"Wharton," said Louis, looking on him with severity, "had Clytus beensuch a counsellor, he would have deserved the javelin of his friend?"
"My breast is ready," cried the Duke, "if thou hast the heart to throw it!"
"I would I could, and cut away the worser part of thine!" answered Louis, "I have seen more of it to-night, than I wish to remember."
"But what message," returned Wharton, "am I to remember, to carry to her, who is awaiting your slow appearance? Is she to give you herself, your father's safety, and your own freedom? Or, do you reject all? Forallyou must accept, or none; and then the scrupulous de Montemar, may go wash his hands of the name he has consigned to infamy; and beatify the paternal head he relinquishes to the block!"
This demand was made with scornful seriousness; with a ruthless application to the feelings of a son. Louis felt the firm collectiveness of a man determined to live or die by one line ofaction. He turned on Wharton with a fixed eye.
"Tell her," returned he, "that father and son may perish together; that their names may be followed by falsehood to the scaffold and the grave; but I never will purchase exemption from any one of these evils, by the prostitution of my heart and my conscience to vice in man or woman!"
Wharton grasped his arm.
"What superstition is this? What madness?—This message would undo you!"
"With whom, Wharton?"
"With the woman you scorn. Her revenge would exasperate your enemies!"
"Let it!" returned Louis, "since she has bereft me of my friend.—Wharton, we are no more to each other!"
"De Montemar?"
"In my extremest need, when I threw myself on your breast for counsel and for aid; when I believed you Heaven'sdelegated angel, to save my father and myself; you would have betrayed him to the dishonour of being bought by the guilt of his son; you would have betrayed me to hell's deepest perdition!"
As Louis spoke with the stern calmness of a divorced heart, Wharton became other than he had ever seen him. With the fires of resentment flashing from his resplendent eyes, he too collected the force of his soul in the mightiness of a last appeal. He spoke with rapidity for many minutes. He repeated, and redoubled his arguments; and then he added in a calmer voice:
"My heart is a man's heart, and therefore is sensible to this stroke from ungrateful friendship. But you now know that I can shame your superstition, by bearing insult upon insult, when my patience may recall you to yourself!"
"I am recalled to myself," returned Louis; "my superstition is, to depend on God alone for the preservation of myfather. If he fall, God has his wise purpose in the judgement, and I shall find resignation. For you, Wharton—that I have loved so long and so steadily—there may be a pang there—when he I trusted above all men, has proved himself my direst enemy!"
"Your enemy, de Montemar? your direst enemy? The words have passed your lips, were engendered in your heart, and my ears have heard them! It is easier to hate, than to love; to discard a friend, than to accept a mistress; to plunge into the gulph of ruin, than to avoid it through a path of happiness! Madman! Did I not pity the folly I marvel at, I would rouse you by a tale. But no more. When you next hear of, or see Philip Wharton, you will understand the import of your own words.—You shall know what he is, when he proclaims himself the enemy of Ripperda and de Montemar!"
Louis stood immoveable, with his eyes on the ground, while Wharton vehemently uttered this denunciation. He remained some time, like a pillar transfixed in the earth, after the Duke had disappeared. The first thing that recalled him to motion, was the profound stillness around, after the sounds of that voice, which till now, was ever to him the music of heaven. The horrible conviction of all that had passed, pressed at once upon his soul; the dear and agonizing remembrance of how he had loved him; and raising his arms to the dark heavens with a fearful cry of expiring nature, he threw himself upon the ground.
The falling dew, and the howling wind raised him not from that bed of lonely despair. And when he did leave the dismal scene of this last act of his miseries, it was like the spectre of the man who had entered it.
Wharton left Vienna, the morning after his separation from Louis in the garden of the chateau. From that day, Louis moved through his duties like a man in a dream. He had dispatched a special courier to his father, with as much of the conspiracy, as he had collected from his now estranged friend; and he confessed how the whole might have been in his possession, could he have brought his conscience to accord with the condition.
Hoping that even this obscure intimation might be some beacon to his father; himself went perturbedly on; racked with suspence, and feeling alone and unarmed amidst a host of ambushed foes. Except when obliged togo abroad on business, he shut himself within the walls of his house; for he now doubted every man who approached him; and the specious courtesies of women were yet more intolerable.
The Empress did not condescend to intimate how she had considered his proposition respecting the ceremony of her daughter; but she sent her chamberlain to inform him, that the Emperor had fixed the day of her favourite's nuptials, when they should be solemnized in a private manner. Louis loathed the very characters of Otteline's name; and shuddered at any new bonds to a society, associated to him with every disastrous remembrance. His soul was stricken; and the evils which appeared in visionary approach before his father's path, and his own, seemed too big for conflict. He felt he could have sustained the fiercest fields of war; could have died with an upward eye, and an exulting spirit on itshonourable bed. But to be a hero under the attacks of the coward breath of man; to stand before an obloquy that threatened the annihilation of his father's glory, and his own respected name; was more than he dared to contemplate: and in appalled expectation, he mechanically prepared to obey the unwelcome behests of Elizabeth.
He was giving his slow orders to amaitre d'hotelrespecting some arrangements for his future bride, when a letter was put into his hands, which had come by a circuitous route from Sardinia; and which he ought to have received a month or two ago. It was from Don Ferdinand d'Osorio. Until the public reception of Ripperda at Vienna, Don Ferdinand was ignorant where to address the cousin of his beloved Alice; and to express, what he felt, his sense of the justice of her appeal against his extorted bonds; and to acknowledge the delicacy with which Louis had seconded her remonstrances.When he heard that the Marquis de Montemar was in Germany with his father, he lost no time in writing; and entrusted his letter to a Sardinian gentleman going to Vienna. But the traveller took a wide tour; and did not bring the letter to its destination until two months after its date.
Louis dismissed his servant, and breaking the seal, read as follows:—
"My dear de Montemar,"I should be ashamed to confess the justice of all your remarks on my conduct with regard to your sweet cousin, my ever-beloved Alice, could I not at the same time assure you that I have obeyed her wishes to the fullest extent, and followed your advice implicitly. I have written to her, and to Mrs. Coningsby; and she is perfectly free: every bond is relinquished, but that of the heart. If her's be as firm as mine, we may confidently await the holy vows, which, I trust, will yet unite us."You must have seen enough of my excellent father, to know that he has one error amongst his many perfections; and that it is an irreconcileable abhorrence of the Protestant religion. However, though I should despair of ever bringing him to tolerate its tenets, I have a hope of compassing his consent to my marriage with its gentle professor. Marcella, my only, and very dear sister, (and who was intended from her cradle for a nunnery,) must assist me in this project. She loves me ardently; and her power with my father, except on one point, is almost omnipotent. It is this point, on which I ground my proceedings: she must obey him; and may gratify her enthusiastic nature, by serving me against herself. Her doom, poor girl! is rather a hard one, as it was absolutely fixed before she was born. My father's youthful passions, (which are now hushed to such monastic stillness!) were the cause of her dedication. I will tell youthe story; and then you may judge of my chance of success through her means."When my father was a young man, his character was too much like my own, self-willed and impetuous; and in affairs of love, as you will see by the sequel, he was even more determined than his son. At an early age, he acquired a great reputation in the army; and at the conclusion of the war in Italy, went on a party of pleasure to Vienna; then the gayest city in the world."During the reign of the Austrian monarchs in Spain, many of our grandees intermarried with the German nobility. It so happened between our family and that of the Austrian Sinzendorff's. My father, then full of life and enterprize, went to the old Count Sinzendorff's. The present Chancellor of that name was then young and thoughtless; and boasted to his cousin, of the great beauty of his youngest sister; who his family had chosen to sacrifice to the fortunes of the elder branches,by consigning her to a nunnery at the age of nineteen.—My father accompanied Sinzendorff to the convent, where they passed some hours with the beautiful novice; for she had yet four months of probation, before she was to pronounce the irrevocable vows. Suffice it to say, a mutual passion was conceived between the two cousins, and my father persuaded her to elope with him.—They fled into Switzerland, where they were married. In the course of time, absolution for the sacrilege was obtained from the Pope; but my father could never obtain it from himself.—His wife's first and second children died in the birth. They were both daughters. He believed it a judgment on his crime, and tried to reconcile offended heaven, by making a vow, that should his next infant be spared, and of the same sex; and he live to the appointed period, he would dedicate it to a monastic life, at the same age in which he seduced her mother from thealtar. The next child was myself. Two or three more infant deaths intervened before the birth of Marcella. But from the hour in which she saw the light, and continued to live, a golden crucifix was hung to her neck, and she was always addressed by the name of the little nun."As she grew in beauty and sweetness, my mother regretted the determined immolation of her child; but my father would listen to no pleadings, to spare such variety of excellence to the world. He demanded the sacrifice for the appeasing of his conscience; and poor Marcella, though educated with all the accomplishments of her sex, and full of as many graces as ever charmed in woman, silently awaited her gloomy destiny. I remember having often seen my father stand impenetrable to my mother's reproaches for consigning all this youth and loveliness to the cloister, and then he has calmly answered:—"Antoinetta, I have covered theblameless offering with all these garlands, to render her a more costly sacrifice at my hands; to make my heart drop blood when she is led to the altar; and then, your sin and mine, my erring wife, may find a veil!"My mother doated on my sister, and she could not see the justice of expiating her own offence, by the misery of her child.—In this spirit, she too, made a vow; and that was, never to be separated from her daughter, till her father's cruel dedication shut her from the world. By a most unhappy fatality, the governess my mother engaged for Marcella when a child, was the widow of one of the illustrious cavaliers who came to the continent, with your James II. She was a learned and a pious woman, and brought up my sister in all her own principles.—My father led too busy a life, to investigate deeper than the fruits; and those, he said were good. But a year ago, the English lady died; and on her death-bed, she declaredherself a Protestant! In short, Marcella had been too long under her tuition, to become a willingdevoteeto the monastic rites of the Romish Church. A superstitious horror of this discovery prevented my father questioning her on the subject; but he proposed her immediate removal to a convent. My mother opposed her vow to his; not to suffer her child to leave her, till the time of her being professed.—Marcella cast herself on her knees, and implored, by every thing sacred in earth and heaven, that her father would not compel her to take vows against which her soul revolted. She engaged to live a life of celibacy; and never to see any persons but her own family; if he would spare her those dreadful oaths, and allow her to remain for ever with her mother. But in the essential point, my mother and sister pleaded in vain. He granted her continuance at home, till the year of her noviciate; but that yearmust come, and it will commence next January."Being aware, from my father's pertinacity on these subjects, that if my sister does not then resign herself to her fate, she will be dragged to meet it, (though he would rather purchase her free consent at any price;) I determined on trying to turn her sad destiny to my happiness. When I pledged my faith to your dear cousin, I did it under a belief that I could persuade Marcella to do that willingly, which she knows she must do, even under violence. I want her to make my father's sanction to my marriage with Alice, the condition of her performing all his vows, without further hesitation!"On my return from Lindisfarne, (without then venturing to open my whole mind to her on the subject,) I prepared the way, by describing the dear family at the pastorage, in such colours as to excite her particular interest for thefair and tender Alice. My mother's gratitude was eloquent towards Mr. Athelstone and Mrs. Coningsby; and again and again she wished to see the latter and her daughters in Spain, that she might repay them in some sort, for their cares of her son."My father and I soon came to Sardinia on public affairs; but we return to Spain in the autumn. I shall then unbosom myself to Marcella; and, I doubt not, she will concede that to my happiness, which, should she withhold it, would only leave me to misery, without prolonging the time of her own liberty."At present she is leading an almost monastic life; and the difference cannot be great, whether it be past in a real cell amongst the Ursulines, and daily cheered by visits from her mother; or in a cloistered apartment at home, which is fitted up with every similar austerity, and has no advantage but the nominal distinction of being in her father's house."I hope every thing from Marcella'sfree consent, and consequent influence with my father; and, when it is given, dear de Montemar, (if you are not too absorbed in politics and Imperial favour, to continue your interest in the happiness of faithful love!) you shall hear again, from your sincerely obliged friend,"Sardinia.Ferdinand d'Osorio."
"My dear de Montemar,
"I should be ashamed to confess the justice of all your remarks on my conduct with regard to your sweet cousin, my ever-beloved Alice, could I not at the same time assure you that I have obeyed her wishes to the fullest extent, and followed your advice implicitly. I have written to her, and to Mrs. Coningsby; and she is perfectly free: every bond is relinquished, but that of the heart. If her's be as firm as mine, we may confidently await the holy vows, which, I trust, will yet unite us.
"You must have seen enough of my excellent father, to know that he has one error amongst his many perfections; and that it is an irreconcileable abhorrence of the Protestant religion. However, though I should despair of ever bringing him to tolerate its tenets, I have a hope of compassing his consent to my marriage with its gentle professor. Marcella, my only, and very dear sister, (and who was intended from her cradle for a nunnery,) must assist me in this project. She loves me ardently; and her power with my father, except on one point, is almost omnipotent. It is this point, on which I ground my proceedings: she must obey him; and may gratify her enthusiastic nature, by serving me against herself. Her doom, poor girl! is rather a hard one, as it was absolutely fixed before she was born. My father's youthful passions, (which are now hushed to such monastic stillness!) were the cause of her dedication. I will tell youthe story; and then you may judge of my chance of success through her means.
"When my father was a young man, his character was too much like my own, self-willed and impetuous; and in affairs of love, as you will see by the sequel, he was even more determined than his son. At an early age, he acquired a great reputation in the army; and at the conclusion of the war in Italy, went on a party of pleasure to Vienna; then the gayest city in the world.
"During the reign of the Austrian monarchs in Spain, many of our grandees intermarried with the German nobility. It so happened between our family and that of the Austrian Sinzendorff's. My father, then full of life and enterprize, went to the old Count Sinzendorff's. The present Chancellor of that name was then young and thoughtless; and boasted to his cousin, of the great beauty of his youngest sister; who his family had chosen to sacrifice to the fortunes of the elder branches,by consigning her to a nunnery at the age of nineteen.—My father accompanied Sinzendorff to the convent, where they passed some hours with the beautiful novice; for she had yet four months of probation, before she was to pronounce the irrevocable vows. Suffice it to say, a mutual passion was conceived between the two cousins, and my father persuaded her to elope with him.—They fled into Switzerland, where they were married. In the course of time, absolution for the sacrilege was obtained from the Pope; but my father could never obtain it from himself.—His wife's first and second children died in the birth. They were both daughters. He believed it a judgment on his crime, and tried to reconcile offended heaven, by making a vow, that should his next infant be spared, and of the same sex; and he live to the appointed period, he would dedicate it to a monastic life, at the same age in which he seduced her mother from thealtar. The next child was myself. Two or three more infant deaths intervened before the birth of Marcella. But from the hour in which she saw the light, and continued to live, a golden crucifix was hung to her neck, and she was always addressed by the name of the little nun.
"As she grew in beauty and sweetness, my mother regretted the determined immolation of her child; but my father would listen to no pleadings, to spare such variety of excellence to the world. He demanded the sacrifice for the appeasing of his conscience; and poor Marcella, though educated with all the accomplishments of her sex, and full of as many graces as ever charmed in woman, silently awaited her gloomy destiny. I remember having often seen my father stand impenetrable to my mother's reproaches for consigning all this youth and loveliness to the cloister, and then he has calmly answered:—
"Antoinetta, I have covered theblameless offering with all these garlands, to render her a more costly sacrifice at my hands; to make my heart drop blood when she is led to the altar; and then, your sin and mine, my erring wife, may find a veil!
"My mother doated on my sister, and she could not see the justice of expiating her own offence, by the misery of her child.—In this spirit, she too, made a vow; and that was, never to be separated from her daughter, till her father's cruel dedication shut her from the world. By a most unhappy fatality, the governess my mother engaged for Marcella when a child, was the widow of one of the illustrious cavaliers who came to the continent, with your James II. She was a learned and a pious woman, and brought up my sister in all her own principles.—My father led too busy a life, to investigate deeper than the fruits; and those, he said were good. But a year ago, the English lady died; and on her death-bed, she declaredherself a Protestant! In short, Marcella had been too long under her tuition, to become a willingdevoteeto the monastic rites of the Romish Church. A superstitious horror of this discovery prevented my father questioning her on the subject; but he proposed her immediate removal to a convent. My mother opposed her vow to his; not to suffer her child to leave her, till the time of her being professed.—Marcella cast herself on her knees, and implored, by every thing sacred in earth and heaven, that her father would not compel her to take vows against which her soul revolted. She engaged to live a life of celibacy; and never to see any persons but her own family; if he would spare her those dreadful oaths, and allow her to remain for ever with her mother. But in the essential point, my mother and sister pleaded in vain. He granted her continuance at home, till the year of her noviciate; but that yearmust come, and it will commence next January.
"Being aware, from my father's pertinacity on these subjects, that if my sister does not then resign herself to her fate, she will be dragged to meet it, (though he would rather purchase her free consent at any price;) I determined on trying to turn her sad destiny to my happiness. When I pledged my faith to your dear cousin, I did it under a belief that I could persuade Marcella to do that willingly, which she knows she must do, even under violence. I want her to make my father's sanction to my marriage with Alice, the condition of her performing all his vows, without further hesitation!
"On my return from Lindisfarne, (without then venturing to open my whole mind to her on the subject,) I prepared the way, by describing the dear family at the pastorage, in such colours as to excite her particular interest for thefair and tender Alice. My mother's gratitude was eloquent towards Mr. Athelstone and Mrs. Coningsby; and again and again she wished to see the latter and her daughters in Spain, that she might repay them in some sort, for their cares of her son.
"My father and I soon came to Sardinia on public affairs; but we return to Spain in the autumn. I shall then unbosom myself to Marcella; and, I doubt not, she will concede that to my happiness, which, should she withhold it, would only leave me to misery, without prolonging the time of her own liberty.
"At present she is leading an almost monastic life; and the difference cannot be great, whether it be past in a real cell amongst the Ursulines, and daily cheered by visits from her mother; or in a cloistered apartment at home, which is fitted up with every similar austerity, and has no advantage but the nominal distinction of being in her father's house.
"I hope every thing from Marcella'sfree consent, and consequent influence with my father; and, when it is given, dear de Montemar, (if you are not too absorbed in politics and Imperial favour, to continue your interest in the happiness of faithful love!) you shall hear again, from your sincerely obliged friend,
"Sardinia.Ferdinand d'Osorio."
Louis closed the letter, with every warm wish for the happiness of his endeared Alice; but while he joined the man she loved, in the heartfelt orison, he could not but regret the strain of selfishness he saw throughout his character. He hardly pitied the amiable Marcella, in the destiny she appeared to deprecate, and to which her brother so coolly rivetted her reluctant hands, while he pretended to deplore her fate. In the state Louis was in, between man's perfidy and woman's wiles, any refuge from the world,seemed a heaven to him. The passions and opinions of youth are in extremes; all delight, or all misery; all virtues, or all crimes; no happiness but in rapture; no grief but in despair. But Louis's griefs were now heavy enough, not to need the overcharging of fancy; and when he thought of all that he had suffered since his last fearful meeting with Wharton in the garden, he could not but exclaim,
"Oh, that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away, and be at rest!"
He was scared from the world by its vices; and sometimes longed to repose his wearied spirit in the grave. But he was now only entered into the lists; the contest was only begun; and he must brace his sinews to continue the combat, for which his ambitious soul had panted while he lay in the peacefulness of his native home!
On the very morning, whose eveningwas to see him perform his extorted vows, to her who had once been the object of d'Osorio's passion, two couriers arrived from Spain. The one was Castanos, who came to Louis; the other was from the Marquis de Castellor, and went direct to Count Routemberg.
The volcano had burst; and all the power, and all the honours of Ripperda were swept away! De Castellor was now in his seat; and when Castanos came off; the Duke was stunned into stupor, overcome by the illimitable ruin.
Of the particulars of the catastrophe, Louis did not hear, till he could question Castanos; for the Spaniard, knowing the tidings of the packet he brought, had presented it in silence and withdrew. Louis opened it impatiently; and took out his father's letter. He could hardly expect it to be an answer to his warning epistle, for the time appeared too short for an interchange of messengers; but eager to know the complexion of thingsin Spain, he broke the seal. The letter was brief, and scarcely legible; but it was sufficient to announce the completion of his worst fears: that his father was no more the minister of Spain; that he was abandoned by the King; insulted by the nobles; and outraged with every species of ingratitude by the people he had served to his own overthrow!
The bolt was then fallen! And, every hand in which his father trusted, had assisted to launch it!
Louis was transfixed with the letter in his hand. Now it was, that he saw the world unmasked before him; now it was, that he saw the views of life unveiled; now it was, that all creation seemed to pass from before him with a frightful noise, and he stood alone in chaos. The smiling face of man was blotted out; gratitude, virtue, were annihilated; and life had no longer an object! What had his father been? All that was noble anddisinterested. What had he done for Spain? Redeemed her from poverty, contempt, and suffering; to riches, honour, and happiness. And what was his reward? He was cast, like the reprobate angel from on high, and trampled upon by his conquerors, as though his actions had been like him he resembled in his fall!
How long he sat in motionless, sightless gaze, upon the fatal letter, he knew not; but he was aroused by the entrance of his secretary, who informed him Count Sinzendorff awaited him in the next chamber.
Louis saw he was now called upon to breast the first wave that was to break on him from the deluge which had overwhelmed his father. He rallied his mental strength; and, looking upwards, to implore the staying hand from above, he proceeded with the composure of inevitable ruin, to the presence of the Chancellor. The virtuous statesman advancedto meet him, while his countenance proclaimed that he knew all, and sympathized with its victim.
Their conference was short; but it implied to Louis, that his delegated reign, as well as that of his father, was at an end. Sinzendorff had been in the Imperial cabinet, when Routemberg laid his dispatches before the Emperor; and to spare the upright son of Ripperda, some rude disclosure of their contents, the Chancellor took upon himself to inform him, that he was to transfer his portfolio to the Count de Monteleone, who had just arrived at Vienna.
On Louis thanking the minister for his generous interference, Sinzendorff took his hand.
"I will always bear my testimony to the fair dealing of the son, and to the disinterested conduct of the father, though we should never meet again."
Even while the words were on the lips of the chancellor, a message arrived fromthe Empress to Louis, to hasten his attendance at the Altheim apartments.—He smiled gloomily, in answer to Sinzendorff's smile of dubious meaning.
"I had forgotten!" said the chancellor, "you have yet a fair bond to Vienna; and this need not be a parting day."
"It is a portentous day, of most unpropitious nuptials!" replied Louis, hardly knowing what he uttered; "but every day, and every where, I must be honoured in the approbation of Count Sinzendorff."
The hour was beyond the time in which he ought to have been in the imperial boudoir, to await the hand of his intended bride. What change in her wishes, his changed fortune might produce, he thought not of. In a postscript to his father's letter, he had found hastily written:
"Events prove that you have done right with regard to the Empress's friend, if she is now your wife."This approbation, was a new bond on the sacrifice; and he threw himself into his carriage, to obey the peremptory summons of Elizabeth!
All was solitude in the first three chambers of the Altheim apartments. As he hurried forward with the desperate step of a man, who had lost so much that the last surrender was a matter of no moment, he saw the Empress in the fourth; but she sat alone. Louis bowed at the entrance, and again as he drew near. She was pale as himself; and did not look up while she addressed him.
"You are come, thus tardily, to ratify your vows? To redeem your pledged honour?"
"I come to obey Your Majesty's commands," replied he.
"Your vows may be returned to you;" answered Elizabeth, "but the honour that was never your's, cannot be redeemed.""Dare I say," replied Louis, "that I do not understand Your Majesty?"
"And yet the words are plain," returned she, "they are to tell you, that low as Ripperda has fallen, he never can reach the depths of his son."
"Madam," exclaimed he, "I am now a ruined man! the malice of his enemies has cast my fortunes, with my father, to the ground; but he shall not be humbled in his son. Virtue is the soul of his being, virtue is my inheritance; and I implore of Your Majesty to say, of what I am accused? Who are my accusers?"
She looked up; and mistaking the ravages of anguish on his fine countenance, for those of guilt, she shuddered with a loathing sensation, and answered indignantly.
"How dare that false tongue profane the name of virtue, by connecting it with that of your father and yourself?—The world teems with your accusers; and he bears witness to their veracity, by nothaving ventured one line to me in his defence."
She then steadily ennumerated the Duke's imputed treacheries. That it was past a doubt, his clandestine coalition with the Duke of Wharton; that their secret meetings had been traced; that he had commenced a correspondence with James Stuart; and that, from what motives, his mad ambition could alone tell; it was well known he was playing in Madrid the counterpart of Wharton's political game at Vienna. In short, he covertly abetted every machination against the Empire, and the house of Brunswick:—"and," concluded the Empress, "I am constrained to believe, that, to me and mine, his overthrow is as timely, as it is irrevocable."
This charge on his father transported Louis beyond the forms of ceremony; and with all the eloquence of truth and filial piety, he burst forth into a defence of his integrity, which, to any otherthan the possessed ears of Elizabeth, must have carried resistless conviction; but with an impetuosity equal to his own, she interrupted him:—
"Cease!" cried she, "Hard, unblushing parricide of all thy father's fame! Dissembling, cozening de Montemar! In every word, and look, and gesture, I see the tempter of Ripperda's ruin! He was Honour's self, till he brought the serpent to his bosom, in the shape of his perfidious son. Shame to thee, young man, and think of the price for which you sold him to Duke Wharton."
Louis was confounded by this charge upon himself, as the instigator of his father's asserted treasons; but he did not shrink, or withdraw his assured eye from the face of the Empress.
"That Wharton was my friend," said he, "I did not withhold from Your Majesty; that my father was, and is, hisimplacable enemy, I have just affirmed: and that it is not in the power of Duke Wharton, or of any other man, to draw us from our allegiance to Spain, and our fidelity to you—name our accusers, and I am ready to maintain it with my blood."
Elizabeth had now restrained the feelings, which some pleading recollections of Ripperda had awakened, and with haughty composure, she replied:—
"You may revenge the discovery of your falsehood, by the lives of your accusers; but the times are past, when truth was proved by bloodshed. Yet, as you demand it, I shall not refuse you knowledge of your crimes. They are simple, but they are comprehensive.—First, your nightly visitations to the Electress of Bavaria, under the disguise of the Chevalier de Phaffenberg!—"
"It is false!" cried Louis, placing his hand on his heart, and lookingup to heaven; "by the eternal judgment, I swear it is false!"
Elizabeth raised her hands in horror.
"Matchless villain!" cried she.
Then frowning terribly, with a redoubling detestation in every feature, she rapidly continued:—
"And have you the audacity to swear, you never visited her at all? That you did not steal from her house by a secret passage, on the night of the destruction of the opera-house? That you have not had clandestine meetings with the arch-counsellor of her treasons? And that this rebellious pair, have not stimulated your presumption, to draw my daughter to disgrace her rank by listening to a passion from you?"
Louis was too much appalled by the two leading charges, to shew any surprise at the third. Had Wharton then betrayed that they had met? That the preserver of his mistress, had once entered her palace?—The blood which mantled on his cheek at the accusation, faded before this direful suspicion; and his eyes, dropping under the indignant beams of the Empress, told her that in this instance at least, his face was honest.
"You do not dare repeat the perjury!" cried she; "leave my presence."
"Not as a guilty man!" cried he, looking up with the bold desperation of innocence; "I have now, nothing to gain or to lose with the Empress of Germany, but my honour; and again I affirm, that under no name but that of Louis de Montemar, did I ever enter the palace of the Electress of Bavaria. I never did enter it but once, and that was on the night Your Majesty mentions. I have also met the Duke of Wharton, by accident, in the courts of this palace, and in various assemblies; and by compulsive necessity, twice in the garden of the chateau:—but we never meet again!"Here Louis stopped. For these charges had so struck on his heart, (as he believed they could only have been inflicted by the threatened vengeance of his friend;) that he forgot the one respecting the Princess.
"You own that you have visited the Electress, and communed with her emissary!" cried Elizabeth, "avow your object, and it will answer to the point to which your effrontery has not yet spoken. Was it to dethrone my husband, and make my daughter a prisoner to the Bavarian Empress? It would have crowned the adventure, to have rewarded her champion with the hand of a captive Princess!"
Stung to the soul, Louis threw himself at her feet, to proclaim his innocence of all these inferences, before heaven and her. But she started back, as from a viper in her path.
"Base hypocrite!" cried she, "I am not to be moved by subtilty.—I know how you dedicated that attitude to thedishonour of your future sovereign. But she is now rescued from your arts—this foot crushed your pernicious resemblance, as the heaven you outrage, will one day do yourself. You may grovel in the dust, but I will hear no more."
Louis rose calmly from his knee.
"Empress," said he, "I solicit for justice no more; but I owe it to my honour, to declare, that my presence in the Bavarian palace was occasioned by a service I had accidentally performed to one of its inhabitants. My meetings with Duke Wharton were an attempt to penetrate into a conspiracy which I knew was forming against my father; but I failed in my purpose. The enemies of the Duke de Ripperda have annihilated his political life, and plunged his son into the same abyss of calumny; but I am not yet sunk to baseness, nor hypocrisy. It was not to the Empress of Germany I knelt, but to the power of justice in her person. But that is past; and I feel, that couldbirth give dignity, my ancestors of Nassau reigned in this very palace! And, if devotion to their successor, be a virtue in their posterity, mine have been faithful to the Emperor, to the last article in the treaty; and I have been devoted to Your Majesty, to the sacrifice of my happiness. This we have done! But, young as I am, I have lived to see, that when power is lost, birth is nothing; and virtue, nothing, but to the possessor's heart!"
The face of Elizabeth blazed with resentment.
"And this is your answer to your daring passion for my daughter?"
"The Emperor knows, I never dared to love the Princess," replied Louis, "and to the honour of his Imperial word, I refer Your Majesty."
Louis bowed with a backward step, as he was preparing to withdraw.
"Incomparable insolence!" exclaimed she; "stop, and know that he is your accuser!"Louis smiled with so insufferable an air of scornful superiority, that she was momentarily struck dumb; but violently extricating her powers of speech, she sternly replied:—
"Every aim of that towering spirit is known to him and to me; but every aim is crushed!"
"Human power cannot crush my aims!" rejoined Louis; "they are to uphold my father's honour and my own truth. And while he deserves the reverence of the world, what can prove that they are lost!"
The Empress's hand was on her beating forehead, but she turned, even fiercely to his question.
"The position in which he now lies, by the determined falsehoods of his son!" replied she, "return to him, covered with dishonour; return to him, bearing the curse of the friend of his virtue—of the mother of Maria Theresa! Return tohim, spurned by the Countess Altheim; and abhorred and stigmatized by all honest men!"
Elizabeth left the blameless victim of all this wrath, standing in the middle of the floor. Every word she breathed, every anathema she denounced, seemed urged by the quick revenge of Duke Wharton! All justice, all fair inference was denied him! His father and himself were alike shut out from the bosom of friendship; were alike betrayed by them in whom they had most confidently trusted! The burthen was almost too much for him to bear. And rushing from the apartment; he knew no more of what he said or did, till he found himself thrown upon a chair, and alone, in his own chamber.
The official transfers were soon made. Monteleone received the diploma ofChargé des Affaires. The Emperor and Empress refused the usual forms of admitting the recalled minister to a parting audience; and not a man, Spaniard, nor Austrian, appeared within the gates of thePalais d'Espagne, to pay a farewell compliment, to the son of their benefactor and friend.
The finger of royal disgrace was on him; and all fled the spot on which it lay. Solitude was around his lately crowded courts; silence in every room; and when business took him abroad, avoidance met him in every passing countenance. The ladies, who had opened their houses to him, now shut up theirdaughters till he had left the city; but few needed the precaution; for with his fortunes had vanished the most powerful charms, even of Louis de Montemar. This mortification, however, was spared him; as in the lofty consciousness of his own integrity, and as high a disdain of the injustice he had received, he went no where to solicit compassion nor propitiate candour. But had he known their present sentiments, the assurance that Countess Altheim breathed the same, would have been sufficient in his eyes to transform the deed of banishment to one of welcome liberty. In the midst of all this gloom of misery, his freedom from her, shone like a star in the dark hemisphere, that promised night was not to remain for ever.
When his lonely carriage passed the barrier, (for all his state attendants were left to the new ambassador,) he threw himself back, and exclaimed. "How did I enter you, proud, ungrateful city?Full of hope, and enterprise, and honour! How do I quit you? Bereft by you of all! Ruined, dishonoured, desolate!"
The barb was in his heart. It was there, in the image of Wharton; and it corroded with a slow and deadly poison. Still as he journeyed forward, and compared events with time, he could not but feel some satisfaction, when he found by calculation, that had he been weak enough to yield to the proposal he had rejected, and accepted the discovery of the authors of this vast overthrow, by the surrender of his innocence; it would still have been too late to prevent his father's fall in Spain. The Empress had shewn herself too entirely prejudiced, to have been affected by any document he could have presented. And while he thought on this, with gratitude to heaven for his firmness; he conceived a deeper horror of the friend, who might have seduced him to such guilt, and left him no other payment than unavailing remorse, anddeserved infamy. In his own person, he was now convinced of the truth of his father's charge against this once beloved Wharton. Thathe could bereave, but not bestow! In the garden of the Chateau, he had promised a preservation he could not have performed; on the same spot he had threatened a vengeance he had now taken! Louis attributed all Elizabeth's accusations to the resentment of his treacherous friend; and by that act considered himself despoiled by Wharton of all that was most dear to him.
"I will forget him!" cried he to himself, "my honoured father, I come to thee, to stand by thee alone! To uphold and cheer thee! To uphold and cheer myself, with the conviction that I yet possess thee! To glory in the virtue that has given thee the fate of Aristides!"
In a pass of the Appenines, Louis's solitary vehicle was met by a courier from Spain. He brought a credential from Martini, which announced him as hisbrother Lorenzo, who had lately been received by Ripperda into his household in the quality of a page. The young man came full speed, to meet the recalled minister; and to hasten his arrival at Madrid; where the Duke lay, in a state to hear no other counsellor, to receive no other comfort.
Lorenzo got into the carriage with his master's son; and detailed the particulars of his mission, as they proceeded rapidly to Genoa. Louis listened to the narrative with unshrinking fortitude.
Immediately on Ripperda's return from Vienna, the King had published an edict, that a revision of all sentences, and a review of all transactions by judges, governors, collectors, and every other kind of royal officers, should be subjected to the cognizance of the Duke of Ripperda. This immense accession of authority put the individual interest of every man in Spain into his hands; and made him no less terrible in the city and provinces, than formidable to the grandees, and an object of jealousy to the King's sons. In short, he was such a minister, as never had been seen before; a kind of Vicar-general, whose power wanted nothing of supreme sovereignty, but the permanency of a throne.
Lorenzo observed, that his brother had owned to him, that, from the Duke's free exercise of one branch of this extensive authority, he had foreseen a rupture between his master and the majority of the Spanish nobility. Since his return from Vienna, his manner to them, and to society at large, was completely changed. He no longer conciliated, but compelled. He summoned the greatest and most powerful of the grandees before his tribunal, whether the appeal came from prince or peasant; and did such strict justice, that none could reproach, though all murmured: the great, for being made to feel there was a power above their wills; and the little, that the laws of Spain should be dispensed by a manwho had been born out of her dominions. While his home policy was good, and efficient; and his outward politics were only held in the balance, by the tergiversation of Austria, there were yet men in the cabinet who privately ridiculed his plans as a mere political romance. And he found it so. For what is speculatively right, is generally practically wrong. Men's probable actions are calculated by the law of reason; but their performance is usually the result of caprice.
In the midst of the universal discontent excited by the agents of his numerous rivals and enemies, the main mine was sprung, and Ripperda's fortunes received their final blow. The King and Queen of Spain were made to believe the most contradictory, preposterous, and terrible things of his private intentions. And, in one hour, he received three successive messages from the King, to inform him, that his offices in the state,the army, and the commercial interests of his country, were taken from him. That Grimaldo, the Marquis de Castellor, and the Count de Paz, filled his places; and that a courier was dispatched to Vienna, to recall his son.
Lorenzo related, that the intelligence of the first messenger, which took from him the office of prime minister, was delivered in such a manner as to excite so unguarded an indignation in the Duke, that he extended his reproaches on his enemies, even to the King; and in the tempest of his wrath, uttered things of His Majesty, the report of which doubly incensed the Monarch and his Queen. This messenger was Baptista Orendayn, the nephew of the Count de Paz. The new ministers were well aware of his insidious powers to insult and to betray, and they selected him to convey their triumph to the Duke. Ripperda, having exhausted himself under the influence of the young sycophant's irritating sympathy, remained in gloomy silence during the communications of the two succeeding messengers. When they were all departed from him, he sat for an hour motionless, in intense thought, with his hands clasped in each other, and his eyes fixed on the floor. Martini passed to and fro in the room, without notice from his master. At last the Duke suddenly started up, as one out of a trance.
"I will go to the Queen!" cried he.
It was now about nine o'clock, in a fine autumnal evening. He directed his carriage to theBuen Retiro. He arrived, but was refused admittance. He returned to his palace, and called for his secretary; but no secretary was to be found. Not one of the officers of any of his late numerous offices were now in attendance. All were fled with the stream of power; and nothing but amazed and alarmed family domestics, were seengliding about the galleries, in silence and dismay.
Castanos, however, presented himself; and by him Ripperda wrote to his son and the Empress, and dispatched him to Vienna: but Monteleone encountered him on the way. He soon found the old Spaniard had a price; and having purchased the perusal of the packet, suffered the son's hurried billet to pass; but the resistless appeal to Elizabeth he committed to the flames.
While Ripperda was writing other letters, his fixed attention was at last diverted, by an unusual sort of tumult in the square before his palace. He was accustomed, at his return, or issuing from his gates, to be hailed and lackied by the acclamations of the populace. His largesses were abundant, and the uproar of vehement thanksgiving, was ever on the watch from the venal multitude. But, for the purpose of the time,the dole was now doubled at the porches of the new ministers: and the same mob, who, four-and-twenty hours before had rent the air with shouts oflong live the great Duke Ripperda!now tore their lungs with curses on his name, and threats of vengeance for the ruin of Spain.
The madness of the people seemed to grow on their own violence; and the fury with which they assailed his gates with flambeaux, clubs and hatchets, left little doubt that they meant to fire the palace, and massacre its inhabitants. Martini urged his master to withdraw privately from the danger.
"What?" cried Ripperda, "fly like a coward and a criminal before the ungrateful rabble of Madrid? Never; though their king were at their head, to urge the murder of their benefactor. I am dispossessed, but am not fallen; and that, myself will shew them."
As he spoke, he rushed towards theopen balcony, which projected over the great gate, and extended his arm to the people, in the act to speak. The blazing lights in the apartment behind him, and the broad glare from the torches beneath, shewed in a moment the noble figure of the Duke, and his commanding gesture.
Struck with surprise, the dead silence of profound awe, for an instant stilled the whole assembly. But before the big words of vehement indignation could burst from the lips of Ripperda, a watchful emissary of his enemies fired a carabine direct at the balcony. Aggression once committed, every restraint of reverence and shame were cast away; and others, near the assassin, echoed his cry of "death to the heretic!"—Martini threw his arms around his master, and dragging him within the balcony, forcibly shut the doors. The Duke turned on him a look of unutterable meaning."You would be more in fashion," cried he, "if you stabbed your patron! Do it, Martini, and spare me from the knives of that ungrateful mob!"
Martini urged his lord, on the only plea to which he would now listen; to save himself for future vengeance. His carriage was brought round to a private door, in a back street; and Ripperda was at last persuaded to enter it. But there was a spy in the house, who informed his enemies of what was done; and before the vehicle, which contained only the Duke and Martini, could pass into the second street towards Segovia, it was met by the howling populace, and surrounded. The windows and doors were quickly beaten in; and Martini, who had hastily covered his livery with one of his master's cloaks, was dragged out, amidst the imprecations of his determined murderers. Ripperda would not tamely witness the sacrifice ofhis faithful servant; and with a pistol, with which he had armed himself, shot the man who had seized Martini, through the head. He then snatched the fellow pistol from his belt, and fired it, but without effect, upon the ruffians who threw themselves upon him. He heard Martini groan under his feet, as he himself seemed to grapple with a hundred miscreants, in the last struggles for his life.
But a shield was yet held over the head of Ripperda. The tumult increased in the rear, with the clattering of horses; and, the cries of the mob; as they fled in terror before the gleaming swords of several horsemen, who pressed towards the carriage. Ripperda had already received several flesh wounds, when the stroke of his deliverer's sabre beat down the arm that held the last weapon that was aimed against him; a huge rough hanger, in the hands of apardoned galley-slave,—who thus struck at the man whose chief offence was resistance to oppression!
His defenders sufficiently dispersed the mob, to allow their leader to dismount; and advancing to Ripperda, who had extricated himself from the writhing limbs of the wounded wretches beneath him; "Duke," said he, "follow me, and these horsemen shall guard you to safety."
Ripperda, at the same moment, felt a hand on his garment; and, in the next, Martini bruised and bleeding, had drawn himself from under the shattered carriage, whither his enemies had cast him. He raised himself, and stood by the side of his master. The horsemen drew around the group; and galloping before it, made a clear way amongst the flying populace, till they conducted Ripperda to the side of a plain travelling carriage.
Their leader, in a suppressed voice,requested the fallen statesman to enter it. Suspicion of some refined species of treachery glanced upon his mind. By a feigned rescue, he might be betrayed to an interminable captivity!
"To what asylum would that carriage convey me?" demanded he, in a tone that intimated his doubts.
"To the honour of an open enemy," was the reply; "I am Duke Wharton!"
At this part of Lorenzo's narrative, a cry, unutterable in words, burst from the engloomed but steadfast bosom of his auditor. It was the light breaking upon chaos! Regardless of the presence of the Italian, he fervently clasped his hands together, and inwardly exclaimed:—
"I thank thee, my God, for this!" Then covering his face, he gave way to the balm of tears.
Lorenzo gazed on him with sympathy, and wept also; but it was under a belief that the young Marquis was thus powerfully affected, by the simple fact of his father's rescue. The amiable page knew not that it was for the rescue of all his future fellowship with man. The sun was again in the heavens to Louis, in the fidelity of Wharton; in the generous revenge he had taken of both son and father.
Strange, inconsistent, noble, erring Wharton! The good was so blended in thee with the ill, that the soul of affection hovered about thy erratic steps, with the watchful tenacity of a guardian angel.
"Oh," cried Louis to himself, "the germs of the tree of life are in that noble, disinterested heart! He has saved my father; and I may weep upon his bosom again!"
The happy agitation of Louis was so great; so pre-eminently did he prize the real character of the beings he loved, before their appendages of fame or power; that it was with an upraisedcountenance, and an open eye, he listened to the remainder of Lorenzo's narrative.
Ripperda no longer hesitated to step into the carriage of his preserver. Wharton made the bruised Martini enter also; and accompanying them himself, the voiture set off, escorted by his servants.
The whole party remained silent for some minutes. Ripperda was the first that broke the pause.
"Duke Wharton," said he, "you have at last accomplished your object! Theproudest man in Christendomhas found no friend in his extremest necessity, but you his bitterest enemy! This is not a time in which I can express my sense of the obligation you have laid upon me. You have saved my life; you must now save my honour. One of the treasons alleged against me, is collusion with you. If I seek refuge at your lodgings, I shall confirm the falsehood of my slanderers: and I will perish,perish by their bullets or their daggers; rather than yield them the advantage of witnessing one of their perjuries, by a dubious action of my own!"
Wharton approved of this caution; and, observing that the Duke's villa at Segovia, would now be as unsafe as his palace at Madrid; he proposed to him the bold measure of proving his sincerity to the house of Brunswick, by throwing himself at once on the protection of General Stanhope, the British Ambassador in Spain. Ripperda saw the advantage of this suggestion; and the carriage was turned towards the residence of this gentleman, which was a mile out of the city, on the road to St. Ildefonso.
On arriving there, the Ambassador was from home; but Ripperda did not hesitate to assume the rights of hospitality at the house of the representative of a sovereign, to whose legal accession to the throne of England, he had obtained the acknowledgement of half Europe.Wharton went in with his companions. And while some of the servants were gone to arouze the medical attendants of the English Ambassador, to attend on the wounds of his guest, the two Dukes remained in private conference for half an hour. When Wharton withdrew, Martini, who sat in the anti-room, remarked that his countenance was clouded and even stern;—but he smiled when he passed him; and bade him take care of his noble master, for in his fidelity rested the fate of "Cæsar and his fortunes!"
General Stanhope arrived a few hours after the departure of the English Duke, (whose name had not been mentioned in the house;) and was not less surprised than perplexed at finding who had claimed his sanctuary.
The hurts of Ripperda, as well as those of his servant, had been found sufficiently deep, to authorize the surgeons in recommending immediate repose; but the Dukewould not hear of any rest for himself, until he had seen the Ambassador. When Stanhope entered to him, he found his guest lying on a sofa, in a high state of fever, both from his wounds and agitation. Ripperda rose at his appearance, and in the name of honour, and the privileges of his station, claimed his protection from the immediate attack of his political enemies.
What more passed between his master and the Ambassador, Lorenzo could give no account; only, that General Stanhope re-ordered his carriage as soon as he left the chamber of his guest, which was then within an hour of day-break. He set off for Madrid, and did not return till the morning was far advanced. He was then closeted with Ripperda for two hours; and Martini heard the voice of his master very high. However, it appeared, he was to remain unmolested in the house of the Ambassador; though it was immediately surrounded by a Spanish Guard.The bustle of these proceedings proclaimed the asylum of the Duke; and Lorenzo, who had only arrived that day from the Segovian villa, (when, to his great consternation he found the house at Madrid deserted by the servants, and its bureaus ransacked by the police;) lost no time in seeking his brother and persecuted master, in their reputed sanctuary.
The Duke saw him; and while he walked the room; for the perturbation of his mind, would not permit him to take the repose his wounds demanded; he told him to go instantly to meet his son.
"You will find him," said he, "some where between this and Vienna. Describe to him what you have heard and seen. My pen would consume the paper, should I attempt to write my injuries! Tell him, that my life has been assailed by those who now sit in my seat!—Not by their own coward hands:—Theyspirit up the rabble to do their bloody work, that they may throw my murder on the indignation of the people! There, however, my fortune baffled them. Now, they insult my protector: they demand his promise, that I shall not escape; and when that is given, they set guards on his house, as if he were a gaoler, and I a prisoner for high-treason! But they venture not to charge it on me: their own infamy is all they dare proclaim; to treat me like the worst of criminals, before I am convicted, before I am accused!——Shew my son, these things; and let him hasten to my support. Tell him, when he is by my side, I will confront them face to face; I will let Spain, and all Europe know, that though honour is banished from the world, it lives and reigns in the bosom of William de Ripperda."
Louis listened to all these details, with various inward emotions; but he was now braced to quell the smallest outward appearance of any. He spoke little in return; but his step was firm, his eye clear, and his port erect, as he gave his orders at the port of Genoa, for immediate embarkation. A vessel was ready to sail; the wind fair, but boisterous; and under a heavy gale, he launched on the ocean that was to convey him to the land of his forefathers; that was to consign him to the dungeons of Madrid.
Meanwhile the cabal against the ruined Ripperda raged with redoubled fury in the Spanish cabinet. No appeals from him were suffered to reach His Majesty, while he was accused of every political crime that could criminate a minister; and amongst others, of bribery from the merchants of Ostend; and this, Baptista Orendayn protested on oath, having seen the golden caskets in the hands of his son. Charge after charge was brought forward by the Spaniards. Baron Otho de Routemberg, (a brother of the Austrian minister, and his Ambassador at Madrid) supported them all by a shew of evidence; till, at last, the King was so far persuaded of the attempt at poisoning him having originated with Ripperda,that he privately summoned a committee of the Council of Castile, and laid the proofs before their judgement.
With equal secrecy they consulted together, and declared it expedient to commit the regicide to some stronger hold than that of the English ambassador's house, till the full council could be assembled, and a solemn trial be made of the offender.
General Stanhope afterwards learnt, that while the new ministers affected great indignation at what they represented as Ripperda's clandestine intelligence with the emissaries of James Stuart, they were severally giving private audiences to Duke Wharton. Philip was entirely in the dark, as to this avenue of their intelligence; for the Duke's presence in Madrid was not generally known, though the Queen herself was more than suspected of having admitted him to a conference in the disguise of a priest. But Stanhope had proof given him, that Wharton passed several hours alone with Grimaldo, on the evening of his rescuing Ripperda from the populace; and that on the night of the sitting of the committee of the Council of Castile, he was seen gliding out of the chamber of the Queen's confessor; who immediately after, went to Her Majesty; and thence carried a message from her to the King, just as he was passing into the cabinet to decide on the judgement that was denounced on Ripperda.
The sentence that was then determined on, and sanctioned by the royal assent, was executed the following morning some hours before the usual time of rising. While all was in profound tranquillity in the city, the Chief Alcaid of the court got into a carriage equipped for travelling, and with a strong escort set forth towards the British residence. A double detachment of soldiers was already there, with orders to support him in case of resistance.It happened that the house porter had risen before his accustomed time; and supposing, from a stir he heard without, that the usual guard was going to be relieved, he opened the door to amuse himself with the ceremony. The Alcaid and his officers seized the favourable moment, and entered the house without opposition. Some of the soldiers secured the porter from creating an alarm; and the rest filling the hall, fastened the door.
The Alcaid having learnt from the terrified domestic, in what part of the residence the Duke de Ripperda slept, went with his Alquazils, and a military guard, up stairs in the described direction. The tumult they made in hurrying along the passages, awoke General Stanhope; who, hastening out of his room to investigate the cause, met the officer of justice in the lobby. A few words explained his errand; but the brave Englishman would hardly hear it to the end.He had received the King's word, that the Duke de Ripperda should remain unmolested in his house, until he was demanded to public trial; and he declared, that on the peril of his life, he would resist all illegal proceedings to the contrary.
The Alcaid presented a letter from the Count de Paz, begging His Excellency to read it at least, while he went forward to apprise the ex-minister of the sentence against him. Stanhope, having no other covering than his dressing gown, took the letter, and retired in angry haste, to read it and hurry on his cloaths. Its contents were to this effect; and they were addressed to him.
"That His Majesty, knowing the integrity of the British ambassador, appealed also to his good understanding. His Excellency must be too well acquainted with the Duke de Ripperda's delinquency, not to see the fatal consequences to the royal authority, shouldHis Majesty bear any longer with the temerity of the Duke, in braving his sovereign with propositions in the language of a prince, rather than of a subject; and all from being in the fancied security of a foreign ambassador's house.
"Such a scandalous example, might hereafter induce some other minister of His Majesty to transgress in a similar way, under the assurance of a similar asylum; and so cover guilt from the royal justice, even within the walls of the royal courts!
"These reflections ought to engage His Excellency to surrender the Duke de Ripperda, on the first summons; and that summons is made in the name of the King, who commands it to be imparted to the British ambassador, that if he insists on the sanctuary of his house, he places the Duke equally out of the reach of His Majesty's mercy, as of his justice. If on a farther impartial inspection of his ministry, it should appear he had notonly betrayed the interests of the state, but had devised the death of the King; when the delinquent was in the power of justice, then His Majesty could either make him a great example in an exemplary punishment; or, what was infinitely more precious in his sight, shew the world as great an example in pardoning so formidable a criminal."
While Stanhope was reading these, and other arguments to persuade, where force was already determined, the Alcaid and his guards approached the door of the Duke's anti-chamber. On opening it rather rudely, (for all now depended on dispatch,) Martini sprang from his mattrass, and seeing the armed men by the dawning light, demanded what they wanted?
"We must speak with your master," replied their leader.
Martini had now approached them; and recognising the office of the Alcaid by his habit, when he glanced also onthe drawn swords of his attendants, he was at no loss to guess the purpose of their visit; but placing himself before the entrance of the interior chamber, with all the pride of its noble occupier elevating his own manner, he replied:
"My master is not accustomed to intrusion at an hour like this. You must await his commands till noon."
"Seize that fellow," returned the Alcaid, motioning to his men. Two of them obeyed; and Martini was held, pinioned between them, while the Alcaid, followed by the rest, passed direct into the chamber. Since his misfortunes, the Duke's sleep was peculiarly profound, and he now lay in as composed a slumber, as if he slept in his tomb. But the Alcaid, fearing resistance from the Ambassador, should he rejoin them before Ripperda had surrendered himself, darted towards the bed; and drawing back the curtains, roughly awoke the Duke. Ripperda started up in the bed, and beheldit surrounded by gleaming sabres. Before he could speak, the officer of Justice proclaimed his errand: that he arrested him for high-treason, and came to carry him to the state-prison of Segovia.
"It shall be my corpse!" cried the Duke, snatching a sword from the unprepared hand of the soldier who stood nearest to him, and attempting to rush from the bed.
But the Alcaid had ordered a concerted sign to be made to the men below; and, while those present threw themselves upon the Duke, the other guards hastened up stairs, and filled the chamber. Stanhope came into the room at the same instant, and called loudly on the illegal proceeding; on the breach of his privileges as an ambassador, on the shameful violation of the claims of honour, and the sacred rights of hospitality!
The Duke was now insensible, froma blow he had received on the temple, in the scuffle. This sight redoubled the indignation, and the threatenings of the brave Englishman; but the Alcaid drew forth his own order, signed by the King, "to take Ripperda, dead or alive;" and then the minister found himself obliged to resist no longer. However, though he stood quiescent while the lifeless Duke was wrapped in the coverlid, and carried to the carriage, he called all around to witness, that he protested against a deed so contrary to the law of nations, and the commonest bonds of faith between man and man.
In passing through the hall, (Martini having been hurried thither by his sentinels,) when the faithful Italian saw his master in so lost a condition, he broke from his guards, and with a dreadful malediction on his murderers, rushed towards him. The soldiers attempted to beat him back; but throwing himself almost upon their swords, his attachment so affectedGeneral Stanhope, that he said to the Alcaid:
"If it be not against your positive orders, let me see, Sir, that you have some regard to humanity, in respecting the fidelity of that man.—Let him accompany his master."
The Alcaid replied, he had no orders, but what related to the person of the Duke; and therefore, to oblige his Excellency, he would permit Martini to attend his Master.
"Not to oblige me;" returned the English minister, "but to lessen the account of outrages I shall immediately charge upon this court to my own! Therefore, on the peril of your safety, pretend to augment that sum, by your own authority alone!"
The Alcaid bowed to Stanhope; and ordered Martini to be placed in the carriage with his master, between a soldier, and an officer of the police. The vehicle then drove off at a rapid gallop, followed by the Alcaid and a grand escort of armed cavalry, towards the dismal Alcazar of Segovia.