Part 12

Their belts were filled with loaded pistols, which they covered from observation by the fringes of their vests; a poniard was in each well-guarded bosom; and a trusty sword by their sides. Being fully equipped, Ripperda looked around him on the walls of his dungeon. It was still in the verge of possibility that his son might seek his father in that dismal chamber. He paused; and hastily wrote a few lines, to say that parent still lived, and would yet proclaim himself with honour to the world. He directed the brief letter to the Marquis de Montemar, and left it on the table.

Martini threw up his hooked-rope; which catching on the iron stanchel of the window, he drew himself by it to the top, and dislodged the bars from their slight holding. A few days before, he had filed away their firm adhesion to their sockets. Having made open way for his master, he fastened the rope-ladder to the opposite side of the window, and dropping it out, slid down its sides till he reached the bottom. Here he drove its spiked extremity into the earth. By that time the Duke had mounted by the same means to the window; and drawing up the rope by which he had ascended, remained seated on the stone casement, till Martini had fixed all right below. It was no sooner accomplished, than Ripperda was on the top of the ladder, and in a few seconds by his side.

The sentinel was singing a sequedilla above; and its notes came to them with the wailing blast. The moon was now full upon them, and Martini putting out his head a little from the wall distinctly saw the musket and waving feather of the soldier as he walked to and fro at his post. Their garments, however, were dark; and they moved cautiously along amongst the bushes at the bottom of the curtain, till they reached the ruined tower whose fallen masses lessened the perpendicular of the descent. Like the rest, it was covered with thicket; and they clambered down from bush to bush and projecting roots of trees now no more, till they arrived at the brink of the fosse.

Martini had tried the ford the night before; and plunging in, which example Ripperda followed, both found a firm footing in the water. They crossed in safety; and Martini, taking up a fragment of the ruin, rolled the Duke's sumptuous garments round it, and also his own, and sunk it in the ditch. This was to prevent the suspicion of their having changed their usual dresses, when they fled. Martini then turned aside to seek the mules. The moon again shone out from the black clouds.

"Fortune favours me!" cried Ripperda, as he looked up to her bright orb, and to the frowning battlements he had left. "Thy ensign may light me back to this castle in a different garb from that in which I leave it! When Spain sees me again, it will not be as a benefactor."

He turned into the thickets to follow Martini, and was soon lost in the darkness.

CHAP. XVI.

The second night after Louis had left the port of Genoa, the vessel which contained him was blown to sea by the severity of the weather; and drove about, contending with the tempest, far from the coasts of Spain, for one and twenty days. Each succeeding day seemed an age, to the heart of a son, impatient to console and cheer a suffering parent under his undeserved misfortunes; and sleep seldom closed those vigilant eyes that were ever watchful for a change in the wind; or for some repose in the turbulent element, which bore him along with unstemmable fury from the shores he sought.

Again and again he questioned Lorenzo on every particular of what had occurred, propitious or adverse, during his father's administration; and on what befel him after his most atrocious overthrow. Sometimes his anxiety to join him became so uncontroulable, he was ready to throw himself into the waves, to breast their torrent towards the Spanish shores; at other times, he called upon himself to endure the hard trial Providence had laid upon his filial patience; and to await its good time of bringing him to the side of his father.

At last the storms changed their direction; and though equally boisterous, blew the little vessel with velocity towards the Balearic Isles. To persist in stretching for Barcelona would have been madness in such desperate weather; the commander, therefore, determined to make the nearest Spanish port. As the ship approached the coast, and Louis for the first time beheld that land, which had so long been the bourn of all his wishes; first, as the theatre of his father's fame, and the stage where himself was to contend for the same deathless prize! then as the spot that contained that father, stripped of every outward honour, and excluded from all hope, but in the dutiful devotedness of his son! He gazed on it in a strange tumult of mind. It was the land of his forefathers; and with what views, with what feelings, was he first to set his foot upon its shores!

Its high and abrupt outline cut the horizon between sea and sky, like a superb citadel of mountains, guarding its rich Hesperian vales. When he saw the golden clouds rolling from the sides of those stupendous natural bulwarks, as the descending car of day plunged into the refulgent main, he thought of his father's setting sun; of his last beams gilding the country he loved; of that fair country, opening before himself; as he had anticipated, luminous in glory, like the unfolding gates of paradise! But even while he gazed, and mused, and felt a pleased augury in the splendid show, the golden hues faded from the ethereal amphitheatre; the clouds, darkening in their shapes, collected around the headlands; and in grey and sombrous masses rested on their tops, till a fierce and eddying wind from the south-east, dispersed them in one wide and obscuring mist over the whole scene. Louis drew a deep sigh, and turned from the side of the vessel.

Next morning it anchored in the bay of Valencia. The business of disembarking and of resuming his journey by land, direct to Madrid, prevented all particular reflection, till he got into the carriage. Lorenzo deemed it prudent not to say, at any of the post-houses, or towns he passed through, who was his companion; and, though Louis felt he was stealing into the country of his ancestors like a stranger and a spy; yet, by this discretion, they travelled rapidly towards the capital of Castile, without any unusual impediment, or even the knowledge that Ripperda had been removed from the protection of the British ambassador.

Whether he were passing over plain or mountain, cultivated fields, or barren tracts, all were the same to Louis, while his eye was fixed alone on the one object of his journey. He entered the barriers of Madrid at midnight; but nothing could prevent him driving immediately through the city and the northern gate, to the British residence.

When the carriage drew up to the portico, another had just driven away; and through the yet open door, Lorenzo saw the Ambassador passing through the hall. In a moment he was out of the carriage, and Louis followed him. The porter was asked by Lorenzo, to conduct the Marquis de Montemar to his Excellency. General Stanhope had just entered his saloon when Louis was announced. Stanhope started at the name, knowing it was that of the son of Ripperda. Louis approached him; his hat was in his hand; and with hardly articulate accents, instead of what he meant to say, he could only utter the agitated words--

"My father----"

That countenance could never be once looked upon by an unprejudiced eye, without making an immediate interest in the heart. Though now worn and pallid, Stanhope felt its power. He saw all the son in its haggard lines; he heard all the son, in those few indistinct sounds.

"You expect to find your father, here, Sir?" replied the General.

By the manner of this question, Louis apprehended something of what had happened, and with inexpressible alarm, he replied:

"And where is my father?"

"To the eternal disgrace of the cabinet of Spain," returned the minister, "its orders violated the sanctuary of my house; and by an outrageous execution of a most unjust decree, tore him from his bed, and immured him in the Alcazar of Segovia!"--

Louis did not stagger under the shock of this intelligence; he firmly replied;

"I am to understand from this, he is in prison?--On what pretence?"

"Treason against the state," returned Stanhope; "but they cannot make their charges good. Visible facts outweigh false swearing; and though Duke Wharton has been their counsellor night and day, nothing can be proved against your father, but that he once was a heretic, and that you are the same."

"Duke Wharton?" repeated Louis.

"Yes;" rejoined the ambassador, "he made a shew of rescuing the Duke de Ripperda from the fury of the populace; but it was only to betray him to the ministry. He left him in my house, and then drove to Grimaldo, to tell him where to find him."

Louis sunk into a seat; and remained, with his hands locked, and his teeth fixed in aiguish death-like coldness, while the ambassador continued his account of the affair.

He assured his agonized auditor, that notwithstanding the circumspection of the present ministers, to conceal their correspondence with the English Duke, he had ascertained the fact of its having preceded the fall of Ripperda several months; and that it was Wharton's task to draw Ripperda into all the situations, which had been wrested to his disadvantage. In consequence of such manoeuvres, it was represented to the King, that Ripperda had privately conferred with Wharton in a pass of the Carinthian mountains; and that at some other place, an affair of secrecy was discussed between them, at which Richelieu the French ambassador was present. These things were told to Stanhope by an authority he could not dispute, but must not mention; and the same informant added, that whatever were the objects Ripperda coalesced in with Wharton, the cause of James Stuart was not one; for, it was in resentment of Ripperda's refusing to embrace his views there, that Wharton betrayed his correspondence with the Duke, and alleged against him treasons of other, and terrible tendencies.

Stanhope observed, that from some of the present ministers being secretly inclined to the Stuart cause, he well understood why Duke Wharton had abandoned all bonds of honour to maintain them in their seats. But could he have found any signs of a changing principle in Ripperda, it was not to be doubted that he would have preferred a single auxiliary of such mental strength, to any combination of more feeble powers. Before Stanhope thought proper to repeat to the fallen minister, what had been confided to him respecting his pretended deliverer; Ripperda had spoken of Wharton's conduct in his rescue, as a deed of generosity that left him no words in which to express his admiration. Stanhope then disclosed the relation of his secret informant; and ended with denominating the alleged previous meetings, as either falsehoods of his enemies, or, the confession of them, an unexampled instance of perfidy in the English Duke. Ripperda, at first listened incredulously to the charges against his deliverer; but when the rencounter amongst the Carinthian mountains was mentioned, and some other corroborating circumstances followed that disclosure, the Duke abruptly exclaimed,

"It is all perfidy, for the facts are true!"

At this part of the narrative, Louis turned his powerful eyes upon the ambassador. Stanhope thought he read their suspicions.

"Hear me to an end," continued he, "and you will find the whole perfidy belongs to the Duke of Wharton."

Louis dropped his heavy eye-lids over those scathed eyes, which he would have been glad to have closed in death; and bowed without a word. General Stanhope then repeated to him, all that the impassioned resentment of Ripperda had excited him to avow. He declared his ancient and inexorable hatred of Wharton and his politics; he boasted that the transaction to which the Duke de Richelieu was privy, had been one of mutual vengeance; that he quarrelled with Wharton at the Cardinal's table, and the same night took his revenge with the sword.

Louis put his hand upon his burning forehead.

"I failed of reaching his heart," said Ripperda, "but my sword went so near it, we believed him slain. He was taken up for dead; and Richelieu and the Cardinal conjured me to hush the affair. I obliged them; and heard no more of him, till like my evil genius, he appeared in the very mountains he speaks of; and under the darkness of night, returned to me the dispatches, which, I doubt not, his own emissaries had taken from my courier. I did not know it was him till several hours after his departure. The mantle the supposed outlaw had worn, was then brought to me; and I recognized it to be that of the Cardinal, in which I saw him wrap the senseless, body. His blood was on it.--Stanhope, we were enemies!--always mortal enemies. Think then, what must have been the revulsion in my breast, when he I had assailed to such extremity, rescued me from the murderous rabble, and brought me to the unquestionable refuge of your house!"

Stanhope subscribed to the reasonableness of the Duke's first impressions, as the immediate effect of such supposed generosity. But since it was proved that Wharton was actuated by the reverse of a generous motive; that he had busied himself in the secret counsels of Ripperda's public enemies; and had gained the ear of the Queen, so far as to influence the rejection of every letter from her once prime favourite: and not satisfied with these treacheries, had even had recourse to representing circumstances which contained no offence in themselves, under colours so invidious, as to wear whatever treasonable shape he chose they should assume.

"What," asked Stanhope of the Duke de Ripperda, "what are you to think of such a man?"

"As the most accomplished villain that ever disgraced the name of man," cried the Duke.

And then, without further hesitation, he opened out the whole of Wharton's converse with him, during the half hour they were alone together in the British residence. It was to urge him to revenge himself on his implacable foes in Spain and Austria, by immediately embracing the Bavarian and Stuart claims. He argued, that should he take this step, France and Prussia, three parts of Germany, and all Italy, would contend for his guiding hand.

"In short, his persuasions were such," added Stanhope, "that your father owned to me, did he not connect honour with revenge, he would have been tempted to accept his offers; but, he said, he had determined to die as he had lived, by his principles; and he rejected all. The consequence was, the disappointed emissary of these double treasons, immediately accused him of his own crimes. And, that he might never meet a second chastisement from the man he had betrayed, it was he that urged Grimaldo to hold your father in perpetual imprisonment."

The substance of Wharton's proffers to his father were so like those he had made to himself; and their rejection having been followed up by the very conduct he had threatened in the chateau garden,--"Ripperda and de Montemar shall find what it is to have Wharton for an enemy!" Louis could not doubt this treacherous vengeance being a fact; and crying within his soul, against him who had perpetrated so black a revenge, he started from his seat. The expression of his face was terrific; the image of sweet humanity seemed blotted from it; and with a burning eye, and a complexion of death, he turned from Stanhope; and totally forgetful of his presence, took a pistol from his belt.

The Englishman grasped his arm.

"Marquis, what do you intend?"

Louis scarcely moved his head as he replied:--

"To seek Duke Wharton."

Stanhope laid his hand gently, but firmly on the pistol.

"Give me this useless weapon," said he, "the treacherous Duke is already hidden from your vengeance. He passed last night in private conference with the triumvirate; and this morning, at day-break, he left Madrid, but in what direction he is gone, no one can guess."

Louis yielded his pistol to the demand of Stanhope, relaxing his fingers from the iron grasp in which he held it, and trembling from head to foot, he leaned on the sympathising representative of his maternal country. At that moment the crime and inefficacy of bloodshed, in avenging injuries like his, or any injuries, struck upon his soul. The venerable form of Mr. Athelstone appeared before him, and turning from the supporting arm of General Stanhope, he buried his face in his hands, and stood immoveable, lost in the multitude and agonies of his thoughts.

The ambassador left him to recover alone. When he re-entered he found him walking up and down the room, with a composed step. Louis advanced to his friendly host. "Will you pardon all that you have just seen of my weakness, and assist me to join my father instantly?"

Anticipating this request, during his absence Stanhope had dispatched two messengers to the Count de Grimaldo, (who he knew was not yet gone, from council, though the hour was so late,) to obtain an order to the warden of the Alcazar at Segovia, for the admission of the Marquis de Montemar to the imprisoned Duke. To the first messenger the Count gave a civil refusal; adding, that such permission would be a dangerous instance of indulgence to so signal a criminal as the Duke de Ripperda; and the enterprizing spirit of the son might be feared. Stanhope sent his secretary back, with a strong remonstrance against the justice of this refusal; adding, that should it be repeated, he must consider the act as a personal insult to himself: it was hostile to every principle of an Englishman; and, he had hoped, to every principle in civilized man. "In England, (said he) law and equity war against crime, not against nature. There, the criminal, under sentence of death for the worst offences, is suffered to see those near and dear to him. Humanity must bench with justice; or punishment itself becomes crime, and degenerates into revenge. The Marquis de Montemar, though he bear a Spanish title, has had a British education. He may be willing to avenge himself of his father's enemies; but as neither plot nor treachery are taught in a British school, trust his father's captivity to his honour, and you cannot hold him in stronger bonds."

The Spanish minister did not deem it politic to repulse a second request from the English Ambassador on such a subject, and with a polite excuse for his former refusal, he dispatched the signed order for the admission of Ripperda's son.

In the course of half an hour Louis was re-seated in his travelling carriage, with four fresh horses, furnished from General Stanhope's stables; and accompanied by Lorenzo, (having left his servants at the ambassador's) he set forward to Segovia.

CHAP. XVII.

The sun had risen, when the equipage that contained Louis de Montemar, ascended the mountainous heights of the Guadarama. From a rocky valley, diverging down to the eastern horizon, and shaded with every umbrageous tree and shrub of that luxuriant climate, a distant view of the Escurial was visible. The rays of the ascending sun were bright upon it: and the superb palace of the Spanish kings shone in its fullest splendour.

Lorenzo looked round on Louis. His countenance was still the same as when he entered the carriage; and the page did not venture to call his attention to the magnificent view before him. League after league was traversed. St. Ildefonso's gilded pinnacles next presented themselves on the declivity of a beautiful hill. Its fountains and its ambrosial vistas rivalled those of Versailles; in emulation of whose regal elegancies, the grandson of Louis XIV. had caused it to be erected. But here, again, Lorenzo was silent; and glittering domes, and sparkling fountains, lowly cottages, and gliding rivulets; all were alike passed, by the abstracted eye of Louis, without note or cognizance.

The chesnut woods of Antero de Herrares opened their enamelled glades before the travellers. They crossed a marble bridge, whose pillared arches and light ballustrades clasped the broadest arm of the river Atayada, which here flowed in a deep and pellucid stream. A little onward was a range of Ionic colonades of the same spotless material, diverging on each side from a triple gate of gilded iron-work surmounted by arches, whose classic architraves were wrought in Italy. A golden eagle, the armorial ensign of the Ripperda family, crested the centre arch. Within were the park and the deer, and the mansion rearing its brilliant columns amidst the redundant groves of a Spanish autumn. The orange, the citron, and the pomegranate, formed the luxuriant avenue; and where fruit bloomed on the branches, the fragrance of the blossom mingled with the breath of the countless flowers beneath, and filled the air with perfume.

The same feeling which had chained the tongue of Lorenzo, while passing indifferent objects, however note-worthy, now precipitated him to speak, and he exclaimed:

"Here, my Lord, is the Duke's Segovian villa!--all the windows are shut up; and not a soul stirring, where we were once so many, and so gay!"

Louis glanced on what might have been his home; and the flying horses shot by those splendid gates, to find their owner in a prison! He did not answer Lorenzo, not even with a sigh; but looked steadily forward, till the dark towers of the Alcazar appeared over the intervening woods. He read their name, in their blackness and their chains; but he neither groaned nor shut his eyes on the dismal abode to which his father was transferred.

After ascending a long and winding road, they passed through the oldest quarter of the town of Segovia, still upon an ascent, till, on crossing the rattling timbers of a draw-bridge, the carriage stopped beneath a massy archway. Several sentinels drew around the vehicle, with demands whence it came, and what was the object of the persons it contained. Lorenzo, being most ready in the language of the questions, abruptly answered:

"We bear an order from the Count Grimaldo to the warden of the Alcazar, for admittance to the Duke de Ripperda."

An officer from the warden appeared, to receive and examine the passport. Louis alighted, and presented the order. The deputy bowed respectfully, when he read the name of the Marquis de Montemar, and requested him to follow him "to the prison of the Duke."

"The prison of my father!" said he to himself.

"But what is in the sound of a word, when the fact is already present."

With unbreathing silence, and a heart into which all that was man within him was summoned, he followed his conductor. They reached a heavy door, studded with iron, and traversed with massy bars. The deputy drew a huge key from his breast, and opened it.

As it grated horribly in the guards of the lock, and the damp and dreariness of the passages struck on the shuddering senses of Lorenzo, the affectionate youth exclaimed:

"Oh, my honoured Lord! Is it in such a place I find you!"

Louis turned at the exclamation, and looked on the faithful servant; but no tear was in his eye, no sound on his lip.

The door was opened; and the deputy stood back, while the son of the Duke entered the vestibule of the prison. The unoccupied pallet of Martini lay in one corner of this miserable anti-room. Louis saw nothing but the door that led to the interior apartment; and passing through the vestibule with one step, though with an awful sense of his father's fallen dignity, and of the dignity whose affliction even a son must not break on too abruptly; he gently pushed forward the half-open door, and found himself in a large and dripping dungeon. He started, and gazed around; for all was horrible, but all was solitude. "Where is my father?"

"In his bed," cried the deputy, who now entered, "He is ill."