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 beautifulprotegée, 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. Shelistened 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 bosomCounsellor 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:
"Youroffence 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 troublingnations, 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 Ripperdacould 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 hewould 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 yourears, 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 presumedto 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 whatI 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?
In the midst of this confusion of mind, he arrived at thePalais 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 activelabours 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,"
"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 tohis 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 thelate 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 Dukede 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; andLouis 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 immediatelyobeying 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 thePalais 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 agitatingtransports 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 throughan 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 hasreported and slanderedLouis 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 insultswith 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, TelephiCervicem roseam, & cerea TelephiLaudas Brachia, væ meumFervens difficili bile tumet jecur."
"Dum tu, Lydia, TelephiCervicem roseam, & cerea TelephiLaudas Brachia, væ meumFervens 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."
"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!Osezis 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.
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 hereturned 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 ofthe 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 Jewishmerchants 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 taughther 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, indark 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 hourto 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 imageof her who had blighted all his prospects.
He hurried to theHotel 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. Louisdisbelieved 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.
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 becruelty 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 meditationshad 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 theHorti 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, andskulking 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 triangleencases 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, theiron enteredwith 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 yourfather, 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 manœuvres 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 ittook 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 friendcarte 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 bydishonour, 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.
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 urgeOtteline, 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, whateverwere 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 butwish 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 lurkingand 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 slewhis 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 thepain 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 havethe 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 andhis 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 proofagainst 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!"