Part 8

As Louis stood in his trammelling arms, and with a downward face thought of these things, he became displeased; and, with a firm air, repeated his request to be released. The Duke persisted to hold him fast, with some gay badinage on the coil of the crested dragon; but Louis, determined to be no longer put from his duty, said, even sternly,--"Duke Wharton, let me go? This compulsion is insufferable, I will not be detained."

"De Montemar," returned the Duke, in a solemn voice, immediately releasing one arm, while he still held the other; "I have wrestled thus long with your caprice, to shew you that I had forbearance; but I now read your changeful heart: go where it leads you. I once thought it was devoted to friendship, and to noble sacrifice! But," added he, after a short pause, and with a disdainful smile, "you are not what you were--you cling to the foot of the ladder, I believed you even too proud to mount,--and so I bid you farewell!"

As he spoke, he relaxed his hand from the grasp he held of Louis's arm, and with a smothered sigh, which he sought to hide under a cough, he turned hastily across the corridor. Louis's heart smote him.

"I have been selfish and arrogant! I have been accessible to ill impressions; and, even now, to suspicions of the motives of him, I once so devoutly honoured.--Alas!" said he, to himself, "I have not acted like a friend! I might have broken from him, since duty required it, but I need not thus have wounded him!"

As at one instant of time all these thoughts flashed over his mind, he stood, without attempting to follow his friend; but he could not help exclaiming,--"Wharton!" Wharton still passed on. "He quits me in deserved resentment!" said Louis, his heart overflowing with contrition; and extricating his feet from the spot, where they had seemed rooted, he made two or three swift steps towards him.

"Wharton!" repeated he, when he drew near, "that farewell must not be for ever!"

Wharton turned round with a lofty and serious air;--"and, why should you wish it otherwise?"

"Because," returned Louis, catching his hand, "I value your friendship as my life, but not beyond my honour." Wharton gazed a moment on his agitated countenance. In a softened voice, though yet maintaining his unusual gravity, he replied, "you could not suppose I should ask you to betray that in yourself, which is my own impugnable estate!"

Louis did not speak; but, with bent eyes, to conceal the tears which filled them, pressed the Duke's hand. Wharton returned the cordial re-assurance; and with a smile playing through his seriousness, he added, "and least of all, when one of the dear sex, I have so long adored to my cost, holds your honour in the charming fetters you have just been hugging to your heart!"

Louis dropped the hand he was so affectionately clasping; and exclaimed with energy, "by that honour, I swear that no amorous passion brought me hither to-night!"

"Nor any night? nor any morning?" replied Wharton, with more of his wonted gaiety! "I will believe just what you please; only make me a vow that she shall not absorb you entirely; and, though I admire the lady and love the sex, I will promise never to wish a reversion in my favour!"

Louis was vexed at this wild speech. He saw, that so far from Wharton having a suspicion that political objects employed him at Vienna, he really believed that his friend's visits to the palace were actuated by a passion for the Countess Altheim. Louis could not shut his eyes on another conviction; that the Duke dishonoured the nature of the passion he supposed, by regarding it rather as an affair _pour passer le tems_, than as a serious attachment for life. But, in spite of his admiration of the Countess, and of what had passed between them, he felt an insurmountable repugnance to say in solemn, considered language, that his visits to her were to terminate in an indissoluble union; and, with a sudden bitterness of spirit towards Wharton himself, and the entanglements of his situation, he exclaimed, with a severe look at his friend, "you distract me, by this determination to believe that I am engaged in the sort of connection that my soul abhors."

"And what, dear de Montemar, does your soul abhor?" returned the Duke, drawing his friend's arm within his, and walking with him down the passage; "the connection mine abhors is matrimony; for a young Xantippe, under its privilege, even now clips my sides with her everlasting bonds, like the spikes of a penance-girdle, piercing into my heart."

"By the current of your wild attack," said Louis, with a crimsoned cheek, "I could not have guessed that you meant an attachment which pointed to so serious an end."

"Serious enough, at the best!" replied the Duke, laughing; "and, in my case, I should say it was at the worst; could I not suppose a quality or two even less to my liking, in your fair lady! She is too much of a female Machiavel for my easy nature, and would have me in the state-dungeons before our honeymoon had shot her horns."

Louis was silent, and his heart beat, even audibly, with its contending emotions. Should he speak a word more, he might betray the secret of the Empress,--of the Sieur,--of his father,--of the Sovereign of the country, to which that father had devoted him!

Wharton and he were now at the outward gate of the palace. Louis attempted to withdraw his arm, but the Duke held it fast. "Nay, nay, my eager Lover! you will not find her in the street! you must sup with me to-night."

"Not for the world."

"How?"

"We must part here, dear Wharton, and part friends,--eternal friends! But ask no questions."

"I will be hanged," cried the Duke, "if you are not in such awful mystery that, if you do not go home with me, and let me see that occult soul of thine through the chrystaline of generous Burgundy, I shall believe (added he in a whisper) that you are too well with the Empress herself."

"Wharton!" cried Louis, dashing the Duke from him, "you will make me hate you."

"You dare not for your life and honours, dear petulant boy!" cried the Duke, with a frank-hearted laugh; "and, till we meet in feast or fray, give me thy gauntlet!" He stretched out his hand. Louis regretted the violence with which he had spoken; but feeling the precipice on which he stood, and dreading further detention, he gave his hand with evident hesitation. Wharton shook it with gay cordiality, and said in his kindest accents, "thou faithless one! dost thou suspect I am going to realize the frog and the raven, and tear thee between my beak and claw!"

He then pressed the hand he held, with the warmth of a full heart; and as he felt Louis's shake in the grasp, he added with strong emphasis; "well, haste away! but I would snatch you from the snares which misled my youthful feet, in the paths you have now entered. I would lead you, where you may plant honour, and reap renown. Oh, de Montemar, I would put a royal heart in that breast, whose pulses are fed by the blood of kings!--Start not!--But thou must not grovel, and creep, and follow--where you may rise and lead!--De Montemar, thou art enslaved and mocked.--Come with me, and you are again free."

"Not for the best blood in my heart!" exclaimed Louis, now exulting in his knowledge of the great cause to which he had devoted himself. "You are mistaken Wharton; and again, I must say, farewell!"

"Be it so," returned the Duke, relinquishing his hand; "but you will remember Philip Wharton, when it is out of the power of his irrepressible friendship to extricate the son of the rich, the great, Baron de Ripperda, from the bonds and bondage of a too fair Semiramis and her subtiler confidant!"

Louis now understood that the Duke could not have meant to have referred at all to a political slavery, which his former speech seemed to imply; but that still he intended only to warn him against the vassalage of the heart. Wharton certainly said enough to open the mind of his friend to some suspicion of the perfection of his fair mistress's character; but before he could rally himself to compose some safe answer, the Duke had disappeared into the universal darkness of the outer court.

CHAP. VIII.

The Sieur Ignatius did as he had determined. He went, and alone, to the Empress the following morning. What he had to propose, soon made her call the chancellor to the conference; and during the discussion, the Sieur so ably adapted the mutual pretensions of the rival monarchs, to the eagerness of their consorts to conclude a treaty, that nothing remained to be done, when he left the apartment, but to obtain the Imperial sign manual, to what the Empress and her minister so heartily approved.

As Ignatius put a large casket of golden arguments, for certain members of the council, into the hands of Sinzendorff, Elizabeth promised that the Emperor's decision should be sent to Vienna, as soon as he could collect his counsellors around him at the Luxemburg; to which palace he meant to go next morning, for a few days. Meanwhile she recommended to the Sieur, and through him, to his secretary, that they should keep in strict seclusion; for she apprehended the indiscreet stir which the Queen of Spain had made on the affront put upon her daughter, would excite an immediate attention in the ambassadors at Madrid, to some anticipation of her meditated revenge. All know that the political train laid by these honourable spies of nations, is as subtle as it is long, devious, and invisible; and where suspicion once points, it is but the word of a moment to set the whole in a blaze. To avert such a catastrophe to Isabella's too open threats against France, Ignatius adopted this advice, as it coincided with his own judgment; and, accordingly, he seemed to immure himself as during his wounds; but he was amply occupied in arrangements, which only awaited the fiat of the Emperor, to be brought into immediate action.

During this suspense, Ignatius received accounts from Sinzendorff, which proved the wisdom of their caution. He informed him, that visits at unseasonable hours had been repeatedly exchanged between the French and other foreign ambassadors resident at Vienna; and that he knew, from indisputable authority, that a messenger had arrived from Paris, who was closeted with the French minister for many hours; and that the same night His Excellency was seen, without any of his accustomed attendants, gliding into the palace of the Electress of Bavaria. In another letter, Sinzendorff communicated to the Sieur, that he had certain intelligence of a private supper which had been given the preceding evening in the Electress's _boudoir_; and no women were present but herself and her Lady of the Key; while the men were the French ambassador, the Dutch Minister, a French philosopher from Berlin, the fierce ex-chancellor Count Stahlberg, and the Duke of Wharton. What was the subject of their deliberations, Sinzendorff could give no information; but he did not doubt that it brooded mischief to the present crisis between Austria and Spain.

In Louis's nocturnal visits to the College, he gladly saw that little inconvenience remained to the Sieur from his dangerous attack, excepting incidental head-aches, and the scar on his forehead, which being recently cicatrised, he still covered with a black fillet. The cadaverous hue of his complexion was hardly deepened by his confinement; but Louis occasionally saw a more than common fire flash from his over-shadowed eye, as he accidentally looked up from the papers he scrutinized. During the investigation, he never spoke more than to ask a question, or to give a direction respecting the business on which he was engaged; and generally answered his pupil's respectful adieu for the night, with a silent, though gracious nod.

Louis's long hours of solitude, (for the whole of the Imperial family had accompanied the Emperor to his spring palace;) were passed at the Chateau. And after he had performed his, now brief vocation for the day, he generally read German authors from the Jesuits' library; or walked in the weedy wilderness, which had once been a garden. He now, neither regarded the swift-flowing Danube, nor the gay groups, which on foot or in carriages, appeared in the distance on its margin. His meditations were all self centered; on the past, the present, and the future. Often, during his deep reverie, he wondered at himself, that his mind should wander, and at such a crisis, from the great affair in which he was a sharer. A year ago, had he speculated on what would have occupied his thoughts in so important a political era of his life, he should have said,--"Exultation in the grand results of my father's patriotic genius; and satisfaction that my noviciate talents had been employed in the glorious atchievement!"

But on the reverse, while he sat at the feet of statesmen, and was the agent between negociating sovereigns, he found himself dwelling, hour after hour, on the private feelings of his heart. He was ready to quarrel with himself for this wretched perversity. In the quiet vales of Northumberland, he had lived in the full enjoyment of these feelings; but then his vagrant thoughts refused to dwell on tranquil happiness. He panted for distant realms, fields of toil, of perils, and renown. He was now in the midst of some of these invoked stations for action; and yet his inconsistent spirit would not abide in the scenes it had chosen! His meditations would extricate themselves from their patriotic objects, and with obstinate tenacity fasten themselves on the most selfish considerations:--on the friend he had loved, and had fled from! on the woman, he believed he loved, and yet was glad to fly!

He recalled the several warnings he had received, at home and abroad, against the Duke; but the recollection of the natural and acquired advantages he possessed over all other men he had known, presented themselves of their own accord to Louis; and his spell-bound eyes, not seeing where the scale turned, he dismissed the subject. The image of the fair Otteline glided before his mind's eye, like the descent of Iris from the rainbow: all brilliancy and ambrosial beauty. He had only to articulate her name, to make the pulse pause in his heart, and a dissolving sensibility steal over all his senses.

"And yet," he murmured to himself, "fair as thou art, I feel a chill on my soul, whenever I think of pledging it to thee for ever. Oh, wherefore?" cried he, "she is lovely, she is tender; but she has not that elevated look in those beautiful eyes, which used to mingle my highest thoughts with the soul of Cornelia! She has not that ineffable glance of exclusive affection, which shoots direct to the heart, and kindles a faith there, no doubts can extinguish!"

There was something in the parting words of the Duke, respecting the Empress and her _subtle confidant_, which had adhered to the memory of Louis, and continued to harass him with conjectures. By that confidant, the Sieur Ignatius, or the Countess Altheim, might have been understood; but it could not be the Sieur; as Wharton appeared so unsuspicious of a political errand taking his friend to the palace, that he avowed his belief at once, it was an amatory attraction.

"And was she _subtle_?" Louis's heart revolted at the question; though he could not disguise from his clearer judgment, that she had herself suggested to him the only incontrovertible mode of silencing the scandal, she had thought herself obliged by duty to sanction as a truth.

"It was not what I like," said Louis, trying to excuse her to himself. But had he uttered his own principles upon the subject, he would have said,--"It is what I not merely blame, but shrink from, as an unpardonable dereliction from female modesty!"

But in this case, he thought her zeal for the Empress, and her prepossession in his favour, had obliterated from her mind all consideration of what was due to herself; and the impelling motives made him find an apology and a pardon for the amiable delinquent.

"Yes," cried he, "she sacrificed her native delicacy, in a double respect to the disinterestedness of her attachment. Did I not see the soft lustre of her eyes kindle with the blushes on her cheeks, and look downwards, to conceal the graceful shame, as she insinuated the delightful alternative!"

Louis was now far advanced in persuading himself that all was delightful, which, he believed he was now bound in honour to make his own, whether it were to his wishes or not. "Her conduct could not be _subtility_," continued he, "for she is ignorant that I am the _son of the rich, the great Ripperda_. Oh, Wharton, you wrong her! there is nothing in my apparent present station to make a union with me, an object of interest with the favourite of the Empress of Germany. She must prefer me, for myself alone; and I am a wretch of ingratitude ever to have found it necessary to convince myself by these doubting arguments!"

In the midst of such musings, he was surprised one evening, by Gerard putting into his hand a letter addressed to, "The Chevalier de Phaffenberg." The hand-writing was unknown to him; indeed, evidently a feigned one. He enquired whence it came. Gerard replied, he did not know: but the letter was brought by a man in the dark, who left it without saying a word. Louis broke the seal, and read as follows:--

"The carriage which conveys you to the Jesuits' College will be beset to-night in your usual route through the deserted street of Saint Xavier. The papers, of which you are to be the bearer, will be taken from you. Resistance would be vain, for the assailants are numerous. To avoid the loss of your trust, and perhaps of your life, should your temerity contest the matter, take a different path to-night. But to no one, excepting your friend the Jesuit, mention this warning. Were it suspected, he that writes it, would soon be put beyond the power of repeating the service."

"_Tuesday Evening._" Louis thought of the attempted assassination of Ignatius. The letter he held in his hand was a second confirmation that, notwithstanding the Sieur's severe precautions, the mysterious business of himself and his secretary was so little a secret to its enemies, that they knew exactly where to point even the most iniquitous means, when they thought such expedient to obtain information, or to create preventions. Who the anonymous friend was, who ran the risque implied at the close of the letter, Louis had no hesitation to believe must be the Duke of Wharton; for the Sieur had hinted to him, only the night before, that he knew the Duke was one of a secret committee who sat nightly at the Bavarian apartments. Wharton must then have discovered that his friend's visits to the palace had a higher aim than gallantry; and Louis felt something like a proud satisfaction in the conviction. The letter, he trusted, would be a sufficient pledge to Ignatius of Wharton's fidelity to his friend; and that whatever might be his bonds to a party, they could not tie his faith to connivance with a dishonourable act. This head of the subject being settled in his own mind; and being enabled, by the warning, to avoid the threatened violence; he would have given up his thoughts to the delicious enjoyment of gratefulness to so dear a friend, had he not trembled to think how far the Duke of Wharton's repulsed recognition of him, might have led to so full a discovery respecting the secret movements of the Sieur and himself.

He saw that he must apprise Ignatius of the knowledge his enemies had acquired of his proceedings; and, in doing so, shew the letter he had just received; and, while he declared his belief that Duke Wharton was the friendly writer, be obliged to narrate what he had hitherto concealed:--his meeting, and at last enforced discourse with the Duke. As Louis reflected on the real harmlessness of that discourse; and on the necessity, at the present momentous juncture, to make his guardian master of every circumstance that might bear at all towards it; he felt the folly of his reserve: and though at the time he had persuaded himself that his silence arose from reluctance to agitate needlessly a wounded man, his conscience now accused him of mental cowardice, in shrinking from the pain he anticipated to himself in the torturing discussion.

"In flying one stroke," said he, "I have incurred twenty. Had I spoken at the time, I should only have had to narrate an event which happened without my seeking; and the worst could only have been the Sieur's suspicions of the Duke wishing to draw me to the Bavarian interest. But now, he may see something clandestine in my silence; and at best consider me imprudent and mean, if not absolutely insincere and worthless." Though harrassed by these reflections, he was not negligent of his trust. When he got into the carriage that was to convey him as usual to the College, it was himself only he committed to the casualties of the evening. He did not take one of the papers with him; thinking it possible that the assailants, missing their prey in the old deserted street, would way-lay him (as their emissaries had probably done Ignatius,) in the college porch. The warning-letter, (which he held in his hand, to tear piece-meal should he be attacked;) he thought would fully account to the Sieur for this precaution. Having placed his pistols in his waistcoat, he ordered the coachman to drive to the College by a circuit in an opposite direction from Saint Xavier's; and being obeyed; without any sign of molestation he reached the Jesuit's cell at the accustomed hour.

The result of this dreaded interview with the stern friend of his father, was very different from what Louis had expected. On his entrance, he presented the anonymous warning, as his apology for not having risqued the usual evening quota of state-papers through the threatened danger. Ignatius examined the hand writing and the seal. The former was a cramped text; the latter, a common diapered stamp.

"Who in Vienna can know you, to be thus interested in you, even as the Chevalier de Phaffenberg? You have been seen by none out of the routine of our business; excepting, indeed, that one accidental meeting with the Electress of Bavaria and her attendant! Surely a five minutes' glimpse of your handsome person, Louis," added the Sieur with a half smile, "could not have wrought so potently on the latter lady, as to excite her to such perilous intervention!"

"I am not quite the coxcomb to suppose it," returned Louis with an answering smile, but a flushed cheek, from the consciousness of what he had to confess. Without circumlocution, or reserve, but with eyes cast down, and a varying complexion, he began and continued the whole narration of Duke Wharton's seeing him twice in the galleries of the palace; his escape from him the first time, and the Duke's consequent remarks to the Countess Altheim: but that on their second recontre he had found it impossible to break away, without suffering the conversation, which he now circumstantially repeated.

Ignatius spoke not a word during the agitated recital of his pupil. While making his confession, Louis did not venture to look up under this awful silence; but when he concluded, and his eyes were still riveted to the ground, the Sieur put his hand on his, and said in an emphatic voice--"This honest narrative has established your character with me. I see by your looks, that it is not left to another to lecture you on the danger of your late concealments: I leave you, therefore, in that respect to your own admonitions. But I will not withhold my entire approbation of the dexterity with which you parried every question of that serpent Englishman. Do not frown at the severity of the epithet. Did you know him, as well as he is known at Paris and in this capital, you would not doubt that he has many properties of that wreathing reptile besides his glassy surface!"