Part 14

Otteline was, now, in a no less agitated state than himself. She read in his averted looks, and haste to leave her, that she was no longer to consider him as her lover; and, not suspecting the real cause, her own ambitious views suggested to her, that his father's higher prospects were the origin of this changed demeanour. Aware that carrying matters with too lofty a hand had lost her the son of the Marquis Santa Cruz, she determined on a different mode with that of Ripperda; and while a large drapery of the curtained arch was yet between him, and the observation of the company in the saloon, she ventured in rapid but suppressed accents, to murmur out--"Oh, Marquis, why are you not the obscure De Phaffenberg?--Then, we should not have met:--or never parted thus!"

Her voice had arrested him. Her words transfixed his heart. He stood, but he did not speak. She resumed.--

"It is as I foresaw. My enemies have prevailed!--Your father objects to my humble birth; and you turn from me, to seek a more illustrious bride?"

"No Madam," returned Louis, believing himself now called upon to pass the final sentence upon his relapsing passions; "my father has not yet spoken to me on the subject. Neither do I seek, or wish, for any other bride:--For--Oh, Otteline," cried he, turning on her a look, in which all the contention of his soul was declared; "Where should I find one so lovely?--One, to whom I could more intensely devote this adoring heart? But yourself has separated us for ever!"

She turned pale as the pearls which bound her forehead.

"Then it is my enemies!" cried she, "But if they have coupled my name with Don Ferdinand d'Osorio's, in any tale of slander; believe it as false as that, which the Electress of Bavaria has published to the ruin of my fame. You know how I am the victim there! And this is invented, to put you from making the only restitution that can redeem me to the envious world!"

The vehemence with which she spoke, and the mention of Don Ferdinand's name, connected with her own, cast a new and an appalling light upon the apprehension of her lover. He recollected that Don Ferdinand had left Vienna, to rid himself from, what his father called, a disgraceful entanglement of his affections; and to find it possible that Otteline might have been its object, confounded all his faculties. The broad appeal to his honour, in the last sentence of her remonstrance, did not the less convince him, that all was not right, in the tenacity with which she urged bonds on him, he had shewn himself determined to break. Braced, therefore, in his resolution, in a collected voice, he briefly answered.

"No, Madam; I have heard no slanderous tales against you. Until this moment, I was not aware that Don Ferdinand d'Osorio was even known to you; and had it been told to me, by any but yourself I should have spurned the information. My heart alone is your accuser."

The renewed emotion, with which the latter words were uttered, and even their import, revived the colour of hope upon the cheek of the Countess. She thought, if his heart alone were her accuser, she had also an advocate there, that would be too powerful for so unassisted an adversary. She smiled bewitchingly, for it was through rushing tears; and laying her hand on his arm, said in a tender and trusting voice,--"And what does it allege against me?"

Louis did not look towards her. Her touch ran like wild-fire through his veins; but the sensations which shook him, only rendered him more desperate to fulfil his resolution; and he exclaimed, "that I did love you--that I adored you!--that I was grateful, for the regard with which you honoured me,--I believe I shall carry the scars on my heart, to my grave:--but, with me, there is a power beyond love--that of virtue! I would sooner have this heart torn from my body, or all it delights in, buried from my sight; than purchase their enjoyment, by admitting one stain on my conscience. When I last saw you, in the conference with the Chancellor and the Empress, you declared, and proved yourself of an opposite opinion! You violated the sacredness of a seal; and you defended that breach of honour, on principles which destroy me to remember!"

Louis stopped, and covered his bloodless face with his hand.--The Countess, though paralyzed to the heart, by so unexpected a disclosure, gathered hope from the pale statue that uttered it. "His frozen virtue, will relent!" thought she; and clasping his arm, with the warm pressure of doubting agitation, she tremblingly said, "Oh, de Montemar, is such the reward of my self-sacrifice. What am I to expect from this exacting virtue?"

"That I may die,"--replied Louis, with a strong effort; "but that we meet no more."

This was the axe to the ambitious Otteline; and with a shriek, she could not restrain, she staggered, and fell prostrate on the floor.

The convulsive cry, and the confused noise of her fall, were heard in the same moment, in the adjoining saloon. Elizabeth, whose thoughts were on what was passing between her favourite and the son of her friend, sprang from her seat, behind the Emperor's chair. Charles was at quadrille with Ripperda, the Princess de Waradin, and another lady. Every body started from their respective positions: but no one, except the young Arch-duchess, durst follow Her Majesty, as she had not commanded the attendance of any.

The Emperor laid down his cards, and asked what had happened. Ripperda was not aware that his son was engaged in it, and with perfect indifference followed the example of the Sovereign, in rising from his chair. But the Princess de Waradin, who had observed Louis having been left with the favourite, rather sarcastically replied to the Emperor's question.

"If Your Majesty will do the Marquis de Montemar the honour of enquiring of him, he can give every information; as he has been _tête à tête_ with Countess Altheim, in that room, for some time."

Ripperda knew the character of the favourite; and recollecting his son's admiration of her; with an alarm he did not allow to be visible, he requested the Emperor's commands, to assist the Empress's interference in whatever accident might have happened.

"Certainly," replied he, "and let any body who may be of service, go with you."

This license sent every-body into the room.

Elizabeth had found Louis, on one knee, by the side of the insensible Otteline. He was pale, and speechless. And fearing that he might soon be in the same state with her he ineffectually attempted to raise, while the young Archduchess clung, weeping, to her lifeless friend, the Empress turned round at the approaching steps; and the first that was near her, being Sinzendorff, in a hurrying, but suppressed voice, she said,--"Chancellor, take care of de Montemar, take him from these people's eyes."

Almost without consciousness, Louis obeyed the impulse of Sinzendorff's arm, and soon found himself withdrawn from the gaze of strangers. The Chancellor had led him, without speaking, across a passage that opened from the music-room, into the Imperial library. When he saw his agitated companion throw himself into a seat, and cover his face with his clasped hands, the worthy statesman laid his hand on his shoulder while he broke silence.

"Marquis, will you tell me frankly? Do you love the Countess Altheim?"

The friendly tone in which this was asked, recalled Louis in some measure to himself; and without altering his position, for he shrunk from shewing the weakness that might be discovered in his countenance, he answered. "I do love her, more than I could have thought it possible, after a full conviction that she can no longer be conducive to my happiness! Oh, my lord, you were present at the scene which decided my fate. What she then avowed, convinced me that she and I must never be united: I have just dared to tell her so.--But the situation to which it reduced her, severs my soul from my body."

"Virtuous young man," cried Sinzendorff, "let it not sever your principle from your soul! You are formed for better things than an intriguing woman's slave. Hear what I am now going to say to you! But as you are worthy the confidence I place in you; and as a breach of it would ruin me with the Imperial family; you must not discover, even to your father, that the facts I am going to state have been learnt from me. When I have told them, examine into their truth, and act on the result. Know then, that the woman, who causes you this emotion, is unworthy of a single regret from a mind like yours. Could you be satisfied with beauty alone, I acknowledge it is there in amplest perfection; but she is without one feminine feeling, wholly abandoned to ambition, and careless by what means she raises herself to the point of her hopes. At the age of sixteen she married one of the worst characters in the Imperial court, to be elevated to the rank of nobility. When a widow, she attempted the affections of several noble strangers, who, however, were too wary to be taken in her toils; but at last she entangled the passions of my sister's son, Don Ferdinand d'Osorio; and wrought him to the most extravagant excesses, while her own selfish aim was only to perpetuate her rank. This, his father told me; but he interfered, and the young man recovered his senses. Her next trial was on yourself! And I solemnly assure you, that from the first of your appearance in this palace, she knew that you were not the Chevalier de Phaffenberg. And, though I doubt not, she prefers your youth and graces, to the age and decrepitude of the dotard to whom she first sold her duty as a wife; I know her well, and can aver, that she has no value for the superiority of your mental qualities. Do not mislead yourself, de Montemar, by investing her with your own feelings. It is not the loss of yourself that caused the situation in which you left her; but the loss of an illustrious husband:--the loss of one, who would have re-introduced her to the circle which her pride insulted, and the members of which, dread, while they despise her. My dear Marquis, excepting the infatuated Empress, she has not one friend in Vienna!"

"She warned me, that she had enemies," replied Louis, in an interrupted voice, "but with me, her worst enemy is herself. Chancellor, I am grateful for what you have said, and you shall find by my fidelity, that I am so. But not even all these charges could have weighed against the pleadings of my heart in her favour, had I not been present that fatal evening in the _boudoir_."

"A man of your principles," replied Sinzendorf, "ought rather to regard it as a providential evening!--If they be principles, you will abide by them; and I shall see you free, honoured, and happy. If they be no more than sentiment, (which is common with youth!) they will evaporate in her first sighs, and I shall soon have to congratulate her as Marchioness de Montemar. In that case, I will forget all that I have said, since I cannot disbelieve it."

Louis felt the force, and the friendship, of this admonition.

"Your Excellency shall never have reason to forget the generous interest you have taken in my happiness. And, in apology for this emotion, you must accept the excuse of one, young as myself, (but, oh, on how enviable an occasion!) _my body trembles at the purpose of my soul_."

"Could I believe, that she did not love me, my task would have less of torture!" This last thought, was in his mind, though he did not utter it; and before the Chancellor could proceed with the commendation this resolution merited, a page appeared at the door, to inform them the Emperor had dismissed the company; and that the Duke de Ripperda awaited the Marquis in the vestibule.

CHAP. XIV.

Not a word passed between Louis and his father, while they drove home. Count de Patinos was in the carriage; and would have sat mute also, had not the Duke, with his usual power over all tempers, brought the sullen youth to converse freely on the entertainments of the evening.

As soon as they alighted, Ripperda desired his son to accompany him to his cabinet. Louis was in such heavy internal distress, he hailed the command as a summons to unburthen his unloaded bosom; and to receive that advice, or rather support, in the fulfilment of his resolution, he found he so woefully required. He followed his father with alacrity. When the Duke had closed the door, and saw that his son had thrown himself into a seat, he took a place near him.

"Now," said he, "the time is come, when you are to give the confidence you promised me. I no longer consider myself the arbiter of your conduct. That responsibility I leave to yourself. The extensive duties of my own destiny are sufficient for me. I, therefore, shall advise, but I command no more. You must rise or fall by your own resolves; and, if I guess right, you stand now, on a point of no insignificant decision. Tell me, what has passed between the Countess Altheim and you, to give rise to the extraordinary scene of this evening; and to sanction the request which the Empress made to me at parting, that I would go to her to-morrow, _to decide on the fate of one, who was dear to her, as her own life_!--Have you pledged yourself to the Countess?"

"I hope not," earnestly replied Louis. "I do not understand you!" returned his father, "by what has just occurred, she has shewn to the whole court, what she wishes people to suppose has passed between you; and you must be aware that the favorite of Elizabeth is not to be treated with idle gallantry. What grounds, then, have you to hope, that you have not pledged yourself beyond recall? Or, did the warning voice of the Sieur Ignatius come to late?"

"It came too late," replied Louis, "to save me from the intoxication of her beauties; and no prudence on my part, could counteract the effects of that luckless rencontre with the Electress of Bavaria. Yet, in the wildest tumults of my heart, I still wrestled with myself; in the very moment of my greatest weakness, I recollected the Sieur's admonition, and, re-awakened to filial duty, checked the vow on my lips; and, telling her I was not my own, I trust, I saved my honour." Ripperda shook his head, "Louis, did I not warn you against the power of beauty?"

"You did!" vehemently replied he, "and, from this hour, I forswear it for ever!"

Being ignorant of the real cause of this abjuration, it surprised the Duke. He had supposed that Louis's disorder had arisen from a consciousness of having transgressed the spirit, if not the letter, of the Sieur's injunctions, and that Otteline's emotion was to be dated from fear that his father would not sanction the romantic passion of her lover. For many reasons, the Duke had no wish to sanction it; and while he regretted that woman was fair, and youth susceptible, he was pleased to hear the unexpected exclamation from his son. He did not remark on it, but required a recital of particulars, word for word, of all that had passed between him and the Countess, that he might be an impartial judge of Louis's freedom, or his bonds.

He obeyed ingenuously, till he came to the parts where her conduct might be translated into a direct wooing of himself. Ripperda saw him hesitate, and the generous colour that mounted to his down-cast eyes.

"Proceed," said he, "I can divine what your honour, or your delicacy inclines you to conceal. She played upon your open nature, to make you believe she loved you so passionately, she could not await your time of drawing the secret from her! I know the sex, Louis. For more than thirty years, I have been an object of their various practices. And, once for all, you may receive it as an unerring rule, that, when a woman runs before a man in the profession of her love, her love is nothing more than profession. Her views are something baser." Ripperda pursued the subject; and Louis was, at last, brought to acknowledge, that the Countess had given him reason to believe that she loved him devotedly,--too devotedly; and then, without with-holding a circumstance, he related the whole affair, from the commencement of their acquaintance, till the moment when he wished to close it for ever. But, he confessed that what had happened in the music-room, had roused all within him to rebellion, though his judgement was as stern as ever against the pleadings of his infatuated senses.

"Oh, Sir!" cried he, "I love, and I despise her. And yet, when I stood over her insensible form, which had become so, from the wound I had inflicted, I could not but ask myself,--Am I a god, that I should thus ruthlessly condemn human error, and break the heart that loves me?"

The Duke was a long time silent, after his son had ceased speaking. Then looking up, he abruptly said, "Louis de Montemar, you are the first man of your sort, with whom I ever came in contact. I see of what spirit you are; but it will not do in the station you fill, or in the times in which we live. The world is always changing, and you must go with it, or it will leave you. I ought not to have left you so long at Lindisfarne!"

Louis turned his eye on his father.

"I do not blame your instructor for educating you like himself. But the style is obsolete, Louis. Had you been intended for a desert island, it might have been well; but a citizen of the world requires other maxims. The fault is mine, that I did not bring you to me before. Now, you come into society, like an unarmed man into the midst of his enemies; and, instead of hastening to shelter, you expose yourself to their weapons, by acts of impotent hostility. You must content yourself in maintaining your own principles; to stretch another's virtue to your standard, you will always find a vain work of supererogation. In all that you have described, the Countess Altheim has only acted as any ambitious woman would have done; and ambition is not less rooted in the sex, than in ourselves. She must not, therefore, be contemned for that. Neither do I object to her, on account of her obscure birth. The blood of your family is too essentially illustrious, not to raise to its own elevation, whatever we mingle with its stream. But I wish to strengthen our hands in Spain, by a marriage between my heir and one of its native daughters. Besides, the Countess Altheim is dangerous in herself. Her haughty spirit would embroil you with this, and every court, to which you might conduct her; and persons might be inclined to disrespect the man who could suffer the weakness of passion to subject him to an union so universally despised."

During this discourse, the confidential warning of the Chancellor seemed to sound again in the ear of Louis. He recollected the hints which Wharton had dropped on the same subject; and, with sickening attention, listened to his father, who, in less reserved language, related every leading event of the life of the beautiful favourite. No word glanced at her honour, as a chaste woman; but, every sentence completed the portrait of mean-spirited, insatiable ambition. Shocked to the soul, by the description of Count Altheim, whose character was of such grossness, that it seemed impossible for a virtuous woman to consent to be his wife; Louis hastily exclaimed, as the Duke rose to depart. "I will never see her more! I will never trust myself again, with any of her betraying sex! Henceforth, my dearest father," cried he, with a feverish smile, "I will have no mistress but glory! Why, why, did I ever withdraw my eyes from her divine face?" "She always suffers, when woman disputes her rights," returned the Duke.

Louis kissed his father's hand, and retired to his own apartments. His spirit felt beaten and bruised. It cowered under a sense of self-degradation; and throwing himself on his bed, he passed a night of painful retrospection, on all that he had seen and heard of her, who was so lately the object of his untameable wishes.

"Cold, calculating, and unprincipled!" cried he, "and to such a woman, did I give the first flames of my heart! Did I light up the sacred altar to a fiend, in the form of the Queen of Heaven!--Wretch that I am, to have so debased what was most noble within me! To sigh for a piece of painted clay; to adore--and, even now, to weep over a creature, whose soul, if I could behold it divested of its beautiful garments, would disgust me by its sordid, earthward visage!" The morning found his agitated spirits subsided to a calm. The intemperance of passion was extinguished in his breast, and as he relinquished the desire of possessing her, who had now lost every grace in his eyes, he strengthened in the hope, that the killing words he had last pronounced to her, were final to her views on him.

Noon brought several animated visitors, to interrupt the studies which were his usual morning occupation, and generally, unfailing tranquillizers. These young Austrians came to invite him to share in various sorts of diversions for the day and the evening; and an hour passed gaily on, in the vivid conversations of versatile youth. A few of the Spaniards made their entrance, and disappeared again. De Patinos was not among them; he had reproached those who had shewn a wish to cultivate the kindness of Louis, with a mean submission to the minion of temporary fortune; they, therefore, merely made their bow, and without joining in the discourse, soon took their leave.

Louis found an amusing diversity of character in the Austrian group. Most of them held commissions in the Imperial service, and were full of the campaign against Turkey, which the valour of Prince Eugene had just brought to a close. Others, were merely jocund spirits, "hot with the fires of youth, and high in blood." And a few, had a philosophic turn; some in the strait, but most in the crooked path: and these latter, were the least agreeable of the set; as they united an ostentatious assumption of purity of intellect, with a systematic corruption of morals. Louis soon comprehended them, and treated them with marked avoidance. The military young men were decidedly his favourites, their profession was that of his own secret preference, and their manners were most congenial to his taste. There was a brave ardour in their deportment, and a careless enunciation of their sentiments, which, whether wrong or right, had no aim but the utterance of the moment; and, commonly, could as easily be turned from the wrong to the right, as from the right to wrong. The faction was in their blood, not in their understanding; and when the one was cooled, the other might soon be recalled to order.

While Louis was attending to Count Koninseg's account of the tremendous battle of Belgrade, a messenger arrived from the Duke de Ripperda. He brought a letter for the Marquis de Montemar. With a blanched cheek, he broke the seal; but the contents were a reprieve. The Duke told him, he had not yet seen the Empress. She was gone to the Baths at Baden, with Maria Theresa, who had sustained a relapse; and Countess Altheim was their companion. The Emperor, had retired with his Council, for a few days to the Luxemburg, to avoid the persecution of the foreign ministers; and thither, by his command, Ripperda had accompanied him.

Louis closed the letter with a renovated countenance. He was left to do the honours of the Embassador's table, not only to its usual guests, but to a party of noble Austrians, whom Ripperda had invited. The Duke being absent, the Spaniards were haughty and reserved at dinner, as they affected to be, when they encountered Louis apart; and, as soon as the desert was placed, de Patinos, and another of the name of Orendayn, rose from their seats; and, with cold bows to the young secretary of legation and his guests, quitted the room, to join societies more agreeable to their humour.