He approached another of the many folding-doors which had led him from gallery to gallery; and on opening this, his guide told the page within to conduct the Chevalier de Phaffenberg to the Altheim apartment."By what authority?" asked the page.
The person from the guard-room had turned away on his return; but Louis, without speaking, presented the passport from the Empress. The youth bowed profoundly, and ushered him through a highly ornamented vestibule, into first one, and then into another saloon still more splendid. In the second, the page made another obeisance, and left him. The Sieur had instructed him, merely to shew the imperial signature, and not to ask for any body, but patiently to await, in this her privateboudoir, the arrival of the Empress. He had therefore leisure to look around him, had his mind been sufficiently free from solicitude to derive amusement from the endless varieties of art and nature which decorated the place. In one part, an apparently interminable conservatory, blooming with all the flowers of summer, wafted its fragrancetowards him. In another, opened a deep alcove of entire mirror, which doubled the mimic garden; and in an opposite direction, a stretch of canopied arches discovered chamber after chamber, till the most capricious fancy might be sated with the gay variety.
Louis's eye hardly glanced along them, for he fell almost immediately into an awful meditation on the scene he had just left, on the probable death of the mysterious Ignatius; and, in the event of such a catastrophe, what might be the consequence to his father. Would the loss of so efficient an agent compel him to abandon his views? or would he come to Vienna, and finish in person what his murdered friend had so well begun? At the close of these melancholy cogitations, nothing but gloomy images presented themselves; the dark-cowled priests flitting around the bed of the dying Ignatius, and the dismal voice of Castanos, presaging a similar fate to the Baron himself! In the midst of these thoughts, he was startled by a sound in the adjoining chamber. He looked towards it, and saw a lady, splendidly attired, approaching him. Unused to courts, he hesitated whether he should go forward, or await her advance; but as she drew near, the amazing beauty he beheld, decided for him, and struck him motionless.
He had heard that the Empress was beautiful and young; but of any thing like this bloom of youth, this splendour of beauty, he had no expectation. It was more like the dream of the poet, than anymortal mixture of earth's mould! He stood as one lost to recollection. The lady did not seem less surprised, though certainly with less amazement. On her first approach to him, when he took his cap from his head, and his disengaged pelisse, falling back, discovered his youthful figure, she retreated a step; but the next moment advancing, with a smile of peculiar complacency, she observed,that "there must be some mistake, for she came to meet a totally different person."
Louis tried to recover himself from the admiration her beauty had excited, to the ceremonial due to her rank, and bowing with disordered grace, he replied, "that he was sent by the person he believed Her Majesty expected to meet in that chamber; and that he came a messenger of distressing tidings. To say, that the Sieur Ignatius had been attacked by ruffians, and was then lying in extremity at the Jesuits' College."
The lady interrupted him; "Sir," said she, with an eager blush, "you have done me the honour to mistake me for the Empress, whom I am so happy as to serve; and being distinguished by my imperial mistress's confidence, I came hither to request the Sieur Ignatius (whose attendance she had required at this hour) to excuse her absence for a few minutes. She is with the Emperor,and, when I deliver your message, will expect you to await her commands."
With these words, the lady curtseyed and withdrew.
Louis gazed on the track through which she had disappeared. A vision of some heavenly creature seemed to have passed before his eyes, to give him assurance of what really did exist in the angelic world! The apparition, the voice, had been seen and heard, and all was again solitude and silence! Was it possible, he asked himself, that any thing mortal could be so perfectly beautiful? that any thing earthly should be too bright to look upon? Lost in the amazement of his senses, he thought only of her; he had forgotten the majesty he came to visit, and almost the disastrous tale that was his errand, when steps again sounded in the adjoining apartment. He sprang towards the canopied arch; the curtains were draperied back by two golden caryates, and his eager eyes shotbeyond; but another form appeared! another lady! of beauty too; but blinded by excess of light, all other objects seemed dark and indistinct before him.
She was less magnificently arrayed than her fair messenger, but approached with so striking an air of dignity, that Louis could not hesitate believing this must be the Empress. Respectfully meeting her advancing steps, he bent his knee to her, as he presented the letter from the Sieur. At the moment of her approach, his bewildered faculties suddenly recollected that such was the attitude Ignatius told him, he must assume in delivering his credentials.
The Empress stood still, and looked steadfastly on him for several moments. Then taking the letter from his hand, in a voice of tender commiseration, she bade him rise.
"The lady I sent hither, has informed me of your melancholy embassy," continued she, in the same gracious tone;"but I trust he is not wounded past hope?"
"Not past his own," replied Louis, as he rose from his knee; "but the surgeons are less sanguine."
With a troubled countenance, the Empress opened the letter and read it hastily. She looked from its contents to its bearer; and fixing her sweet but penetrating eyes anxiously on his face, said in a doubting voice, "you are young, very young, for the trust I am called upon to confide to you!" Still she looked on him, and still she spoke; evidently without consciousness, uttering the remarks her observing mind was passing upon his appearance. "A youth like you, must be too fond of pleasure, to be a secure confidant! Too accessible—to much in the power of circumstances. And at such a crisis too! But he tells me, I may trust you as his son!"
Again she looked full at him. Louis's whole soul was fixed on that look, andarouzed by its occasion. That the rigid Ignatius had given such testimony of him, at such a moment, did not more surprise, than determine him to perish, rather than dishonour it. He did not venture to speak, but the expression of his eloquent countenance was more than a thousand vows to Elizabeth.
She sighed deeply, and sitting down by a table, leaned her head upon her hand. Louis remained standing where she had left him, regarding her with respectful interest. At last she looked up, and waved her hand to him to approach her.
"My heart is heavy," said she, "with the tidings you have brought me. For, should my counsellor in all this, be indeed taken from me, how incalculable are the difficulties into which I shall be plunged! Nothing but full and complete success in the end, can excuse me to my family and to the world, for the perils I incur in the progress."Louis was silent.—Elizabeth resumed.
"You know to what I allude!"
"I know nothing," replied he, "but what the Sieur Ignatius has told me; and that is, a general intimation of his possessing Your Majesty's confidence: and that jealousy of so high distinction, he suspects to be the cause of his present state."
The Empress took two or three turns up and down the room. She was harrassed, and undecided, and often turned, to look again and again upon the youthful secretary. She suddenly stopped.
"Did Ignatius tell you, who I know you to be?"
"He did.—That I am the son of the Baron de Ripperda."
As he made this simple reply, the pride he had in being the son of such a father, seemed to encircle his brow with the before veiled diadem of all his princely ancestors."And where is your father?" asked the Empress.
"At Madrid. And I cannot doubt that at such a moment, he would be eager to hasten to the feet of the Empress Elizabeth; the generous truster in his friend!"
The Empress shook her head—"Alas! Alas!" cried she; and again she walked from Louis with a hurrying pace. For some time she continued murmuring to herself, in a voice so low that he could not distinguish what she said; but at last drawing near him, she again threw herself into a chair, and spoke aloud. "You call me the generous truster in his friend! I will be that to his son too. There is an honesty in your countenance; an enthusiasm in your manner, so unlike a courtier, that, I cannot but believe you trust-worthy! and, whenhesays it," added she, pressing the Sieur's letter in her hand; "it is conviction.—Hearken then to me."Louis drew near.—And the Empress, in a low but steady voice, imparted to him certain subjects of national dispute between the empires of Germany and of Spain; and personal rivalries between their respective sovereigns; which she and the Baron de Ripperda, through the secret agency of Ignatius, were labouring to reconcile. She intimated that her Imperial husband retained so much of his ancient enmity to Philip; and the Austrian ministers were so jealous of yielding advantage to the Spanish cabinet; she was obliged to move towards her end with the strictest caution. Besides, she had some collateral objects in view, which, if obtained, would not only establish a cordial friendship between the two countries; but so balance the power of the continent; that war, for this generation at least, could hardly find a plea for disturbing the tranquillity of Europe.
"Some of these plans," added she, "are more than suspected by my enemies,and the enemies of my children; and since they have engaged a certain wily English Duke in their interest, an hour does not pass over my head without dread of the whole scheme being blown into the air. Like an evil spirit, he can transport himself when and wherever he pleases; and while he is invisible, work a train of mischief that is felt through many nations. It was only yesterday that he returned from one of his secret flights; from Paris, I suspect——" She suddenly paused; and putting her hand to her head, appeared to muse for a few minutes.
Louis's blood chilled at this mention of an English Duke. From what Ignatius had said to him on the same subject, he was compelled to think that the Empress could mean no other than Wharton. And, how strange it was, that every person who had named that Duke to him with censure, had all concurred in giving him some epithet of duplicity.Elizabeth looked up, with an abrupt demand of her auditor, whether he thought the assassination traceable to Duke Wharton? adding, that she did not know a source whence it was more likely to spring.
"Madam," returned Louis, "I should as soon suspect it from my own hand."
She gazed on him, astonished.
"Yes!" repeated he, in a determined voice; "though it is possible that Duke Wharton may be hostile to Your Majesty's politics; and even be the personal enemy of the Sieur Ignatius; yet I know him too well, not to stake my head on his abhorrence of a crime like this."
The Empress did not withdraw her penetrating eye from his face.
"I now remember," said she, "that it was he who spread the report at theFavorita, that the Baron de Ripperda's son was at Vienna. He met you on the Danube. But Ignatius assured me, you had never seen him since!""I never have.—And I never will, while he is an object of suspicion to Your Majesty, and to my father's friend. But I must again aver, as I would at the judgment-day, that Duke Wharton is incapable of assassination."
"He shall be the better for your vindication," returned the Empress. And then entering into a detailed communication, of what her new confidant was to impart to Ignatius relative to the most open part of their scheme; she gave him a letter, which she wrote, and sealed in his presence, to acquaint the Sieur with the recent progress of their more secret views. When she put it into the hand of Louis, she said with much emotion, "the last courier from Madrid, wrought so favourably on the Emperor, that I was even now conversing with him in the highest spirits, when I was called to hear this danger of my noble coadjutor!—Should I lose him at this moment, their daggers had better have reached me!Louis de Montemar, guard his life, as you would your own. You know not the value of the charge."
Louis received her command to be in these apartments the next day, at the same hour, to give her tidings of the Sieur. She then presented her hand to him to kiss, in sign of her favour to himself. He touched it on his bent knee; and as she turned to withdraw, she told him a page should attend him to the guard-room; but he must take such cognizance of the passages, as henceforth to find his way in the palace alone. Again she proceeded to the door, and again she turned round, and said with agitated solemnity; "should any fatal change occur, come to me to-night.—We will discourse together for the last time; and all that I have said in this conference, you must regard as a dream—to be forgotten!"
Louis silently bowed his head, and Her Majesty passed on. So crowded werehis thoughts with the events of the last six hours, he hardly noted the time, though he did the situation of the ground, as the promised attendant brought him to the guard-chamber.—Martini sprang to meet him; and, a moment after, he had left the mansion of royal splendors and luxury, to seek the cloisters of world-forswearing men! All without, was darkness and assumed humiliation; but within, dwelt the rulers of kings, the universal dictators, the all-compelling Jesuits! Louis now entered, to visit one of the most extraordinary personages that ever came within their walls; one, to whom the vast machinery was all unfolded, by which these mighty workmen moved and controuled the world.
The information which Louis brought to the suffering Ignatius, did not fail to heal the worst wound his enemies had inflicted; suspicion, that their machinations had reached the mind of the Emperor. When the surgeons visited their patient in the evening, they gave a more favourable report on his symptoms with regard to fever, which was the threatening danger of the morning. The manner of his passing the night, they thought would be decisive for hope or fear, and Louis entreated permission to attend his couch until day.
The Sieur peremptorily put his negative on this proposal. But Louis was steady in not being denied watching by the side of Castanos in the anti-room.Martini, with a surgeon and a priest, remained all night in the cell of Ignatius; and that he slept most part of the time, Louis was satisfied; as, with his strictest attention, he could hardly hear a movement within.
Castanos, and his anxious companion, kept true vigils. The act was the same, though the motives were as different as the two men. In one of the dreary pauses of the night, when the intensity of Louis's meditations, on the various objects which bore upon the event of the present hour, had wearied his unrested spirit; he observed Castanos shake the exhausted embers from his pipe; and desirous of asking some questions respecting the fate of his packet to Don Ferdinand, he thought he could not have a better opportunity, and while the old Spaniard was twisting out his tobacco, he addressed him in a low voice.
"Senor Castanos," said he, "you were so kind as to deliver a packet fromme to Don Ferdinand d'Osorio, into the hands of my father?"
"No," returned he, "your father was not at Madrid."
"Then, what became of my packet?"
"It was sent with the dispatches, to where he ordered them."
"Then I may assure myself of its safety?—and that my father was well?"
Castanos had resumed his pipe, and made no answer. After the second volume of renewed smoke had wreathed away from his sullen features, Louis addressed him again.
"But of course you saw my father, before you left Spain? Under the present anxious circumstances, it would particularly cheer me to know that he is well."
Castanos drew in, and puffed forth another cloud; then indolently sliding his words out of the unoccupied corner of his mouth, he sulkily replied, "Senor, the less, in the present circumstances, youtalk of your father; the better for the object of your anxiety, and for yourself!—Walls have ears."
With this apothegm, he resumed his smoking with redoubled energy, and Louis submitted to the silence imposed.
A few hours more, and the dawn brought a more communicative comforter from the inner chamber. Martini issued forth with smiling lips, to announce that his master's symptoms were those to please the doctors, for that he had just awoke with little remaining fever. The priest and surgeon soon after appeared, bearing the same testimony; and the latter communicated the Sieur's commands, for the Chevalier de Phaffenberg to attend him immediately.
Though Louis shrunk from answering to the name, yet he hastened to obey. Again Ignatius took his hand, but it was no longer with the icy tremor of expiring life, nor the burning clasp of raging fever; there was languor, but not death,in the pressure; and with heart-felt joy Louis congratulated him on the certain hope of his recovery.
"It is well," replied the Sieur, "and we shall not be ungrateful for it, where thanksgiving is due. But we must now proceed to business. They tell me, my wounds are too deep, to give prospect of my quitting this couch for many days. Our affairs will not brook that time. Your duty at the Chateau, and mine at the palace, must continue to be discharged, and you must perform them both."
Louis's assent was as prompt as the delight with which he embraced active service. And if the idea of the bright form he had seen only for an instant, did flash across his mind with a hope of beholding it again; the passing thought was too transient to materially alloy the pure zeal with which he pressed forward to his new duty.
The Sieur then told him to return tothe Chateau for certain of the completed papers, and to bring them without delay, for his further orders. As the carriage was now directed to be always in readiness for the Chevalier de Phaffenberg, Louis found no tardiness in transporting himself back to the Chateau, and thence to the College again.
On his return, he found the surgeons in the invalid chamber, remonstrating with their patient against seeing his secretary again for that day. But Ignatius was inflexible, and to prevent encreasing the evil by further opposition, they withdrew. Louis obeyed the beckon of his governor to the side of his bed, and there he received his instructions respecting the papers he had brought. He disposed them into several packets, and putting them into as many small leather-bags, sealed them, and addressed them according to his orders.
At a particular hour, he was conducted by Martini to a dungeon-like cell, in adistant and obscure quarter of the College, where the Italian introduced him to a grey-headed brother of the order, who had been entrusted by Ignatius with this part of the business. His office was to receive, and to bring in succession, the messengers of the correspondence which Louis held in his hand. The venerable Jesuit told him, that several were then in waiting, but in separate cells; for no one was to know of the other, and each were conducted out by different passages.
Louis remained three hours in his gloomy hall of audience, before he had seen every body he ought to see, and had delivered to them all the packets of which they were to be the bearers to some of the most distant nations in Europe. He gave no further account of the Sieur's absence, to these foreigners, than that he was suddenly indisposed. An idea of his danger might havehad ruinous effects on the purposes of this various correspondence.
As the time drew near for his attendance on the Empress, Louis returned to Ignatius, to receive his further commands. This interview was brief, but pregnant with matter; and included instructions for a conversation with another personage, to whom the Imperial Elizabeth would see the necessity of introducing their young negociator.
Louis had now no reason to complain of want of trust, in those who commanded his services. The Empress was so impatient to hear his report, that he found her awaiting him; and his communications were so satisfactory, that she at once dismissed her worst fears for the Sieur, and entered into a circumstantial discussion of his message, comparing its expectations with what had passed between the Emperor and herself on the last overtures brought by Castanos.She was not the direct agent to her husband in these affairs; for His Majesty had not the most distant suspicion of her interference with any of the ostensible negociators; therefore, all that she appeared to do, was by apparently accidental remarks; but they were so managed, as very often to decide a fluctuating question. He had never admitted the Sieur Ignatius to a personal audience; who, he however, respected as a Jesuit of talents, employed by the Spanish sovereigns to compromise secretly with Sinzendorff; the Imperial chancellor. The Emperor usually talked with the Empress on all that passed between him and Sinzendorff: and she made ample use of her influence in suggestion, and persuasion towards the leading objects of the Spanish propositions. Besides the brilliancy of her ostensible motive, to see her husband be the secondCæsarto close thegates of Januson mankind! she had two private views, in gratifyingthe demands of Spain: to obtain the guarantee of so leading a power to thepragmatic sanction, which would establish her own descendants, male or female, on the throne of Germany; and to complete the cession of Philip from the cause of James Stuart, by which her near kinsman, George of Brunswick, would be more firmly seated on that of Great Britain.
An active enemy to the first of these projects was then residing at Vienna, in the person of the widowed Electress of Bavaria. Being the daughter of the late Emperor Joseph, (who died without a son,) she believed, if the female line were to inherit, that she and her posterity had every way more right to the succession than any daughter of the present Emperor, who was the younger brother of his predecessor, her father. To avert these claims, the present Emperor, Charles the Sixth, devised the act of settlement, (called thepragmaticsanction,) on his own female posterity, in default of male issue; and to this, he was moving every wile of policy, to obtain the guarantee of the great European states. Fonder of artifice, than of plain dealing, Charles made promises he never intended to perform; though he hoped by their means to purchase the acquiescence of his brother monarchs. Spain had been once attempted in this way; but Philip's resentments against his former rival were not to be appeased. He joined France in thwarting all the Emperor's plans. And as he not only withheld his assent to the proposed act for the Austrian succession, but was actively hostile to that of the new King of England, the Empress concluded that he had extended his animosity to her, and was altogether jealous of the further aggrandizement of the House of Brunswick. But when the Baron de Ripperda, (whose brilliant wit, and diplomatic magnificence at her father's court, had been the firstobject of her youthful admiration,) when he quitted Holland for Spain, and gained the confidential ear of its king; then the Spanish cabinet seemed to turn a colder aspect towards the setting star of the Stuarts; and the hopes of the Empress settled on the newly-rising minister of Spain.
The same policy which united the friends of the pragmatic sanction with those of the reigning king of England, brought the supporters of the Bavarian pretensions into joint interest with all the adversaries of the house of Brunswick, and consequently into strict friendship with the intended restorers of the line of James. To keep the negociation between the sovereigns of Spain and the Empress, from the cognizance of these two latter parties, now so determinately united, was indispensible to its ultimate success; for the Emperor was too jealous of a prince, who had once gained over him a great advantage; and too personally attachedto ancient Austrian prejudices, not to be very accessible to the diplomatic subtilities of the adverse faction, should they have timely notice to make the attack.
The Empress expressed herself to this effect; but there were still some secret measures between herself and Ignatius, which she did not think expedient to notice to their young confidant; and when she had explained all that she deemed necessary for the present, she told him he must go to the apartments of Count Sinzendorff, where that minister was now expecting him. She drew from her finger a ring that the Count knew, and which, on being presented by Louis, would be sufficient assurance that he was visited by the right person.
"But recollect," said she, "the chancellor is ignorant that you are of more consequence than the mere secretary of the Sieur Ignatius. I told him your name is Phaffenberg; and take care youdo not give him, or any one else, reason to suspect you have any other."
Louis bowed; and her air of cautionary command, dilating into a smile, she added, "to-morrow, and every day, attend me here at the same hour, until perfect recovery restore your guardian to the full performance of his own duty."
The Empress's description of the situation of the chancellor's apartments in the palace, was too accurate for her ambassador to mistake his way; and, without impediment he found himself ushered into the presence of Count Sinzendorff. He recognized the ring, which the young secretary respectfully put into his hand, and without preface or circumlocution, entered at once upon the assassination of Ignatius, and the consequences to be drawn from the attempt. To detect the perpetrators was impossible, as the necessity for concealment in all that related to the negociation of the Sieur, extended tohis person; and to make a stir in search of the ruffians, would only direct the eyes of their employers, where to dare a second attack.
The chancellor then opened the communications he wished to be conveyed to Ignatius. They principally consisted of certain demands, besides that for the pragmatic sanction, which His Imperial Majesty persisted in making on the King of Spain, before he would propound to his ministers, what he styled, the very high requisitions from the Spanish side. The chancellor followed this up, with remarks on his own difficulty in preparing the minds of some of the most stubborn of these ministers, whom he could hardly bring to apprehend even the possibility of such measures being ever proposed to them.
From the plain and well-digested discourse of Count Sinzendorff, Louis derived a clear idea of the scheme in negociation; which, if brought fully into effect, did indeed promise universal benefit. In the constrained confidence of the Sieur, there was always so much mystery; and in the hurried communications of the Empress, so much confusion; that, until now, he could only see as afar off, a mass of anticipated events whose misty obscurity rendered some mostrous and most indistinct. But now he comprehended, not only the magnificence of the mutual greatness of Austria and of Spain; but the foundations of prosperity and peace for Europe, so long threatened with the interminable miseries of hereditary wars. His soul, devoted to noble contemplations, was roused to all its wonted ardour by these views; and, vibrating to the tone of his father's declared motive, which the chancellor had incidentally quoted; he made some remarks on the proposed measures, that did not less astonish than please that consummate statesman.
Count Sinzendorff saw that it was no hireling secretary Ignatius had dispatched to him. The air and language of Louis were too elevated to belong to a man born in dependance; and the chancellor read in the intelligence of his eye, and the peculiar attention of his countenance, as he respectfully listened to what was said, that he was still unapprenticed to the mechanism of politics. He felt the soul of patriotism, but he was not yet aware of the machinery, which, in this world of artifice must be its body! A few general sentiments of political virtue, uttered by the Count, elicited its purest principles from the lips of Louis. His own glowing words had given the tone he thought he had taken from the chancellor, who, in fact, only admired the enthusiasm he reflected, and pitied what he admired. "It isfirst love, amiable youth!" thought he, "which must give place to a more worldly bride!"
That this singularly noble young man, both in appearance and manner, should have been introduced to him by the Empress and the Jesuit Ignatius, as a common secretary, and by the name of Phaffenberg; (a family, whose folly and extravagance had long ago sent it into obscurity!) did not so surprise Sinzendorff, as it confirmed his suspicion, that he saw the son of some great man in this interesting novice; and his shrewd guesses did not lead him far from the mark. He smiled inwardly, at the useless deception which the Empress thought to put upon his penetration; and determined to allow her to believe he was as blind as she wished. Before he and the object of his doubts separated, it was fixed, that every night, at an hour before midnight, the latter should attend in the Chancellor's apartments, to be the medium of communication between him, Ignatius, and the Empress.
When Louis returned from his long and double embassy, all he had to impart was listened to without interruption. For when he began his recital, the Sieurapprised him, that in transactions of this nature, it was so necessary to recapitulate every word that passed; and as nearly as possible, describe the manner of saying it, that he would not confuse his recollection by a single interrupting remark. When Louis finished speaking, all his guardian said, was—"It is well." and then bade him return to the Chateau for the remainder of the night.
He had a task to perform there before he slept; and similar ones would henceforth lengthen his visits to a late hour every evening, as long as his double duty lasted. He was to register all that was said in his presence, by the Empress and the Chancellor. And he was to make duplicates of this diary, into the cypher he had been so long accustomed to copy; and to understand which, the Sieur now gave him a key. Every night he was to return to the Chateau, and every morning make his appearance at the College.
The two following days passed in thesame round of duties; but there was a difference in the third, which made it remarkable to Louis, and gave a new character to those which succeeded it. He again beheld the beautiful friend of Elizabeth.
Not having seen her since her first transit across his then cheerless sky, the starry brightness of that glance only occurred to him afterwards, like the fading image of a delightful dream. Absorbed in the great interests which now occupied him, he was thinking of nothing less than her, when, on entering theboudoirto await the Empress, he was surprised to see her accustomed chair filled by another lady; and a lovely girl sitting by her, busily employed on the table. He started, and the lady, hastily throwing back a lace veil, which shaded her face as she bent over her companion, discovered to him the beautiful creature he hardly expected to see again. She apologized for having permitted her own, and the Arch-Duchess's occupations, to make her forget the hour in which these rooms ought to be left to his use; and, taking the Princess's arm, had even passed into the next chamber, before he could recollect himself so much as to feel that he stood like an idiot, without having uttered a word of the commonest civility, in answer to her graceful address. He then flew after her; and spoke, he knew not what, in explanation of his remissness; all the while walking by her side in a strange disorder of feelings, till reaching a small door in almost the farthest apartment, she turned round, and with a dignified bend of her neck and a dimpled smile, granted him her pardon, and disappeared with her fair charge.
Louis paused a moment, looking at the closed door through which she had passed; and then returned to theboudoir, with his senses all in a maze. His heart, which had never beat before at the sight of womankind, throbbed in his breast almost audibly. Such an eye, as its softlustre fell upon him, he had never met before; he felt its rays in his heart. And then, so finely composed a figure! Such matchless grace in her shape and snowy arms, as she led the young princess along. And the golden tresses which mingled with the white veil upon her neck, made him think of the peerless Helen, whose divine beauties compelled the admiration of the very empire she destroyed.
Full of these imaginations, the more he thought, the farther did his mind wander from the business which brought him there:—and, when the Empress did make her appearance, it was with difficulty that he recalled his senses to the subject of the interview. In one of her pauses, she noticed his abstraction. She remarked it to him. A bright crimson flashed over his face. She repeated her enquiries. Louis was astonished at his own emotion; but without seeking other excuse, though with deepening colour,he said, he feared he had behaved rudely to a lady who had just left that apartment: but he was surprised, at meeting any but Her Majesty; and he had not yet recovered from his confusion.
Elizabeth bade him describe the lady. To do that, he felt was impossible; though, on the demand, his ready heart repeated its pulsations; and looking down, he merely answered, "she was with the Arch-duchess." The Empress smiled. She now knew whom he had seen; and by his disorder, had no difficulty in guessing the cause of his abstraction.
"The lady," returned she, "is the Countess Altheim; to whose care these apartments are consigned, as my firstlady of the key. She is also the governess of my eldest daughter, whom you saw; and whom I wish her to model after her own graces!"
Louis unconsciously sighed, as he bowed to this information; and Elizabeth, thinking she understood his meaning, with a smile still more gracious than theformer, added—"she is a widow, though so young:—and has hitherto loved me too well, to be persuaded from my service by any one of the numerous solicitors for her hand."
Louis felt another impertinent sigh rising to his lips, but he smothered it with a gentle effort; saying inwardly—"What is all this to me!" and made no answer to the Empress, but a second bow. She immediately passed to the subject of his audience.
In returning to the College, he would not suffer himself to dwell a moment on the image of the beautiful Countess. But he was not permitted to keep his wise resolve of dismissing it altogether from his thoughts; for the bright original found occasions of repeating the impression day after day.
She sometimes awaited him with preparatory messages from the Empress. At other times he surprised her and the young Princess at their studies. But atnone of these meetings could she be prevailed on to linger a moment. When she had to deliver a message, she hastened away as soon as it was uttered. And when he broke on her accidentally, the instant he had caught a glimpse of her white arms moving over the lute, or had heard the trill of her exquisite voice warbling through the rooms, she would rise in disorder, and hurry from his ardent entreaties in so sweet a confusion, that it was sure to fix her idea in his mind till their next rencounter.
Louis felt the truth of the observation, that "The secret to interest, is to excite curiosity, and never satisfy it." He was ever asking himself, why the charming Countess, the worshipped of so many hearts, should be so timid to him? Or rather, why she should thus fly, as if with aversion, one whose heart was so well prepared to admire the graces of a mind, which, the Empress had assured him were equal to those of her matchless person. He had never seen any thing so beautiful as that person! And in so fair a temple, he could not doubt, as fair a spirit must dwell. He longed to converse with it; to understand all its loveliness; and to feel his heart sympathise, as it was wont to do in holy Lindisfarne, with all the pure intelligence of woman's mind. It was not of love he thought; for though he respected the sentiment, hitherto he had never felt its touch; and, as he had devoted his admiration to all that would take him out of himself, he had always regarded the winning of a female heart, as but a secondary object in the aims of his life. "Ah, never," has he often said, "would I give mynoon of manhood to a myrtle shade! Woman's love was given to be the helpmate of man, but his folly makes her the tyrant!" In this case, as in others, Louis was yet to learn.—How wise is speculation, how absurd is practice!
The Countess was indeed accomplished; and most accomplished in the art of charming. The noble Cornelia, and the tender Alice, knew nothing of her science; and of what spirit it was, the heart of their cousin had yet to prove.
On the day of his first appearance at the palace, she had only to behold his singularly fine person, to think him the handsomest young man who had ever entered there. But the fair Altheim was not particularly attracted by the charms which most pleased in herself; and she would never have sought a second glance of the graceful secretary, had she not accidentally attended to a discourse between her imperial mistress and the chancellor, wherein the latter,(being piqued by a quotation from Ripperda, which the Empress made, to confute one of his political arguments;) rather sarcastically gave hints that he suspected the wounded Jesuit had got something more illustrious in his diplomatic novice, than he chose to acknowledge. Elizabeth affected to see nothing peculiarly distinguishing in the manners of the secretary; but when the chancellor had withdrawn, she let some ambiguous expressions escape her, in the triumph of having baffled his penetration. These intimations were not lost on the Countess. And on the day following that in which she and the Arch-Duchess had retreated from Louis in such haste, the Empress could not forbear telling her in what an amazement of admiration she had surprized him; adding, "He is a conquest worthmorethan a haughty beauty'ssmile!"
Elizabeth smiled as she said this, but remarked no further. It was enoughfor her fair confidant; who, if her soul possessed any passion, did not scruple to own it was ambition. To gratify this, she had given her blooming beauties, at the age of seventeen, to the superannuated Count Altheim; a man of high family and great riches, but who had long survived every faculty, but that of dotage on any pretty face that would endure the incense of an habitual idolater of youth and beauty. At that early age, she had been sent for by the Empress, who loved her, from her having been the only daughter of the respectable woman who had been her nurse; and in consequence of which the pretty Otteline had been brought up as the favourite play-thing of the Princess; but the gracious Elizabeth soon regarded her with the tenderness of a sister; and on the death of the venerable mother, embraced the opportunity to have the companion of her youth brought to Vienna. Otteline de Blaggay was many yearsyounger than her Imperial mistress, and far transcended that beautiful Princess in every personal grace. But as the prejudice in favour of high birth is so great in Austria, that a mis-alliance is considered as indelible a disgrace, as a moral dishonour; none of all the illustrious courtiers who contemplated, and sighed for the possession of the lovely Otteline, ever thought of making her the sharer of his rank. A thousand gay adventurers pressed forward, to gratify their passion for beauty, and to excite an interest in their behalf with the Empress, by making her favourite their wife. But Otteline knew herself to be despised, though worshipped. And as rank was all she wanted, to set her in every respect above the women who envied her charms, and therefore looked with double contempt on her untitled name, she resolved to marry for rank, and for nothing else. Within a few months after her arrival, the old Count Altheim became infatuated with her beauty; and, intoxicated by her smiles, dared every obloquy to raise her to the station her lofty spirit seemed so calculated to dignify. The Empress felt the situation of her favourite, and, having joyfully pronounced her consent; the no less delighted Otteline gave her hand to the Count in a splendid espousal, at which, not merely her patroness, but all the Imperial family were present.
While the fond husband lived, his young Countess was the brightest, the loveliest, the proudest of the court. Elizabeth exulted in the homage the haughty Austrians were at length obliged to pay hereléveand country-woman; and to render it more complete, she determined that an application to the Countess should be the only avenue to her Imperial favours. But the Count died; and according to the law at Vienna, that on the death of her husband, the wife loses whatever rank shemay have acquired by her marriage; the Countess Altheim, though a richly endowed widow, found herself at once thrown back into all her former insignificance. This reverse was doubly galling, since she had been on the heights of consideration; and had trod that elevated path with a step not much less imperial than that of the Empress herself. To be contemned now, was mortification almost to madness. But the beautiful mourner had lived too long in courts, to permit her rivals to perceive the complete victory events had given them over her. Affecting a wish for retirement after the death of so adoring a husband, she lived secluded for a time; loftily leaving that world, she was aware, would have scornfully excluded her: and when the assumption of inconsolable grief was no longer feasible, Elizabeth appointed her to the high office of presiding governess over the Arch-Duchess Maria-Theresa. This afforded her a dignifiedplea for still abstaining from the assemblies of the court; though in private parties she sometimes permitted herself to be seen. Yet this was a rare indulgence;—that the novelty of her unequalled charms, whenever she did appear, might continue to give her successive triumphs over the envy of her proud rivals;—and the effect was ever what she expected. She was then twenty-six, and though in the meridian of her beauty, she foresaw that the time approached when she must resign this, her sole sceptre of power, to some younger hand. What then should she be? She could not endure to dwell upon the answer; and again turned her views to some elevating alliance. To think of another Austrian connection, would have been waste of time, and a hopeless speculation. She must direct her attention to some of the numerous noblemen from foreign countries, who visited Vienna.This plan was hardly determined on, before the arrival of the Marquis Santa Cruz gave the wished-for victim to her ambition in the person of his son Don Ferdinand d'Osorio.—Young, handsome, susceptible, and of high rank! It was an opportunity not to be neglected; and a few interviews with him at thepetits soupésof the Baroness Hermanstadt, put to flight every remembrance of the dove-eyed beauties he had so lately sighed for in the groves of Italy. Lost in the blaze of her attractions, he soon lived only in her presence; and drew from her a confession, that she awaited his father's consent alone to become his bride. But she was a Protestant, and she was of ignoble birth; two disqualifications, which the Marquis's bigotry of faith and of ancestry could not be brought to excuse. In anguish and hope, Ferdinand flew to the feet of his adored Otteline, and implored her to give him her hand, in spite of his inexorable father.—She knew the degrading consequence of such a compliance. She saw the point to which the passions of Ferdinand were hurrying his reason; and to throw it at once on that dreadful extremity; and by that phrenzy of despair alarm the Marquis, and compel him to save the senses of his son, by consenting to the marriage; to do this, she exasperated the agonies of her lover's mind, by appearing to regard the proposal for a clandestine union, as an insult from himself. When she allowed herself to be convinced of the contrary, still her indignation continued, though directed to a different object; and she declared, that her wounded honour could never be appeased, nor would she consent to see Don Ferdinand again, till he should bring her the Marquis's only adequate apology for the disgrace he had presumed to attach to her alliance.
Ferdinand departed from her, almost insane; and in that condition threw himself upon the mercy of his father. Butthe good Catholic, and Spanish Grandee, was not to be moved. And the frantic lover, being denied admittance at the door of his proud mistress, he flew to unburthen his distracted soul to their mutual friend, the Baroness Hermanstadt.
The narrative that follows is of more common, than agreeable detail. The Baroness was one of those women who are a blot on their own sex, and a blight to all of the other on whom they fix their rapacious eyes. Abandoned to ostentatious expence, no means were rejected, by which she could gratify the vanity her own fortune could not supply; and while her friend looked abroad for an ennobling alliance, to give her rank, she laid snares for dishonourable engagements, to furnish her with gold. Her iniquitous proceedings had hitherto been so warily managed between herself and her dupes, that no one else suspected her of error.—She wasgenerally received in the first circles of Vienna, and hence had a wider field from which to select her victims. The thoughtless expenditure of the son of Santa Cruz, had for some time tempted her rapacity; and the opportunity presented itself of making it all her own. She was an elegant woman, and an animated companion; and soon made the distracted Ferdinand forget the pretended disdain of managing ambition, in the delusions of practised art and soothing flattery. Intoxicated with what he believed her generous oblivion of herself, in voluntarily sacrificing every duty to her newly-avowed passion for him; he was-only awakened from his trance of vice, by the information that her husband, a rough Hungarian General, was returning from his post on the Turkish frontiers. She would gladly have exchanged this poor and rugged hero, for the soft prodigal, she had bereft of his better reason; and she made the proposal to him:—To flywith him, before the Baron could arrive; and that henceforth their fates should be one. As she clung round him, making the insiduous proffer, a gleam from his long banished reason seemed to visit him from on high; he shrunk with horror from an everlasting engagement with such a woman. Though the slave of her allurements, she was not the mistress of his soul, and he dared to deny her. Then all her assumed persuasiveness was cast aside. She insisted on flight, with a vehemence that turned her passionate love to threatening fury; and closed with holding a pistol to her head, to extort his assent, or to end her existence. He wrested the weapon from her hand; and oppressed with his own bitter consciousness, left her in a storm of frantic upbraidings, to the care of her confidential maid.
From this disgraceful connection, it was, that the Marquis Santa Cruz had borne away his son.As soon as the extraordinary disorder of Ferdinand, and consequent enquiries, had made the Marquis aware of these circumstances, he saw the necessity of hurrying him away from the machinations of a wicked woman, too well practised in the ruin of the youthful mind; and too ready to make the credulous Ferdinand a lasting prey.
Meanwhile, the disappointed Countess Altheim, foiled by her perfidious friend and versatile lover, broke with the one, and really disdained the other. And though she never condescended to enquire about either, after the double desertion was known to her beyond a doubt; yet she was not insensible to some feeling of gratified revenge, when she heard that Ferdinand had abandoned her rival, and left the country.
The Marquis hastened with his remorseful son, to Holland and to England. But the pangs of his repentance had not struck at the root of his crime.He mourned the act of guilt, not the empassioned nature which impelled it. He cursed the hour in which he had ever met with the Baroness Hermanstadt; but he did not condemn the headlong impetuosity with which he yielded to every impulse of self-gratification. The only son of his parents, and heir to immense revenues in both hemispheres, he had been indulged in every wish, till he believed he had no duty in life but to enjoy all its blameless pleasures. But when personal gratification is the principle of existence, the boundary between innocence and transgression is often invisible. Ferdinand had more than once trembled on it. He had now overleaped it.—And though racked with self-abhorrence at what he had done; and hoping, by deeds of penance to repass it; yet he fostered in his heart the passions which had betrayed him: and even found a new temptation for their excesses, in the land of his penitential pilgrimage. By a strange coincidence of fate, while he was sowing tares in the happy fields of Lindisfarne, Countess Altheim was preparing a similar attempt on the peace of its darling Louis.
The beautiful Otteline was as widely different from the character of her false friend, as unsunned snow from the molten lava of Vesuvius. She sought for nothing in her union with Ferdinand, but the rank he would bestow on her. His riches and his love were alike indifferent to her. And when she turned her eyes on the handsome secretary of Ignatius, she had no other idea in her meditated attack on his heart, but what aimed at sharing a birthright, which the Empress had assured her, would exceed her proudest wishes. Notwithstanding her incapability of loving, and indeed of feeling any emotion but those connected with her ambition and its disappointments; she was so keen an observer, and so fine an actress, that he must have had anIthurieleye, who couldhave distinguished the counterfeit from the real, in her pretensions.
Having made her first advances on Louis, by a retreating manœuvre, she perceived that her personal charms had made their intended impression; and that she had only to produce the graces of her conversation, to complete the conquest. On subjects of general taste, she was mistress; and in every department of human knowledge that belongs to worldly wisdom, she was perfectly informed. If sympathy did not give her anticipation of her lover's thoughts, self-interest endowed her with tact to glide into his opinions; and she did this so adroitly, as to make her echo appear the leading voice:—Her accomplishments were likewise brought into play; and the Empress did not disdain to partake the management. Once or twice, she detained the Arch-dutchess and her governess in the room, to call forth some natural or acquired charm in the beautiful instructress; and when the blushing Countess withdrew, Her Majesty usually made some observation on the inimitable perfections of her character, and the engaging modesty by which they were so constantly veiled.
In one of these interviews, when Louis was gazing with his soul in his eyes after the departing steps of the too exquisite Otteline, the Empress, with a peculiar smile, ejaculated,—"She has lately become enamoured of politics.—And should she negociate for herself, adieu my right in her possession!"
Louis felt himself turn pale, but he did not reply.—Though his Imperial Inquisitor thought his looks were sufficiently expressive, she was determined to carry away a direct avowal; and with a little archness, she added, "But you, perhaps, doubt her powers?"
He coloured as he replied: "I believe the Countess Altheim may command just what she pleases.""Indeed!" cried the Empress, "then you must not be my minister. If she negociate against me, I see where my interest would be."
Elizabeth smiled again, and with an expression that Louis could not resolve into any positive meaning;—but it was unpleasant to him, and gave him an impression of being played upon. A confused recollection of the Sieur's exordium against the power of beauty, suddenly occurred to him; and with rather a more offended air than is often ventured to an Empress, he said; "believing that the Countess Altheim would always please to command what is right, I did not suppose her influence could ever be actuated against the interests of Your Majesty."
The soft colour on Elizabeth's cheek, mounted to a proud crimson. The words were compliment, but the manner reproof. She regarded the audacious speaker with a look of astonishment. His eyeswere now directed to the ground. She felt she had been reproved; and by a youth! a boy! The son of a man, who, if her confidant and coadjutor, she was also his! and, from circumstances, so much more in her power, than she in his; that, at any moment she could ground his chariot in the quicksands; and give him a fall as deep, as that which had sunk for ever the fortunes of his predecessor, the great Alberoni!—And yet the son of this man, so perilously placed, so dependant on her will, durst presume to be offended with an innocent freedom she had condescended to take with his feelings!—He had dared to imply to her, that she had trifled with him beneath her dignity; and still he stood before her with a mien of more true respect, than any she was accustomed to meet from the most obsequious of her vassals!
With a haughty swelling at her heart, the Imperial Elizabeth ran through the first of these suggestions, but as she contemplated the countenance of the speaker, so noble, so modest; she found a more ingenuous sentiment arise. She had then, for the first time in her life, beheld the unveiled face of simple truth! the situation was strange to her; but there was a charm even in the novelty: and again smiling, but with an air in which all the distance of her rank was conveyed, she graciously said, "there was something besides compliment in that speech of your's, de Montemar; but I forgive you." She stretched out her hand to him, in sign of full pardon; and as he respectfully touched it with his lip, she added, "you would make a better counsellor than a courtier; but if you mean to be a statesman, you must unite both."
He bowed as she turned away; and said to himself, "then I must mean to be, what I never can be. If the world is not to be governed without the moral degradation of its governors, my ambition to be a ruler must follow Orlando's wits to the moon!"
Gracious as the Empress looked and spoke, he yet saw that he had been on the verge of giving her mortal offence. His Pastor-uncle had often told him, the atmosphere of courts was cold, in proportion to their elevation: it was as withering to every honest demonstration of the heart, as the icy peaks of the glaziers, to the verdure which would flourish in the vallies! Louis did not then quite believe the representation; but he now remembered the lesson, and sighed to find it true.
Musing on the causes and consequences of so unnatural a state of moral existence, he passed hastily through the galleries. The day was unusually warm for the season, and the heat of the stoves made the unventilated air so oppressive, that absorbed in thought, he unconsciously complied with his bodily feeling; and, with his cap still in his hand, he allowedhis pelisse to fall open from his figure, as he hastened down the passages. As he turned into an obscure lobby, by which he avoided the public guard-room, he passed the bottom of a flight of steps. Two persons were coming out of a door at the top. He did not observe the circumstance, so profound was his reverie, till he heard the voice of Wharton exclaiming, "'tis he, by Heaven!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Louis sprang forward; but not to meet his friend. He disappeared from the passage, at the very instant he heard the Duke throw himself over the rails of the stair, and call in louder accents, "De Montemar! De Montemar! Stop, for God's sake! It is Wharton who calls you!"
But Louis continued to fly, and Wharton to pursue, till the former abruptly turning through a small postern into the street, darted into his carriage; which always awaited him at this obscure entrance. It was just wheeling into the mob of attending equipages, when he beheld the Duke issue from the gate, and stand gazing around in search of his faithless friend!
"Faithless, I am not, dear, insulted Wharton!" cried Louis, aloud, though unheard by him he apostrophised. "But you have seen me desert you! Fly you, in spite of the sacred adjuration with which you would have recalled me! Oh, what do you now think of ungrateful de Montemar?"
At that moment he saw the Duke strike his forehead, as in the vexation of disappointment; and in the next, the turn of the carriage snatched him from his sight.
Louis now began to arraign his own carelessness, in having erred so unpardonably against warning, as to permit any abstraction of mind to divert him from the indispensible concealment of his person. Angry with himself, and vexed tothe soul that his negligent reverie had so immediately incurred the evil most deprecated by Ignatius, the wormwood in his heart for a moment distilled over every other object, and with a bitterness unusual to him, he exclaimed, "Why did I forget that a man sworn to politics, has immolated body and mind? Neither love nor friendship, nor the reasoning faculty, are for him. She is his deity, and must command all his thoughts! Had I properly recollected this detested creed, coiled like Satan in his serpent-train, I might have passed through the dust, unnoticed by the erect eyes of Duke Wharton!"
Perhaps, the consciousness that his own nature had caught some of this abhorrent system of disguise, excited temper, as well as regret, in this moody exclamation! His soul was naturally brave and frank; but the mysterious language of the Sieur had touched him with a kind of superstitious dread on certainpoints; and he now shrunk from mentioning this rencontre to any one. He knew it would fill Ignatius with alarm for their secret; and in the present state of his slowly-closing wounds, all agitation was dangerous. To name it to the Empress, might not only re-awaken her suspicions of the Duke, but excite her to precautions hostile to his safety. Louis thought, and re-thought over these circumstances; and, as his perturbed feelings subsided, and gave him clearer judgment, he fully determined on silence. He flattered himself that no ill could proceed from this concealment; and while he resolved to be more circumspect in future, he believed that Wharton was incapable of any act which could implicate his friend, and might be justly feared. He did not hope that the Duke could suppose that either now, or on the Danube, he had mistaken any other person for him. He might have been persuaded to say the mistake was probable; butLouis could not believe the possibility of his having ever thought so. For, could any one make him think he had not seen Wharton on the Danube; that he had not heard his voice calling on him through the passages of the palace?
"Oh, no," cried he, "there is an identity which never can deceive the heart! You know that it was Louis de Montemar you saw, that it was Louis de Montemar who fled you! But a day will come, I trust, when you may know all; or at least, when you shall see cause to grant to me, that I could not do otherwise: and that one essential in true friendship, is sometimes to confide, even against the evidence of our own senses."
With that romantic faith, Louis had confided in the purity of Wharton's attachment; and he believed that Wharton would not be less generous to him. But Louis was enthusiastic, and judged men with that deference to oral wisdom, which hangs on the precept of virtue, as if itwere virtue's self. He was yet practically ignorant, that a man's taste for moral excellence might be as exquisite as that which modelled the life of Addison; and his conduct be as foreign from his theory, as that which debased the genius of Richard Savage. Hence, Louis formed his opinion of his fellow-creatures, rather from the sentiments he heard them utter, than from the actions he was told they performed. He could not be mistaken in the one; misrepresentation, or misapprehension of motives, might pervert the other; and thus he more often made a good sentiment the commentary on a dubious action, than tried the principles of the sentimentalist, by the rectitude of his conduct. Indeed, he was not thus liberal, merely from never having supposed the absurdity of men admiring a principle they are determined never to adopt; but from an ingenuous pleader in his own breast, whose still small voice continually whispered to him, "Whyshould I conceive the worst of others, when my own conduct so often falls short of my best intentions! nay, frequently turns so blindly aside, that I wonder to find myself in the midst of errors, when I most intended to do the perfect right! But the heart's weakness, the impatience of the will, the frowardness of the temper! how can I feel these within me, and not judge with charity of appearances in others?"
"And you, dear Wharton," cried he, "are now called on to judge me charitably. To believe any thing of me, but that I could treat you thus, from the dictates of my own will."
How Wharton did judge of the conduct of Louis de Montemar, after events were to prove. Louis was right in believing him sure of his friend's identity, both on the Danube and in the palace gallery. But in the first instance, as he saw him no more, he supposed that some cause must have hurried him from Vienna; and hedid not think it worth while to press the matter on those who denied it. But now, that he had not only seen him again, but seen him fly his sight and his voice! Here indeed, Wharton could hardly credit his senses. And he was still standing in the porch, gazing after the various passing carriages, when the companion he had broken from in his pursuit, rejoined him.
He enquired of the Duke, who the person could be, he was so eager to overtake; and remarking on the oddity of so determined an avoidance, exclaimed, "He must have been gone in an instant; for though I heard your exclamation, I never saw to whom it was made."
"Then I have probably been racing after a ghost," replied Wharton, stifling his chagrin under a gay laugh; "but if it have aught of mother-earth about its airy sides, I will grapple with it yet."
His companion replied in the same strain, observing, that had it not been forthe over-topping figure of the Duke, he might have had a glimpse of the nimble-footed apparition. But soon observing that the curved brow of Wharton did not well agree with the merriment on his lip, the gentleman looked more serious, and again asked the name of the fugitive. Perceiving that his companion had not attended to the words of his exclamation, whatever he had done to its sound, the Duke carelessly answered, "It matters not; he is only a scape-goat, with more sins on his foolish head than he thinks of!"
"But his flight vexes you?"
"Because he is so good as to bear away my sins on his pate, and I am not in a humour to be tired of their company."
"He is your confessor then, and was flying from his duty?"
"You have it," returned the Duke, in a low whisper; "and for my conscience's sake, without further comment, let us allow him to go to the devil!"The gentleman shook his head incredulously; but added, laughing, "I am too good a catholic to pry into mysteries, sacred or profane." And Wharton, seeing he suspected some affair of gallantry, with a glance to corroborate the idea, laughed also, and passed to another subject.