Part 13

Elizabeth continued for some time in conversation with Ripperda; and then giving her hand, according to usage, to the Chancellor to lead her out; as she passed near where Louis stood, she descried him, and spoke to her conductor. He immediately called to the Marquis de Montemar, to attend Her Majesty's commands. Louis obeyed, in renewed disorder; and with a gracious smile, she gently whispered. "You attend the Duke de Ripperda this evening to the _Favorita_. It is the Dowager Empress's name-day; and you will see friends and foes. The Duke has received my permission to bring the young Spaniards to be presented to my daughter."

Louis bowed, and Her Majesty, with her own fair hand, gathering her robe from the pages who held it, disappeared by a small door into the private apartments.

When he looked round, to rejoin his father, he saw him discoursing with the circle of ladies who stood nearest the throne. Ripperda had already introduced his young grandees to the group; but on some of the ladies naming his son, he beckoned Louis, who immediately approached, and was presented also. His rapid glance soon convinced him the looks he feared were not present; and relieved by this certainty, the effect was instantly apparent. The anxiety which so lately had embarrassed his words and actions, disappeared; and restored to ease, he replied with his usual ingenuous politeness, to the courtesy of the ladies who welcomed him to the court of Vienna. The Duke soon after took his leave of the fair assembly, and followed by the young Spaniards and his son, returned to the _Palais d'Espagne_.

It was the vernal month of May, and nature appeared in her robes of youth and laughing beauty. The tender azure of the sky was tinged with blushing radiance, while the soft green earth lay in enamelled smoothness, under the umbrageous canopy of trees and shrubs, diffusing odours from blossoms, flowers, and balmy zephyrs, laden with the warm breathing of the reposing sun.

As the carriage which contained Louis drove along the thronged _Prato_, towards the palace of _la Favorita_, he descried the distant turrets of the Chateau de Phaffenberg. They stood gloomy and desolate, and he passed them by, like one awakened from the dead, looking aside on what had been his tomb. The Danube was now rolling its majestic flood, broad as a lake around the island of the palace. The company crossed to it in gay boats, borne along with silken sails, or rowed by silver oars, and when they stepped on shore, they found the whole a scene in fairy land.

On a raised platform, in the midst of a verdant lawn, round which the beauty and fragrance of all the seasons were collected, sat the Dowager Empress. Most of the Imperial family, excepting the Emperor and the Empress, were seated near her. Many of the court were also there; and in the brilliant circle Louis recognised the Duke of Wharton standing behind the chair of the Electress of Bavaria. The eye of Wharton seemed to wander carelessly over the advancing party, without distinguishing any particular object. But the buz that announced the Duke de Ripperda attracted the notice of the Electress. Her curiosity was excited to see this formidable minister, whose influence had induced his royal master to overthrow her dearest schemes, by affixing the guarantee of Spain to the pragmatic sanction. She looked at his commanding figure, with lightning in her eyes; and as Ripperda approached to pay his respects to the Dowager Empress, she whispered in the bending ear of Wharton. The next instant her rapid glance caught the face of Louis, and fixed there. Again she whispered Wharton. What she said, and what the answer, was completely between themselves; all passed in so low a voice; but Louis heard the Duke laugh in his reply, as, without looking up from his folded arms, he leaned on Her Highness's chair. Had Louis distinguished what was said, he would have learnt that the Electress recognised him immediately; and with astonishment, pointed him out to her companion, when she heard him presented to her illustrious grandmother as the son of Ripperda.

"Could Your Highness believe it possible," replied Wharton, "that the fair Altheim would cast her tendrils round a fallen pillar?"

The Electress did not withdraw her persevering gaze, though she ceased her whispers, for the Emperor and Empress approached from the house. The Duke de Ripperda was instantly engaged with the Imperial pair; and soon after Charles, putting his arm through his, turned with him to the opposite side of the lawn. As Elizabeth was passing Louis, to give her hand to the Dowager Empress, who wished to view the scene from the palace windows, she desired him to offer his arm to the venerable Princess. He hastened to bear his share in supporting the infirm footsteps of old age; a duty, which, to all ranks, was sacred with him; and during the walk, as the aged Empress was deaf, Elizabeth informed him, that the Arch-Duchess Maria Theresa being suddenly indisposed, the Countess Altheim attended her. "But," added the gracious speaker, "hope is the lover's comforter!"

She thought it was the ruby light of love that passed over the cheek of Louis, as she spoke; and she smiled as she placed the Empress in her chair, and dismissed him to the lawn. Trying to shake from his burning complexion, the evidence of his weakness, with a swift step he returned towards the platform. Wharton stood there, though the Electress had moved into the more general circle of the company. The Duke was talking with two or three persons, amongst whom was the Count Leopold Koninseg, a colonel in the Austrian service, and the nephew of the Princess de Waradin, a Hungarian lady, to whom Ripperda had presented his son in the morning at the drawing-room. As Louis was hastening to the group that contained his friend, and his new acquaintance, the Princess de Waradin, leading a blooming girl of fifteen by the hand, interrupted him. The noble matron asked him if he had yet engaged himself for the dance. On his answering in the negative, she presented him to her daughter, with the compliment, "that there was no person with whom she should be so satisfied to see her Amelia make her first public appearance at court, as the son of the Duke de Ripperda."

Louis made a suitable answer to this politeness, and the pretty Hungarian received his bow with a smile. Other ladies, to whom also his father had introduced him in the morning, now drew around the graceful de Montemar. Invitations to various assemblies, were given to him by a multitude of rosy lips; and for half an hour before the dancing began, he was enchained in the fair circle; not ungrateful for the flattering distinction, but longing for the moment of release, when he might at least, give one heart-felt pressure of the hand, to the friend who had twice saved him from a personal encounter with his father's enemies. He often turned his face from the smiling dames, with whom he was conversing, to seek a glance from his kind preserver; but, though Wharton looked hither and thither, in talking with the passing groupes, a perverse fatality seemed to prevent his eyes ever falling where Louis stood. Impatience encreased with disappointment, and almost ready to break from the throng that detained him, he gladly heard the music sound from an orchestra, near the arcades of the palace; and, immediately a chamberlain approached, to summon the dancers to the soft green before the imperial windows. The fair Amelia extended her hand to her partner, who took it with redoubled pleasure on seeing, by the direction in which the company turned to the rural ball-room, that he must pass close to the spot where Wharton stood.

As the gay procession moved on, the Duke turned carelessly on his heel, which withdrew him a little from the path, but not so far off, but that Louis heard Leopold Koninseg ask him whether he knew the Marquis de Montemar.

"Who is he?" negligently replied the Duke.

"The Spanish ambassador's son," replied Koninseg, "shall I introduce him?"

"No," returned Wharton, "he seems very well engaged; and I am not ambitious of the acquaintance."

Louis was startled at these words; but recollecting the Duke's situation with the Bavarian faction; and the risks he had already run, between its revenge and his friend's safety; he soon comprehended that prudence had suggested this apparent indifference.

The dance began; and in its exhilarating maze, of motion, music, and sparkling beauty, Louis found all that bouyancy of spirits return, with which he used to animate the smaller, but not less festive circles of his native land. The ethereal grace of his movements attracted admiration in a country where the graces of dancing are a science; and the Electress, again turning to Wharton, who had accompanied her to the flowery lists of the waltzers, desired him to observe the extraordinary elegance of the Anglo-Spaniard. Wharton saw that several of the young grandees were standing near, and observed one of them cast a disdainful glance on the Electress, when she made the remark. Princess de Waradin was also a spectatress; and while her eye complacently followed the airy flight of her daughter on the sustaining arm of Louis, she took up the Electress's observation, and replied, "there is not so fine a dancer in the circle, as the Marquis de Montemar?"

"Because he happens to have the best figure in the circle," returned Wharton, "and a well-made man cannot be awkward if he would."

The Electress smiled, and whispered the Duke; "you must get him amongst us!"

"Crown me for Actæon, when I do!"

Wharton did not require an interpreter to the thickening clouds on the brow of the young Spaniard, who, muttering something to his companions, their looks suddenly reflected his, and they all turned abruptly and haughtily from the ring. The Electress drew close to the garlands, which composed it; and ordering a chair to be placed there, sat down, and conversed at her ease with the groupe around. Louis's eyes often glanced towards the animated Duke. But his favour with Her Highness was too visible, to allow surprise that he did not give attention to any one else. Indeed, he appeared as careless of remark, as he seemed pleased with his situation, and hovered near her with the familiarity of perfect confidence. Her circle of ladies courted his smiles, as the guarantee of her's; and he trifled, and talked with them all, as his humour dictated. But in the midst of this gallant badinage, the men regarded him as something more than the gay _Cicisbeo_, who had followed the illustrious mourner from her widowed pilgrimage through Italy. They were aware of his political genius; that the lap of beauty could not lull it to repose; and with less surprise than wonder, they contemplated certain changes in the mutual relations of states, which they knew must have arisen from him; but when or how his manoeuvres were devised and executed, they could not guess by observation on himself. For in all situations he seemed equally open and disengaged.

Ripperda passed behind the Bavarian party, surrounded by the foreign ambassadors. The Electress was mortified at the sight:--"Behold the flatterers!" cried she, to her gay companion.

"Dogs will worship the moon!" answered the Duke, carelessly: "and their hymn is desperate howling."

Without farther thought of what covered the polished brow of his mistress with heavy frowns, he turned to rally one of the young ladies of honour, for having refused to dance. The Bavarian almoner stood near. He was the only person, excepting the Electress, who knew that the late rupture between France and Spain was the work of Wharton. Marvelling within himself at the volatility of the man, who had so circumvented the gravest heads; and at the jocund indifference with which he beheld the triumph of his political adversary; the worthy ecclesiastic, with a half-reproaching smile, touched his arm.--"I believe, Duke," said he, "it is all one to you, whether you fire your own, or another's territories; from very _gaieté de coeur_, as either burn, you play!"

"Weeping at calamities is to double them," replied Wharton; "and I never had any passion for sackcloth."

"No," replied the Electress, "I believe your perversity, enjoys the wreck that has been made of your own plans!"

"When the wind blows, he is but a fool who sits down to cry in the blast! common-sense, my sweet Electress, draws his cloak about, and walks merrily through the storm."

"But he does not scoff at the destructive elements!" replied the ecclesiastic; "may not the Duke de Ripperda think disparagingly of so smiling a rival?"

"My good Lord Almoner," returned Wharton, "I care not what Duke de Ripperda thinks. There is a season for all things! And when I am with the fair, I forget the follies of other men, and content myself with my own."

Whatever were his motives with regard to Louis, no act of recognition passed, either from his voice, or his looks, towards him, during the whole evening; and Louis, taking the tone from a judgment his enthusiasm made him deem infallible, behaved towards him with the same reserve. They often approached each other in the change of amusements; they sometimes passed close; and then the heart of Louis beat, and his cheek glowed, as he felt the dear attraction. As he was handing the daughter of the Princess de Waradin to the supper-room, he saw Wharton at a distance in one of the vestibules, conversing with the Count de Patinos; a young man of the highest rank amongst the Spaniards who had joined the embassy of their country.

The Electress and her party did not stay supper. It was in a style answerable to the august _jour de fête_; and at a late hour, the Emperor and Empress rose. Before Louis could pass from the table at which he had sat, to join his father, who had been the distinguished personage at the Imperial board, he was intercepted by a moving and involving throng. In short, he soon learnt, that from Ripperda's unexampled favour with the reconciled sovereigns, his son was become an object of calculating and universal attention. Some of the Spaniards had even drawn off from the proud side of de Patinos, and glided towards Louis; to gain, by his means, a freer passage into the circles, which seemed so eager to make him their center.

De Patinos was young, handsome, and ambitious. He was the son of the Marquis de Castallor, and the near kinsman of the venerable Grimaldo, the present ostensible minister in the cabinet of Spain:--and therefore, to see the almost regal honours paid to the Duke de Ripperda, whom he affected to consider as only the agent of that minister, excited jealousy for his own consequence, reflected from Grimaldo. But, that himself should be overlooked and disregarded in the presence of what he called the upstart Marquis de Montemar, because he was the son of this arrogant Ripperda, inflamed him with a hatred, that only waited opportunity to shew its malignant nature.

As wealth and rank are considered the corner stones of happiness in this world of selfish enjoyment, it was not to be wondered at, that a marriage with such a foreigner as Louis de Montemar, should be considered an advantageous object, by many of the most illustrious families at the German court. The restoration of Ripperda to his Spanish rights had given him rank with the first nobles in any land. His blood was superior to most of them, as it flowed from the mingled current of three lines of princes. And his riches, from his restituted property in Spain and the Indies; from his former fortune, transported from the Netherlands; and daily redoubling, by the exhaustless resources of commerce; were beyond the powers of calculation. It was not, then, a subject of surprise, though it might be of envy, that the heir of all this wealth and honours should be a point of ambition to the proudest mothers in Vienna; and as the expectant was also handsome and accomplished, it was not a wonder that many of the daughters smiled upon the young de Montemar. He saw many fair, and more elegant; but none so fair, none so conspicuously elegant, as the graceful Otteline, whose absent form floated in fond regrets at the bottom of his heart. He sighed to think, that the spirit was not so fair as its temple; and then he sighed again, as he checked himself for the repining pang which accompanied the remembrance.

CHAP. XIII.

The two following days were passed in official arrangements, previous to the execution of certain articles in the treaty, which the Spanish sovereigns were impatient to have performed. Ripperda spent the evenings with the Austrian ministers, and Louis at the Princess de Waradin's. But on the morning of the third day, when he was sitting at his post, and making minutes of some preliminaries, which the Emperor demanded, before the actual betrothment of his eldest daughter to Prince Carlos of Spain; the Empress, who was in her husband's private cabinet at this discussion, stood over Louis as he wrote; and when he had finished his memorandums, she said in a low voice,--"My daughter is now well enough to bear company. You will see her and Otteline in my drawing-room to-night? and you must impress her as favourably of your Prince, as you have fixed her governess in behalf of yourself."

Elizabeth turned away; and Louis saw neither the paper that was before him, nor the royal presence leaving the room. He was lost in the tumult of his thoughts, till his father, touching his arm, told him the council was broke up.

When Ripperda received the invitation for the evening, for himself and his son, he asked permission to include the Count de Patinos in the proposed honour; as it would gratify King Philip to have the imperial notice extended in succession to the young grandees in the suite.

"But never to the exclusion of de Montemar," replied the Empress; "I regard him as my own _eléve_. Do with the rest as you please, Duke; for you know the pleasure I have in promoting your interest." Ripperda knew all the avenues to the noble heart of Elizabeth; and he made her a reply, that lit up her gracious countenance with an emotion direct from the soul.

Louis walked as in a dream, from the hour in which he was told he should meet Otteline, to the moment of his going to the palace. The imperial saloon was full, though not crowded. Having paid his homage to the Empress, he turned round, as she directed him, while certain well-known sounds were vibrating on the harp. The object he expected met his eyes. The instruments of music were in an adjoining apartment, opened to the saloon by a canopied arch; and Otteline stood there, just risen from the harp, and attending to something that was addressed to her by the Archduchess Theresa, who was seated at a harpsichord. She wore the portrait of her future husband, Prince Carlos, suspended at her neck; and the timid bride was evidently preparing to sing to the Emperor her father, who stood near her. Lovely as she was, in the first morning of her youth; her soft blue eyes turned upwards, with a gaze of almost infantine attention upon the face of her beautiful instructress; yet the eye of the beholder could not rest upon the blooming girl. That beautiful instructress seemed nothing less than a being of a superior order. She leaned over her like some bright creature of the air, hovering near her sweet but earthly charge. Louis felt a mist pass over his memory. The abhorrent words of her lips, which he thought must burn before him, in accusing characters, for ever, flew at once from their station; and his heart rose in his bosom, with an impulsive violence to throw himself at her feet, and forget all the world and himself, in the rapturous moment of swearing that he loved her. But, if celestial spirits do indeed surround the path of those who would contend for heaven; the guardian seraph of Louis, at that moment breathed upon his dissolving soul, and strengthened it to virtue. With a bitter contempt of his weakness, he tore his eyes from the dangerous contemplation; and followed his father and the Empress, to pay his respects to her Imperial husband.

While the Emperor discoursed with Ripperda, Elizabeth addressed her favourite.

"Otteline," said she, with a smile, "I hope you will grant as honourable notice to the Marquis de Montemar, as that with which you graced the Chevalier de Phaffenberg!"

The Countess looked up, with a blush bright as the tints of Aurora; and while she sought to meet the eyes of Louis, which were covered with their "veiled lids;" she softly answered,--"The Marquis de Montemar is too well convinced of the esteem in which I held the Chevalier de Phaffenberg, to require that I should encrease my consideration of him, under any other name."

He bowed in silence. But Her Majesty, seeing the Emperor and Ripperda walk together into the adjoining room, as she turned to follow them, added--"De Montemar, I leave you to assist the Countess in selecting a duet for my daughter to sing."

This command Louis could not disobey; and though a quivering fire shot through all his veins, he was not the less determined to persevere in the assumption of a coldness which his reason dictated; and which, he trusted, would so pique the sexual dignity of Otteline, that he should never be demanded to a second interview. With obedient haste, and to occupy himself, he began to turn over the music books. The young Princess took hold of the Countess's arm, and artlessly whispered.--

"Do ask the Marquis de Montemar, whether Prince Carlos is really like this ugly picture!" Otteline whispered in return:--"I am sure the Marquis de Montemar will be honoured in replying to Your Highness; and he will tell you that Prince Carlos is very handsome."

None of this was spoken so low, but that Louis heard it all; and the Arch-duchess, holding up the jeweled portrait, said to him in a timid voice:--"Do tell me, if he is so very disagreeable?--I could never endure to leave my beautiful mamma, and charming governess, to look always upon so frightful a face as this!"

Louis glanced at the picture; which was, indeed, the portrait of a plain, but it was a sensible countenance. The ingenuous eyes of the Princess, turned from it, to those of Louis, with anxious enquiry.

"I never saw the Prince," replied he, "But Your Highness must pardon me, if I do not think this portrait disagreeable? It expresses a noble mind; and without such an expression, the finest features in the world would want the soul of beauty."

Maria Theresa looked earnestly in the face of Louis. She had never done so before; and then turning her eyes again on the picture, she drew a deep sigh.

"Come will not Your Highness sing?" asked the Countess, presenting a duet.

"No," replied she, "I shall go, and beg mamma, to permit you to sing alone;" then whispering her, as she was leaving her seat, she put her arm round her neck, and softly said--"Oh, my happy Otteline! He that you are to marry, has both a handsome and a noble countenance!"

Louis could not escape hearing this; nor seeing the quick pressure with which the Countess strained her young charge to her breast; who in some apprehension that she had been overheard, broke away, with a slight blush tinging her lilly complexion.

He was now alone in the music-room, with her, whose presence he felt in every nerve. The parting whisper of the Princess; and the responsive action of the Countess, followed by a fluttering sigh, which now vibrated in his heart, made him tremble for himself. He knew not how to fly, and he felt it was perilous to remain. Hastily closing a music-book, he said with a forced smile, "Since the Arch-duchess declines singing, my duty here terminates!" and with a hurrying bow, he started from the instrument.