spoke.
Equally averse with Louis, to his son's union with the mere minion of
any crowned head, he was aware that open opposition in this instance,
would embarrass all his other objects. The Queen of Spain's fury
against France, and her eagerness for revenge, had put the Spanish
interest totally into the power of the Empress. In her first rage, she
had written a letter to Elizabeth, of unguarded relinquishment; which
Ripperda vainly attempted to qualify. The Empress saw the advantage
Isabella had yielded, and in spite of her friend's representations, she
maintained it in the amplest sense. Spain had, therefore, by the fury
of its Queen, given up all check upon the non-execution of the most
momentous articles in the treaty. She soon found the effects of her
rashness; and in letters of despair to Ripperda, acknowledged that it
now wholly depended on his fidelity and contrivance, whether Austria
should fulfil its engagements, or the business end in loss and disgrace.
Another reason, besides her infatuated attachment to the companion
of her childhood, urged Elizabeth to insist on the engagement of de
Montemar with Countess Altheim, Ripperda marked her manner; and foresaw
the vexatious delays she would throw in the way of the execution of the
treaty, if he should appear to thwart her wishes. When she arrived
from Baden, at the Luxemburg, it was not long before she granted him
a private interview; and, notwithstanding all the influence of her
partiality in his behalf, when he attempted to give his own reasons
against his son marrying at so early an age, she turned on him with
a look and demeanour, more like that with which Catherine de Medicis
repelled the insinuations of Cardinal Mazarin, when he sought to betray
her into sanctioning a marriage between his niece and the king; than
the familiar confidence with which Elizabeth had always regarded the
Duke de Ripperda. Ripperda understood her suspicion, and her scorn; and
had he not possessed a political self-command, equal to his towering
pride, the reply of his eyes and his voice at that moment, would have
severed a friendship which had lasted eighteen years, and dashed to
atoms the present vaunted fabric of peace to Europe for succeeding
generations. He affected not to have observed the air with which she
had uttered these otherwise innoxious words.
"Your son is old enough to be the colleague of politicians; and surely
he is not too young to be the protector of an amiable and tender woman,
whose only strength lay in my love, and her spotless name. The last
she has lost through his handsome face, her fidelity to me, and the
malignancy of the Electress of Bavaria; and, my love, and his honour,
must and shall restore, what he and I have destroyed!"
In short, she gave him to understand, more than had ever passed
between Otteline and his son; but sufficient to convince him, that she
considered Louis bound beyond release; and that his attached mistress
was so assured of the same, there was nothing on the earth could induce
her to withdraw her claim. She accused Louis of cold, dissembling
vanity; treated with disdain the high principle which had impelled
his rejection of her friend; and added, that she should influence the
Emperor not to permit the reversionary investiture of Don Carlos into
the possession of the Italian Dukedoms, to take place on the person of
Louis, till Otteline should appear at the ceremony as Marchioness de
Montemar.
After this insinuation, Ripperda saw there was no resource but to
dissimulate and gain time. But, knowing the sincerity of his son in
all his transactions; he found it necessary to alarm his delicacy and
honour, to induce him to embrace, without consideration, any prospect
of escape from so disreputable a union. The base exaggerations of
Otteline, in her representations to the Empress of his conduct, and his
own desperate entanglement with her, wrought him almost to phrenzy.
The Duke owned, that as circumstances were, there was a necessity
for the marriage; or, at least, an appearance of preparing for its
celebration. Should events compel the ceremony, Louis might extricate
himself from its domestic discomforts, as soon as the affairs between
the two countries were brought to a happy consummation. He might then
leave his bride, and never see her more; being well assured, that she
would be fully satisfied in the enjoyment of her new rank, by the
side of her infatuated mistress. But this was taking the case at the
worst, for could they mislead the Empress and her favourite by apparent
compliance, and real delays in the performance, events might start
forward to elude the whole.
"I cannot, Sir," cried Louis, "I cannot compromise myself one moment on
so abhorrent a subject! How could I look up, if I were to be pointed at
wherever I moved, as the future husband of this justly contemned widow
of Count Altheim? My Lord, command me in every thing but this! Send me
from Vienna,--banish me where you will, but do not entangle me farther
with that insidious woman! Do not subject me to the consciousness, that
I am any way deserving the punishment of being ensnared beyond the
power of extrication."
"Louis," replied the Duke, "there is nothing that I can command, or
counsel you to do, to unite the preservation of your private freedom,
with your public duty, but a temporary system of deceiving the Empress
and her favourite. When you entered a political career, you engaged
on oath, to sacrifice every thing; your bosom's passions, and even
your reputation with men, to the service of your country, should it be
demanded. You are now called upon to perform the first part of this
vow."
"Yes, Sir, but I did not engage to sacrifice my conscience. That
belongs to God alone; and, I will perish, or keep it so."
"Then you must marry the Countess Altheim," calmly, rejoined his father.
"In the hour that I do," replied Louis, "I shall have given my heart's
dearest blood to the country I have never seen! to the country I will
never see! I will abjure the world, and retire to die a despised
wretch, where I may not hear the derision I have plucked upon the name
of de Montemar."
"And will that be obedience to your conscience?" asked the Duke, "if
so, mark its inconsistency, and sometimes doubt its text. Before
I quitted the Empress, I brought her to apologise to me, for the
offensive innuendos she had dropped at the beginning. I brought her to
tears, when I reminded her how I had served her and her daughter, in
the establishment of the Pragmatic Sanction. But before I accomplished
this conquest over a self-willed and powerful sovereign, I removed
every impression from her mind that I had any other objection to the
proposed union, than your youth, and the lady being so much your
senior. In the moment of reconciliation, I smoothed your path. I
alledged that my duty towards my new country, obliged me to write
thither, to ask permission of the King and Queen of Spain to form a
foreign alliance, before I could formally give my consent. In this, the
Empress acquiesced. Here then, is one delay secured. Meanwhile, should
you appear to concur heartily in the arrangement, I have little doubt
of winning upon Elizabeth to grant the investiture before the messenger
can return; the engine will then be restored to our own hand; and we
may protract and excuse, and finally break away without danger."
"No, Sir," replied Louis, "I abhor this marriage, because of the want
of all honourable principle in the woman who had infatuated me; and I
never will move one step to avoid it, by becoming the thing I abhor. If
my liberty is only to be regained by acting a falsehood,--a treacherous
falsehood! I submit to my cruel destiny, and I will marry her."
"That is to yourself alone," replied the Duke, rising from his chair
with a disturbed, and even a severe countenance. "But, remember, it is
your duty to await the return of my messenger from Spain."
"I will wait, my father, as long as you please. But, I repeat, it is
with no purpose to deceive. If I ever appear again in the presence
of the Countess Altheim, to permit her to consider me as her future
husband; it must be with the intention, on my part, to become so at the
prescribed time. My weak vassalage to beauty has brought me to this;
and heavy will be the punishment, but it is more tolerable than my own
utter contempt." "You must visit her this evening."
"Not alone, my Lord! That never shall be exacted from me. Till she
bears my name, no power shall compel me to be alone with her!"
"Who, then, must be your companion? I cannot."
"Tell the Empress, I demand it of her tenderness for the Countess's
honour, that some person be always present when we meet. Should I ever
find it otherwise, in that instant I will withdraw."
"In that, you are right," replied his father; and quitted the
apartment.
CHAP. II.
Elizabeth's reply to Ripperda's note, respecting the delicate scruple
of his son, told him that herself would be present at the scene of
reconciliation.
To go to this portentous interview, was, to Louis, like setting forth
to execution. A curtain seemed to have dropped between him and all the
world. It closed out, not only every domestic comfort, but every aim of
ambition. Fame was now robbed of its glory; and the ardour of pursuit,
turned into a joyless resolve of fulfilling his task from a sense of
duty alone. His heart felt like a petrifaction in his breast; his veins
were chilled; and, with a cloud over every faculty, he paced his way,
as a man in a dream, through the often trod, but now hateful galleries
of the Imperial Palace. He knew not how his faultering steps bore him
into the _boudoir_ where he expected to see Otteline, but instead of
her pleading or resentful form, he found himself in the august presence
of the Empress.
She advanced to meet him, all smiles; but what her first words were, he
knew not. She observed his pale looks, and the distracted wandering of
his eyes; but she would not notice either.
"Whatever was your quarrel with Otteline, in your last meeting;"
continued she, "her gentle spirit is ready to grant you forgiveness.
Shall I conduct you to her feet?"
"To her presence, Madam," replied Louis, recalling his attention; "I
shall be honoured in following Your Majesty; but not to her feet. I
cannot ask her forgiveness, for addressing her with candour."
Elizabeth looked sternly at him.
"Young man, you are not come here, to brave the Empress of Germany!
Beware, Louis de Montemar, of insulting my friend, beyond, even her
persuasions to pardon!"
"I come to speak the truth;" replied he, "to declare that I am ready to
fulfil every claim that Countess Altheim demands of my honour; but also
to throw myself on Your Majesty's justice to me, and tenderness for
her; by a frank avowal, that I shall contract this marriage against my
heart, and against my conviction, that my honour does not acknowledge
the pledge she asserts."
The Empress remained indignantly silent, while he briefly recapitulated
the cause of his repugnance to the union she was determined to
accomplish.
"It is as impossible for me to restore her to my esteem," added he,
"as to relinquish my nature. But if, under the circumstances I have
mentioned, Your Majesty deems me bound, where no engagement was made;
and when I have already told her, that our hearts are as separated
as our natures;--I am ready to submit to become her husband, with the
cold, soul-less duty, the name may enforce."
Louis stood firm, though pale and respectful, before the resentful gaze
of Elizabeth.
"Sir," said she, "you know how to insult; and you know how to attempt
to wrest from a tender woman, the rights you have given her over your
honour,--But I am her protectress; and shall hold the chain that binds
you, until death severs it. Young man, I know more of that vain heart,
than I can easily pardon.--And yet, you dare to tell me, that your
honour made no engagement with Countess Altheim, because you did not
say, in veritable words--_I offer you my heart, my hand, my fortune,
and my life!_ But, did you not weep on her hand? Did you not press it
to your breast, while you vowed you loved, adored, and lived only in
her smile? Did you not proffer her your life, to clear her aspersed
fame? Did you not pledge her your heart; were you not sensible that you
were master of hers? and what was all this, but a bond to be hers; a
pledge, that you were hers? What is _honour_, if it be only a word and
not an action? and, in this case, an interchange of soul for soul?--All
this has passed between you, and yet you talk of your honour being your
own!"
Louis stood impressed, but not confounded by the truth of this appeal.
While he felt the reproach to many of his sex, he might have said with
Hamlet:--
"Let the galled jade wince; my withers are unwrung!"
Elizabeth observed a change in his countenance, and with all the woman
in her Imperial heart, she exclaimed, "Oh, man, man!" But checking
herself from completing the apostrophe, she turned proudly away, and
walked up the room. She returned, and addressed him.
"I have condescended to argue thus with you, because you are the son
of the Duke de Ripperda. His unswerving probity disdains subterfuge;
act as becomes his son, and I may forget, what Otteline is too ready to
pardon."
Louis looked up. The noble candour in his eyes almost dazzled the
stedfast, doubting gaze of Elizabeth.
"Had I sought a subterfuge," replied he, "I should have merited the
utmost of Your Majesty's disdain; but from the first moment that I
found myself too sensible to her charms, I struggled against the
disclosure; and when circumstances extorted the confession from me,
with the declaration of my love, I also declared that I was not at my
own disposal. These reproaches, do not, then hold on me. For had she
still appeared, what I then supposed her; had my father refused his
consent, I would have proved my fidelity by never giving my hand to any
other woman."
"Your father gives his consent!" answered the Empress, "and as you
yield obedience to his commands, it is well they coincide with the
bonds of your honour. I accept your offered terms for my friend; your
hand, with the consideration due to your wife. For know, vain boy, that
Otteline has a spirit as dignified as it is tender; and will not brook
obloquy, either from her lover, the world, or her husband!"
Louis would have spoken, but she put out her hand in sign of silence.
"Follow me, Marquis," cried she, "and the consequences of the next two
hours be on your own head."
The consequences he already felt in his heart; and, without further
look of remonstrance, or attempt to utter another word, he bowed and
obeyed.
She opened a door in the farthest apartment, and discovered the
beautiful favourite, seated on a sofa awaiting them. She was luxuriant
in every charm. And perhaps the flush of a smothered indignation,
irradiated her complexion with redoubled brilliancy. But all was worse
than lost upon the senses of Louis. Every beauty appeared to him, like
the serpents on the Gorgon's head, wreathing to sting him. She rose as
the Empress entered.
"Otteline," cried Her Majesty with a proud smile; "I have brought you a
penitent. Can you pardon and receive him again to your heart?"
"Oh, Wharton!" exclaimed the inmost soul of Louis, at that moment
recollecting the rejected warning of his friend; "This _Semiramis_ and
her _subtle confidant_, have, indeed, bound me in a toil unto death!"
As he approached, the Countess made some answer, which he rather heard
in its tones than its words; for almost instantly, Elizabeth had put
the hand of Otteline into his. He held it, but it was without pressure;
without recognizance of the delight with which he once grasped it.
"Now," continued the Empress, "I am happy since I see the son of my
earliest counsellor, thus affiance himself to the cherished friend of
my youth!"
As she spoke, she pressed their hands together, while a mortal coldness
shot through the heart of Louis, at this consummation of his fate; and
stupified, he neither saw nor heard for a few moments. In this interval
the Empress disappeared. Otteline sunk, weeping into a chair. He turned
his eyes upon her; but no sympathy was in their beams; no belief in the
semblance of her tears. She looked up and met his rigid observation.
Her beautiful eyes swam, like sapphire gems in the summer dew. A soft
attraction was in their lucid rays. A melancholy smile, gave utterance
to her faultering accents; and holding out the hand he had dropped, she
gently, timidly, and tenderly articulated,
"De Montemar! Is it a mutual forgiveness? The hand that is now yours,
is a feeble pledge of the reconciliation of my heart!"
Louis did not approach her. He felt there was poison in that honeyed
tongue; and though he came to commit himself to her for ever, he shrunk
from being cozened again, by her charms or her art, to become a willing
sacrifice. Could he now unite himself to her from any other impulse
than hard, extorting duty, he felt how deep would be his degradation in
his own thoughts; and he looked down to shut all these witcheries from
his eyes.
After a minute's pause, while he stood painfully silent, she resumed in
great emotion.
"What is it I have done, to deserve this harsh contempt? Oh, de
Montemar, I have only proved myself, a fond, a feeble woman? For your
sake, I gave way to the suggestions of a zeal, that would have carried
me, as surely on the points of your enemies' daggers, as to violate
the letter which gave notice of your danger.--And thus am I repaid!"
With a suffocating gasp, she fell back into the chair on which she sat,
and covered her face with her hands. Her whole frame was shook, as if
life were indeed passing in agonizing throes from her body. The heart
of man could not bear this. Could these mortal struggles be indeed
dissimulation?--Whatever they might be, he could not look on them
unmoved. He hastily approached her, and touched her hand. It was cold
as death, but the plastic fingers closed on his agitated pressure. He
trembled fearfully as he drew it away from her pale face, and beheld
those matchless features convulsed with mental agony. Again her eyes
opened upon him, as he hung over her. They fixed themselves on his
face, with a languid, but pleading sorrow.
"Countess!" said he in a voice of anguish. "Oh, call me Otteline--your
Otteline!" cried she, impetuously grasping his arm, and hiding her face
on it; "or, repeat that word, and release me, by killing me! But, I
have survived your esteem, and why should I longer wish to live?"
His heart was subdued; and with tears starting from his own eyes, he
exclaimed. "And is it possible that you do really love me?"
In that moment she was on her knees beside him. She clasped her
hands; and looked up with such beaming beauty in every feature,
such effulgence in her dewy eyes; that his were rivetted on her, as
they would have been on a kneeling angel. Her lips appeared vainly
to attempt sounds, that were too big for utterance; and, finding it
impracticable, she turned towards him, and meeting the relenting
expression of his anguished countenance, she smiled like heaven, and
threw herself upon his breast. Louis's heart heaved, and panted under
the beautiful burden it sustained, as her sighs breathed on his cheek,
and her tender tears bathed it; but, even in that moment of female
victory, the excess of his emotion smote on that betrayed heart: and
sensible to all the shame of his defeat, the rapid current in his
veins, chilled to its former ice; and, with a tremor, far from ecstacy,
he replaced her in her chair, and, almost unconsciously knelt down by
her side.--But the attitude was dictated by his humbled sense of his
own weakness, not, indeed, addressed to her; though he now believed she
loved him; and while he looked on her agitated frame, he thought to
himself:--
"If I cannot be happy myself, in the degradation to which I am doomed;
at least, I do not leave you miserable! I will cherish, and protect;
and, perhaps, recall that fond heart, to respect the principles of her
husband!" As he thus thought, he raised her hand to his lips; and, by
that action, sealed to himself, the compact to be hers.
"My de Montemar!" murmured the Countess, feeling the import of this
mute symbol. At this crisis, she heard a light step in the room.
She looked round, and beheld the young Arch-duchess, standing pale,
and fixed in the middle of the floor, with her eyes rivetted on the
kneeling figure of Louis.
"The Princess!" exclaimed Otteline, in a voice of surprise, to Louis.
He started from his knee, and in the confusion of his feelings,
retreated a few paces back. The gentle Maria Theresa smiled mournfully,
but did not speak. Taking her hand, the Countess enquired her commands.
The Princess still kept her eyes fixed on Louis, while, in a suppressed
and unsteady voice, she answered her governess.
"My mother wishes to speak with you. But, perhaps, had she known the
Marquis was here, she would not desire you to leave him. God bless you,
Marquis!" cried he, addressing him with agitated earnestness; "Be kind
to my Otteline; for, when you are married, I shall never see her
more."
With the last words, she tore her eyes from his face, and threw herself
into the bosom of the Countess.--Otteline looked her adieu to her
lover, as in a tumult of undescribable disorder he hurried out of the
room.
CHAP. III.
Though Ripperda had made it a point with the Empress, that there should
be no public intimation given of the proposed marriage of her favourite
with his son, until the Queen's consent should arrive; it is probable
Her Majesty might have sent it abroad by a private whisper, had she not
seen the prudence of not stimulating the ill offices of the Princess de
Waradin, and others, by any hint that the heir they courted for their
daughters was promised to their proudest enemy.
When Elizabeth appeared to grant this silence as a favour, she insisted
that it should not deter Louis from making his daily visits at the
Altheim apartments; it was a respect due to the amiable forbearance of
his future bride; and it should always be in the presence of one of
her confidential ladies, who was also a friend of the Countess.
Louis had now abandoned himself to his fate. But he had hardly given
full sway to compulsive duty, and to the pleasing credulity that was
re-awakened by compassion, before a thousand circumstances arose, to
bid all his former repugnance return. The veil of imagination had been
too forcibly rent from his eyes, ever to pass again between him and
the object of his past idolatry. Unblinded by its delusions, every
succeeding day shewed him clearer views of a character she vainly
sought to disguise in assumed sentiment and delicacy. He perceived
that her defects were not merely those of a perverting education, but
of a radically warped mind. She had no spontaneous taste for moral
greatness. Grandeur was her object; but it was that of station, of
splendour, of dictating power. But still she loved him! loved him with
a devotion, a fondness, a bewitching fascination, that, at times,
made him almost forget she was not the perfection that might have
been the mistress of his soul. The beautiful deception never lasted
many minutes; and his heart sighed for its partner, with a sterile
consciousness that spoke of desolation, and dreariness, and solitude,
through the whole of his after-life.
In moments like these, how often has a frequent quotation of his
Pastor-Uncle occurred to him! "He that does a base thing in zeal for
his friend, burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together.
Such proof of love is conspiracy, not friendship!"
In the midst of this banishment of his hopes, from ever knowing
the sweets of domestic comfort again, he received large packets
from the dear home, where his best instructor presided, and where
perfect happiness dwelt with humility and innocence. The counsel of
the venerable man strengthened him in every disinterested rule of
life; but the letters of his aunt, and his cousins, made his yearning
heart overflow with rebellious regrets. The spirit of virtue and of
tenderness breathed through every eloquent line that dropped from the
pen of Cornelia.
"Ah, sister of my soul!" cried he, "I could fly with thee into
the bosom of paradise! Here is all celestial purity, all divine
aspirations! and I wished to wander from such a heaven! I longed to
busy myself in the ambitious turmoil of the world! I am in that world;
and, what is my achievement? I find myself chained to the foot of a
woman, my noble Cornelia would despise! I dare not confess to those who
love and honour me, so degrading a disappointment of their hopes."
He turned to the gentle accents of his sweet Alice, breathed in a
letter which had been wet with her grateful tears. Don Ferdinand had
complied with her petition. He had written to her mother, and avowed
his love for her daughter. But throwing himself upon her pity, he
implored her not to betray him to his father; and to assure her that
he meant nothing disobedient to him, nothing clandestine to her in the
demand, he released Alice from every vow, only reserving one claim on
her compassion; to be allowed, at some future day, to throw himself at
her feet; should the issue of certain circumstances, which still gave
him the privilege to hope, hereafter induce his father to consent to
his happiness.
Alice added that her mother had written to Don Ferdinand, that she
pardoned what had passed, in consideration of the amplitude of the
restitution; that she should preserve his blameable conduct from his
father's eye, since it was repented of, and relinquished; but, that
he must not suppose she yielded any encouragement to the continuance
of his attachment for her daughter, as she desired, that here all
correspondence must cease.
"But," added Alice, "I know he will be true to what he has written; and
I know I shall always love him dearer, for having taken that dreadful
load from my heart. I am therefore quite sure I shall be content to
await his father's consent, should it not come these many years. If
you knew how happy I am now, since I can lift up my eyes in my dear
mother's presence, and no longer feel ashamed at being pressed to the
affectionate bosom of my blameless sister; you would be ready to pour
as many tears of joy over the welcome of the little strayed lamb, as
your kind heart shed floods of sorrow that melancholy night, when you
found her so sadly wandered from her fold! Oh, my Louis, shall my
gratitude to you ever find words to express it?"
Mrs. Coningsby's letter was not less energetic in thanks to her nephew
for the judicious advice he had given to her almost infant Alice; and
for the activity of his exertions, to bring it to effect.
Louis smiled with glistening eyes, over these letters; for he was yet
to learn the science of forgetting his own privations, in the fullness
of others. The comparison now only aggravated the pangs in his breast;
and rising from meditations that subdued, agitated, and maddened him,
he rushed into crowds for that dissipation of thought he vainly sought
in the exercises of study, or the fulfilment of his official duties.
Count Koninseg had lately introduced him to a house, in which he
moved about at perfect ease, and met with every gratification to put
his usual indifference to gay society, to the test. It was the abode
of the Count d'Ettrees, a French adventurer of rank, whose wife and
sister formed an attraction of wit and beauty, that rivalled every
other assembly in Vienna. Under their magic auspices, every amusement
was presented that capricious fancy could desire or devise; and all
lavished with a splendor of luxury, and an elegance of taste, which
must soon have been exhausted, had not the fountain as it flowed
returned by another channel to its native bed. Count d'Ettrees drew a
revenue from that spirit for play, which his display of means excited
in his guests.
Louis could never be induced to touch a card, or the dice-box,
despising them both as sordid and senseless in principle; but found
ample entertainment in the conversations of, indeed, an epitomised
world. In these assemblies he saw persons from all countries and of all
parties; but they were the chosen of all. For, to make the attraction
the greater, so select was the Count in the rank and pretensions of
those whom he admitted, it was deemed the highest proof of consequence,
and of being _un bel esprit_, to be seen in this privileged circle. The
Countess Claudine and her sister-in-law, Angelique d'Ettrees were
ostensibly women of character, and really women of talent. But, while
all around shewed a gorgeous pageant of amusement, wit, and genius;
ruin lurked in the rooms, dedicated to play; infidelity and pride
animated the philosophic colonade; poetry and Voltaire, Rousseau and
bewildering sentiment, discoursed alike with talents, or with beauty;
and vice sapped the unwary footstep where-ever it trod.
At present, Louis was too self-absorbed by the struggles within him,
to look deep into what was passing around him. It was sufficient for
him that the varying intellectual enjoyments of the place, wrested
him from his thoughts; and he gave himself up to all their power
with a desperate avidity. He found his mind roused and exercised, by
discussions with men of genius; he was delighted with the brilliant
wit of the women, and the graceful frankness of their manners; and,
perhaps, he was unconsciously propitiated by the indirect flattery
which was offered to himself, by the Countess and her sister, and
which, being paid to his talents alone, he received without suspicion.
One evening, while he was thus engaged, he observed de Patinos and Duke
Wharton enter together. It was the first time he had seen the Duke in
the hotel d'Ettrees. The Spaniard descried Louis at the same instant,
as he sat between the Countess and her sister Angelique. De Patinos
drew his arm almost immediately from Wharton, and approached the group;
but when near, he stopped, and turned away, casting a furious look at
Ma'amselle d'Ettrees. She soon left her seat, and Louis afterwards
saw her and the Spaniard in close conversation, while they, at times,
turned round and glanced at him, as if he were the object of their
discourse. De Patinos seemed very sullen, and Angelique very earnest.
Soon after they parted, with a sarcastic laugh from the Spaniard, and
Ma'amselle mingled with the crowd.
Without any known cause of offence, a tacit acknowledgement of mutual
dislike was shewn by Louis and de Patinos. For some time, their
civilities had been merely confined to a cold bow at meeting in the
_Palais d'Espagne_; when they met elsewhere, they passed as strangers.
Baptista Orendayn was de Patinos's shadow in all things. But the
conciliating manners of Louis, and (when he could emerge from his bosom
regrets) his brilliant powers of amusement, had won the other Spaniards
to court his society, and regard him with more confidence. This
desertion from his party, incensed de Patinos the more; and a lurid
fire burnt in his angry eye, whenever it encountered his admired rival.
As Louis left the side of the animated Countess d'Ettrees, and was
passing away through the rooms, in a crowd of attendants rather than
of company, his shoulder pressed against that of Wharton. They turned
their heads, and their eyes met. Louis snatched his friend's hand, and
in the grasp, the embrace of his heart was felt. Wharton's luminous
smile played on his lip, as he whispered.
"Something better than _the garden of the Hourii_! Socrates, or
Alcibiades de Montemar?"
Louis did not answer, for at that moment he met the glance of Orendayn,
who was just entering. He bowed with obsequious lowliness, both to him
and the Duke, and passed on. Wharton and Louis had withdrawn their
hands at the same instant they caught his eye; and the Duke turned
into the circle. They were conscious however, to having been observed,
but whether with a malicious or an indifferent observation, Louis
did not pause to think on. Indeed, persons of all parties conversed
so indiscriminately in this Elysian society, where nothing seemed
considered but the free enjoyment of all which was delightful in the
human mind, that he saw nothing to apprehend in the simple circumstance
of having been known to speak to Duke Wharton in so privileged a scene;
and for any inferences, which the busy ignorance or ill nature of
Orendayn might chuse to draw, it could be a matter of no consequence,
as most of the Spanish grandees in Ripperda's suite conversed openly
with Wharton; and Orendayn, though a nobleman, was known to be a
character of contemptible craft and falsehood.
Thus, Louis continued to throw away the time that was once so precious
to him. But it was no longer the friend, with which he joyed to "take
sweet counsel," and lay open a bosom that knew no guests but hope and
exultation. It was become a heavy monitor of remembrance, to remind
him in solitary hours, of the blank his youthful infatuation and hard
destiny had made of his present and future days. His official duties
done, his home saw him no more, till their recurrence recalled his
steps, or the hour of rest demanded him to his pillow.
An hour, each morning, was passed in the Altheim apartments,
where the Empress often met him with unvarying graciousness; and
Otteline received him with as stationary smiles. But the vesture
of art cannot elude the penetration of every day. In spite of her
vigilance, he became master of her secret; and, no longer deceived
into self-complacency, by the idea that she loved him, he saw himself
consigned to be the prey of frigid, unfeeling, circumventing ambition.
From her, he rushed to Princess de Waradin's, to his military
associates, the _Hotel d' Ettrees_; or into any vortex that would hurry
him from himself, and present him with other meditations than Otteline
and his misery.
The Empress and Ripperda were now sailing forward on the unruffled sea
of success. He had brought her to yield him such implicit confidence,
that she exerted her own influence with the Emperor, to hasten the
investiture of Don Carlos in the Duchies of Parma and Placentia.
Charles promised that the official documents should immediately be
finished; and the ceremony be performed with the earliest dispatch.
He put into the Duke's hand, his final renunciation, for himself and
his posterity, of all claims on the succession of Spain; and he gave
him written bonds for the payment, at certain seasons, of a large debt
of many millions, owed by the Empire to the Spanish monarchy. He also
signed several new articles to the secret treaty; one of which was, to
relinquish the Netherlands to Don Carlos, as a dowry with his intended
bride.
About this time Cardinal de Giovenozzo arrived from Rome, on a special
mission from the Pope; and with the usual caution of the reigning
Pontiff, all parties were to be conciliated to the measures he
proposed. To this end, his first proceeding was to collect round his
table the foreign Ambassadors, and the leading men of the different
factions at Vienna.
At one of these entertainments, it chanced that the Duke de Ripperda
and the Duke of Wharton were placed at the same table. If there were
any man in the world whom Ripperda absolutely hated, it was this rival
of his politics; and he hated him, because he was the only man, who had
ever effectively crossed them. But while he cherished this hatred, he
would not own to himself that it was mixed with any fear of the talents
he affected to despise. He, therefore, took no notice of the Duke at
table, but by a stiff bow; and he would not, even have granted that,
had it not been at the board of the representative of the Father of
Christendom, where such mutual recognition of universal brotherhood in
the Catholic church, was a regular ceremonial.
During dinner, some observations were made by Wharton, respecting the
balance of power in Italy, which extracted two or three angry flashes
from the eye of Ripperda; but he disdained to appear to attend to any
thing advanced by him, and continued, with an air of indifference,
drinking wine with the British Ambassador, and conversing with the
Cardinal at whose right hand he sat. The animated Wharton proceeded in
his remarks, at the end of the table he occupied; and in a strain of
argument and eloquence that gradually attracted every ear, until even
Giovenozzo himself bowed without reply, to some passing observation of
Ripperda, and bent forward to catch what Wharton was asserting relative
to the Pontiff's rights, in the transfer of principalities in Italy.
This temporary triumph of the English Duke, over the imposing presence
of Ripperda, stung him to the quick; and, for a moment he laid open the
wound, by the impatient scorn with which he glanced on the resistless
speaker. The Portuguese minister, who sat next him, remarked on the
powerful consequences of the last argument of Wharton. Ripperda
contemptuously replied.--
"Wind is sometimes mistaken for thunder."
Wharton caught the words, and with a gay but pointed laugh, looked
towards the top of the table.
"Jove wields both in his rod; and the lighter the stroke, the quicker
the smart."
"When the bolt is launched against presumption," retorted Ripperda, "it
harrows up the dirt that blinds the multitude."
Wharton smiled. "I have no ambition to be the glorious malefactor!"
And bowing to the Duke, the reference could not be mistaken. Some of
the company did not repress the answering smile that flickered on every
lip. It was too much for the incensed pride of Ripperda, and starting
from his chair he turned indignantly to the Cardinal.
"When Your Eminence understands the distinction between the accredited
representative of the King of Spain, and the lurking emissary of a
dethroned, and medicant Sovereign; then the Ambassador of His Catholic
Majesty may appear where he is not to be insulted."
Every person had risen from their seats in consternation; and
Giovenozzo, not the least alarmed of the party, seized the Duke's arm,
and began a confused apology for the attention he had paid to Wharton;
and even attempted an excuse for the English Duke.
"I beg Your Eminence, not to trouble yourself with my apology," cried
the unruffled Wharton;--"I meant all I said. And, I am obliged to
the candour of the Spanish Ambassador, for so publickly declaring
the distinction that is indeed between us! He is the representative
of a King in the plenitude of power; at the head of the fountain of
riches and honours; and the stream flows bounteously! I am the lurking
emissary of a dethroned and mendicant monarch: but it has not yet been
my good fortune to play the successful _Gaberlunzie_ in the courts of
rival sovereigns, or to beg alms for my Prince, at the gate of the Duke
de Ripperda!"
Ripperda, turned on him with an eye of flame. His soul was on fire;
and, at that moment insensible to every thing but the expression of his
burning hatred, he sternly exclaimed:
"Were not Duke Wharton as impotent as he is vain, I might stoop to
chastise what offends me: but I pardon, what I pity."
"And I," replied the Duke, "am proud to imitate so great an example!"
Ripperda, almost beside himself with wrath, struck the hilt of his
sword fiercely with his hand. Wharton turned gaily on his heel, and
asked some indifferent question of the Duke de Richelieu.
The Cardinal followed Ripperda out of the apartment. Alarmed at the
consequence of suffering him, who seemed to hold the balance of
Christendom in his hands, to quit his roof unappeased, he drew the
enraged Duke into another room, and vainly tried to assuage his fury.
Ripperda's pride was in arms, at being so insolently braved before
all the nations of Europe, in the persons of their Ambassadors. He
was angry with himself, at having shewn himself susceptible of insult
from the man, it was his policy to teach others to despise; and in a
disorder of mind he had never known before, he poured on the Cardinal
all his resentments against the Duke and himself. He saw that nothing
could redeem him to the vantage ground he had so intemperately
abandoned, but an ample and formal apology from Wharton; and, he told
Giovenozzo, he must force the English Duke to make that restitution;
else he should act from a conviction that they had been invited
together, to insult the politics of Spain in the person of its minister.
The Cardinal feared Ripperda; and flattered himself, that he might work
upon the zeal and good-nature of Wharton, to serve the interest of His
Holiness by this concession. When Ripperda arose to withdraw, on being
informed that his carriage was ready, Giovenozzo attended him to the
foot of the stairs, and absolutely promised to bring him the demanded
apology next day.
But unfortunately, the company in the dining-room, supposing that
Ripperda had been sometime gone, moved to depart also. In the hall,
Wharton again met his proud antagonist; and, in the instant when most
unhappily the spirit of discord seemed to have extended itself to
their respective domestics. Wharton's carriage and that of Ripperda
had drawn up at the same moment; and their coachmen were disputing the
right to maintain the door. From words, they had recourse to whips.
"A comfortable way of settling a controversy!" exclaimed Wharton, who
stepped forward, to order his servant to draw off; but Ripperda, who
felt the late scene festering in his heart, and supposing a different
intention, and a new affront in the Duke's prompt advance; cried aloud,
with an air of derision:--"Less haste, my Lord! or the whip of my
coachman, may chance to brush Your Grace's skirts!"
"If it did," replied Wharton, with a glance that told he understood the
remark; "I should know where to repay the impertinence."
Ripperda was again in a blaze.
"Insolent!" cried he.
Wharton, who had checked his advancing step, on the first word from
his antagonist, now leaned towards him; and whispered:
"The lion may be chafed beyond its bearing! It is possible for the
father of Louis de Montemar to go too far with the Duke of Wharton!"
This assumption of forbearance to him, Ripperda felt as the climax of
insult; and starting back, with all the pride and resentments of his
nature rushing through his veins, he touched the hilt of his sword with
a significant glance, and in a subdued voice, replied:
"If you do not shroud cowardice under the name of my son, you will
follow me!"
This had cleft the threatened cord; and, in one moment the two Dukes
had vanished through the colonades of the hall, into an interior and
lonely court of the building.
In the same instant they found themselves alone, the drawn sword of
Ripperda was in his hand, and he called on Wharton to defend himself.
There was no time for further forbearance or parley. Wharton had hardly
warded off the first thrust of his determined antagonist, before a
second and a third were repeated with the quickness of lightning.
The glimmer of the lamps, which lit this little solitary quadrangle,
marked each movement of the weapon with a gleam on its polished steel;
and Wharton continued rather to defend than attack. But a noise of
approaching steps, withdrawing his attention for a moment from his
guard, a desperate lunge from the infuriate arm of his adversary, ran
him through the breast, and he fell. The blood sprang over his hand, as
he laid it on the wound.--His proud destroyer stood confounded at the
sight.
"I forgive you my death!" cried Wharton, "but I guess your son will
not. Rash Duke, to you he dies in me!" The tongue of Ripperda clove
to the roof of his mouth; and in the next instant the Cardinal and the
French Ambassador appeared at his side. As the bloody scene presented
itself, Giovenozzo shut the door, and bolted it behind him, to prevent
further entrance. Richelieu hurried to the prostrate Duke, and spoke
to him. Wharton looked up, and in hardly articulate accents, said,
"bear witness, Richelieu, that I acquit the Duke de Ripperda. He was in
wrath, and I provoked him. Let not his high character be dishonoured by
my death."
This was the first time that Ripperda's lofty consciousness of
consistent greatness had ever shrunk before the eye of man; he could
not brook the strange humiliation, and with asperity he haughtily
exclaimed; "my honour does not require protection. I know that I have
been intemperate and rash. But let the world know it as it is: I have
done nothing that I am not prepared to defend." Wharton raised himself
on his arm to reply; but in the exertion he fainted and fell.
The Cardinal, (in consternation at the report he must give to the Pope
of such an affray under his holy roof,) implored his implacable guest
to pass into the oratory, which was on the opposite side of the court,
and await him there, till the French Ambassador and he had borne the
insensible Wharton to a place where his state might be examined.
Ripperda complied in silence; and Giovenozzo, wrapping his scarlet
scarf around the bleeding body of Wharton, between him and Richelieu,
bore him round the back of the oratory, into one of the penitential
cells. His Eminence having been a brother of the Order of Mercy,
understood surgery; and staunching the Duke's wound, so as to leave
him for a short time in safety, though still insensible; he came forth
with Richelieu. The French Duke gave him his word of honour, that if
Ripperda could be induced to keep silence on this terrible affair,
whether Wharton lived or died, the secret should never escape from him.
Richelieu had his own views in this secrecy; and took his part, in
returning to the hall to quench suspicion there. Those who had lingered
to know the issue, with what degree of credence suited them, listened
to his hasty account, that he and the Cardinal had just arrived in time
to laugh at their zeal; for Wharton had given a merry explanation of
his ill-timed raillery to the Duke; laying it to the account of the
Cardinal's bright Falernian; and Ripperda, with the dignity of a great
mind, having accepted the apology; no more was said about it.
All appeared to believe this statement, for there was no disputing
the _word of honour_ of an ambassador!--But there were a few drops
of blood on the point ruffles and bosom of Richelieu; which, being
observed by Count Routemberg alone, told him a different story; and he
remained a few minutes behind the rest. When the hall was cleared of
all but himself and the French minister, he did not speak, but pointed
significantly to the testimonies on the ruffles and frill. Richelieu
was hurrying out some excuse, invented on the moment; but Routemberg,
(who was president of the Emperor's council,) whispered something in
the embassador's ear. They both smiled, shook hands, and parted.
When Ripperda returned to his palace, he entered the room where his son
was completing some especial communications to Spain. Louis put them
into the hand of his father. As he did so, he beheld that form and face
which, a few hours before, had left him gallantly habited, and bright
in lofty complacency; now discomposed, pale and haggard. He gazed
on the alteration with surprise, while Ripperda seemed to read the
dispatch with a moveless eye. "It will do," said he, laying it on the
table. He mechanically took up one of the candles, and was turning away
to his own chamber. Louis could keep silence no longer.
"You are ill, my Lord!" cried he, "or something terrible has happened!"
"What is there terrible to have happened?" returned Ripperda, pausing
as he approached the door, and looking on his son.
"Nothing, that I can guess," replied Louis, "but your looks, my father,
are not as when you left me!"
"How often have I told you, de Montemar," returned the Duke, "never to
guess at a stateman's looks! I have come from a party of many vizards,
and you must not be surprised that mine has changed in the contact. I
am well; let that satisfy you."
With these words the Duke withdrew.
CHAP. IV.
Morning reported all that had passed at the table of the Cardinal.
What happened in the hall, was slightly mentioned; for little of
that had been generally heard; but an account was circulated, that
notwithstanding the good offices of Giovenozzo had produced a shew of
reconciliation, some serious consequences might be anticipated.
When Ripperda entered to his son the next day, he perceived by his
pallid hue and averted eyes, that he had heard something of the affray.
Without preface, he abruptly asked, what had been told him of the
Duke of Wharton's behaviour the preceding night. The informant of
Louis had shaped the story under a flattering veil for his father; and
the anxious son had heard nothing but of the insolence and scoffing
speeches of the English Duke; and of the dignified forbearance of
Ripperda.
The blood that accused his friend in his heart, rushed to his face,
when he repeated what had been told him.
"And how," demanded Ripperda, "do you mean to act towards the man who
could so taunt, deride, and insult your father?"
"Though he twice preserved my life," returned Louis, "he has now
wounded me in a more vital part; and I shall ever after regard him as a
stranger."
Ripperda shook his head, and laid his hand on his son's arm. "And what
would be your decision, were I to reverse the charge?"
Louis looked on the flushed countenance of his father.
"Man is fallible, Louis!" cried he, "and, after thirty years
of undeviating self-control----" Ripperda broke off, in the
acknowledgements he believed it magnanimous to make, and in the
bitterness of his mortification thrusting his son from him, he
exclaimed,--"How must I hate the man who burst my fettered passions,
and, for one desperate moment, made me their victim, and his sport!"
Louis did not speak, in his astonishment at what he hoped would end in
some acquittal of his friend; but the pleasurable feeling was quickly
smothered by this tremendous burst from his father; and he saw revived
before him, the terrible moment in which the Sieur Ignatius clenched
his dagger at his breast. Without a word, or a look upward, he stood,
awefully expecting him to proceed.
After a minute's pause, the Duke turned desperately calm to his son.
"Discredit the vile flatterers, who would tell you, that Wharton alone
was the aggressor. We met like hostile bulls, and wonder not that we
should plunge at once upon each other's horns! Respect him still, for
he is a noble enemy; but I am his, for ever."
Louis threw himself at his father's feet.
"My gracious father! oh that the visible pleadings of my heart, that
its dearest blood, could make you regard him as a friend!"
There are hearts that cannot bend where they have injured. Ripperda's
was of this proud mettle; and looking down on his kneeling son, he
exclaimed:--"Impossible! that has passed between us which has made our
enmity eternal. Your conduct in the affair I leave to yourself. But I
can trust to you, that you will not compromise your father's honour by
broadly shewing fellowship with his most open enemy."
Louis pressed his father's hand to his lips; that hand which was hardly
washed from the stain of Wharton's blood! But he was ignorant of that
part of the horrid tale; and the Duke, in a milder voice, bade him rise.
"You will not soon be called upon to act a Roman part between your
father and your friend!" continued he. "I saw Cardinal de Giovenozzo
this morning; and he tells me that Wharton has disappeared."
This information was balm to Louis, as it seemed to promise a peaceful
termination to so threatening an affair. That his friend had withdrawn,
was a pledge of his pacific wishes; and, with a lightened countenance,
Louis rose from his knee.
Ripperda said no more; and his son was left to his meditations.
Whatever details he afterwards heard of the affair, were so confused
and contradictory, he could form no certain criterion, which was most
to blame. But Giovenozzo at last put all to silence, by a declaration,
that he should deem all further discussion of a transaction which
passed under his roof, as an impertinent interference with his
responsibility. He pronounced, that neither the Duke de Ripperda,
nor the Duke of Wharton, could have acted otherwise than they did,
consistently with their own dignities; and he insinuated to Louis,
that a third person, whom he could not mention, was the origin of
a dissention, which had ended in a manner to reflect honour on his
father. The Cardinal then hinted, that Wharton had vanished on some
occult mission, to circumvent the Italian investiture.
"And so," added the smiling ecclesiastic, "I doubt not, he seeks to
revenge the triumphant magnanimity of his transcendant rival."
From all this, though Louis could not learn much to criminate his
friend, he gained enough to impress him with an encreased conviction of
his father's greatness of mind; that a generosity, something like his
own romantic nature, had impelled the few words of self-blame which had
dropped from him in their first, and, indeed, only conference on the
subject. After that discussion, it was never resumed; and the whole
matter dying away from people's tongues and memories, Ripperda appeared
in every circle as usual, bright and serene as the cloudless sky in
midsummer.
The favour in which he was held at Court was made more apparent than
ever; and though the dispatches which were to bring the royal assent
to Louis's marriage, seemed unaccountably delayed; yet to shew that no
doubt remained in Elizabeth's mind, of the father and son's sincerity,
she permitted the solemn installment of the latter in the name of Don
Carlos, into the reversion of the two long-disputed Italian dukedoms.
This important rite was just completed, when a packet was put into
Ripperda's hand from Spain. It brought his recall to the council of his
sovereign.
The various objects of the treaty with Vienna had so alarmed the other
kingdoms of Europe, that the cabinet of Madrid was besieged day and
night by the clamour of their respective envoys. Grimaldo, the prime
minister, enfeebled by age, and adverse to the new system of politics,
had begged to resign his office. Philip granted the petition; and
now sent for Ripperda, to take the supreme chair himself; and, (in
the King's own words,) to consummate the greatness of Spain. Their
Majesties desired that the Marquis de Montemar should be left _Charge
des Affaires_; and that the Duke himself would immediately set forth on
his return.
Ripperda examined farther into the packet, to find the expected consent
for his son's marriage; but it was not there; and no notice taken of
the application he had made for it. On questioning the messenger,
whether he had omitted to bring any part of his charge, the man told
him that a special courier, which was Castanos, had been dispatched a
few days before him; and he was not less surprised than alarmed, to
find him not arrived, as he knew he brought dispatches of great value.
The disappointment Elizabeth sustained in this procrastination of the
marriage of her favourite, was absorbed for a time in her regrets
for the recall of her friend. Louis could think only of his father's
glorious summons, to perfect the happiness of his country; and when,
in the midst of his preparation for departure, Castanos did arrive,
this affectionate son, hardly cast a thought on the reprieve, that he
brought no dispatches.
Castanos told Ripperda, he had been beset on the road, in the mountains
of Carinthia, by a band of armed men, who rifled and left him for dead.
A poor herdsman found him, and took him to his hut; where, having
recovered strength to pursue his journey, he came forward, to apprise
his master that he had lost the dispatches, and with them a casket of
jewels from Don Carlos to the Arch-duchess. The bruises on Castanos's
person bore witness to the truth of his assault; and the Empress and
her favourite, were obliged to resign themselves to await a courier
from Ripperda himself, when he should have arrived in Spain.
On the third day after the declaration of his recall, Ripperda took his
official leave, and presented his son in his new office. At parting,
the Emperor invested the Duke with the Star of the _Golden Fleece_;
in which order, he was the only exception to an undeviating line of
Sovereign Princes. The Empress presented him with her picture set in
brilliants; and when the Court broke up, she told him to follow her, to
receive the farewell commands of her daughter.
Louis waited in the anti-room, while his father entered the apartment,
where the still invalid Princess sat on a sofa, supported by the
Countess Altheim. Louis could not help seeing the lovely group, through
the half-obscuring draperies of the open door. The Princess was pale
and thin; and, though dressed superbly, seemed fitter for her chamber.
When Ripperda drew near, a faint colour tinged her cheek.
"The Duke approaches you, my love," said the Empress, "to bear your
commands to Don Carlos; and to receive from your hands, the portrait of
his future bride."
"Where is it?" said the Princess, turning hurryingly to Otteline.
The Countess drew a beautiful miniature from its case, which lay on the
sofa near her, and presented it to her young charge. Maria Theresa held
it in her hand, and looked on it a few seconds with a languid smile.
"It is very pretty, and very fair!" said she, "Do not you think so,
Duke?" added she, putting it into Ripperda's hand, who received it on
his knee; "But tell the Spanish Prince, I shall be much fairer before
he looks on it." And then she cast down her eyes, and sat perfectly
still and silent.
"What means my love, by so strange a message?" enquired the Empress.
The Princess did not answer, but merely sighed, and looked round,
uneasily. Elizabeth repeated the question, with enquiries, whether she
wished to send the Prince any thing else, that she looked about so
searchingly.
"O, no," replied the young creature, shaking her head, and rising from
her chair; "I only wish to give this rosary to the Duke of Ripperda,
for himself;--himself, alone!" cried she, and clasping her fair hands,
as she dropped it into his, she turned hastily round with a glowing
cheek, and flew out of the apartment.
At the moment of her last raising her eyes, she had caught a glimpse of
Louis, as he stood in a distant corner of the other room half concealed
in its draperies, but regarding with a pitying eye the resigned victim,
who, like himself, was to be offered up to the ambition of others.
In evident emotion, Elizabeth put her hand on the arm of Ripperda, and
withdrawing with him into a part of the room out of sight,--Otteline
advanced to his son.
Louis's soul was full of sympathy for the interesting Maria Theresa;
the import of whose melancholy message to Don Carlos, he well defined:
and his compassion for such thraldom, extending to himself, made him a
very unfit companion for his own future bride. He could have wept over
the sweet, and faded Theresa; while the blooming cheek and rosy smile
of Otteline, at such a season! withered him as she approached; and he
stood sad and absorbed, after he had given her the ceremonious salute
of the day.
The Countess had found her account in not striving to change these
fitful moods in her lover. But while she suppressed the risings of her
haughty soul, she often said within herself. "Disdainful tyrant!--My
hour is coming!--When I am your wife, then you shall feel what you have
done by trampling on the slave, who only waits a few magic words, to be
your sovereign!"
For the whole of the remainder of the day, Ripperda's house was
crowded with ministers, foreign embassadors, and persons of various
descriptions. It was past midnight, before the last of these levies
was dismissed; in the midst of all of which, Louis had seen his father
like a presiding deity. He seemed the umpire of Europe; and as if
the monarchs of each realm stood before him in the persons of their
delegates, to hear from his lips the fiat of their weal or woe. To all
he was as gracious as he was peremptory: and while he asserted the
greatness of Spain, and proclaimed her claims in the various quarters
of the globe, he breathed nothing but peace and prosperity to the
nations that sought her amity.
Ripperda did not go to rest the whole night. He remained until morning,
instructing his son on the objects entrusted to his completion. Louis
received these lessons as distinctly, as a mirror receives the image of
the face that looks on it; but where that fled, these were stationary,
and remained indelibly stamped on his mind.
With the rising orb of day, the travelling equipage was announced.
Ripperda rose from his seat. Louis started up also, with an emotion to
which he would not give voice.
"I have spoken of all that relates to your public duty;" resumed the
Duke, "I wish your private concerns were in as fair a prospect. But
in my last conference with the Empress, I found myself obliged to
pledge her my word, (and to seriously intend its performance,) to
suffer no hesitation in the Queen's consent to your marriage with the
favourite. But cheer yourself under the sacrifice. Believe, that in
giving Otteline your name, you perform an act of self-devotion, of a
consequence to the interests of your country, I cannot now explain,
but it is worthy the price. Like your father, my son, you must live to
virtue alone; live for mankind; live to future ages!--Do this, and all
common concerns will be lost in the imperishable glory!"
Louis threw himself on his father's bosom.
"For this once!" cried he, in the full voice of filial affection; "For
this once, let me be pressed to the heart that inspires me to virtue!
The heart that I most honour and love in the world!--Oh, my father, may
I be like unto thee; and all minor enjoyments shall be nothing to me!"
The Duke strained him to his breast. Louis's cheek was wet with tears;
but his own flowed; so he knew not whether his father's mingled there.
Ripperda strove to break from him, with an averted face. Louis clasped
his hands, as he sunk on his knees; "Bless me, Oh, my father!" cried
he, "Bless me, ere you leave me to this dangerous world!"
The Duke paused, and looked for a moment on the bent head of his son.
"Bless you, Louis!" said he, "But be firm in yourself, and you will
need no beadsman's orison."
Louis hardly heard the latter sentence, in his growing emotions; and
pressing the hem of his father's garment to his lips, it slid from his
hand as the Duke drew it away, and disappeared through the door.
CHAP. V.
Ripperda was gone. Day rolled over day; and the most splendid
preparations continued to be privately made for the betrothment of
Maria Theresa, and the marriage of Otteline; but the Empress had still
to count the hours with impatience, until the ceremonial consent should
arrive.
Meanwhile, the conduct of Louis, in the management of the intricate
affairs confided to him, gained the universal suffrage of the foreign
ministers with whom he conferred; who united in saying, that had he
been the son of the obscurest individual, his talents and strict fair
dealing, would have ensured him every honour that he now received as
the son of Ripperda.
Routemberg, the prime minister, affected to treat him with peculiar
confidence; and he was with him when a packet arrived from his father.
He opened it; and it contained the very dispatches which had been
taken by the robbers from Castanos. The Duke accompanied them with a
few lines, dated from a post-house in Carinthia, saying, that he had
recovered them in a very extraordinary manner, which he should describe
in his first letters from Spain; but he now lost no time in dispatching
them forward to Vienna, under the care of Martini.
Subsequent considerations made Ripperda withhold this adventure; but it
was briefly as follows.
Just as the Spanish suite had passed into the mountainous tracks of
Carinthia, and Ripperda had entered the solitary post-house in the
forest of Clagenfurt, he was followed into his apartment by the master
of the house. The man told him in a mysterious manner, that a person
in a strange foreign habit, had waited for His Excellency some hours
in an upper chamber; and he now requested to speak with the Duke for a
few minutes on a subject of consequence; but that it must be in a room
without light.
Ripperda desired that the person might be told, it was not his custom
to admit strangers to his presence, and never to suffer dictation in
the manner he was to receive them.
In a few seconds the innkeeper returned with a charged pistol, which
he presented to Ripperda, with this message. "The person who sent
that, was as little accustomed to arbitrary decisions as the Duke de
Ripperda. He had matters of moment to impart to him. If he did not
chuse to receive them on the stranger's terms,--well,--and they should
rest with himself; but if he decided otherwise, he must admit the
communication under the obscurity of total darkness. If he suspected
personal danger, he was at liberty to stand on his guard during the
interview, either with his sword or that pistol."
There was something in the boldness of the demand, and the gift of the
pistol, that stimulated the curiosity of Ripperda. He could protect his
life from a single arm; and from a more supported treachery he had an
armed guard in his suite.
Without further hesitation, he told the innkeeper to return the pistol
to him from whom he had brought it; to take the lamp from the room, and
to introduce the stranger.
When the door re-opened, a man was let in, the outline of whose figure
and apparel the Duke caught a glimpse of, in the reflected light from
the outer chamber. The person was tall, seemed in a military garb, by
the clangor of a heavy sword, in an iron scabbard, striking against
the door-post as he approached. But there was a great involvement
of drapery about him; and the black plumage of his head brushed the
door-top, as he stooped and entered. The door closed on his back; and
the twain were in total darkness.
"Your business, Sir?" demanded Ripperda, with a tone of superiority.
"It is to confer an obligation on the proudest man in Christendom,"
returned a hoarse and rough voice, in as lofty a strain. "Ten days
ago your courier was stopped in these mountains, and robbed of his
travelling case. The contents are a padlocked casket and a sealed bag.
It fell in my way; and I restore them to you."
"Brave stranger!" returned Ripperda, "whoever you are, accept my
thanks. Point but the way, and the proudest man in Christendom would
feel himself prouder in being allowed to repay such an obligation."
"I doubt it not," replied the stranger, sarcastically; "but my taste is
not man's gratitude. If it were, I should starve in this generation."
"Try the man on whom you have just conferred this favour! Pardon me,
but by your language, you appear to have been outraged by mankind? Let
me make restitution? I love a brave spirit, and could employ and reward
it."
The stranger laughed scornfully.
"Mine is Esau's birth-right, and I have employed it manfully; witness
this sword!" cried he, striking it down with his hand upon the hilt,
and rattling its steel against the floor; "witness that bag of policy
and riches I despise; which the Duke de Ripperda now holds in his hand
as the gift of an outlaw and an enemy!"
"You are a fearless man," returned the Duke, "and have proved yourself
an honourable one! You know my power. Name the country that has
outlawed you, and I will obtain your pardon. Name the price to make
you my friend, and I will pay it."
"Ripperda," replied the stranger, "I leave that behind, which will
direct you where to find its owner. If you use it wisely, it may be
Ulysses' hauberk; if you reject it, the shirt of Nessus were a cooler
winding-sheet!--Farewell."
Before Ripperda could unclasp his lips to reply, the stranger had
opened the door, and passed through it like a gliding shadow.
The moment he had disappeared, the Duke called for lights, and the
landlord brought them in.
When Ripperda was alone, he examined the case his rugged visitor had
put into his hand. He broke the seals of the bag, in which he found
the key of the casket; and on looking over the contents of both,
missed none of the jewels, whose answering list was amongst the
dispatches. The jewels were a magnificent present from Don Carlos
to the Arch-duchess Maria Theresa; and a necklace, inscribed by the
Queen's own hand for Countess Otteline Altheim; but amongst none of the
papers was there any trace of the expected consent. The present of the
necklace seemed a presumptive proof that Her Majesty did not intend to
withhold it; but, until it was formally given, Ripperda could add no
further sanction from himself. However, to inform the Empress, as soon
as possible, of even this promise of Isabella's acquiescence, he lost
no time in summoning two or three of the young noblemen, who, wearied
of Vienna, had chosen to return with him to Spain. He told them of
his having recovered the dispatches, by the gift of the leader of the
banditti he believed; and of his intention to forward them that night
to Vienna, if they had any commands to send by the messenger he should
dispatch.
Don Baptista Orendayn, who was present, eagerly offered a suggestion
that Martini ought to be the messenger, as the most trusty person; and
Ripperda, pleased with his zeal, having ordered a sufficient suite
to attend whomever he should select, adopted his advice, and saw the
faithful Italian set off on his return to the Austrian capital, just as
the dawn opened behind the farthest mountains.
His equipages were getting ready for the prosecution of his own
journey; and, not having found any letter or memorandum from the
stranger himself, in the case which had held the casket; he was
wondering to what mysterious manner of tracing him he could have
referred, since none certainly had presented itself, when the landlord
entered the apartment; he carried a scarlet mantle in his arms, and
laying it on the table before the Duke.
"My Lord," said he, "the person you saw last night, left this cloak in
the chamber where he waited for you. He told me to bring it to Your
Excellency in the morning."
Ripperda's eye fell upon the mantle,--it was discoloured a dark red
in many places, he nodded his head, and the man withdrew. Ripperda
then took it from the table, supposing a name or a direction might
be affixed to it; but on the ample folds disengaging themselves, he
started with a shudder.--He had seen it before!--It was marked with the
keys of Saint Peter!--It was embroidered on the shoulder with the arms
of Giovenozzo!--It was stained with the blood of Duke Wharton!
Ripperda dropped it from his hand.
"Accursed Wharton!" exclaimed he, now recollecting, in the disguised
tones of the stranger's voice, some notes of the Duke's, "this insult
shall not be pardoned! I am not to be cajoled nor menaced into peace
with you, my most detested, most insolently triumphing enemy. We have
once measured swords!" and his eye glanced on the blood-stained scarf;
"when they next meet, the blow may be surer!"
Wharton's graces of mind, body, and political management, formed the
only character which had ever peered with that of his haughty rival. He
was the only man who had ever foiled Ripperda by secret machination. He
had made him feel that he had an equal, that he might have a superior.
He had discovered that the all-glorious boast of Spain was not exempt
from the infirmities of common men. He had wrought him to commit an
injury, and he had stood between him and the world's cognizance. To
be so humbled in the knowledge of any living being, was the vultures
of Prometheus to the proud heart of Ripperda. Wharton, by the present
action, had declared his triumph,--had presumed to promise, or to
threat! and the hatred of his enemy was now wound up to a height that
could know no declension, till its cause was laid low in the silence
of death.
A wood-fire burnt on the hearth of the room Ripperda occupied. He
thrust the Cardinal's mantle into it, and stood over the smouldering
cloth, till the whole was consumed to ashes.
Comprehending that Wharton must have set his emissaries to way-lay
the Spanish dispatches, merely to afford him the opportunity he had
boasted, of conferring an obligation on his rival, Ripperda assuaged
his enraged thoughts by devising schemes of revenge as he rapidly
pursued his journey towards the seat of his power.
He met with no accident nor obstacle, till on the night of the 25th of
July. The tops of the hills were laden with thunder-clouds, and the
turbid atmosphere laboured with the stifling Sirocco. His long train
of attendants had dispersed themselves amongst the narrow and shelving
roads, which traverse that line of the Appenines, which form the mural
diadem of the gulph of Genoa. Ripperda's equipage wound down a long
and twisting defile between two precipitous rocks. The intricacies and
abrupt turns in the road separated him from his immediate followers. It
was the darkest hour of twilight, when there was just enough of gleam
from the lurid sky, to shew the outline of objects.
As the Duke's carriage turned a jutting cliff, he found it suddenly
stop, and then heard a volley of oaths from his drivers, mingled with
more direful imprecations from strange voices. While he was letting
down the glass to enquire the cause, the lash of whips accompanied the
mutual swearing, and he felt the struggle of his horses to force their
way forward. The next moment a pistol was fired at their head, and a
deep groan shewed it had taken too true an aim. As the window dropped,
Ripperda saw the wounded postilion fall on the neck of his horse. But
he saw no more. The carriage door was instantly opened, and before he
could snatch a pistol from his own belt, he was dragged from the seat
by the collected strength of several arms. Having thrown him upon the
flinty way, one man of colossal bulk, cast himself upon the prostrate
and struggling Duke, and kneeling upon his body, with both his knees,
coolly and determinately put a pistol close to the temple of his
victim. Ripperda had now grasped his own weapon, and with one hand,
striking aside the arm of his antagonist, the pistol went off; where
that ball fell he knew not, but with his other hand, at the same moment
he lodged the contents of his own pistol in the heart of the ruffian.
The wretch tumbled aside, with a convulsive recoil, and was no more.
His comrades, deeming the Duke's destruction sure, were rifling the
carriage, while others were posted at the entrance of the defile, to
prevent a rescue from his attendants. One of them turning round at
the double report of the pistols, and seeing his coadjutor thrown
motionless off the body of Ripperda, who sprang on his legs, alarmed
his fellows, and rushed towards their prey. The Duke saw he must sell
his life dearly, for he was determined never to yield it to such base
assailants, and drawing his sword, set his back against the precipice,
and held them at bay. But the strength of his arm, and the bravery of
his heart could not have defended him long against their determined
attack.
The men, whose poniards his sword parried, had recourse to fire-arms,
and two pistols were fired at him.
"He stands yet!" cried one of the ruffians, "give him another volley."
A volley did sound, and instantly; but it came from the rocks above,
and three of the villains fell. The rest drew back a few paces in
surprise, and in the moment several men jumped from the shelving
precipice to the side of the Duke. The conflict closed, and became
desperate. Ripperda was bleeding fast from the graze of a ball on his
head; and though he assisted his defenders with a resolute heart,
he was nearly fainting. A party of his new friends had cleared the
entrance of the road, for the approach of his followers; and the
discomfited ruffians, foreseeing further contention must end in their
utter destruction, laid hands suddenly on their wounded and dead;
and throwing them over a chasm in the precipice, were presently lost
themselves amongst the bushy recesses of the perpendicular rocks.
The persons who had come thus opportunely to the rescue of Ripperda,
assisted his servants to bind his wound; and to place him, now as
insensible as his lifeless postillion, in the carriage. Martini was on
his mission to Vienna; but another valet was put into the chariot to
support the Duke. The man respectfully enquired of him who appeared the
superior of the group, what name he should say, when his master should
ask for his brave deliverer?
"Some day, I will tell it to him, myself;" returned he, "meanwhile I
shall exchange swords, as a memento of this hour."
He closed the carriage door, and ordered the trembling postilions to
drive on. The valet, calling from the chariot window, implored his
further protection; he nodded his head in acquiescence; and, with his
train, escorted the alarmed party safe through the defile. As it opened
into the champaigne country, the remainder of the suite, under the
leading of Don Baptista Orendayn, approached from another road. At this
sight, the gallant travellers turned their horses' heads, and leaving
Ripperda to his friends, galloped across the plain in an opposite
direction. The Duke had recovered only to a dreamy recollection. But
his medical staff having gone before him to Genoa, when he arrived
there, his wound was properly dressed; and a day's repose left him no
apparent effects of his adventure, but the bandage on his head; and
his regret, that such immediate insensibility had deprived him of the
opportunity of thanking his deliverer. He spoke to Orendayn about his
gallant preserver: but the young Spaniard could give no account of
him; as he was lost among the mountains at the time of the attack. He,
however, informed Ripperda, that while enquiring his way, the Alpine
cottagers had told him of a noted banditti, which prowled in their
neighbourhood in search of prey; and he did not doubt these assailants
were the very troop. He lamented with great bitterness, that the
stupidity of his guides, should have led him so far astray, when his
patron was in danger; and envied those who had come to his rescue,
with many encomiums on their timely valour.
Ripperda was pleased with the exchange of the swords; as the fabrick of
the one which had been left in the place of his, was of a fashion that
proved its owner to be a gentleman, as well as a brave man. Strange as
it may seem, the former citizen of Groningen, had now imbibed so much
of Spanish prejudice, he would have been sorry to have thought that his
eagle-crested rapier, might now be suspended at the side of a man of
ignoble blood, even though the hand that hung it there was that of his
deliverer.
On the morning of Ripperda's recommencing his journey, he put the sword
into his belt. It had once saved his life! And he wore, and wielded it
hereafter, in many a menacing and perilous scene.
CHAP. VI.
The Duke de Ripperda no more troubled his son with a narrative of
this attack in the Appenines, than he satisfied his curiosity, by
the promised relation of the adventure in Carinthia. The one passed
from his mind, as it was attended by no apparent consequences; and
the other, though it lived in it, was connected with Wharton, and the
memory of a transaction he would gladly obliterate for ever.
Martini set out to rejoin his master, as soon as he had delivered his
trust; and when Louis opened it, he found the Queen's commands to
himself, that he should be the representative of Don Carlos, in the
betrothing ceremony with the Arch-duchess. He sighed as he laid the
papers on the table; for he thought the task would be a harder one than
even his own immolation.
"Ah," cried he, "can I have a hand in striking the sacrificial knife
into the innocent lamb, that shrinks so pleadingly from the horrid
altar!"
The Empress was not satisfied with the Queen's slowness in expressing
her consent to the marriage of Louis; and the less so, as she wanted to
have had it solemnised immediately. Otteline was summoned to Brunswick,
to attend the dying moments of her father; and Elizabeth would have
been glad to have secured Louis eternally her's, before so many leagues
should divide them.
The day that had been fixed upon between the four illustrious parents
of the intended royal pair, for the celebration of the affiancing
ceremony, now approached. All the preparations were ready; and the
adversaries to the mutual aggrandisement of Austria and of Spain,
beheld these pledging nuptials with despair. Ripperda, with whom the
whole scheme had originated, seemed omnipotent.
Indeed the splendour of his proceedings in his new office of Prime
Minister of Spain, realized the visions of all its former statesmen. He
moved forward with a magnificence of design, which surpassed Alberoni
in grandeur, and Cardinal Ximenes in boldness of spirit, and determined
execution. The eyes of Europe were fixed on the mighty hand, which
moved all their interests as the interests of his own country prompted;
and while a feeble prince sat on the throne, the minister bid fair to
make the Spanish monarchy as vast and dominant as under the sceptre of
the Emperor Charles. The pragmatic sanction, and a marriage between a
Spanish prince and the heiress to the German empire, might accomplish
this, and other plans, which were bursting to their ripening. But the
withering mildew was now breathed forth, that was intended to blast
this goodly harvest.
On the night in which Wharton was carried, even as a dead man, out of
the mansion of Giovenozzo, the Cardinal had him carefully transported
to a monastery in the neighbourhood, where he slowly recovered to life
and strength. He learnt enough from his only visitors, Giovenozzo and
de Richelieu, to know that Ripperda, not merely had disdained his
justification and his friendship, but persisted in every circle, to
treat his name with not less pointed, though silent contempt. Wharton
smiled at this littleness in so great a man, but determined that he
should feel the power he despised.
With the active English Duke, it was only to will and to do. Distances
were to him as nothing; and difficulties only stimulated him to give
his adversaries a more signal overthrow. What Swift said of Lord
Peterborough, was as aptly adapted to Wharton; for while his rivals in
the various courts of Europe were hearing of him at Rome, Paris, and
London, and marvelling whether he would not next be in South America or
Prestor-John's dominions:--
"Still as they talk of his condition,
So wonderful his expedition,
He's with them like an apparition!"
As soon as he recovered from the immediate effects of his wound, he
set forward on his new pursuit; and he did not move to and fro upon
the earth on a vain errand. Before his rencontre with Ripperda at
the Cardinal's, he had penetrated all the secrets of the Altheim
apartments. The jealousy of Count Routemberg, respecting some of the
objects of the Spanish policy; and the private dispositions of the
Emperor on the same subject, he had also mastered, by having secured
the key of Routemberg's bosom, the beautiful and avaricious Countess
d'Ettrees. The secret wishes of half the nobility in Spain, were also
unfolded to him by the envy of de Patinos; and the venality of Orendayn
was at his service.
Wharton was fully aware of the disgust that Maria Theresa had taken to
Don Carlos; likewise of her romantic prepossession for the person and
manners of Louis, and of the Empress's design to hasten the betrothment
on this account. The Duke saw his vantage ground; and Ripperda's last
conduct determined him to storm the breach he had made in these secret
counsels.
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.
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."
"Madam," exclaimed he, "I am now a ruined man! the malice of his
enemies has cast my fortunes, with my father, to the ground; but he
shall not be humbled in his son. Virtue is the soul of his being,
virtue is my inheritance; and I implore of Your Majesty to say, of what
I am accused? Who are my accusers?"
She looked up; and mistaking the ravages of anguish on his fine
countenance, for those of guilt, she shuddered with a loathing
sensation, and answered indignantly.
"How dare that false tongue profane the name of virtue, by connecting
it with that of your father and yourself?--The world teems with your
accusers; and he bears witness to their veracity, by not having
ventured one line to me in his defence."
She then steadily ennumerated the Duke's imputed treacheries. That it
was past a doubt, his clandestine coalition with the Duke of Wharton;
that their secret meetings had been traced; that he had commenced a
correspondence with James Stuart; and that, from what motives, his mad
ambition could alone tell; it was well known he was playing in Madrid
the counterpart of Wharton's political game at Vienna. In short, he
covertly abetted every machination against the Empire, and the house of
Brunswick:--"and," concluded the Empress, "I am constrained to believe,
that, to me and mine, his overthrow is as timely, as it is irrevocable."
This charge on his father transported Louis beyond the forms of
ceremony; and with all the eloquence of truth and filial piety, he
burst forth into a defence of his integrity, which, to any other
than the possessed ears of Elizabeth, must have carried resistless
conviction; but with an impetuosity equal to his own, she interrupted
him:--
"Cease!" cried she, "Hard, unblushing parricide of all thy father's
fame! Dissembling, cozening de Montemar! In every word, and look,
and gesture, I see the tempter of Ripperda's ruin! He was Honour's
self, till he brought the serpent to his bosom, in the shape of his
perfidious son. Shame to thee, young man, and think of the price for
which you sold him to Duke Wharton."
Louis was confounded by this charge upon himself, as the instigator of
his father's asserted treasons; but he did not shrink, or withdraw his
assured eye from the face of the Empress.
"That Wharton was my friend," said he, "I did not withhold from Your
Majesty; that my father was, and is, his implacable enemy, I have just
affirmed: and that it is not in the power of Duke Wharton, or of any
other man, to draw us from our allegiance to Spain, and our fidelity to
you--name our accusers, and I am ready to maintain it with my blood."
Elizabeth had now restrained the feelings, which some pleading
recollections of Ripperda had awakened, and with haughty composure, she
replied:--
"You may revenge the discovery of your falsehood, by the lives of your
accusers; but the times are past, when truth was proved by bloodshed.
Yet, as you demand it, I shall not refuse you knowledge of your crimes.
They are simple, but they are comprehensive.--First, your nightly
visitations to the Electress of Bavaria, under the disguise of the
Chevalier de Phaffenberg!--"
"It is false!" cried Louis, placing his hand on his heart, and looking
up to heaven; "by the eternal judgment, I swear it is false!"
Elizabeth raised her hands in horror.
"Matchless villain!" cried she.
Then frowning terribly, with a redoubling detestation in every feature,
she rapidly continued:--
"And have you the audacity to swear, you never visited her at all?
That you did not steal from her house by a secret passage, on the
night of the destruction of the opera-house? That you have not had
clandestine meetings with the arch-counsellor of her treasons? And that
this rebellious pair, have not stimulated your presumption, to draw my
daughter to disgrace her rank by listening to a passion from you?"
Louis was too much appalled by the two leading charges, to shew any
surprise at the third. Had Wharton then betrayed that they had met?
That the preserver of his mistress, had once entered her palace?--The
blood which mantled on his cheek at the accusation, faded before this
direful suspicion; and his eyes, dropping under the indignant beams
of the Empress, told her that in this instance at least, his face was
honest.
"You do not dare repeat the perjury!" cried she; "leave my presence."
"Not as a guilty man!" cried he, looking up with the bold desperation
of innocence; "I have now, nothing to gain or to lose with the Empress
of Germany, but my honour; and again I affirm, that under no name but
that of Louis de Montemar, did I ever enter the palace of the Electress
of Bavaria. I never did enter it but once, and that was on the night
Your Majesty mentions. I have also met the Duke of Wharton, by
accident, in the courts of this palace, and in various assemblies; and
by compulsive necessity, twice in the garden of the chateau:--but we
never meet again!" Here Louis stopped. For these charges had so struck
on his heart, (as he believed they could only have been inflicted
by the threatened vengeance of his friend;) that he forgot the one
respecting the Princess.
"You own that you have visited the Electress, and communed with her
emissary!" cried Elizabeth, "avow your object, and it will answer
to the point to which your effrontery has not yet spoken. Was it to
dethrone my husband, and make my daughter a prisoner to the Bavarian
Empress? It would have crowned the adventure, to have rewarded her
champion with the hand of a captive Princess!"
Stung to the soul, Louis threw himself at her feet, to proclaim his
innocence of all these inferences, before heaven and her. But she
started back, as from a viper in her path.
"Base hypocrite!" cried she, "I am not to be moved by subtilty.--I
know how you dedicated that attitude to the dishonour of your future
sovereign. But she is now rescued from your arts--this foot crushed
your pernicious resemblance, as the heaven you outrage, will one day do
yourself. You may grovel in the dust, but I will hear no more."
Louis rose calmly from his knee.
"Empress," said he, "I solicit for justice no more; but I owe it to
my honour, to declare, that my presence in the Bavarian palace was
occasioned by a service I had accidentally performed to one of its
inhabitants. My meetings with Duke Wharton were an attempt to penetrate
into a conspiracy which I knew was forming against my father; but
I failed in my purpose. The enemies of the Duke de Ripperda have
annihilated his political life, and plunged his son into the same abyss
of calumny; but I am not yet sunk to baseness, nor hypocrisy. It was
not to the Empress of Germany I knelt, but to the power of justice
in her person. But that is past; and I feel, that could birth give
dignity, my ancestors of Nassau reigned in this very palace! And, if
devotion to their successor, be a virtue in their posterity, mine have
been faithful to the Emperor, to the last article in the treaty; and I
have been devoted to Your Majesty, to the sacrifice of my happiness.
This we have done! But, young as I am, I have lived to see, that when
power is lost, birth is nothing; and virtue, nothing, but to the
possessor's heart!"
The face of Elizabeth blazed with resentment.
"And this is your answer to your daring passion for my daughter?"
"The Emperor knows, I never dared to love the Princess," replied Louis,
"and to the honour of his Imperial word, I refer Your Majesty."
Louis bowed with a backward step, as he was preparing to withdraw.
"Incomparable insolence!" exclaimed she; "stop, and know that he is
your accuser!" Louis smiled with so insufferable an air of scornful
superiority, that she was momentarily struck dumb; but violently
extricating her powers of speech, she sternly replied:--
"Every aim of that towering spirit is known to him and to me; but every
aim is crushed!"
"Human power cannot crush my aims!" rejoined Louis; "they are to
uphold my father's honour and my own truth. And while he deserves the
reverence of the world, what can prove that they are lost!"
The Empress's hand was on her beating forehead, but she turned, even
fiercely to his question.
"The position in which he now lies, by the determined falsehoods of
his son!" replied she, "return to him, covered with dishonour; return
to him, bearing the curse of the friend of his virtue--of the mother
of Maria Theresa! Return to him, spurned by the Countess Altheim; and
abhorred and stigmatized by all honest men!"
Elizabeth left the blameless victim of all this wrath, standing in
the middle of the floor. Every word she breathed, every anathema she
denounced, seemed urged by the quick revenge of Duke Wharton! All
justice, all fair inference was denied him! His father and himself were
alike shut out from the bosom of friendship; were alike betrayed by
them in whom they had most confidently trusted! The burthen was almost
too much for him to bear. And rushing from the apartment; he knew no
more of what he said or did, till he found himself thrown upon a chair,
and alone, in his own chamber.
CHAP. XIII.
The official transfers were soon made. Monteleone received the diploma
of _Chargé des Affaires_. The Emperor and Empress refused the usual
forms of admitting the recalled minister to a parting audience; and
not a man, Spaniard, nor Austrian, appeared within the gates of the
_Palais d'Espagne_, to pay a farewell compliment, to the son of their
benefactor and friend.
The finger of royal disgrace was on him; and all fled the spot on which
it lay. Solitude was around his lately crowded courts; silence in every
room; and when business took him abroad, avoidance met him in every
passing countenance. The ladies, who had opened their houses to him,
now shut up their daughters till he had left the city; but few needed
the precaution; for with his fortunes had vanished the most powerful
charms, even of Louis de Montemar. This mortification, however, was
spared him; as in the lofty consciousness of his own integrity, and
as high a disdain of the injustice he had received, he went no where
to solicit compassion nor propitiate candour. But had he known their
present sentiments, the assurance that Countess Altheim breathed the
same, would have been sufficient in his eyes to transform the deed of
banishment to one of welcome liberty. In the midst of all this gloom of
misery, his freedom from her, shone like a star in the dark hemisphere,
that promised night was not to remain for ever.
When his lonely carriage passed the barrier, (for all his state
attendants were left to the new ambassador,) he threw himself back, and
exclaimed. "How did I enter you, proud, ungrateful city? Full of hope,
and enterprise, and honour! How do I quit you? Bereft by you of all!
Ruined, dishonoured, desolate!"
The barb was in his heart. It was there, in the image of Wharton;
and it corroded with a slow and deadly poison. Still as he journeyed
forward, and compared events with time, he could not but feel some
satisfaction, when he found by calculation, that had he been weak
enough to yield to the proposal he had rejected, and accepted the
discovery of the authors of this vast overthrow, by the surrender
of his innocence; it would still have been too late to prevent his
father's fall in Spain. The Empress had shewn herself too entirely
prejudiced, to have been affected by any document he could have
presented. And while he thought on this, with gratitude to heaven for
his firmness; he conceived a deeper horror of the friend, who might
have seduced him to such guilt, and left him no other payment than
unavailing remorse, and deserved infamy. In his own person, he was now
convinced of the truth of his father's charge against this once beloved
Wharton. That _he could bereave, but not bestow_! In the garden of the
Chateau, he had promised a preservation he could not have performed;
on the same spot he had threatened a vengeance he had now taken!
Louis attributed all Elizabeth's accusations to the resentment of his
treacherous friend; and by that act considered himself despoiled by
Wharton of all that was most dear to him.
"I will forget him!" cried he to himself, "my honoured father, I come
to thee, to stand by thee alone! To uphold and cheer thee! To uphold
and cheer myself, with the conviction that I yet possess thee! To glory
in the virtue that has given thee the fate of Aristides!"
In a pass of the Appenines, Louis's solitary vehicle was met by a
courier from Spain. He brought a credential from Martini, which
announced him as his brother Lorenzo, who had lately been received
by Ripperda into his household in the quality of a page. The young
man came full speed, to meet the recalled minister; and to hasten his
arrival at Madrid; where the Duke lay, in a state to hear no other
counsellor, to receive no other comfort.
Lorenzo got into the carriage with his master's son; and detailed the
particulars of his mission, as they proceeded rapidly to Genoa. Louis
listened to the narrative with unshrinking fortitude.
Immediately on Ripperda's return from Vienna, the King had published
an edict, that a revision of all sentences, and a review of all
transactions by judges, governors, collectors, and every other kind
of royal officers, should be subjected to the cognizance of the Duke
of Ripperda. This immense accession of authority put the individual
interest of every man in Spain into his hands; and made him no less
terrible in the city and provinces, than formidable to the grandees,
and an object of jealousy to the King's sons. In short, he was such a
minister, as never had been seen before; a kind of Vicar-general, whose
power wanted nothing of supreme sovereignty, but the permanency of a
throne.
Lorenzo observed, that his brother had owned to him, that, from the
Duke's free exercise of one branch of this extensive authority, he had
foreseen a rupture between his master and the majority of the Spanish
nobility. Since his return from Vienna, his manner to them, and to
society at large, was completely changed. He no longer conciliated, but
compelled. He summoned the greatest and most powerful of the grandees
before his tribunal, whether the appeal came from prince or peasant;
and did such strict justice, that none could reproach, though all
murmured: the great, for being made to feel there was a power above
their wills; and the little, that the laws of Spain should be dispensed
by a man who had been born out of her dominions. While his home policy
was good, and efficient; and his outward politics were only held in the
balance, by the tergiversation of Austria, there were yet men in the
cabinet who privately ridiculed his plans as a mere political romance.
And he found it so. For what is speculatively right, is generally
practically wrong. Men's probable actions are calculated by the law of
reason; but their performance is usually the result of caprice.
In the midst of the universal discontent excited by the agents of his
numerous rivals and enemies, the main mine was sprung, and Ripperda's
fortunes received their final blow. The King and Queen of Spain were
made to believe the most contradictory, preposterous, and terrible
things of his private intentions. And, in one hour, he received three
successive messages from the King, to inform him, that his offices in
the state, the army, and the commercial interests of his country, were
taken from him. That Grimaldo, the Marquis de Castellor, and the Count
de Paz, filled his places; and that a courier was dispatched to Vienna,
to recall his son.
Lorenzo related, that the intelligence of the first messenger, which
took from him the office of prime minister, was delivered in such a
manner as to excite so unguarded an indignation in the Duke, that
he extended his reproaches on his enemies, even to the King; and in
the tempest of his wrath, uttered things of His Majesty, the report
of which doubly incensed the Monarch and his Queen. This messenger
was Baptista Orendayn, the nephew of the Count de Paz. The new
ministers were well aware of his insidious powers to insult and to
betray, and they selected him to convey their triumph to the Duke.
Ripperda, having exhausted himself under the influence of the young
sycophant's irritating sympathy, remained in gloomy silence during the
communications of the two succeeding messengers. When they were all
departed from him, he sat for an hour motionless, in intense thought,
with his hands clasped in each other, and his eyes fixed on the floor.
Martini passed to and fro in the room, without notice from his master.
At last the Duke suddenly started up, as one out of a trance.
"I will go to the Queen!" cried he.
It was now about nine o'clock, in a fine autumnal evening. He directed
his carriage to the _Buen Retiro_. He arrived, but was refused
admittance. He returned to his palace, and called for his secretary;
but no secretary was to be found. Not one of the officers of any of his
late numerous offices were now in attendance. All were fled with the
stream of power; and nothing but amazed and alarmed family domestics,
were seen gliding about the galleries, in silence and dismay.
Castanos, however, presented himself; and by him Ripperda wrote to
his son and the Empress, and dispatched him to Vienna: but Monteleone
encountered him on the way. He soon found the old Spaniard had a price;
and having purchased the perusal of the packet, suffered the son's
hurried billet to pass; but the resistless appeal to Elizabeth he
committed to the flames.
While Ripperda was writing other letters, his fixed attention was at
last diverted, by an unusual sort of tumult in the square before his
palace. He was accustomed, at his return, or issuing from his gates,
to be hailed and lackied by the acclamations of the populace. His
largesses were abundant, and the uproar of vehement thanksgiving, was
ever on the watch from the venal multitude. But, for the purpose of the
time, the dole was now doubled at the porches of the new ministers:
and the same mob, who, four-and-twenty hours before had rent the air
with shouts of _long live the great Duke Ripperda!_ now tore their
lungs with curses on his name, and threats of vengeance for the ruin of
Spain.
The madness of the people seemed to grow on their own violence; and
the fury with which they assailed his gates with flambeaux, clubs
and hatchets, left little doubt that they meant to fire the palace,
and massacre its inhabitants. Martini urged his master to withdraw
privately from the danger.
"What?" cried Ripperda, "fly like a coward and a criminal before the
ungrateful rabble of Madrid? Never; though their king were at their
head, to urge the murder of their benefactor. I am dispossessed, but am
not fallen; and that, myself will shew them."
As he spoke, he rushed towards the open balcony, which projected over
the great gate, and extended his arm to the people, in the act to
speak. The blazing lights in the apartment behind him, and the broad
glare from the torches beneath, shewed in a moment the noble figure of
the Duke, and his commanding gesture.
Struck with surprise, the dead silence of profound awe, for an instant
stilled the whole assembly. But before the big words of vehement
indignation could burst from the lips of Ripperda, a watchful emissary
of his enemies fired a carabine direct at the balcony. Aggression
once committed, every restraint of reverence and shame were cast
away; and others, near the assassin, echoed his cry of "death to the
heretic!"--Martini threw his arms around his master, and dragging him
within the balcony, forcibly shut the doors. The Duke turned on him a
look of unutterable meaning. "You would be more in fashion," cried
he, "if you stabbed your patron! Do it, Martini, and spare me from the
knives of that ungrateful mob!"
Martini urged his lord, on the only plea to which he would now listen;
to save himself for future vengeance. His carriage was brought round to
a private door, in a back street; and Ripperda was at last persuaded to
enter it. But there was a spy in the house, who informed his enemies of
what was done; and before the vehicle, which contained only the Duke
and Martini, could pass into the second street towards Segovia, it was
met by the howling populace, and surrounded. The windows and doors were
quickly beaten in; and Martini, who had hastily covered his livery with
one of his master's cloaks, was dragged out, amidst the imprecations
of his determined murderers. Ripperda would not tamely witness the
sacrifice of his faithful servant; and with a pistol, with which he
had armed himself, shot the man who had seized Martini, through the
head. He then snatched the fellow pistol from his belt, and fired it,
but without effect, upon the ruffians who threw themselves upon him.
He heard Martini groan under his feet, as he himself seemed to grapple
with a hundred miscreants, in the last struggles for his life.
But a shield was yet held over the head of Ripperda. The tumult
increased in the rear, with the clattering of horses; and, the cries of
the mob; as they fled in terror before the gleaming swords of several
horsemen, who pressed towards the carriage. Ripperda had already
received several flesh wounds, when the stroke of his deliverer's sabre
beat down the arm that held the last weapon that was aimed against him;
a huge rough hanger, in the hands of a pardoned galley-slave,--who
thus struck at the man whose chief offence was resistance to oppression!
His defenders sufficiently dispersed the mob, to allow their leader to
dismount; and advancing to Ripperda, who had extricated himself from
the writhing limbs of the wounded wretches beneath him; "Duke," said
he, "follow me, and these horsemen shall guard you to safety."
Ripperda, at the same moment, felt a hand on his garment; and, in
the next, Martini bruised and bleeding, had drawn himself from under
the shattered carriage, whither his enemies had cast him. He raised
himself, and stood by the side of his master. The horsemen drew around
the group; and galloping before it, made a clear way amongst the
flying populace, till they conducted Ripperda to the side of a plain
travelling carriage.
Their leader, in a suppressed voice, requested the fallen statesman to
enter it. Suspicion of some refined species of treachery glanced upon
his mind. By a feigned rescue, he might be betrayed to an interminable
captivity!
"To what asylum would that carriage convey me?" demanded he, in a tone
that intimated his doubts.
"To the honour of an open enemy," was the reply; "I am Duke Wharton!"
At this part of Lorenzo's narrative, a cry, unutterable in words, burst
from the engloomed but steadfast bosom of his auditor. It was the light
breaking upon chaos! Regardless of the presence of the Italian, he
fervently clasped his hands together, and inwardly exclaimed:--
"I thank thee, my God, for this!" Then covering his face, he gave way
to the balm of tears.
Lorenzo gazed on him with sympathy, and wept also; but it was under a
belief that the young Marquis was thus powerfully affected, by the
simple fact of his father's rescue. The amiable page knew not that
it was for the rescue of all his future fellowship with man. The sun
was again in the heavens to Louis, in the fidelity of Wharton; in the
generous revenge he had taken of both son and father.
Strange, inconsistent, noble, erring Wharton! The good was so blended
in thee with the ill, that the soul of affection hovered about thy
erratic steps, with the watchful tenacity of a guardian angel.
"Oh," cried Louis to himself, "the germs of the tree of life are in
that noble, disinterested heart! He has saved my father; and I may weep
upon his bosom again!"
The happy agitation of Louis was so great; so pre-eminently did
he prize the real character of the beings he loved, before their
appendages of fame or power; that it was with an upraised countenance,
and an open eye, he listened to the remainder of Lorenzo's narrative.
Ripperda no longer hesitated to step into the carriage of his
preserver. Wharton made the bruised Martini enter also; and
accompanying them himself, the voiture set off, escorted by his
servants.
The whole party remained silent for some minutes. Ripperda was the
first that broke the pause.
"Duke Wharton," said he, "you have at last accomplished your object!
The _proudest man in Christendom_ has found no friend in his extremest
necessity, but you his bitterest enemy! This is not a time in which I
can express my sense of the obligation you have laid upon me. You have
saved my life; you must now save my honour. One of the treasons alleged
against me, is collusion with you. If I seek refuge at your lodgings,
I shall confirm the falsehood of my slanderers: and I will perish,
perish by their bullets or their daggers; rather than yield them the
advantage of witnessing one of their perjuries, by a dubious action of
my own!"
Wharton approved of this caution; and, observing that the Duke's
villa at Segovia, would now be as unsafe as his palace at Madrid; he
proposed to him the bold measure of proving his sincerity to the house
of Brunswick, by throwing himself at once on the protection of General
Stanhope, the British Ambassador in Spain. Ripperda saw the advantage
of this suggestion; and the carriage was turned towards the residence
of this gentleman, which was a mile out of the city, on the road to St.
Ildefonso.
On arriving there, the Ambassador was from home; but Ripperda did
not hesitate to assume the rights of hospitality at the house of the
representative of a sovereign, to whose legal accession to the throne
of England, he had obtained the acknowledgement of half Europe.
Wharton went in with his companions. And while some of the servants
were gone to arouze the medical attendants of the English Ambassador,
to attend on the wounds of his guest, the two Dukes remained in private
conference for half an hour. When Wharton withdrew, Martini, who sat
in the anti-room, remarked that his countenance was clouded and even
stern;--but he smiled when he passed him; and bade him take care of his
noble master, for in his fidelity rested the fate of "Cæsar and his
fortunes!"
General Stanhope arrived a few hours after the departure of the English
Duke, (whose name had not been mentioned in the house;) and was not
less surprised than perplexed at finding who had claimed his sanctuary.
The hurts of Ripperda, as well as those of his servant, had been found
sufficiently deep, to authorize the surgeons in recommending immediate
repose; but the Duke would not hear of any rest for himself, until he
had seen the Ambassador. When Stanhope entered to him, he found his
guest lying on a sofa, in a high state of fever, both from his wounds
and agitation. Ripperda rose at his appearance, and in the name of
honour, and the privileges of his station, claimed his protection from
the immediate attack of his political enemies.
What more passed between his master and the Ambassador, Lorenzo could
give no account; only, that General Stanhope re-ordered his carriage
as soon as he left the chamber of his guest, which was then within an
hour of day-break. He set off for Madrid, and did not return till the
morning was far advanced. He was then closeted with Ripperda for two
hours; and Martini heard the voice of his master very high. However, it
appeared, he was to remain unmolested in the house of the Ambassador;
though it was immediately surrounded by a Spanish Guard. The bustle of
these proceedings proclaimed the asylum of the Duke; and Lorenzo, who
had only arrived that day from the Segovian villa, (when, to his great
consternation he found the house at Madrid deserted by the servants,
and its bureaus ransacked by the police;) lost no time in seeking his
brother and persecuted master, in their reputed sanctuary.
The Duke saw him; and while he walked the room; for the perturbation of
his mind, would not permit him to take the repose his wounds demanded;
he told him to go instantly to meet his son.
"You will find him," said he, "some where between this and Vienna.
Describe to him what you have heard and seen. My pen would consume the
paper, should I attempt to write my injuries! Tell him, that my life
has been assailed by those who now sit in my seat!--Not by their own
coward hands:--They spirit up the rabble to do their bloody work,
that they may throw my murder on the indignation of the people! There,
however, my fortune baffled them. Now, they insult my protector: they
demand his promise, that I shall not escape; and when that is given,
they set guards on his house, as if he were a gaoler, and I a prisoner
for high-treason! But they venture not to charge it on me: their
own infamy is all they dare proclaim; to treat me like the worst of
criminals, before I am convicted, before I am accused!----Shew my son,
these things; and let him hasten to my support. Tell him, when he is by
my side, I will confront them face to face; I will let Spain, and all
Europe know, that though honour is banished from the world, it lives
and reigns in the bosom of William de Ripperda."
Louis listened to all these details, with various inward emotions; but
he was now braced to quell the smallest outward appearance of any. He
spoke little in return; but his step was firm, his eye clear, and his
port erect, as he gave his orders at the port of Genoa, for immediate
embarkation. A vessel was ready to sail; the wind fair, but boisterous;
and under a heavy gale, he launched on the ocean that was to convey him
to the land of his forefathers; that was to consign him to the dungeons
of Madrid.
CHAP. XIV.
Meanwhile the cabal against the ruined Ripperda raged with redoubled
fury in the Spanish cabinet. No appeals from him were suffered to reach
His Majesty, while he was accused of every political crime that could
criminate a minister; and amongst others, of bribery from the merchants
of Ostend; and this, Baptista Orendayn protested on oath, having seen
the golden caskets in the hands of his son. Charge after charge was
brought forward by the Spaniards. Baron Otho de Routemberg, (a brother
of the Austrian minister, and his Ambassador at Madrid) supported them
all by a shew of evidence; till, at last, the King was so far persuaded
of the attempt at poisoning him having originated with Ripperda, that
he privately summoned a committee of the Council of Castile, and laid
the proofs before their judgement.
With equal secrecy they consulted together, and declared it expedient
to commit the regicide to some stronger hold than that of the English
ambassador's house, till the full council could be assembled, and a
solemn trial be made of the offender.
General Stanhope afterwards learnt, that while the new ministers
affected great indignation at what they represented as Ripperda's
clandestine intelligence with the emissaries of James Stuart, they
were severally giving private audiences to Duke Wharton. Philip was
entirely in the dark, as to this avenue of their intelligence; for the
Duke's presence in Madrid was not generally known, though the Queen
herself was more than suspected of having admitted him to a conference
in the disguise of a priest. But Stanhope had proof given him, that
Wharton passed several hours alone with Grimaldo, on the evening of
his rescuing Ripperda from the populace; and that on the night of the
sitting of the committee of the Council of Castile, he was seen gliding
out of the chamber of the Queen's confessor; who immediately after,
went to Her Majesty; and thence carried a message from her to the King,
just as he was passing into the cabinet to decide on the judgement that
was denounced on Ripperda.
The sentence that was then determined on, and sanctioned by the royal
assent, was executed the following morning some hours before the usual
time of rising. While all was in profound tranquillity in the city, the
Chief Alcaid of the court got into a carriage equipped for travelling,
and with a strong escort set forth towards the British residence. A
double detachment of soldiers was already there, with orders to support
him in case of resistance. It happened that the house porter had
risen before his accustomed time; and supposing, from a stir he heard
without, that the usual guard was going to be relieved, he opened the
door to amuse himself with the ceremony. The Alcaid and his officers
seized the favourable moment, and entered the house without opposition.
Some of the soldiers secured the porter from creating an alarm; and the
rest filling the hall, fastened the door.
The Alcaid having learnt from the terrified domestic, in what part of
the residence the Duke de Ripperda slept, went with his Alquazils, and
a military guard, up stairs in the described direction. The tumult
they made in hurrying along the passages, awoke General Stanhope; who,
hastening out of his room to investigate the cause, met the officer
of justice in the lobby. A few words explained his errand; but the
brave Englishman would hardly hear it to the end. He had received the
King's word, that the Duke de Ripperda should remain unmolested in his
house, until he was demanded to public trial; and he declared, that on
the peril of his life, he would resist all illegal proceedings to the
contrary.
The Alcaid presented a letter from the Count de Paz, begging His
Excellency to read it at least, while he went forward to apprise the
ex-minister of the sentence against him. Stanhope, having no other
covering than his dressing gown, took the letter, and retired in angry
haste, to read it and hurry on his cloaths. Its contents were to this
effect; and they were addressed to him.
"That His Majesty, knowing the integrity of the British ambassador,
appealed also to his good understanding. His Excellency must be too
well acquainted with the Duke de Ripperda's delinquency, not to see the
fatal consequences to the royal authority, should His Majesty bear any
longer with the temerity of the Duke, in braving his sovereign with
propositions in the language of a prince, rather than of a subject; and
all from being in the fancied security of a foreign ambassador's house.
"Such a scandalous example, might hereafter induce some other minister
of His Majesty to transgress in a similar way, under the assurance of a
similar asylum; and so cover guilt from the royal justice, even within
the walls of the royal courts!
"These reflections ought to engage His Excellency to surrender the Duke
de Ripperda, on the first summons; and that summons is made in the name
of the King, who commands it to be imparted to the British ambassador,
that if he insists on the sanctuary of his house, he places the Duke
equally out of the reach of His Majesty's mercy, as of his justice. If
on a farther impartial inspection of his ministry, it should appear he
had not only betrayed the interests of the state, but had devised the
death of the King; when the delinquent was in the power of justice,
then His Majesty could either make him a great example in an exemplary
punishment; or, what was infinitely more precious in his sight, shew
the world as great an example in pardoning so formidable a criminal."
While Stanhope was reading these, and other arguments to persuade,
where force was already determined, the Alcaid and his guards
approached the door of the Duke's anti-chamber. On opening it rather
rudely, (for all now depended on dispatch,) Martini sprang from his
mattrass, and seeing the armed men by the dawning light, demanded what
they wanted?
"We must speak with your master," replied their leader.
Martini had now approached them; and recognising the office of the
Alcaid by his habit, when he glanced also on the drawn swords of his
attendants, he was at no loss to guess the purpose of their visit; but
placing himself before the entrance of the interior chamber, with all
the pride of its noble occupier elevating his own manner, he replied:
"My master is not accustomed to intrusion at an hour like this. You
must await his commands till noon."
"Seize that fellow," returned the Alcaid, motioning to his men. Two of
them obeyed; and Martini was held, pinioned between them, while the
Alcaid, followed by the rest, passed direct into the chamber. Since his
misfortunes, the Duke's sleep was peculiarly profound, and he now lay
in as composed a slumber, as if he slept in his tomb. But the Alcaid,
fearing resistance from the Ambassador, should he rejoin them before
Ripperda had surrendered himself, darted towards the bed; and drawing
back the curtains, roughly awoke the Duke. Ripperda started up in the
bed, and beheld it surrounded by gleaming sabres. Before he could
speak, the officer of Justice proclaimed his errand: that he arrested
him for high-treason, and came to carry him to the state-prison of
Segovia.
"It shall be my corpse!" cried the Duke, snatching a sword from the
unprepared hand of the soldier who stood nearest to him, and attempting
to rush from the bed.
But the Alcaid had ordered a concerted sign to be made to the men
below; and, while those present threw themselves upon the Duke, the
other guards hastened up stairs, and filled the chamber. Stanhope came
into the room at the same instant, and called loudly on the illegal
proceeding; on the breach of his privileges as an ambassador, on the
shameful violation of the claims of honour, and the sacred rights of
hospitality!
The Duke was now insensible, from a blow he had received on the
temple, in the scuffle. This sight redoubled the indignation, and the
threatenings of the brave Englishman; but the Alcaid drew forth his own
order, signed by the King, "to take Ripperda, dead or alive;" and then
the minister found himself obliged to resist no longer. However, though
he stood quiescent while the lifeless Duke was wrapped in the coverlid,
and carried to the carriage, he called all around to witness, that he
protested against a deed so contrary to the law of nations, and the
commonest bonds of faith between man and man.
In passing through the hall, (Martini having been hurried thither by
his sentinels,) when the faithful Italian saw his master in so lost a
condition, he broke from his guards, and with a dreadful malediction on
his murderers, rushed towards him. The soldiers attempted to beat him
back; but throwing himself almost upon their swords, his attachment so
affected General Stanhope, that he said to the Alcaid:
"If it be not against your positive orders, let me see, Sir, that
you have some regard to humanity, in respecting the fidelity of that
man.--Let him accompany his master."
The Alcaid replied, he had no orders, but what related to the person
of the Duke; and therefore, to oblige his Excellency, he would permit
Martini to attend his Master.
"Not to oblige me;" returned the English minister, "but to lessen the
account of outrages I shall immediately charge upon this court to my
own! Therefore, on the peril of your safety, pretend to augment that
sum, by your own authority alone!"
The Alcaid bowed to Stanhope; and ordered Martini to be placed in the
carriage with his master, between a soldier, and an officer of the
police. The vehicle then drove off at a rapid gallop, followed by the
Alcaid and a grand escort of armed cavalry, towards the dismal Alcazar
of Segovia.
CHAP. XV.
Stanhope's indignation was as vehement, as it was sincere, at what had
been done; and, to every one of the royal ministers, separately and
collectively, he spoke his mind with corresponding boldness. Indeed,
his remonstrances were so strong and what he urged in the Duke's
favour, so powerful; that, as it came repeatedly before the King,
they began to fear the issue.--Difficulties in substantiating their
various allegations against Ripperda, were starting up every hour,
and the charge of poisoning, was completely disproved. From all these
considerations, they saw the necessity of keeping the ruined minister
from any chance of gaining the royal ear; which, they augured, could
hardly be prevented, when his son should arrive; whose high character,
notwithstanding the aspersions of his enemies, was whispered about,
from the representations of Sinzendorff. Indeed, those who had seen
Louis, and knew the foibles of the Queen, were afraid, that should she
see him, she might transfer that notice to the son, personal jealousy
had alone withdrawn from the father. Impelled by these apprehensions,
they moved every engine to convict the Duke of heresy, before Louis
could arrive; and in that case, should the Inquisition once claim him
as their victim, they knew the bigotry of Philip would abandon his
former favourite without another question.
While these machinations were going on at Madrid, Ripperda found the
Alcazar at Segovia answer every purpose of his malignant rivals,
but that of subduing his spirit. They had placed him in charge of a
creature of their own. And though the noble prisoner lay for several
days in such extremity, that for as many nights his faithful servant
despaired of his ever seeing the light of another morning, yet no
physician was permitted to enter those dismal walls. A dungeon was his
chamber; and the coarsest fare, his support. The men, who would not
dare to administer poison or strangulation, calculated without remorse
on this way of ridding themselves of an obnoxious life. When they
thought him sufficiently reduced by sickness and bodily hardships, they
put his soul to the torture, by sending a well-tutored priest to extort
a confession of his crimes. The demand was backed by an insulting
assurance, that, on such a proof of penitence, he should be allowed the
indulgence of the state apartments, and the range of the garden for
exercise.
Ripperda rejected these insidious proffers, with indignation. Sometimes
the language of his Inquisitor provoked him beyond self-controul and,
between the delirium of illness, and the phrenzy of despair, he,
more than once, was left raving, or insensible, in the arms of his
servant. As time wore away, and no tidings of Louis or Lorenzo arrived,
his enemies took advantage of this circumstance; and on Martini
incautiously dropping a hint of the young Marquis's future revenge on
the injurers of his father, the priest intimated that Louis was in too
good an understanding with his own interests, to unite them again with
a discarded traitor, though he were his parent.
This imputation on his son was too much for the small remnant of
patience that remained to the Duke. He was now reduced to a maddening
state of mental irritation; to an exasperated hatred of human nature;
and denouncing Austria and Spain in one wide malediction, he fiercely
commanded their agent to leave his presence. The man, however, sat
unmoved in soul or in countenance, while Martini looked with anguish
on his master; as on a noble galley he had lately seen proudly stemming
its steady way through the raging sea, but now beheld bereft of rudder
and compass, and at the mercy of every wind.
The malignant priest waited for a momentary calm, and then threw out
some dark hints, that in a few days Ripperda would be removed to a
surer durance; and on a double charge of having secretly maintained the
principles of heresy in himself; and entrusted the interests of His
Catholic Majesty to his son, whom he knew to be a professed heretic.
The Duke listened to this in gloomy silence; but when the subtle agent
proceeded to say, that this son had offered his evidence to witness the
same, Ripperda started from his chair. He now knew no bounds to his
wrath; and he proclaimed it in such a manner, that the terrified priest
flew before him. Insult and outrage seemed to have given that bodily
vigour to Ripperda, which medicine and surgery had taken no pains to
restore.
"Revenge is within me, like a new principle of life!" cried he, to
Martini; "I will free myself. And then they shall feel the strength
that lies in this single arm!"
Martini learnt from the servants of the prison, that the priest's
denunciation was no vain threat; for preparations were silently making
for the Duke's removal to the Inquisition, as soon as the King could
be brought to sign the warrant. All knew that such a warrant was the
signal of death; and of such a death, that human nature shuddered at
the bare idea of its horrors. Martini hastened to his master with the
intelligence. He found him leaning over a map of the world, which
lay on the table before him. Ripperda attended to all he said, with
profound attention. When he had finished speaking, he commanded him
to withdraw for an hour; after which time, he would tell him his
resolution.
It was two hours, before the Duke called him in from the anti-chamber,
which was his usual station as his master's guard; and then he calmly
told him that it was his determination to effect his own escape, and
to take his revenge from the pillars of Hercules. As he spoke, he
pointed with his finger to the spot on the map which marked the Rock of
Gibraltar. Martini readily came into all his master's plans; and gladly
heard him discuss them, with all his former sobriety of manner, and
decision of command.
"But," asked the faithful servant, "should the Marquis visit this
prison when we are gone, how is he to know where to follow you?"
"My actions shall proclaim to him and to the world where to follow me!"
replied the Duke; "If he be the parricide these people represent, he
will then repent the poor part he has now taken; and see the policy,
if not the duty, of being true to the fortunes of such a father. But,
if these wretches have slandered him, and he be indeed my son,--then I
will make that England, which fostered him, what I would have made this
ungrateful, ruined country!"
Martini saw that a temporary mist clouded the mind of his master;
but that noble nature had been so smitten by universal ingratitude,
he did not wonder it should doubt every dubious appearance. He,
however, had seen enough of Louis, to admire and to love him; and he
zealously exerted himself to overthrow the suspicions against him which
occasionally arose in the mind of his father. Something influenced
by his reasoning, Ripperda employed the greatest part of the day in
writing a large packet for his son. He inclosed it under a cover to
the Marquis Santa Cruz, who had a villa in the neighbourhood. Martini
delivered it the same night into the hands of the Marchioness, her
husband being still in Sardinia; but she assured the faithful servant
of her care of its contents.
Ripperda's attention was next directed to put his plan of escape, in
train for execution. It was modelled by the difficult situation of
the Alcazar. This state prison stands on the summit of a huge rock,
overlooking the city of Segovia on one side; and on the other, which is
nearly perpendicular, and covered with matted underwood to a thickness
almost impenetrable, it precipitates down to a fosse, filled from the
river Atayada. The castle was erected by the Moors; and is fortified
according to their ancient mode. The large old square towers are bound
round their battlements with a heavy stone-work of chains, proclaiming
from afar the subjection in which the Moresco princes formerly held
the Spanish land. This once formidable fortress, like their banished
race, was, in many parts, in a state of decay; and, in others, totally
destroyed. Some of the buttresses were mouldering away; and, where
one of the towers had fallen, its ruins dammed up part of the ditch;
at least it raised a causeway under the water, so high that a person
acquainted with its direction, might pass over very safely, knee-deep
in the stream.
In a dungeon of the corresponding tower, on this side of the castle,
was the prison of Ripperda.
Martini prepared a couple of stout mules, and concealed them amongst
the thickets on the opposite side of the fosse. In that part, it was
little better than a morass, from the occasional overflowing of the
waters at the rainy seasons. He also procured the habits of muleteers,
for the Duke and himself; and a ladder of ropes, to descend from the
window of the prison to the top of the rock; whence they were to
scramble their way down its declivity to the edge of the ditch.
Every thing was prepared for the momentous attempt; but on the very
morning of the day fixed on for the escape, Ripperda was visited by
a Jesuit of rank; who came on a special commission from the Marquis
de Paz, to apprize him that the King had signed his warrant for the
Inquisition; and to mock him with the assurance, that nothing could now
save him from the extremest vengeance of the offended church, but a
full acknowledgement of all his heretical and political iniquities. The
gracious message then was, that in such a case he should be represented
to the Pope, and possibly might be pardoned.
The Jesuit expatiated on the curse of heaven, which now manifested
itself on the head of the Duke in every relation of his life. Whether
in its public or private circumstances, all bore the marks of
universal excommunication. His son had deserted him; and the fortunes
on which he leaned as on a rock, were now sinking in the ocean; or
becoming the prey of corsairs, to swell the iniquity of infidels
like himself. All this circumlocution only informed Ripperda of a
misfortune, unworthy of his attention at the present moment: the loss
of his Levant merchantmen; part, in the late heavy storms; and part,
taken by the pirates of Barbary.
To impose upon this new emissary, he had received him, lying on his
bed, where he affected to have sustained a relapse of his illness;
and, during the whole discourse kept a stern silence. At last, being
vehemently urged for some reply to the proposition respecting a
penitential appeal to the Pope, Ripperda raised himself on his arm; and
with eyes glaring on his visitor, like the roused lion from his lair,
he fiercely replied:--
"Tell your employers, that before they again lay hands on the Duke de
Ripperda, he will have made his appeal to a tribunal which shall make
them tremble! And for your arguments! I too, studied in the Jesuits'
college, and am not to be ensnared!"
The priest supposed the infuriated Duke anticipated his own death, and
meant the tribunal of heaven; and shaking his head, while he pronounced
the words "reprobate!" and "accursed!" he left the apartment.
Martini urged that nothing should delay their departure that night;
for, after the information which the Jesuit brought, he saw the
approach of _a Familiar_ in every shadow that flitted across the
dungeon wall.
Ripperda sat a long time, absorbed in thought. He heard no word
of Martini's; he saw nothing of his busy arrangements for their
flight. The corsairs of Barbary, his own Moorish ancestors, and the
banishment of part of their race, while his own line remained great
lords in Spain; were all before his mind's eye, in fearful, prompting
apparition. His warlike progenitor, Don Valor de Ripperda, two hundred
years ago, had married the only daughter of the Moresco King of Granada.
His son, the renowned Don Ferdinand de Valor shook the Christian
kingdoms of Spain to their centre, when the dark policy of Philip II.
issued his edict to expel the Moorish descendants from their ancient
seats in Spain. Aben-Humeya was the name of the Granada princes. De
Valor resumed it, when he raised the rebel standard on the Alpuxara
mountains.
"Another Philip shall hear that name again!" cried Ripperda to
himself; and covering his face with his hands, to prevent any outward
circumstance disturbing the current of his meditations, he sat without
word or motion, till the dungeon became wrapped in total darkness, and
the hour of his attempt drew near.
Martini had furnished himself with gold from his master's villa in the
neighbourhood; which he had visited secretly by the Duke's directions,
through ways known only to himself; and to a treasury under ground,
which had escaped the scrutiny of the police, and was abundant in
jewels and ingots. The wealth, which Ripperda deemed necessary for his
expedition, was sewed into various parts of their muleteer garments.
Martini appeared from his little anti-room, with a lamp in his hand, as
the prison clock struck ten. It was a rough autumnal night; a bright
moon, at times shewed her head through the flying clouds; and at others
was totally obscured under a mass of billowy vapours, rolling over each
other, and descending till they touched the hills.
The goaler had locked his prisoners in, and retired to rest. The
sentinels were planted at their posts; each on the ramparts of the
curtain that ran between the towers. Ripperda roused himself from
his portentous trance, and arrayed his noble figure in the rugged
habiliments of the muleteer. In vain he dyed his visage with the
bista-nut; in vain he shrouded himself in the leathern jerkin,
unshapely boots, and huge Sierra-bonnet; still the grandeur of his air,
and the grace of his person, proclaimed the descendant of princes; and
he who was used to command, and be obeyed.
The light Italian looked what he assumed; a brisk, active muleteer,
full of life and merriment.
Their belts were filled with loaded pistols, which they covered from
observation by the fringes of their vests; a poniard was in each
well-guarded bosom; and a trusty sword by their sides. Being fully
equipped, Ripperda looked around him on the walls of his dungeon. It
was still in the verge of possibility that his son might seek his
father in that dismal chamber. He paused; and hastily wrote a few
lines, to say that parent still lived, and would yet proclaim himself
with honour to the world. He directed the brief letter to the Marquis
de Montemar, and left it on the table.
Martini threw up his hooked-rope; which catching on the iron stanchel
of the window, he drew himself by it to the top, and dislodged the bars
from their slight holding. A few days before, he had filed away their
firm adhesion to their sockets. Having made open way for his master,
he fastened the rope-ladder to the opposite side of the window, and
dropping it out, slid down its sides till he reached the bottom. Here
he drove its spiked extremity into the earth. By that time the Duke
had mounted by the same means to the window; and drawing up the rope
by which he had ascended, remained seated on the stone casement, till
Martini had fixed all right below. It was no sooner accomplished, than
Ripperda was on the top of the ladder, and in a few seconds by his side.
The sentinel was singing a sequedilla above; and its notes came to them
with the wailing blast. The moon was now full upon them, and Martini
putting out his head a little from the wall distinctly saw the musket
and waving feather of the soldier as he walked to and fro at his post.
Their garments, however, were dark; and they moved cautiously along
amongst the bushes at the bottom of the curtain, till they reached the
ruined tower whose fallen masses lessened the perpendicular of the
descent. Like the rest, it was covered with thicket; and they clambered
down from bush to bush and projecting roots of trees now no more, till
they arrived at the brink of the fosse.
Martini had tried the ford the night before; and plunging in, which
example Ripperda followed, both found a firm footing in the water.
They crossed in safety; and Martini, taking up a fragment of the ruin,
rolled the Duke's sumptuous garments round it, and also his own, and
sunk it in the ditch. This was to prevent the suspicion of their having
changed their usual dresses, when they fled. Martini then turned aside
to seek the mules. The moon again shone out from the black clouds.
"Fortune favours me!" cried Ripperda, as he looked up to her bright
orb, and to the frowning battlements he had left. "Thy ensign may light
me back to this castle in a different garb from that in which I leave
it! When Spain sees me again, it will not be as a benefactor."
He turned into the thickets to follow Martini, and was soon lost in the
darkness.
CHAP. XVI.
The second night after Louis had left the port of Genoa, the vessel
which contained him was blown to sea by the severity of the weather;
and drove about, contending with the tempest, far from the coasts of
Spain, for one and twenty days. Each succeeding day seemed an age,
to the heart of a son, impatient to console and cheer a suffering
parent under his undeserved misfortunes; and sleep seldom closed those
vigilant eyes that were ever watchful for a change in the wind; or
for some repose in the turbulent element, which bore him along with
unstemmable fury from the shores he sought.
Again and again he questioned Lorenzo on every particular of what had
occurred, propitious or adverse, during his father's administration;
and on what befel him after his most atrocious overthrow. Sometimes his
anxiety to join him became so uncontroulable, he was ready to throw
himself into the waves, to breast their torrent towards the Spanish
shores; at other times, he called upon himself to endure the hard trial
Providence had laid upon his filial patience; and to await its good
time of bringing him to the side of his father.
At last the storms changed their direction; and though equally
boisterous, blew the little vessel with velocity towards the Balearic
Isles. To persist in stretching for Barcelona would have been madness
in such desperate weather; the commander, therefore, determined to make
the nearest Spanish port. As the ship approached the coast, and Louis
for the first time beheld that land, which had so long been the bourn
of all his wishes; first, as the theatre of his father's fame, and
the stage where himself was to contend for the same deathless prize!
then as the spot that contained that father, stripped of every outward
honour, and excluded from all hope, but in the dutiful devotedness of
his son! He gazed on it in a strange tumult of mind. It was the land of
his forefathers; and with what views, with what feelings, was he first
to set his foot upon its shores!
Its high and abrupt outline cut the horizon between sea and sky, like
a superb citadel of mountains, guarding its rich Hesperian vales. When
he saw the golden clouds rolling from the sides of those stupendous
natural bulwarks, as the descending car of day plunged into the
refulgent main, he thought of his father's setting sun; of his last
beams gilding the country he loved; of that fair country, opening
before himself; as he had anticipated, luminous in glory, like the
unfolding gates of paradise! But even while he gazed, and mused, and
felt a pleased augury in the splendid show, the golden hues faded from
the ethereal amphitheatre; the clouds, darkening in their shapes,
collected around the headlands; and in grey and sombrous masses rested
on their tops, till a fierce and eddying wind from the south-east,
dispersed them in one wide and obscuring mist over the whole scene.
Louis drew a deep sigh, and turned from the side of the vessel.
Next morning it anchored in the bay of Valencia. The business of
disembarking and of resuming his journey by land, direct to Madrid,
prevented all particular reflection, till he got into the carriage.
Lorenzo deemed it prudent not to say, at any of the post-houses, or
towns he passed through, who was his companion; and, though Louis felt
he was stealing into the country of his ancestors like a stranger
and a spy; yet, by this discretion, they travelled rapidly towards
the capital of Castile, without any unusual impediment, or even the
knowledge that Ripperda had been removed from the protection of the
British ambassador.
Whether he were passing over plain or mountain, cultivated fields, or
barren tracts, all were the same to Louis, while his eye was fixed
alone on the one object of his journey. He entered the barriers of
Madrid at midnight; but nothing could prevent him driving immediately
through the city and the northern gate, to the British residence.
When the carriage drew up to the portico, another had just driven away;
and through the yet open door, Lorenzo saw the Ambassador passing
through the hall. In a moment he was out of the carriage, and Louis
followed him. The porter was asked by Lorenzo, to conduct the Marquis
de Montemar to his Excellency. General Stanhope had just entered his
saloon when Louis was announced. Stanhope started at the name, knowing
it was that of the son of Ripperda. Louis approached him; his hat was
in his hand; and with hardly articulate accents, instead of what he
meant to say, he could only utter the agitated words--
"My father----"
That countenance could never be once looked upon by an unprejudiced
eye, without making an immediate interest in the heart. Though now worn
and pallid, Stanhope felt its power. He saw all the son in its haggard
lines; he heard all the son, in those few indistinct sounds.
"You expect to find your father, here, Sir?" replied the General.
By the manner of this question, Louis apprehended something of what had
happened, and with inexpressible alarm, he replied:
"And where is my father?"
"To the eternal disgrace of the cabinet of Spain," returned the
minister, "its orders violated the sanctuary of my house; and by an
outrageous execution of a most unjust decree, tore him from his bed,
and immured him in the Alcazar of Segovia!"--
Louis did not stagger under the shock of this intelligence; he firmly
replied;
"I am to understand from this, he is in prison?--On what pretence?"
"Treason against the state," returned Stanhope; "but they cannot make
their charges good. Visible facts outweigh false swearing; and though
Duke Wharton has been their counsellor night and day, nothing can be
proved against your father, but that he once was a heretic, and that
you are the same."
"Duke Wharton?" repeated Louis.
"Yes;" rejoined the ambassador, "he made a shew of rescuing the Duke de
Ripperda from the fury of the populace; but it was only to betray him
to the ministry. He left him in my house, and then drove to Grimaldo,
to tell him where to find him."
Louis sunk into a seat; and remained, with his hands locked, and his
teeth fixed in aiguish death-like coldness, while the ambassador
continued his account of the affair.
He assured his agonized auditor, that notwithstanding the
circumspection of the present ministers, to conceal their
correspondence with the English Duke, he had ascertained the fact of
its having preceded the fall of Ripperda several months; and that it
was Wharton's task to draw Ripperda into all the situations, which had
been wrested to his disadvantage. In consequence of such manoeuvres,
it was represented to the King, that Ripperda had privately conferred
with Wharton in a pass of the Carinthian mountains; and that at some
other place, an affair of secrecy was discussed between them, at which
Richelieu the French ambassador was present. These things were told to
Stanhope by an authority he could not dispute, but must not mention;
and the same informant added, that whatever were the objects Ripperda
coalesced in with Wharton, the cause of James Stuart was not one; for,
it was in resentment of Ripperda's refusing to embrace his views there,
that Wharton betrayed his correspondence with the Duke, and alleged
against him treasons of other, and terrible tendencies.
Stanhope observed, that from some of the present ministers being
secretly inclined to the Stuart cause, he well understood why Duke
Wharton had abandoned all bonds of honour to maintain them in their
seats. But could he have found any signs of a changing principle in
Ripperda, it was not to be doubted that he would have preferred a
single auxiliary of such mental strength, to any combination of more
feeble powers. Before Stanhope thought proper to repeat to the fallen
minister, what had been confided to him respecting his pretended
deliverer; Ripperda had spoken of Wharton's conduct in his rescue,
as a deed of generosity that left him no words in which to express
his admiration. Stanhope then disclosed the relation of his secret
informant; and ended with denominating the alleged previous meetings,
as either falsehoods of his enemies, or, the confession of them, an
unexampled instance of perfidy in the English Duke. Ripperda, at first
listened incredulously to the charges against his deliverer; but when
the rencounter amongst the Carinthian mountains was mentioned, and some
other corroborating circumstances followed that disclosure, the Duke
abruptly exclaimed,
"It is all perfidy, for the facts are true!"
At this part of the narrative, Louis turned his powerful eyes upon the
ambassador. Stanhope thought he read their suspicions.
"Hear me to an end," continued he, "and you will find the whole
perfidy belongs to the Duke of Wharton."
Louis dropped his heavy eye-lids over those scathed eyes, which he
would have been glad to have closed in death; and bowed without a
word. General Stanhope then repeated to him, all that the impassioned
resentment of Ripperda had excited him to avow. He declared his ancient
and inexorable hatred of Wharton and his politics; he boasted that the
transaction to which the Duke de Richelieu was privy, had been one of
mutual vengeance; that he quarrelled with Wharton at the Cardinal's
table, and the same night took his revenge with the sword.
Louis put his hand upon his burning forehead.
"I failed of reaching his heart," said Ripperda, "but my sword went
so near it, we believed him slain. He was taken up for dead; and
Richelieu and the Cardinal conjured me to hush the affair. I obliged
them; and heard no more of him, till like my evil genius, he appeared
in the very mountains he speaks of; and under the darkness of night,
returned to me the dispatches, which, I doubt not, his own emissaries
had taken from my courier. I did not know it was him till several hours
after his departure. The mantle the supposed outlaw had worn, was then
brought to me; and I recognized it to be that of the Cardinal, in which
I saw him wrap the senseless, body. His blood was on it.--Stanhope,
we were enemies!--always mortal enemies. Think then, what must have
been the revulsion in my breast, when he I had assailed to such
extremity, rescued me from the murderous rabble, and brought me to the
unquestionable refuge of your house!"
Stanhope subscribed to the reasonableness of the Duke's first
impressions, as the immediate effect of such supposed generosity. But
since it was proved that Wharton was actuated by the reverse of a
generous motive; that he had busied himself in the secret counsels of
Ripperda's public enemies; and had gained the ear of the Queen, so
far as to influence the rejection of every letter from her once prime
favourite: and not satisfied with these treacheries, had even had
recourse to representing circumstances which contained no offence in
themselves, under colours so invidious, as to wear whatever treasonable
shape he chose they should assume.
"What," asked Stanhope of the Duke de Ripperda, "what are you to think
of such a man?"
"As the most accomplished villain that ever disgraced the name of man,"
cried the Duke.
And then, without further hesitation, he opened out the whole of
Wharton's converse with him, during the half hour they were alone
together in the British residence. It was to urge him to revenge
himself on his implacable foes in Spain and Austria, by immediately
embracing the Bavarian and Stuart claims. He argued, that should he
take this step, France and Prussia, three parts of Germany, and all
Italy, would contend for his guiding hand.
"In short, his persuasions were such," added Stanhope, "that your
father owned to me, did he not connect honour with revenge, he would
have been tempted to accept his offers; but, he said, he had determined
to die as he had lived, by his principles; and he rejected all. The
consequence was, the disappointed emissary of these double treasons,
immediately accused him of his own crimes. And, that he might never
meet a second chastisement from the man he had betrayed, it was he that
urged Grimaldo to hold your father in perpetual imprisonment."
The substance of Wharton's proffers to his father were so like those he
had made to himself; and their rejection having been followed up by the
very conduct he had threatened in the chateau garden,--"Ripperda and
de Montemar shall find what it is to have Wharton for an enemy!" Louis
could not doubt this treacherous vengeance being a fact; and crying
within his soul, against him who had perpetrated so black a revenge,
he started from his seat. The expression of his face was terrific; the
image of sweet humanity seemed blotted from it; and with a burning
eye, and a complexion of death, he turned from Stanhope; and totally
forgetful of his presence, took a pistol from his belt.
The Englishman grasped his arm.
"Marquis, what do you intend?"
Louis scarcely moved his head as he replied:--
"To seek Duke Wharton."
Stanhope laid his hand gently, but firmly on the pistol.
"Give me this useless weapon," said he, "the treacherous Duke is
already hidden from your vengeance. He passed last night in private
conference with the triumvirate; and this morning, at day-break, he
left Madrid, but in what direction he is gone, no one can guess."
Louis yielded his pistol to the demand of Stanhope, relaxing his
fingers from the iron grasp in which he held it, and trembling from
head to foot, he leaned on the sympathising representative of his
maternal country. At that moment the crime and inefficacy of bloodshed,
in avenging injuries like his, or any injuries, struck upon his soul.
The venerable form of Mr. Athelstone appeared before him, and turning
from the supporting arm of General Stanhope, he buried his face in his
hands, and stood immoveable, lost in the multitude and agonies of his
thoughts.
The ambassador left him to recover alone. When he re-entered he found
him walking up and down the room, with a composed step. Louis advanced
to his friendly host. "Will you pardon all that you have just seen of
my weakness, and assist me to join my father instantly?"
Anticipating this request, during his absence Stanhope had dispatched
two messengers to the Count de Grimaldo, (who he knew was not yet gone,
from council, though the hour was so late,) to obtain an order to the
warden of the Alcazar at Segovia, for the admission of the Marquis de
Montemar to the imprisoned Duke. To the first messenger the Count gave
a civil refusal; adding, that such permission would be a dangerous
instance of indulgence to so signal a criminal as the Duke de Ripperda;
and the enterprizing spirit of the son might be feared. Stanhope sent
his secretary back, with a strong remonstrance against the justice of
this refusal; adding, that should it be repeated, he must consider the
act as a personal insult to himself: it was hostile to every principle
of an Englishman; and, he had hoped, to every principle in civilized
man. "In England, (said he) law and equity war against crime, not
against nature. There, the criminal, under sentence of death for the
worst offences, is suffered to see those near and dear to him. Humanity
must bench with justice; or punishment itself becomes crime, and
degenerates into revenge. The Marquis de Montemar, though he bear a
Spanish title, has had a British education. He may be willing to avenge
himself of his father's enemies; but as neither plot nor treachery are
taught in a British school, trust his father's captivity to his honour,
and you cannot hold him in stronger bonds."
The Spanish minister did not deem it politic to repulse a second
request from the English Ambassador on such a subject, and with a
polite excuse for his former refusal, he dispatched the signed order
for the admission of Ripperda's son.
In the course of half an hour Louis was re-seated in his travelling
carriage, with four fresh horses, furnished from General Stanhope's
stables; and accompanied by Lorenzo, (having left his servants at the
ambassador's) he set forward to Segovia.
CHAP. XVII.
The sun had risen, when the equipage that contained Louis de Montemar,
ascended the mountainous heights of the Guadarama. From a rocky valley,
diverging down to the eastern horizon, and shaded with every umbrageous
tree and shrub of that luxuriant climate, a distant view of the
Escurial was visible. The rays of the ascending sun were bright upon
it: and the superb palace of the Spanish kings shone in its fullest
splendour.
Lorenzo looked round on Louis. His countenance was still the same as
when he entered the carriage; and the page did not venture to call his
attention to the magnificent view before him. League after league was
traversed. St. Ildefonso's gilded pinnacles next presented themselves
on the declivity of a beautiful hill. Its fountains and its ambrosial
vistas rivalled those of Versailles; in emulation of whose regal
elegancies, the grandson of Louis XIV. had caused it to be erected. But
here, again, Lorenzo was silent; and glittering domes, and sparkling
fountains, lowly cottages, and gliding rivulets; all were alike passed,
by the abstracted eye of Louis, without note or cognizance.
The chesnut woods of Antero de Herrares opened their enamelled glades
before the travellers. They crossed a marble bridge, whose pillared
arches and light ballustrades clasped the broadest arm of the river
Atayada, which here flowed in a deep and pellucid stream. A little
onward was a range of Ionic colonades of the same spotless material,
diverging on each side from a triple gate of gilded iron-work
surmounted by arches, whose classic architraves were wrought in Italy.
A golden eagle, the armorial ensign of the Ripperda family, crested the
centre arch. Within were the park and the deer, and the mansion rearing
its brilliant columns amidst the redundant groves of a Spanish autumn.
The orange, the citron, and the pomegranate, formed the luxuriant
avenue; and where fruit bloomed on the branches, the fragrance of the
blossom mingled with the breath of the countless flowers beneath, and
filled the air with perfume.
The same feeling which had chained the tongue of Lorenzo, while passing
indifferent objects, however note-worthy, now precipitated him to
speak, and he exclaimed:
"Here, my Lord, is the Duke's Segovian villa!--all the windows are shut
up; and not a soul stirring, where we were once so many, and so gay!"
Louis glanced on what might have been his home; and the flying horses
shot by those splendid gates, to find their owner in a prison! He did
not answer Lorenzo, not even with a sigh; but looked steadily forward,
till the dark towers of the Alcazar appeared over the intervening
woods. He read their name, in their blackness and their chains; but
he neither groaned nor shut his eyes on the dismal abode to which his
father was transferred.
After ascending a long and winding road, they passed through the oldest
quarter of the town of Segovia, still upon an ascent, till, on crossing
the rattling timbers of a draw-bridge, the carriage stopped beneath a
massy archway. Several sentinels drew around the vehicle, with demands
whence it came, and what was the object of the persons it contained.
Lorenzo, being most ready in the language of the questions, abruptly
answered:
"We bear an order from the Count Grimaldo to the warden of the
Alcazar, for admittance to the Duke de Ripperda."
An officer from the warden appeared, to receive and examine the
passport. Louis alighted, and presented the order. The deputy bowed
respectfully, when he read the name of the Marquis de Montemar, and
requested him to follow him "to the prison of the Duke."
"The prison of my father!" said he to himself.
"But what is in the sound of a word, when the fact is already present."
With unbreathing silence, and a heart into which all that was man
within him was summoned, he followed his conductor. They reached a
heavy door, studded with iron, and traversed with massy bars. The
deputy drew a huge key from his breast, and opened it.
As it grated horribly in the guards of the lock, and the damp and
dreariness of the passages struck on the shuddering senses of Lorenzo,
the affectionate youth exclaimed:
"Oh, my honoured Lord! Is it in such a place I find you!"
Louis turned at the exclamation, and looked on the faithful servant;
but no tear was in his eye, no sound on his lip.
The door was opened; and the deputy stood back, while the son of
the Duke entered the vestibule of the prison. The unoccupied pallet
of Martini lay in one corner of this miserable anti-room. Louis saw
nothing but the door that led to the interior apartment; and passing
through the vestibule with one step, though with an awful sense of his
father's fallen dignity, and of the dignity whose affliction even a son
must not break on too abruptly; he gently pushed forward the half-open
door, and found himself in a large and dripping dungeon. He started,
and gazed around; for all was horrible, but all was solitude. "Where
is my father?"
"In his bed," cried the deputy, who now entered, "He is ill."
Louis hastily, but with a light tread, passed across the pavement to
the mattrass, which lay behind a woollen curtain in a low vaulted
part of the cell. The officer, with less delicacy of attention to the
supposed slumbers of an invalid, followed him. Lorenzo glided in also;
and at the very moment in which the deputy had pressed before Louis,
to announce to the sleeping Ripperda, the arrival of his son, the
page's eye fell on a letter which lay on the table. In the instant the
officer's appalled ejaculation proclaimed that no Duke was in the bed,
Lorenzo saw it was directed to the Marquis de Montemar, and snatching
it up, put it in his breast.
"Then, where is he?" exclaimed Louis, throwing himself between the door
and the deputy, who was hastily moving towards it; "You pass not here,
till you tell me, to what deeper dungeon you have removed him; for no
power on earth shall keep me from my father."
The man stood still, and the consternation in his countenance, more
than his asseverations of total ignorance on the subject, convinced
Louis that whatever was become of his father, this person was innocent
of his fate. He therefore demanded to see the warden, declaring, while
he insisted on his demand, that the order he had presented, was from
the minister to admit him to the Duke where-ever he might be; and on
the authority of that order, he would force his way to his presence
against every opposition.
The officer affirmed, that the warden could know nothing of the Duke's
strange absence; for that he, the deputy, had himself secured the
doors on the prisoner and his servant the preceding night; and no one
else, not even the warden, possessed a duplicate key to that dungeon.
While he continued to speak with vehemence, and in manifest terror
of punishment for what had happened, the determined son of Ripperda
repeated his demands to have the warden summoned; for he would not
leave the spot till he was convinced that both officers were ignorant
of the cause of his father's disappearance.
The deputy being now suffered to go to the dungeon door, called a
sentinel from the end of the stone gallery, and briefly told the man to
remain with the Marquis till he should return. But as he withdrew, he
had the precaution to turn the key of the dungeon on those it contained.
The sentinel stood with fixed arms where his employer had left him, and
Lorenzo glided silently round the dismal apartment, prying into every
thing. Having found the letter, (which he yet kept carefully concealed,
till he could safely shew it to his master,) he thought he might
possibly discover some other memorandum from Martini to himself; and,
not doubting that the Duke and his brother had made their escape, he
left no nook or crevice unexplored.
Louis remained seated against the table, with his arms folded, and
gazing intently on the open window. But it was the gaze of concentrated
thought, not of observation. Indeed it could hardly have seemed
possible to him, that the Duke could have withdrawn himself through
that aperture. It was not only eighteen feet above the bottom of the
dungeon, but from the shadows in the depth of the wall, appeared a mere
crenille, too narrow for any man to pass through. These objections
would have occurred to Louis, against the supposition of this having
been the way of his father's escape; had the idea of an escape once
presented itself to his mind. But he repelled the first intimation
from the deputy of such a suspicion. "From what," said he, "should my
father fly? Justice must speak at last, and acquit him with honour!"
In his own person, he felt that he would sooner be condemned in the
face of day by an iniquitous sentence, than incur the stigma of
conscious guilt by flying from the trial it was his right to demand.
"No," cried he, "the Duke de Ripperda would not so desert himself!"
While he believed this, his heart died within him at the thought of his
father's endless captivity in some remote prison, where he might never
hear the voice of consolation, or see the face of a comforter; and
then the spectre of midnight murder suddenly presented itself. His eye
hastily scanned the flinty pavement, but there were no traces of blood;
all was clear, and all was orderly in the wretched apartment, without
any traces of struggle.
In the midst of these reflections, the throng of hurry and alarm was
heard in the gallery, the great key once more turned in its guards;
and the hinges grating roughly as the door was pushed open, a crowd
of soldiers, preceded by the warden and the deputy, poured into the
dungeon.
Louis stood to receive them. The warden, holding the order of the
Marquis de Montemar's admittance in his hand, in the disorder of his
consternation hastily advanced to him and exclaimed,
"Marquis, where is the Duke, your father?"
"That is my demand of you," replied Louis, pointing to the order; "the
Count Grimaldo expected I should find him here. Here he is not. And you
are answerable for his safety, and his appearance."
In glancing round the dungeon, from the floor to the cieling, the
warden's eye was quicker than the deputy's; and without attending to
the reply of Louis, he exclaimed, "He has escaped through the window!"
"Impossible!" cried the deputy, "he could not reach it."
"Who reached it to take out the bars?" returned his superior, "he is
gone, and by that way. Round, soldiers, to the ditch!"
Louis stood in wordless astonishment at this confirmation of what he
too had thought impossible, though the impossibility to him had rested
on the mind of the Duke, not on the means of escape: but when he saw
the men withdraw with fixed bayonets, to hunt his father's life, (for
he knew his resolution too well to believe, that after having once
chosen the alternative of flight, he would submit to be re-taken;) all
his father's danger rushed upon him; and conscious to no other impulse
than that of defending him, he turned impetuously to throw himself
before the soldiers.
The warden saw the movement, and guessed the intention. He was a man
of gigantic muscle, and seizing the arm of Louis, called aloud to bar
the egress.
"What violence is this?" demanded Louis, forcibly extricating himself
and rushing towards the door. But the sentinel without had thrust the
bolt into its guard.
"You must be my prisoner, Marquis," returned the warden, "until those
men have searched the neighbourhood.
"On your peril!" exclaimed Louis; "I demand to be released!--In the
name of your sovereign, and of your laws, I demand it!--You have no
right to imprison an unoffending man, who came hither under the safe
conduct of your minister's signet."
As he spoke, he heard the report of a carbine; and desperate with
apprehension for his father, he snatched his only remaining pistol
from his belt. "Open that door, warden," cried he, "or I will make a
passage through your heart!"
The wary Spaniard did not stop to answer, but striking aside the arm
that held the pistol, it went off; and the ball lodged in the opposite
wall. Louis then felt for his sword. His athletic opponent was on the
watch; and seizing him round the body.
"Marquis," cried he, "these outrages can only undo yourself. If the
Duke de Ripperda be found, he must be taken alive, at the risk of those
who seek him. Kill me, and you are no less a prisoner; for the door is
fastened, beyond your strength to burst."
Louis was alone with this powerful man; for Lorenzo, with the same
intentions as his master, had rushed out with the soldiers. While he
stood, apparently quiescent, in the clutch of his adversary, he still
held his hand on his sword. He discredited the pledge for Ripperda's
safety, and resolutely replied. "If my father have fallen, there shall
be life for life!"
And with the word, he suddenly wrenched himself from the warden's
grasp, and as suddenly drawing out his sword, stood with his back
against the door.--"I am here, till I know the issue of this search;
but I am not, a second time to be disarmed. Repeat to the sentinel
without, your command respecting my father's safety; and demand of him,
the cause of the firing of that carbine!"
The warden had no weapons, but his bodily strength; and finding that
the nerve of his young antagonist, when braced by despair, was equal
to his own; and seeing that desperation was in his eyes, and a sword
in his hand; he thought it prudent to comply; and he called to the
sentinel to dispatch a man round with the demands of the Marquis.
Never, since the hour of his birth, did Louis find himself in so
terrible a situation. He was hearkening to the distant voices of them,
he believed were his father's murderers, and he found it impossible
to get to his rescue! He was, himself, acting the part of a man of
violence, to one who was only performing his hard, but cruel duty! As
he stood, gloomily lost in the horror of the moment, another carbine
was fired, accompanied by shouts from the soldiers. He thought he heard
a groan follow the report, and that it issued from below the window.
Without a word, or almost a thought, he threw his sword from him, and
springing on the opposite wall, found that he had not climbed the
perpendicular cliffs of Lindisfarne in vain. The stones were rough;
and giving short but sufficient hold to his hand and foot, he gained
the deep recess of the window before he scarcely knew he had left the
ground. The act seemed but one spring, to the amazed warden. Louis had
no sooner reached the window, than he would have thrown himself from
the flinty butments upon the top of the precipice. Happily the voice of
Lorenzo, from the rock beneath, arrested him.
To descend on this side, by clambering, was impossible; the outer part
of the wall being worn inward in great and abrupt hollows, till that
part of the tower where the window was excavated, hung over the rock in
a shelving state.
"The Duke cannot be found!" cried Lorenzo.--"For his sake, and for
God's do not attempt quitting the dungeon by that window! The soldiers
have just shot away this rope-ladder, by which he must have escaped."
While he spoke, he lifted it from the ground. The soldiers had spied
it at a distance, hanging loose from the wall; and as they scrambled
through the matted brambles towards the point, one of them took aim,
and it fell. Lorenzo, had made his approach, before; to see what
farther evidence of Ripperda's flight might be found there; and while
the echoes rang with the men's shouts, at so poor an achievement; he
fortunately saved Louis further danger, by shewing him the trophy,
"But another carbine was fired?" demanded Louis.
"A soldier slipped his foot, and his piece went off," replied Lorenzo.
"Discard me, kill me; but believe me true!" cried the page, aware of
his master's surmises, and seeing his hand ready to leave its grasp;
"quit that perilous place, I conjure you. The pursuers are gone round,
to say the Duke has escaped beyond their recovery!"
Louis was satisfied; and turning towards the dungeon, the entering
soldiers doubly assured him; and dropping from the window, inward, he
sprung upon the floor.
The men gave a hurried account of their fruitless search.
"Marquis," said the warden, "you must excuse me, that I do not restore
a sword which has menaced an officer of the crown; but the door is
open, and you may now pass hence. My employers will properly notice the
violence of the son, when they have information of the flight of the
father."
"Sir," returned Louis, "if I have injured you, in my struggles for
the liberty that was my right, I regret it; and if you know either a
father's or a son's heart, you will not reject my apology."
"Soldiers, attend the Marquis de Montemar to the gates," coldly replied
the warden.
Louis doubted. He might yet be deceived. He knew not where to seek
his father. The enlargement that was now offered him, re-awakened
his suspicions; and without noticing the order of the warden, he
stood still. Lorenzo was more present to himself. He had entered
with a second groupe of soldiers; and putting his hand gently on his
master's arm, almost unconsciously drew him out of the dungeon. On the
threshold, he whispered:--
"If you are to succour the Duke, we must not linger here!"
The words were a talisman on the benumbed faculties of Louis; he
hastened forward, and threw himself into the carriage.
"Back to the British ambassador's," cried Lorenzo to the postilions.
The rapid vehicle once more passed over the draw-bridge and wheeled
down the declivity through the town. On a rising knoll, Louis caught
another glimpse of the dismal towers in which he had endured such
variety of mental agony, in the course of so few hours! He drew his
eyes from them, and the carriage plunged into the long avenue of aloes
which led to the wooded heights of Antero de Herrares.
Lorenzo pulled up the windows, and let drop the silken blinds. He then
put one hand in his bosom, and laid the other on his master's arm.
"My dear Lord," cried he, "here is a letter from your father!"
Louis started; "Lorenzo?" and snatched the letter that was held to him.
It was his father's hand-writing on the address! While he tore open
the seal, Lorenzo told him where he had found it. It was not necessary
to explain why he had concealed it until this moment. Louis read as
follows:--
"If my son have not abandoned me, he will probably visit my prison,
and find this. In such a case, he may go to the house of the noble
Spaniard who was his uncle's guest at Lindisfarne. He has a packet in
his possession, that will inform Louis de Montemar of the fate of his
father."
"William, Duke de Ripperda."
There was a thousand daggers in the few first words of this brief
epistle. _If my son have not abandoned me._ To be suspected by his
father of such parricide, was almost more than he could bear. He
clenched the letter against his bursting heart, and fell back in the
seat.
"My master! my dear master!" exclaimed the pitying Lorenzo, as he saw
the fearful changes in his countenance, and opened a window to give him
air. Louis unclosed his eye-lids; and those once cheering and radiant
eyes, which used to break from under them like the morning star from
the tender shades of night, turned on his faithful servant, bloodshot
and dimmed with bitterest anguish.
"What does my Lord say, in that cruel letter," demanded the
affectionate youth, "that can have affected you thus?"
Louis put the letter into his hands. It was not needful to point to
the lines which had barbed him so severely; and Lorenzo read them
with a bleeding heart, both for father and son. He remarked, that
outraged as the Duke had been by the ingratitude of all the world, the
extraordinary length of their voyage might have driven him to some
misconception regarding their detention.
"It is hard," continued he, "to be entirely just ourselves, when every
body about us treats us with injustice; and the Duke, though a great
and a good man, is yet a man; and must share some of our infirmities.
You, my Lord, will seek an opportunity to obey him immediately; and
then, all these too natural suspicions must be destroyed."
Louis looked at the affectionate speaker.
"Excellent Lorenzo!" said he, "my father has found one faithful in your
brother. If you too adhere to me, I shall not be quite alone in this
desert universe!--I may yet find my father," murmured he to himself,
"and die before him! My life, my life, is all I may now have, to prove
my soul's integrity!" Much of this, and more, of the sad wanderings of
a spirit overtasked, and wounded in its most susceptible nerve, passed
in the mind, and on the half-uttering lips of Louis.
"But where," asked Lorenzo, "are we to seek this friend of Lindisfarne?"
"It is the Marquis Santa Cruz," replied Louis; "General Stanhope will
probably tell me where to find him."
"The Marquis has a villa in the Val del Uzeda, between St. Ildefonso
and the Escurial," replied Lorenzo, "and there, I know, his family
usually resides, as the Marchioness is sometimes in attendance on the
Queen."
"Then," cried Louis, "direct the postillions to drive thither. If the
Marquis be there, I may yet see my father before another night englooms
me in this direful Spain!"
CHAP. XVIII.
It was noon, when Louis again passed the marble gates of the Palacio
del Atayada, the deserted mansion of his father; and after journeying
over many a league of Arcadian landscape abundant in the olive and the
vine; and waving with harvests, which the paternal policy of Ripperda
had spread over hill and dale, the heights of Uzeda re-opened to him
the distant and transverse vallies of St. Ildefonso and the Escurial.
His carriage turned into a cleft of the hills, overhung with every
species of umbrageous trees; and out of whose verdant sides innumerable
rills poured themselves over the refreshened earth, from the urns of
sculptured nymphs and river-gods reposing in the shade. In the bosom
of this green recess stood the villa of Santa Cruz. All around spoke of
elegance and taste. The carriage drove under the light portico; and the
servants, who thronged round, gave earnest of the hospitable temper of
the owner.
Lorenzo questioned them, whether their lord were at the villa. They
replied in the negative, but that his lady was there.
"Then I must see the Marchioness," returned Louis; and he sprang from
the carriage, the door of which a servant had already opened. Lorenzo
remained below for further orders, while his master was conducted up
stairs into a splendid saloon, whose capacious sides were hung with the
finest pictures of the Italian and Flemish schools. But no object could
displace from the vision of Louis, the dungeon which had contained his
father.
He had written his name with pencil upon a leaf which he tore from his
pocket-book, and sent it to the Marchioness. It was some time before
a reply was returned to him, or, indeed, any person re-appeared. His
anxiety became insufferable. He paced the room with impatience, and
a sickening heart. For he knew not but the delay of first one ten
minutes, and then of another, before he could follow the track he
expected to find in the packet he sought, might, by leaving his father
undefended in all the personal dangers of a pursuit, be the very means
of allowing him to be retaken.
In the midst of these harassing fears, the door opened, and a young
lady entered, who, by her air, could not be mistaken for other than
one of the noble members of the family, though her dress was that of a
_religieuse_. It was all of spotless white, with a long black rosary
hanging from her breast. Her face was mild and pale; but it was the
transparent hue of the virgin flower of spring, clad in her veiling
leaves. It was Marcella.
Her mother had received the name of the Marquis de Montemar in her
chamber. She was an invalid; but remembering the reception his family
had given to her son in Lindisfarne, she sent her daughter to bid him
welcome.
When Marcella entered, she drew back a moment, on beholding so
different a person from the one she had expected to see in the son of
the Duke de Ripperda. He had been reported by the ladies of Vienna as
"the glass of fashion, and the mold of form!" Her brother had described
him as gay and volant; full of the rich glow of health, and animated
with a joyous life, that made the sense ache to follow it through all
its wild excursiveness. The Spaniards, on returning from Vienna, spoke
of him as vain or proud, a coxcomb or a cynic, just as their envy
or their prejudices prevailed. But Sinzendorff, her revered uncle,
had written of him as one whom all the women loved, while he loved
only honour. His letters had given the Marchioness an account of the
young minister's entanglement and release from the woman who had laid
similar snares for her son; and he dwelt with encomium on his unshaken
firmness through every change of fortune. As Marcella passed from her
mother's chamber, these recollections crowded upon her; and all were
calculated to increase the timidity of her approach. She was going to
present herself, and alone, to an admired young man, proud in conscious
dignity, whose lustre calamity could not dim, and whose spirit was
exasperated by oppression!
But instead of this lofty Marquis de Montemar, gallant in attire, and
resplendent in manly beauty; stern in resentful virtue; and upholding
in his own high port, all the threatened honours of his race; she
beheld a youthful, and a fine form indeed, but in a neglected dress
covered with dust. The jewels of his hat were broken away; and its
disordered plumage darkly shaded his colourless cheek and eyes, whence
every ray of joy had fled. Beauty was there; but it was the beauty of
sadness; it was the crushed ruin of what might once have been bright
and aspiring.
Marcella wondered, for a moment, at the change which grief must have
made; and with a very different sentiment from that with which she
entered, she approached the son of Ripperda. She held a packet in her
hand. Louis's heart bounded towards it, and he hastily advanced.
"From my father, Madam!"
"It was left with my mother two nights ago, by the Duke de Ripperda's
servant;" replied she; "and he informed her, that the envelope directed
to my father, contained a letter for the Marquis de Montemar. My mother
would not detain it from you till she could present it herself; being
only now preparing to leave her chamber, and therefore she confided its
delivery to me."
As she spoke, she put the packet into his hand. By these words he
found he was in the presence of the Marquis Santa Cruz's daughter;
and, expressing his thanks, he begged permission to peruse it before
he quitted the house. She answered politely in the affirmative, and
immediately withdrew.
Louis had observed nothing of her face or figure, to distinguish her
again from the next stranger who might enter the room. The novelty of
her dress, however, could not escape even his possessed eye; and in
the moment he learnt who she was, he thought of Ferdinand and Alice,
and of their future union; of which her assumption of that garb seemed
a promise. But as soon as she disappeared, he forgot both, and every
accompanying circumstance, and even where he was, in his eagerness to
make himself master of the contents of the packet.
On breaking the seal, a letter at the top of a bundle of papers
presented itself. He seized it, and began to read it with avidity. It
was written by Ripperda under all the exasperation of his mind, when
he believed himself not merely the object of the world's ingratitude,
but abandoned by his own and only son. Yet he forebore to specify his
injuries; saying, that to name them, would be to stigmatize the whole
human race. He had hitherto lived for universal man:--his days should
terminate on a different principle. He would yet confound his enemies,
and astonish Europe. But it should not be by embracing revenge through
the treasons, whose arms were extended to receive and to avenge him.
He would maintain his integrity to the last; and from the heights of
Gibraltar assert the honour of a name, whose last glories might die
with him, but never should wane in his person till he set in the grave.
Louis would not think twice on the implied suspicions against himself,
which every sentence of the letter contained. They were bitterness to
his heart; but he knew his innocence. He now knew the point to which
his father was gone; and thither he determined to follow him.
The papers in the packet contained schedules of the vast properties of
the Duke, that were cast over the face of Spain, in landed estates,
immense manufactories, and countless avenues of merchandize.
"I bestow them all on my son;" was written by Ripperda on the envelope
which contained the catalogue; "they may give power and consequence
to the Marquis de Montemar, when he has forgotten that the Duke de
Ripperda was his father."
A memorandum of his territories in Spanish America was bound up with
the others; and brief directions added on each head, how his son was to
secure his rights in them all.
Louis ran over these lists and their explications, that he might not
leave a single word unnoted; but when he had finished, he closed up all
that related to pecuniary affairs, and laying them aside in the packet,
again turned to the letter. It alone would be his study and business,
till he should reach Gibraltar, and prove to his father, that by his
side, in poverty or disgrace, it was his determination to live or die.
He was yet leaning over the letter, perusing it a second time, when
he heard the door open behind him. He looked round, and saw the
daughter of Santa Cruz re-enter, supporting on her arm an elderly lady
of a noble air, who appeared an invalid. He guessed her to be the
Marchioness; and rising instantly, approached her. "Marquis," said
she, "I come, thus in my sick attire, to welcome the son of the Duke
de Ripperda, to the house of my husband. I know his respect for your
father; also his esteem of yourself; and whatever may have been the
misrepresentations of evil tongues, my brother the Count Sinzendorff
has not left the character of the Marquis de Montemar without an
advocate."
The Marchioness observed a brilliant flush shoot over the face of her
auditor, as he bowed his head to her last words. She added, in a still
more respectful tone, softened even to tenderness by the sentiment
of pity; "The machinations of these enemies have been too successful
against the Duke. Indeed, I doubt not, that packet has spared me the
pain of saying, you must seek your noble father in the Alcazar of
Segovia."
Louis briefly related the events of the last six hours; and presented
her the note to read, which his servant had found on the table in
the prison, and which had referred him to the Marquis Santa Cruz. The
Marchioness had seated herself, and placed her guest beside her. She
read the note; and looked with maternal sympathy upon the distressful
countenance of the duteous son to whom it addressed so cutting a
reproach. Her commiserating questions, and the knowledge she shewed
of all the virtues of his father; added to the information, that her
husband was hastening from Italy, to interest himself in his cause;
seemed to demand from Louis his fullest confidence. He revealed to
her the substance of what his father had written in the packet; and
declared his intention to follow him immediately to Gibraltar.
The Marchioness approved of his reunion with his father, but resisted
his quitting her house, till he had taken the repose she saw he so
much needed. Louis would have been unmoved in his resolve to commence
his journey that very night, had she not suggested, that, severely as
the Duke had been used before his flight, should he be retaken, his
treatment would be yet more rigorous; and, therefore, his son must
be careful not to be himself the guide to so fearful a catastrophe.
She assured Louis, that now ministers knew of his arrival, all his
movements would be watched; and that above all things, his pursuing the
direct route of his father, must be avoided. She urged, that a rash
step at this crisis, might be fatal; and, therefore, conjured him to
remain that night at least, under her roof; where he might consider
and reconder his future plans, and take the rest that was necessary to
support him through the trials he might yet have to sustain.
There was so much good sense and precaution in this counsel, that Louis
no longer found an argument to oppose it; and adopting her advice
of turning in a direction from Gibraltar, rather than towards it,
proposed going to Cadiz, and thence hiring a vessel to take him by sea
to the British fortress. This being sanctioned by her approbation, he
no longer hesitated to pass the remainder of the day, and the night,
under her friendly shelter; and while she retired with her daughter, he
followed a page to an apartment, where every comfort was provided, that
could refresh the weary traveller.
After she had withdrawn, the Marchioness would not permit her
daughter to quit the side of the couch on which she reclined; but
continued discoursing of the interesting son of the fugitive Duke, and
recapitulating all the kindnesses which his English relatives had shewn
to her darling Ferdinand in Lindisfarne.
"Marcella," said she, "we must repay part of that vast debt, to this
inestimable young man. Your brother has not exaggerated his merits.
For, never did I see exquisite beauty so unconsciously possessed; nor
heroic indifference to the world's idols, expressed with such noble
simplicity."
When Louis rejoined the kind hostess, his misfortunes and his manners
had so happily propitiated, she was seated with her meditative daughter
in the evening saloon; which opened to a small lake, surrounded by
aromatic groves. She rose to receive him.
Relieved from immediate alarm for his father's personal safety, by
knowing that his projected asylum was the one least likely to occur
to his pursuers, Louis's agitated mind had sunk into a kind of
torpid repose. He took the seat offered to him, by the Marchioness;
and listened to her conversation with soothed attention. There
was something in her figure and air, which so reminded him of the
cherishing mother of his youth, Mrs. Coningsby, that his harassed soul
seemed to have regained its home, while he drank in her sweet maternal
comfortings. She appeared to know by intuition the fittest medicine
for his spirit; but she only spoke from her own noble nature, and it
mingled direct with his. She expatiated on his father's character; on
the envy of his rivals; and dated his fall to their ambition alone. She
dwelt on the high reverence in which he was held by the King and Queen;
and affirmed, that justice must be done him, both by Sovereign and
people, when experience should have taught them how they had cast away
their benefactor.--
"Meanwhile," said she, "how glorious he is in suffering magnanimously
for his virtues!"
"So to suffer, is the Cross that makes our virtues Christian!" observed
Marcella in a low voice, hardly aware that she had uttered what was
passing in her thoughts.
The remark was so like what he would have expected from the lips of
his first christian teacher, that Louis turned towards the speaker.
He turned to look on her; recollecting that she was not merely the
daughter of the amiable woman who was so maternally solicitous about
him; but the disinterested sister, whose self-sacrifice was to empower
her brother to complete the happiness of Alice Coningsby. Though
she had been the first to welcome him to this hospitable refuge, in
most inhospitable Spain, he had noticed her so little, he could not
have recognised her in any other garb. He now perused her pensive
countenance. It was fair and meek, and touched with the tenderest
sensibility. Her eyes were hidden with their downward lashes; and the
shadow of her veil tempered the dazzling whiteness of her forehead,
while the dark and glossy tresses that braided its arching brows, gave
her the air of a youthful Madonna. Her soft white hand at that moment
pressing the cross to her bosom, completed the picture. Unconscious of
observation, she was then breathing an internal prayer for the Duke and
his son; and continuing her meditations on their fate, did not raise
her eyes from the floor.
Louis looked on her, but it was as he would have looked on a lovely
image of the consecrated being she resembled; and again he turned to
the voice of her mother.
The Marchioness finding him so composed, entered fully into all she
knew of the rise and progress of the conspiracy which had ruined his
father. She recounted the various perfidies of the inmates of the
Palais d'Espagne; which had been confided to her, in the exultation of
triumph, by Donna Laura. She narrated particulars in the correspondence
between de Patinos and his father, the Marquis de Castellor; and
gave instances of even deeper double-dealing in Baptista Orendayn,
the nephew of the Count de Paz. Indeed, she hoped, the Marquis,
her husband, would be able to prove, by what she could impart, that
Orendayn was concerned with a subborned band of ruffians who attacked
the Duke de Ripperda in the Appenines; and would certainly have
destroyed him there, but for the fortunate intervention of a stranger.
This assassination was the device of his Spanish rivals. And it was as
well known by the Marchioness's informants, that the attempt which was
made on the Duke in the porch of the Jesuits' college, was the work of
certain Austrians at the court of Vienna; and not at all arising from
the partizans of the Electress. The Bavarians had never gone farther
than to way-lay for the state papers; and under the leading of Count
Stalhberg, they had taken the dispatches from Castanos; which, being
examined by the party, were afterwards returned.
In recapitulating this host of jealous adversaries, she asserted that
none were so actively hostile to Ripperda as the Austrian junto; at the
head of which was Count Routemberg, whose darling policy was to place
eternal barriers between any future junction of the empire and Spain.
In his house the confederation was formed, that was to accomplish the
destruction of Ripperda and his plans; and by a secret management it
was supported and impelled by the Emperor himself.
While Louis listened to this information, which agreed so fatally with
Wharton's last conference in the garden of the chateau, he became more
and more bewildered on the motives of his false friend.
At last the Marchioness mentioned that name, which never could be heard
by him with indifference; his confidence, or his detestation must rest
upon it. He was thinking of the accumulated treachery of Wharton, when
she pronounced his name. He started as if it took him by surprise.
In her eagerness she did not observe his emotion, but dwelt on the
English Duke's clandestine interviews with Grimaldo, de Paz, and the
Queen; shewing their results in the King's inflexibility to Ripperda's
demands to be heard; and his subsequent warrant, to silence the injured
minister's appeal in the sealed dungeons of the Inquisition.
In the height of her representations, Louis, with a tremendous fire
in his before faded eye, grasped the arm of the Marchioness, and
desperately exclaimed,
"Cease that theme--or it will make me a murderer!"
His manner alarmed the Marchioness, and terrified Marcella. The former,
however, restrained herself, and mildly pressing down the hand that
clasped her's, detained him on his seat; while Marcella started from
her chair, and gazed upon his flashing countenance with dismay. His
terrific guilty words yet rung in her ears. For a moment his eye caught
the expression of her's; and he answered the horror in her face by the
exclamation,
"I loved, and trusted him--and he has betrayed my father!"
He turned away as he spoke, and walked to the other end of the room.
The eyes of the Marchioness and her daughter met with an anguish of
commiseration in each, neither of them could utter. Marcella looked
again at his agitated movements, as his back was towards her. His
words, "I loved, and trusted him--and he betrayed my father!" had smote
upon her filial heart; and tears gushing into her eyes, she glided from
his presence, to pray and weep in secret.
When Louis recovered himself, he scarcely remarked that Marcella had
withdrawn.
In hopes to sooth him, the Marchioness asked two or three questions
respecting Wharton. Twice he attempted to speak, before he could give
any voice to what he wished to say; at last he hastily articulated.
"Spare me on this subject. I would forget him, if God will grant me
that gracious oblivion; for that is the only way by which I can remain
guiltless of his blood!"
"Rash de Montemar!" cried the Marchioness, pitying while she reproved;
"were my holy daughter here, she would tell you, that if you have hope
of heaven's pardon for your own errors, you must forgive your enemies!"
An agonized smile gleamed on his convulsed lip.
"My own enemies, I could forgive, and load with benefits. There are
some, were they my enemies alone, I could love in spite of every
injury; and pray for them, as for the peace of my own soul. But when
they extend their malice to my father; when they betray his trusting
faith, and give him to the murderous gripe of them who lurk for his
honour and his life: they are his enemies, and I cannot forgive them."
"Yet, do not risk your life, which is now his sole comfort," cried she,
"Appeal to Heaven, and it will avenge you."
Again Louis walked from her. He felt that, inexorably as he now
believed he hated Wharton, and horrible as was the idea of meeting
him arm to arm; yet, even that would be more tolerable to him than to
invoke Almighty power for vengeance.
A sad confusion of right and wrong, struggled in his breast; but
the better principle prevailed; and, even while the pressure of new
convictions against Wharton, crowded upon him, he felt that the
bitterest pang of all, would be an assurance that by such guilt on
guilt, his false friend had forfeited the mercy of his God. In his
fiercest throes of resentment, he could yet say with the Divine Spirit,
"I have no pleasure in the death of a sinner; but rather that he should
turn from his wickedness and live!"
The Marchioness marked his unuttered emotion, and with self-blame at
the amplitude of her communications, apologised for her indiscretion,
and proposed his seeking composure in rest. He gladly acquiesced; while
he begged her, not to distress herself by regretting what she had said;
for it was necessary to his father's preservation and to his own, that
he should know all his enemies, and the extent of their malice.
It was now within an hour of midnight. On Louis entering his chamber,
he sent away Lorenzo; that he, at least, might enjoy the sleep that
fled his master's eyes. In a few minutes he was alone, in a magnificent
apartment, where every tranquillizing luxury invited to repose.
But the downy couch would then have been a bed of thorns to him. He
continued to walk the room from hour to hour, in perturbed meditation
on all that he had seen and heard through the day.
His spirit was on the wing to rush through every obstacle to his
father's feet; to labour day and night, to redeem the reputation
sacrificed by his flight; and to avenge himself on the slanderous
world, by some glorious assertion of the names of de Montemar and
Ripperda.
At last, his exhausted taper went out suddenly; and, being without the
means of replenishing its light, he threw himself on the bed to muse
till morning.
CHAP. XIX.
About an hour before sun-rise, the inhabitants of the villa were
aroused by the clattering of horses' hoofs upon the pavement around the
house, which was speedily followed by a loud knocking at the gates.
The Marchioness and her daughter, in their dressing-gowns, met in the
corridor between their rooms, with each a lamp in their hand. Alarm
was in the countenance of both; which was increased to indescribable
terror, when the chamberlain of the mansion appeared on the stairs,
and informed them, he had looked from his window to demand the cause
of such untimely disturbance; and the answer he received was from
the leader of the party, who said he came to arrest the Marquis de
Montemar, in the name of the King. Marcella's knees shook under her,
and a mist passed over her eyes; but it was only transitory; she heard
the steady orders of her mother, and rallied her own presence of mind
in the same instant.
"Pedro," said the Marchioness, "doubly barricade the doors; and let no
man enter, till I have spoken with the Marquis."
Pedro flew to obey his lady, and she proceeded along the gallery to the
apartment of her guest. Marcella did not follow her in, but sunk into
a seat, near the door of the chamber. The lock yielded to her mother's
hand. She saw her enter, and could distinctly hear her footsteps as
she cautiously approached the bed, and gently called on the name of de
Montemar, to awaken him. At last, she heard him start from the leaden
slumber, which had only recently fallen on his harassed faculties; and
with an exclamation of surprise at seeing the Marchioness leaning over
him at that hour, and in such evident agitation; he sprang from the bed.
The tumult at the outside of the house, strenuously demanding
admittance, and the replies from within to withhold it for a time,
explained the alarm to Louis, almost before his trembling hostess could
speak the words of his arrest. Being fortunately dressed, he stepped
forward with an immediate tranquillity succeeding his first appalled
thought, that, by this new detention, his father would yet be left to
his cruel suspicions. But he suddenly recollected, that Lorenzo might
seek him, if he could not; and that when his father knew how he was
detained, he could no longer doubt his filial duty. This passed through
his mind in a moment; and taking the agitated hand of the Marchioness,
he told her his wish respecting Lorenzo; and entreating her not to be
distressed at what could not essentially injure him, begged her to
order her servants to request the officers to be patient for a few
minutes only, when he would instantly put himself into their hands.
"Never!" cried she, "you are my husband's guest, and you shall not be
forced from his house during his absence. Ill should I repay the family
who fostered my son, were I to surrender their darling into the hands
of his enemies. I am aware they may break open my doors; but there is a
place in this villa they cannot discover. Come with me, and you shall
be safe, till the way is clear for your complete escape."
Surprised at this proposal, Louis did not interrupt her; but when she
paused, and put her arm on his, to draw him towards the offered asylum,
he earnestly thanked her, yet repeated that it was his fixed intention
to obey the arrest of the king.
"What?" cried she, "this is despair, beyond their hopes! They will
confine, perhaps torture you! They could not have obtained this
warrant from the King, had they not made him believe that you are
accessary to the crimes with which they charge your father. They
will try to compel you to confession; and, though you are blameless,
you will suffer the cruelest ordeal of transgression. They fear your
talents; and, if the laws refuse to be their emissary; when you are in
the solitude of a prison, how many means will present themselves, of
ridding them of what they fear!"
In great emotion, she followed up these representations with renewed
beseeching that he would accompany her to a temporary concealment.
"It is for my father's enemies to fly;" returned he, in a firm though
gentle tone; "they are guilty of treachery to the confidence of their
Sovereign, and flight may do them service. But I am innocent of offence
against this country; my father has been its benefactor. I will
therefore stay, to meet any trial they may devise, to impugn him in
my person. And, if my defence of his integrity fail with his unjust
judges; and, should I even fall in the attempt, honest men will form
a truer judgement; and, such hearts as yours, and those I left in
England, will still respect Ripperda and his son."
In despair at his resolution, the Marchioness reminded him, that the
father whom he so justly revered, acted on a different principle. He
was innocent, and menaced; and he fled.
"And there," returned Louis, "he gave the advantage to his enemies,
that sanctions the arrest of his son. He should have demanded open
trial. All Europe would have supported the demand; and in the face of
Europe he would have been acquitted. To this I would yet urge him. His
proud rivals will not dare suffer his return; and their cowardice
will, of itself, pronounce his triumph."
The Marchioness clung to him, as the uproar below increased, and she
thought by the extraordinary noise, that her gates were burst open.
"Alas!" cried she, "you know not the summary justice of this country!
The bow-string is yet amongst us,--and you will perish in prison,
unheard, unremembered!--Oh, de Montemar, in the name of all you love,
hasten with me!"
"In the name of all I love and honour, dearest Madam!" returned he,
straining her respected and clinging form to his grateful heart, "I
must remain, and abide the ways of Providence."
"Marcella!" cried the Marchioness, looking round, and seeing her
daughter, who had unconsciously started into the room on hearing the
augmented tumult below; "Marcella, come hither, and by your holy
eloquence conjure him to fly, and save these men the sin of murder!"
Marcella stood still, looking on the ground. Her mother continued her
entreaties to him, and then again implored her daughter.
"Speak to him, my heaven-devoted child! For that father's sake, conjure
him to abandon the ruinous project of abiding by the justice of his
enemies!"
Marcella's complexion was the hue of death, while she gaspingly
answered:
"I cannot urge the Marquis to depart from sentiments I so much honour."
Louis looked from the weeping Marchioness, who hung on him with
maternal tenderness, to the daughter, pale, and trembling, but firm in
the faith that nerved his soul.
"Madam," said he, "I thank you for this support," then turning to her
mother, "Revered lady," cried he, "remember me in your prayers, and I
shall not fear the malice of my enemies!" The words of her daughter
had put the Marchioness to silence, and she leaned upon the shoulder
of Louis, drowned in tears. At this moment the clamour of many feet
were heard upon the stairs, and a man bursting into the room, told
his mistress that Don Diego Cuellar, one of the Alcaids, had ordered
the gates to be forced; and, was not only in the house, but then
approaching the corridor. The Marchioness sobbed aloud, and exclaimed
in wild grief, "my son, my son!" As if it were Don Ferdinald she held
in her arms.
Louis supported her on his bosom, but did not hesitate to say to the
servant; "tell the officer, I am at his orders. I will descend to him
immediately."
But before the man could obey, Don Diego and his train were in the
corridor, and in the room. A threatening denunciation was in his
visage, as he advanced with his staff of office towards his prisoner.
Louis perceived the storm; and to spare the sensibility of his hostess
any shew of violence, he intercepted the thunder of the Alcaid, by
repeating the message he had sent by the servant.
"'Tis well, Sir," replied the officer, "but the resistance which has
been made, must be answered for before the council."
"I will answer for it, and all else that may be brought against me,
when I am before the council;" replied Louis, "but meanwhile, I request
of your courtesy as a Gentleman, to dismiss your guards till I can
sooth this lady."
The manner of his prisoner, sufficiently mollified the officer; and he
made a sign to his attendants to withdraw. The Marchioness then turned
to the Alcaid; and, to her fearful interrogatories, he informed her how
Louis had been traced to her house.
On his departure from the Alcazar, the warden thought it prudent to
send a person to observe his movements. This spy followed him to
the Val del Uzeda; and then, proceeding to St. Ildefonso, (where the
royal family were), apprised the ministers of the escape of Ripperda,
and where they might find his son. A council was convened; and it
determined that Louis should be arrested, and held in strict ward, till
information could be gained of the flight and views of his father.
"When that is ascertained," continued the Alcaid, "the enlargement of
the Marquis de Montemar will be brought into immediate consideration."
The Marchioness, being a little assured, drew Louis aside; and in a
low voice, entreated him to rely on the strenuous friendship of her
husband, and to depend upon seeing her in whatever prison he might be
confined. He expressed his gratitude in emphatic, but brief terms; and
begged her to continue her kindness, by writing what had happened, and
transmitting it by Lorenzo to his father.
Marcella stood all this while, leaning against the tapestry, in a
silent astonishment of thought and feeling.
Lorenzo had been the most active below, in keeping out the officers;
and, having extricated himself from them who had seized him in
consequence, he now rushed into the room, and in much agitation threw
himself at the feet of his master. Louis grasped the faithful hand that
clung to his, and answered the fervent vows to follow him into all
captivity, by an impressive whisper:--
"You must serve me here. The Marchioness will tell you how."
Then, advancing to the officer, he repeated, "Sir, I am ready."
Don Diego beckoned two guards, who immediately drew near their
prisoner. They attempted to lay their hands on the sword and pistols
with which his generous hostess had re-furnished him the preceding
night; but he repelled them, and demanded of the Alcaid, what was meant
by this indignity.
"To disarm you, Sir," replied the officer, "such are my orders. You
menaced the warden of the Alcazar, in the discharge of his duty; we are
to be protected in ours, and you must yield your weapons, or have them
forced from you."
"The laws require it of me, as your prisoner?"
"They do."
Louis said no more, but put his sword and pistols into the Alcaid's
hands.
"He has a poniard!" cried one of the attendants, (who was indeed the
spy which had watched his steps,) "I saw it in his vest, when he leaped
from the window in the dungeon."
Louis had forgotten this weapon, but did not demur in relinquishing it
also.
The Marchioness shuddered. "What," cried she, "he is to have no
defence? Merciless men!"
"The laws, and their honour, will defend me, Madam!" returned he,
putting her hands to his lips; "I fear no man, for I have injured none."
By a sign from the Alcaid, the soldiers then closed around him, and the
Marchioness sinking on the bosom of her daughter, did not see his last
grateful look as he was hurried from the room.
CHAP. XX.
A deeper dungeon than that which had confined the father, now received
the son. The light which discovered its dismal bounds to his solitary
eyes, came from a small grated aperture in the vaulted roof. Escape,
then, had he meditated such an expedient, was impossible.
But so far was that idea from presenting itself to his thoughts, he
never ceased lamenting that his injured father had been reduced to so
equivocal an alternative. He knew not how to reconcile the imprudence
of the act, with Ripperda's consummate wisdom; till, as he passed
hours in these lonely musings, the events of history occurred to his
memory; and he saw, that there may be times in the lives of the most
illustrious characters, when their good genius, or their good sense,
seems to desert them; the faculty of judgement is taken away; and
they obey the impulse of passion, with all the blind zeal of the most
inconsiderate of men. Some such alienation of his better reason, Louis
thought must have occurred in the experienced mind of Ripperda, before
he could have taken so condemning a step; for of neither his personal
courage, nor patriotic integrity, could this devoted son conceive a
suspicion. From infancy to manhood, he had but one impression of his
father, that--
"---- in his port divine
The image of his glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, rectitude severe and pure!"
And almost worshipping the human idol in his heart, as formed--
"For God only--his son, for God in him!"
He loved and honoured him without measure. On the night of his
arrival, he learnt that his prison was the castle of Madrid. But it was
not necessary for him to enquire how strict, or how apparently long,
was to be his confinement. Hour after hour, day after day, wore away;
and no person was suffered to approach him; no letter permitted to
reach his hand; and when he attempted to question his goaler, whether
the Marchioness Santa Cruz had visited his prison; or if tidings had
yet transpired of the Duke de Ripperda; his only answers were gloomy
denials of all communication.
Though his portmanteau had been brought to him, the writing materials
and money it contained, were taken out in his presence, and even his
books of devotion shared the same fate. Indeed, the latter seemed a
prize of some moment to the officer who superintended the search, for
when the little bible, which had been the gift of his Pastor uncle,
opened its title page to the eye of superstition, the alarmed fanatic
ordered it to be carried under a strong guard, to the grand inquisitor.
Remonstrance on this, or on any other head, was vain; and under a
suspense that increased to torture, three weeks dragged away their
anxious days. At times, he almost suspected that the Marchioness Santa
Cruz had forgotten him; then, that Lorenzo had arrived in Gibraltar,
and failed of convincing Ripperda of the truth of his son. Every
frightful apprehension of doubted honour; of absolute abandonment to
his enemies; and an endless captivity in this dreary dungeon, assailed
him in the gloom of his uncompanioned thoughts.
Every rigor of hard fare, and severe usage, was inexorably brought
upon him. His bed was on the flinty pavement; his food, the scanty
portion of a criminal. But the conscience of Louis was at rest; and
he soon found that "man does not live by bread alone!" Though his
gaolers seemed inclined to do so much wrong in their treatment of him,
he never repented that he had done rightly in submitting to the law
of his new country, by yielding himself to their power. But when he
writhed under the tyrannous grasp with which they held him, he could
not but remember, with many a yearning comparison, the country which
had fostered his infancy. There he had imbibed the mingled tides of
freedom and of equity, as from the breast of a mother. Here the proud
state that claimed him as her own offspring, met him with the injustice
of a malignant step-dame.
"Noble, regretted England!" cried he, "I had rather be a door-keeper in
thy courts, than a prince in this land of despotism!"
In these lingering weeks of anxious loneliness, every impetuous
passion, and daring wish; every motive and action, or his short
but eventful life, passed in review before him; his impatience to
plunge into the world, and the readiness with which he gave way
to its delusions. While reflection humbled him to the dust; the
consciousness of having, in all his transgressions, erred from mistake
or inconsideration, but never from wilfulness, raised his head to
that Being, whom the precepts of Mr. Athelstone had so often told
him to "Remember in the days of his youth; and in his extremity, he
should not be forgotten," These thoughts were heavenly visitants to
the young captive, who lay like Joseph in bonds, with Faith, and Hope,
and Innocence, his comforters. The cheering lamp which these immortal
sisters lit in his heart, illumined the dark eclipse with which the
recent treacheries of man had overshadowed it. Yet he never thought
of Wharton but with a horror that shook his soul. He durst not look
steadily on his image; for no light was there.
A fourth week commenced. It was the anniversary of that day in the
past autumn, when Santa Cruz took his leave of Lindisfarne; and Louis
stood gazing on his departing vessel, vehemently wishing to hang
upon its sails, and so be transported to his father and to action!
It was also the Sabbath-day! And the uncle, who a year ago had then
stood by his side, admonishing the intemperate desire; he, at this
dismal anniversary, was, even at that hour, in the little church of
Lindisfarne, beseeching Heaven's "pity on all prisoners and captives!"
unconscious he was then putting up a prayer for his own darling child!
The tears were not without balm, that filled the eyes of his nephew at
the recollection.
In the midst of these meditations, the dungeon door opened, and Santa
Cruz himself appeared on the threshold. Louis started from his seat,
and could have cried aloud:--"Then my God has remembered me!"
But tidings from his father were also in his thoughts, and he only
ejaculated that revered name.
Santa Cruz embraced him, with more agitation than his stately mien
might have announced.
"The Duke de Ripperda has not been heard of;" returned he, "he must
therefore be safe. By any other means than that of flight, I would his
son were equally secure from his enemies!"
Fearless for himself, Louis entered at once upon his father's case.
His first wish was to induce the Marquis to solicit the King to hear
the son in defence of the parent; or, if that were denied, to allow
Santa Cruz to present a written vindication of Ripperda's Austrian
ministry. He gave the Marquis a simple narrative of every transaction,
from the beginning of the business to the stage in which he left it at
his recall; and, in the course of the explanation, he could not avoid
noticing the destructive mystery into which the double conduct of Duke
Wharton had involved every proceeding, even to those in which he had no
explicable concern.
"You are already avenged of him," replied the Marquis, "General
Stanhope transmitted to his government all the Duke de Ripperda
reported to him of Wharton's secret practices in favour of the exiled
Sovereign. George of Brunswick has taken alarm at so deep a scheme; and
the consequence is, the confiscation of your enemy's estates, and a
reward offered for his apprehension."
Louis was planet-struck at this information. The words which Wharton
had spoken to him in the park of Bamborough, murmured in his ears,--"_I
put my life in your hands!_"
"And my father has accused him!--Has set that life at a price!--The
country in which we first met, is now no more to him than to me. He is
an out-law,--I, a prisoner!"
Louis was silent under these thoughts; a stricture was on his heart,
but he recovered himself, while Santa Cruz proceeded in his discourse.
He had been only a few days returned to Spain. The Marchioness lost no
time in informing him of all she knew relative to the fall of Ripperda,
and the arrest of his son; and, urged by her, as well as his own zeal,
he hastened to Madrid. He there investigated the affair. Among other
nefarious particulars respecting the overthrow of the ex-minister, he
learnt what was to have been its bloody consequence. The king was so
pressed by the British Ambassador on the outrageous seizure of his
guest; and some of the northern envoys openly pleading their conviction
of the Duke de Ripperda's general integrity; the Spanish ministers
feared to stem such an opposition of opinion, should they venture their
predecessor in a public trial; and aware of their inability to convict
him of treachery, peculation, and unlawful ambition, (the grounds of
his impeachment,) they had recourse to the _Lettres de cachet_ of the
Inquisition.
"Did I believe that your father's reconciliation to the Romish Church
were hypocrisy," continued the Marquis, "I should be the first to
approve his sentence. But I know the spring of these accusations; and
that the penalty of imputed heresy would soon have been paid."
Santa Cruz did not stop at this observation, but candidly acknowledged
that if ever the flight of an innocent man from the bonds of his
country, were an act of compulsive prudence, it was in the case of
Ripperda. He added,
"It is not here, as in England, that the laws govern the prince.
Arbitrary power holds them in check; and, when once a man is seized, if
he cannot attain the grace of his judge, he has little dependance on
his justice."
The Marquis then informed Louis, that he had made personal applications
to the ministers and to the queen, to beg their interference with
Philip for his trial or enlargement. The ministers were inflexible;
and Isabella not less firm in her refusal. All that he could extract
from their clemency, (or rather from that of the queen alone,) was a
hard-wrung permission to visit Louis in his cell.
"Yet," said the Marquis, "my hopes do not stop there. One step in
humanity warrants the expectation of a second. I am in favour with Her
Majesty. I came to be, what you propose, the medium of your father's
vindication; and that will comprehend your own."
Impressed with the deepest gratitude, Louis confided to his
disinterested friend, the whole contents of the packet he had left in
the care of the Marchioness. According to his previous request, she
had entrusted her husband with the secret of Ripperda's asylum; and now
he acknowledged, that one object of his present visit, was to obtain
Louis's permission to confide it also to the Queen. He urged, that it
would flatter the peculiarities of her character, and might conciliate
her good offices for his liberty. Being at Gibraltar, Ripperda was
out of the reach of personal danger, even should the secret transpire
beyond herself; and, meanwhile, the measure might do every thing for
his son, and his son's final wishes in the assertion of his father's
fame.
"Should her influence be seriously aroused in your behalf," said
the Marquis, "you would find it resistless with the King, therefore
peremptory with his ministers."
Sensible as he was that his father's asylum was chosen with honour, and
that its divulgement could be productive of no possible harm, Louis
had every disposition to yield to this advice. But his eagerness to
adopt any honourable means of facilitating his release, ran before the
progressive hopes of his zealous friend, when he found that his father
was yet ignorant of his being in Spain.
He learnt from the Marquis, that as soon as he was taken from the Val
del Uzeda, a reserve guard had forcibly seized Lorenzo; and borne away
him also, to prison.
Soon after imparting the latter information, Santa Cruz rose to
retire; promising to use his endeavours for the enlargement of the
servant, as well as the master: and, bearing with him many respectful
acknowledgements to the Marchioness, he embraced the grateful son of
Ripperda, and bade him adieu.
END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
Printed by A. Strahan,
New-Street-Square, London.
Transcriber's Notes
page 4, the changed to they (Rewards of any other kind, they changed)
page 15, immerese changed to immerse ( immerse all in one broad system)
page 29, alledged changed to alleged (alleged that my duty towards)
page 66, medicant changed to mendicant (mendicant monarch)
page 96, inkeeper changed to innkeeper (the innkeeper returned)
page 121, mannner changed to manner (Her manner amazed him)
page 134, Princesss changed to Princess (Louis's arts towards
the Princess)
page 138, congratulory changed to congratulatory (contained
congratulatory letters on the event)
page 153, visting changed to visiting (by visiting them in their towns)
page 187, consquences changed to consequences (to be always fearing
consequences)
page 201, premptory changed to peremptory (assurances of his peremptory)
page 258, ungarded changed to unguarded (so unguarded an indignation)
page 260, unusal changed to unusual (by an unusual sort of tumult)
page 279, procceedings changed to proceedings (all illegal proceedings)
page 281, question mark changed to a comma (replied their leader.)
page 298, missing "of" added (Ripperda of a misfortune, unworthy of his
attention)
page 311, extra he removed (and with inexpressible alarm, he replied)
List of Archaic and Variable Spelling (not an exhaustive list)
achievement is spelled as both atchievement and achievement
ante-room is spelled anti-room
balustrades is spelled ballustrades
ceiling is spelled cieling
doted is spelled doated
mattress is spelled mattrass
portray is spelled pourtray
uncontrollable is spelled uncontroulable
lily is spelled lilly
frenzy is spelled phrenzy
faltering is spelled faultering
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