Part 5

Not having seen her since her first transit across his then cheerless sky, the starry brightness of that glance only occurred to him afterwards, like the fading image of a delightful dream. Absorbed in the great interests which now occupied him, he was thinking of nothing less than her, when, on entering the _boudoir_ to await the Empress, he was surprised to see her accustomed chair filled by another lady; and a lovely girl sitting by her, busily employed on the table. He started, and the lady, hastily throwing back a lace veil, which shaded her face as she bent over her companion, discovered to him the beautiful creature he hardly expected to see again. She apologized for having permitted her own, and the Arch-Duchess's occupations, to make her forget the hour in which these rooms ought to be left to his use; and, taking the Princess's arm, had even passed into the next chamber, before he could recollect himself so much as to feel that he stood like an idiot, without having uttered a word of the commonest civility, in answer to her graceful address. He then flew after her; and spoke, he knew not what, in explanation of his remissness; all the while walking by her side in a strange disorder of feelings, till reaching a small door in almost the farthest apartment, she turned round, and with a dignified bend of her neck and a dimpled smile, granted him her pardon, and disappeared with her fair charge.

Louis paused a moment, looking at the closed door through which she had passed; and then returned to the _boudoir_, with his senses all in a maze. His heart, which had never beat before at the sight of womankind, throbbed in his breast almost audibly. Such an eye, as its soft lustre fell upon him, he had never met before; he felt its rays in his heart. And then, so finely composed a figure! Such matchless grace in her shape and snowy arms, as she led the young princess along. And the golden tresses which mingled with the white veil upon her neck, made him think of the peerless Helen, whose divine beauties compelled the admiration of the very empire she destroyed.

Full of these imaginations, the more he thought, the farther did his mind wander from the business which brought him there:--and, when the Empress did make her appearance, it was with difficulty that he recalled his senses to the subject of the interview. In one of her pauses, she noticed his abstraction. She remarked it to him. A bright crimson flashed over his face. She repeated her enquiries. Louis was astonished at his own emotion; but without seeking other excuse, though with deepening colour, he said, he feared he had behaved rudely to a lady who had just left that apartment: but he was surprised, at meeting any but Her Majesty; and he had not yet recovered from his confusion.

Elizabeth bade him describe the lady. To do that, he felt was impossible; though, on the demand, his ready heart repeated its pulsations; and looking down, he merely answered, "she was with the Arch-duchess." The Empress smiled. She now knew whom he had seen; and by his disorder, had no difficulty in guessing the cause of his abstraction.

"The lady," returned she, "is the Countess Altheim; to whose care these apartments are consigned, as my first _lady of the key_. She is also the governess of my eldest daughter, whom you saw; and whom I wish her to model after her own graces!"

Louis unconsciously sighed, as he bowed to this information; and Elizabeth, thinking she understood his meaning, with a smile still more gracious than the former, added--"she is a widow, though so young:--and has hitherto loved me too well, to be persuaded from my service by any one of the numerous solicitors for her hand."

Louis felt another impertinent sigh rising to his lips, but he smothered it with a gentle effort; saying inwardly--"What is all this to me!" and made no answer to the Empress, but a second bow. She immediately passed to the subject of his audience.

In returning to the College, he would not suffer himself to dwell a moment on the image of the beautiful Countess. But he was not permitted to keep his wise resolve of dismissing it altogether from his thoughts; for the bright original found occasions of repeating the impression day after day.

She sometimes awaited him with preparatory messages from the Empress. At other times he surprised her and the young Princess at their studies. But at none of these meetings could she be prevailed on to linger a moment. When she had to deliver a message, she hastened away as soon as it was uttered. And when he broke on her accidentally, the instant he had caught a glimpse of her white arms moving over the lute, or had heard the trill of her exquisite voice warbling through the rooms, she would rise in disorder, and hurry from his ardent entreaties in so sweet a confusion, that it was sure to fix her idea in his mind till their next rencounter.

Louis felt the truth of the observation, that "The secret to interest, is to excite curiosity, and never satisfy it." He was ever asking himself, why the charming Countess, the worshipped of so many hearts, should be so timid to him? Or rather, why she should thus fly, as if with aversion, one whose heart was so well prepared to admire the graces of a mind, which, the Empress had assured him were equal to those of her matchless person. He had never seen any thing so beautiful as that person! And in so fair a temple, he could not doubt, as fair a spirit must dwell. He longed to converse with it; to understand all its loveliness; and to feel his heart sympathise, as it was wont to do in holy Lindisfarne, with all the pure intelligence of woman's mind. It was not of love he thought; for though he respected the sentiment, hitherto he had never felt its touch; and, as he had devoted his admiration to all that would take him out of himself, he had always regarded the winning of a female heart, as but a secondary object in the aims of his life. "Ah, never," has he often said, "would I give my _noon of manhood to a myrtle shade_! Woman's love was given to be the helpmate of man, but his folly makes her the tyrant!" In this case, as in others, Louis was yet to learn.--How wise is speculation, how absurd is practice!

CHAP. V.

The Countess was indeed accomplished; and most accomplished in the art of charming. The noble Cornelia, and the tender Alice, knew nothing of her science; and of what spirit it was, the heart of their cousin had yet to prove.

On the day of his first appearance at the palace, she had only to behold his singularly fine person, to think him the handsomest young man who had ever entered there. But the fair Altheim was not particularly attracted by the charms which most pleased in herself; and she would never have sought a second glance of the graceful secretary, had she not accidentally attended to a discourse between her imperial mistress and the chancellor, wherein the latter, (being piqued by a quotation from Ripperda, which the Empress made, to confute one of his political arguments;) rather sarcastically gave hints that he suspected the wounded Jesuit had got something more illustrious in his diplomatic novice, than he chose to acknowledge. Elizabeth affected to see nothing peculiarly distinguishing in the manners of the secretary; but when the chancellor had withdrawn, she let some ambiguous expressions escape her, in the triumph of having baffled his penetration. These intimations were not lost on the Countess. And on the day following that in which she and the Arch-Duchess had retreated from Louis in such haste, the Empress could not forbear telling her in what an amazement of admiration she had surprized him; adding, "He is a conquest worth _more_ than a haughty beauty's _smile_!"

Elizabeth smiled as she said this, but remarked no further. It was enough for her fair confidant; who, if her soul possessed any passion, did not scruple to own it was ambition. To gratify this, she had given her blooming beauties, at the age of seventeen, to the superannuated Count Altheim; a man of high family and great riches, but who had long survived every faculty, but that of dotage on any pretty face that would endure the incense of an habitual idolater of youth and beauty. At that early age, she had been sent for by the Empress, who loved her, from her having been the only daughter of the respectable woman who had been her nurse; and in consequence of which the pretty Otteline had been brought up as the favourite play-thing of the Princess; but the gracious Elizabeth soon regarded her with the tenderness of a sister; and on the death of the venerable mother, embraced the opportunity to have the companion of her youth brought to Vienna. Otteline de Blaggay was many years younger than her Imperial mistress, and far transcended that beautiful Princess in every personal grace. But as the prejudice in favour of high birth is so great in Austria, that a mis-alliance is considered as indelible a disgrace, as a moral dishonour; none of all the illustrious courtiers who contemplated, and sighed for the possession of the lovely Otteline, ever thought of making her the sharer of his rank. A thousand gay adventurers pressed forward, to gratify their passion for beauty, and to excite an interest in their behalf with the Empress, by making her favourite their wife. But Otteline knew herself to be despised, though worshipped. And as rank was all she wanted, to set her in every respect above the women who envied her charms, and therefore looked with double contempt on her untitled name, she resolved to marry for rank, and for nothing else. Within a few months after her arrival, the old Count Altheim became infatuated with her beauty; and, intoxicated by her smiles, dared every obloquy to raise her to the station her lofty spirit seemed so calculated to dignify. The Empress felt the situation of her favourite, and, having joyfully pronounced her consent; the no less delighted Otteline gave her hand to the Count in a splendid espousal, at which, not merely her patroness, but all the Imperial family were present.

While the fond husband lived, his young Countess was the brightest, the loveliest, the proudest of the court. Elizabeth exulted in the homage the haughty Austrians were at length obliged to pay her _eléve_ and country-woman; and to render it more complete, she determined that an application to the Countess should be the only avenue to her Imperial favours. But the Count died; and according to the law at Vienna, that on the death of her husband, the wife loses whatever rank she may have acquired by her marriage; the Countess Altheim, though a richly endowed widow, found herself at once thrown back into all her former insignificance. This reverse was doubly galling, since she had been on the heights of consideration; and had trod that elevated path with a step not much less imperial than that of the Empress herself. To be contemned now, was mortification almost to madness. But the beautiful mourner had lived too long in courts, to permit her rivals to perceive the complete victory events had given them over her. Affecting a wish for retirement after the death of so adoring a husband, she lived secluded for a time; loftily leaving that world, she was aware, would have scornfully excluded her: and when the assumption of inconsolable grief was no longer feasible, Elizabeth appointed her to the high office of presiding governess over the Arch-Duchess Maria-Theresa. This afforded her a dignified plea for still abstaining from the assemblies of the court; though in private parties she sometimes permitted herself to be seen. Yet this was a rare indulgence;--that the novelty of her unequalled charms, whenever she did appear, might continue to give her successive triumphs over the envy of her proud rivals;--and the effect was ever what she expected. She was then twenty-six, and though in the meridian of her beauty, she foresaw that the time approached when she must resign this, her sole sceptre of power, to some younger hand. What then should she be? She could not endure to dwell upon the answer; and again turned her views to some elevating alliance. To think of another Austrian connection, would have been waste of time, and a hopeless speculation. She must direct her attention to some of the numerous noblemen from foreign countries, who visited Vienna. This plan was hardly determined on, before the arrival of the Marquis Santa Cruz gave the wished-for victim to her ambition in the person of his son Don Ferdinand d'Osorio.--Young, handsome, susceptible, and of high rank! It was an opportunity not to be neglected; and a few interviews with him at the _petits soupés_ of the Baroness Hermanstadt, put to flight every remembrance of the dove-eyed beauties he had so lately sighed for in the groves of Italy. Lost in the blaze of her attractions, he soon lived only in her presence; and drew from her a confession, that she awaited his father's consent alone to become his bride. But she was a Protestant, and she was of ignoble birth; two disqualifications, which the Marquis's bigotry of faith and of ancestry could not be brought to excuse. In anguish and hope, Ferdinand flew to the feet of his adored Otteline, and implored her to give him her hand, in spite of his inexorable father.--She knew the degrading consequence of such a compliance. She saw the point to which the passions of Ferdinand were hurrying his reason; and to throw it at once on that dreadful extremity; and by that phrenzy of despair alarm the Marquis, and compel him to save the senses of his son, by consenting to the marriage; to do this, she exasperated the agonies of her lover's mind, by appearing to regard the proposal for a clandestine union, as an insult from himself. When she allowed herself to be convinced of the contrary, still her indignation continued, though directed to a different object; and she declared, that her wounded honour could never be appeased, nor would she consent to see Don Ferdinand again, till he should bring her the Marquis's only adequate apology for the disgrace he had presumed to attach to her alliance.

Ferdinand departed from her, almost insane; and in that condition threw himself upon the mercy of his father. But the good Catholic, and Spanish Grandee, was not to be moved. And the frantic lover, being denied admittance at the door of his proud mistress, he flew to unburthen his distracted soul to their mutual friend, the Baroness Hermanstadt.

The narrative that follows is of more common, than agreeable detail. The Baroness was one of those women who are a blot on their own sex, and a blight to all of the other on whom they fix their rapacious eyes. Abandoned to ostentatious expence, no means were rejected, by which she could gratify the vanity her own fortune could not supply; and while her friend looked abroad for an ennobling alliance, to give her rank, she laid snares for dishonourable engagements, to furnish her with gold. Her iniquitous proceedings had hitherto been so warily managed between herself and her dupes, that no one else suspected her of error.--She was generally received in the first circles of Vienna, and hence had a wider field from which to select her victims. The thoughtless expenditure of the son of Santa Cruz, had for some time tempted her rapacity; and the opportunity presented itself of making it all her own. She was an elegant woman, and an animated companion; and soon made the distracted Ferdinand forget the pretended disdain of managing ambition, in the delusions of practised art and soothing flattery. Intoxicated with what he believed her generous oblivion of herself, in voluntarily sacrificing every duty to her newly-avowed passion for him; he was-only awakened from his trance of vice, by the information that her husband, a rough Hungarian General, was returning from his post on the Turkish frontiers. She would gladly have exchanged this poor and rugged hero, for the soft prodigal, she had bereft of his better reason; and she made the proposal to him:--To fly with him, before the Baron could arrive; and that henceforth their fates should be one. As she clung round him, making the insiduous proffer, a gleam from his long banished reason seemed to visit him from on high; he shrunk with horror from an everlasting engagement with such a woman. Though the slave of her allurements, she was not the mistress of his soul, and he dared to deny her. Then all her assumed persuasiveness was cast aside. She insisted on flight, with a vehemence that turned her passionate love to threatening fury; and closed with holding a pistol to her head, to extort his assent, or to end her existence. He wrested the weapon from her hand; and oppressed with his own bitter consciousness, left her in a storm of frantic upbraidings, to the care of her confidential maid.

From this disgraceful connection, it was, that the Marquis Santa Cruz had borne away his son. As soon as the extraordinary disorder of Ferdinand, and consequent enquiries, had made the Marquis aware of these circumstances, he saw the necessity of hurrying him away from the machinations of a wicked woman, too well practised in the ruin of the youthful mind; and too ready to make the credulous Ferdinand a lasting prey.

Meanwhile, the disappointed Countess Altheim, foiled by her perfidious friend and versatile lover, broke with the one, and really disdained the other. And though she never condescended to enquire about either, after the double desertion was known to her beyond a doubt; yet she was not insensible to some feeling of gratified revenge, when she heard that Ferdinand had abandoned her rival, and left the country.

The Marquis hastened with his remorseful son, to Holland and to England. But the pangs of his repentance had not struck at the root of his crime. He mourned the act of guilt, not the empassioned nature which impelled it. He cursed the hour in which he had ever met with the Baroness Hermanstadt; but he did not condemn the headlong impetuosity with which he yielded to every impulse of self-gratification. The only son of his parents, and heir to immense revenues in both hemispheres, he had been indulged in every wish, till he believed he had no duty in life but to enjoy all its blameless pleasures. But when personal gratification is the principle of existence, the boundary between innocence and transgression is often invisible. Ferdinand had more than once trembled on it. He had now overleaped it.--And though racked with self-abhorrence at what he had done; and hoping, by deeds of penance to repass it; yet he fostered in his heart the passions which had betrayed him: and even found a new temptation for their excesses, in the land of his penitential pilgrimage. By a strange coincidence of fate, while he was sowing tares in the happy fields of Lindisfarne, Countess Altheim was preparing a similar attempt on the peace of its darling Louis.

The beautiful Otteline was as widely different from the character of her false friend, as unsunned snow from the molten lava of Vesuvius. She sought for nothing in her union with Ferdinand, but the rank he would bestow on her. His riches and his love were alike indifferent to her. And when she turned her eyes on the handsome secretary of Ignatius, she had no other idea in her meditated attack on his heart, but what aimed at sharing a birthright, which the Empress had assured her, would exceed her proudest wishes. Notwithstanding her incapability of loving, and indeed of feeling any emotion but those connected with her ambition and its disappointments; she was so keen an observer, and so fine an actress, that he must have had an _Ithuriel_ eye, who could have distinguished the counterfeit from the real, in her pretensions.

Having made her first advances on Louis, by a retreating manoeuvre, she perceived that her personal charms had made their intended impression; and that she had only to produce the graces of her conversation, to complete the conquest. On subjects of general taste, she was mistress; and in every department of human knowledge that belongs to worldly wisdom, she was perfectly informed. If sympathy did not give her anticipation of her lover's thoughts, self-interest endowed her with tact to glide into his opinions; and she did this so adroitly, as to make her echo appear the leading voice:--Her accomplishments were likewise brought into play; and the Empress did not disdain to partake the management. Once or twice, she detained the Arch-dutchess and her governess in the room, to call forth some natural or acquired charm in the beautiful instructress; and when the blushing Countess withdrew, Her Majesty usually made some observation on the inimitable perfections of her character, and the engaging modesty by which they were so constantly veiled.

In one of these interviews, when Louis was gazing with his soul in his eyes after the departing steps of the too exquisite Otteline, the Empress, with a peculiar smile, ejaculated,--"She has lately become enamoured of politics.--And should she negociate for herself, adieu my right in her possession!"

Louis felt himself turn pale, but he did not reply.--Though his Imperial Inquisitor thought his looks were sufficiently expressive, she was determined to carry away a direct avowal; and with a little archness, she added, "But you, perhaps, doubt her powers?"

He coloured as he replied: "I believe the Countess Altheim may command just what she pleases." "Indeed!" cried the Empress, "then you must not be my minister. If she negociate against me, I see where my interest would be."

Elizabeth smiled again, and with an expression that Louis could not resolve into any positive meaning;--but it was unpleasant to him, and gave him an impression of being played upon. A confused recollection of the Sieur's exordium against the power of beauty, suddenly occurred to him; and with rather a more offended air than is often ventured to an Empress, he said; "believing that the Countess Altheim would always please to command what is right, I did not suppose her influence could ever be actuated against the interests of Your Majesty."

The soft colour on Elizabeth's cheek, mounted to a proud crimson. The words were compliment, but the manner reproof. She regarded the audacious speaker with a look of astonishment. His eyes were now directed to the ground. She felt she had been reproved; and by a youth! a boy! The son of a man, who, if her confidant and coadjutor, she was also his! and, from circumstances, so much more in her power, than she in his; that, at any moment she could ground his chariot in the quicksands; and give him a fall as deep, as that which had sunk for ever the fortunes of his predecessor, the great Alberoni!--And yet the son of this man, so perilously placed, so dependant on her will, durst presume to be offended with an innocent freedom she had condescended to take with his feelings!--He had dared to imply to her, that she had trifled with him beneath her dignity; and still he stood before her with a mien of more true respect, than any she was accustomed to meet from the most obsequious of her vassals!