Part 6

The Empress talked herself into every suspicion of Louis's arts towards the Princess, and insulting coldness to his own affianced bride. While the Emperor stimulated her wrath, he tried to spread it from the son to the father, by new insinuations against the sincerity of both. He dwelt upon certain documents he possessed, that the quarrel at the Cardinal's, was concerted between Ripperda and Wharton, to blind the French minister, who had suspected their private friendship. He also mentioned the stolen glances which the Electress of Bavaria was often observed to give to de Montemar; and that he generally replied to them in the same clandestine way. It had been noticed in the _Prato_; and particularly at the assemblies of the Countess Lichtenstein, where, one night, the Electress evidently dropped her fan before him, that he might take it up; and, as he presented it, she closed her hand over his as she received it,--"and gave it a quick pressure, and a glance," continued the Emperor, "that pretty plainly declared they were no strangers." The Empress listened to all with greedy, because prejudiced attention. But nothing of the information affected her with regard to Ripperda; a partial spirit presided in her mind, when he was accused; and she would believe nothing of such aimless treachery. Of Louis she now entertained the very worst opinion; and she determined to send for him immediately, and tax him at once with all that she had heard, against both his father and himself.

Charles remarked, that he knew from one or two of his young chamberlains, that Louis's profligacy was equal to his talents; that he was a constant frequenter of the most dissipated circles in Vienna; and therefore, he intimated the impropriety of committing the reputation of the Arch-duchess, by even implying to so vain and unprincipled a young man, the least hint of her preference for him; or allowing the possibility of his daring to turn an eye of passion upon her. Elizabeth saw the delicacy of this caution; and while she consented to restrict her reproaches to political subjects alone, she determined to revenge herself on his presumption and duplicity, by precipitating the marriage she knew he abhorred.

CHAP. VII.

While this was passing at the palace, dispatches arrived from Madrid. On breaking the seals of the packet of the latest date, Louis perceived that the Queen supposed the Arch-duchess was now the betrothed of her son, for it contained congratulatory letters on the event. But, there was also another which might not be quite so pleasing to Elizabeth, although Louis felt it came too late for him. He received copies, of what were inclosed for the Imperial pair; and this one was from Isabella to the Empress, retracting any consent she might have implied, to the Marquis de Montemar's marriage with Countess Altheim. It was written with apologies, and regrets for the necessity, but it was positive. Ripperda accompanied this unexpected refusal, with a laboured epistle to his imperial friend. He excused the Queen's changed sentiments, by pleading a great point which she hoped to gain, by uniting his son in a different direction. With sincerity, he expressed his own distress, at being obliged to yield his wishes in favour of the Empress's beautiful _protegée_, to the duty he owed his sovereign; but, he concluded, with repeating, that in all essential circumstances, Elizabeth should find she had put no vain trust in Ripperda.

After all the polite cunning of Isabella's letter, and the hard-wrung finesse of her minister's, it was easy to discern that truth was conveyed in neither.

The fact was simply this:--De Patinos's correspondence with his friends at Madrid, and the whisperings of Orendayn, when he arrived there, had gradually made their way to the Queen, with insinuations and representations of the Empress's personal power over the Duke and his son. So much was said, that her jealousy was at last excited, to check it from proceeding further; and to try how far it could cope with her own influence in the same quarter, she told Ripperda her intentions that Louis should break with the Countess Altheim, and marry one she should hereafter name. Not suspecting her motive, he represented the hazard of putting so great an affront on the favourite of the Empress. Isabella was a passionate woman; and, when self-will urged her, she often acted as pertinaciously against her judgment, as against her counsellors. On this subject, she would hear no reasoning; no representation of the vexatious resentments that might be anticipated from Elizabeth. The more he dwelt on the Empress's mortification, the more she was resolved to excite it. She felt something of female vanity, as well as sovereign pride, in this opportunity of shewing her rival Elizabeth, that she could make Ripperda sacrifice his early friend's wishes to his new mistress's commands.

Isabella was peremptory, and the dispatch was sent off; and with additional triumph too, for letters had arrived from Vienna to some of the attendants at court, mentioning the departure of a messenger to Madrid with accounts of the royal betrothment. In vain Ripperda protested against acting on such vague information; or indeed, on any information that did not come in the regular official train. Isabella laughed at his fears, and derided the idea that a rupture between his son and the favourite of the Empress, could have any effect on the marriage of her son, with the heiress of the Empire.

The messenger set off, and the issue soon followed.

While Louis was reading these dispatches, he received a summons from Elizabeth, to attend her immediately. He took the packet that was for Her Majesty, and proceeded to the Altheim apartments. The Empress was there, but she hardly noticed him when he entered the room. She had caught a glimpse of his face as he approached; and the sight of its seeming nobleness incensed her the more against his actual dishonour.

She gave no credence to the story that had been told her of his father's insincerity. She knew the slanderous inventions of envy, and she confided, without a shadow of doubting, in the friend she had trusted from her youth. But for the delinquency of his son, she had ocular demonstration; and her indignation was hardly to be repressed.

Louis presented the Queen's and his father's letters. Elizabeth commanded him to read them. He obeyed without remark, though with an unsteady voice, as he uttered communications he knew were so hostile to her expectation. She listened in speechless amazement, first to the one and then to the other. When he had finished, she took them from his hand, and turning them round in agitated silence, examined their seals and writing.

"It is his hand!" cried she, in a tone, from which the convictions in her bosom had rifled all its sweetness. Then turning to Louis, with all her lately suppressed wrath, flashing from her eyes, "It is meet that a false tongue should have read such false language! Louis de Montemar you are a traitor to me and mine, and your father is the same. He abets his treacherous son, to the ruin of a name, of fifty years' unblemished honour."

Louis was not less astonished at this charge, than the Empress had been at the communication which aroused it. But attributing her displeasure, to a suspicion that he had wrought on his father to influence the Queen to prevent his marriage, after the momentary shock of his, first surprise, he calmly and respectfully answered her;--"that he was as faithful to all his bonds, made under the sanction of Her Majesty, as he believed, were the dictates of his father's heart. He regarded his promises to her, and his engagements to the Countess Altheim, as now too sacred to be broken by him, even at the command of his sovereign."

"Indeed?" Answered Elizabeth, hardly attempting to conceal her scornful doubt of his sincerity.

Her manner amazed him; it was so unlike the aspect of fair interpretation, with which she usually discussed a dubious subject.

"And you will marry the Countess Altheim?" continued she.

"Assuredly, Madam."

"And knowing my affection for her, you will generously leave her with me? You will follow the suite of my daughter to Spain, and you will become the bosom Counsellor of the wife of your Prince? I apprehend your honour and your loyalty?"

She paused, and fixed her eyes on the calm astonishment of his. There was a haughty condemnation in her looks, he could not misunderstand; but still he was at a loss to account for the origin of so unmerited a judgment; and with the confident appeal of an unburthened conscience, he entreated to be told how he had incurred the displeasure he read in her words and manner.

She too well remembered the Emperor's caution to explain the offence, though the resentment of a suffering mother could not be entirely repressed. She cast down her indignant eyes, and with petrifying coldness replied:

"_Your_ offence is of no moment. The shadow of an eclipse, which leaves no stain on the fair disk it would have darkened! But your father! He cannot start from his sphere, without troubling nations, and quenching his own rays, which should have shone to eternity!"

While the Empress spoke of Ripperda, it was rather to utter the lamentations of her heart, over the dereliction of the coadjutor in whom she gloried; than addressing his son, who, she now thought, too worthless for remonstrance. She sat for a few minutes, looking abstractedly down, grasping the letter she had received. He did not interrupt her reverie. Conscious of no blame in himself; and equally convinced of his father's uprightness; with patient respect, he awaited her further explanation. At last she looked towards him, with an austere, but calm countenance. She opened her charge against the Duke, by repeating what the Emperor had told her of the pretended exchange of insults between Wharton and Ripperda at the table of Giovenozzo. She avowed that she had repelled the story as a slander; but the letter she held in her hand, proved that Ripperda could surrender her dearest wishes, to his own fancied interests. She warmed in resentment, as she dwelt on his base compliance with the caprice of Isabella.

"One failure in fidelity," continued she, "is a sufficient earnest.--I believe the rest."

As the Empress had proceeded in her allegation, Louis's countenance brightened at the unfounded tale; and, without reserve, he unfolded to her all his father's hostility to Wharton: all at least, that he knew; for he was yet ignorant that the contention at the Cardinal's had ended in bloodshed. He spoke of his own attachment to the English Duke; but, that by the commands of his father, he had passed him by as a stranger, and was admonished never to consider him as a friend. Having exacted such a sacrifice from his son; and politically opposed every measure of Wharton's during his life; was it credible, that he would now stake the grand objects of his existence, by forming a clandestine union with a man, with whom he had no common interest, and whose personal self he determinately hated?

"If my father ever had a sin in his son's eyes," continued Louis, "it was, and is the inveteracy of that hatred."

During this defence, the Empress frequently shook her head; and when it was finished, she rose from her chair.

"It will not do!" said she, "I see the brink on which I stood, and the consequences must come."

"Madam," replied Louis, "I conjure you, by the completion of your own object, in supporting my father in his labours for the peace of Europe; I conjure you, not to permit the accusations of real traitors, to turn your confidence from as true a benefactor of the human race, as ever devoted his life to man! Their tongues, when credited by your ears, are of more mortal stroke, than all the daggers which struck at him under the garb of the Sieur Ignatius."

"And what is your tongue? Dissembling de Montemar!" cried she, "had you been true, those words, that voice, would have been evidence to out-weigh a multitude. But you are false;--and your father suffers by his advocate."

"In what am I false?" cried Louis, "not in affirming my father's integrity; for I am ready to seal my evidence with my blood!--Not in re-affirming my resolution to marry the Countess Altheim; for I am ready to pass through the ceremony, whenever Your Majesty commands!--But I should be false, indeed, were I to say, that I performed my hard-wrung word of honour, with my heart as well as my hand."

"Then you dare avow----?" demanded the Empress, turning rapidly towards him, and then checking herself.

"No more than what I once presumed to tell Your Majesty, on the same knee, with which I now bend before this incomprehensible displeasure. I then said, and I now repeat, that, finding all her principles discordant to mine, it is her own exaction, and my honour alone, that compels me to make her my wife. Truth urges me to this last avowal; and self-defence, that her benefactres may judge if he can be false, who redeems his honour at the price of his happiness."

"Happiness! honour!" cried the Empress, and she laughed bitterly; "young hypocrite, I penetrate all thy artifice!--But if you can have a hope, that I shall pardon what _I know_, meet my Otteline at the altar on the very day she returns from Brunswick. Treat her with the duties of a husband, and the respect due to my friend; and once more the name of de Montemar may be heard by me without detestation."

With these words the Empress turned away, and left the chamber. Louis returned home, appalled and distressed, by the scene which had just passed. He saw there were charges against himself in her bosom, which she did not chuse to deliver; to rest under them might be dangerous; and how could he confute what she disdained to utter?

CHAP. VIII.

In the midst of this confusion of mind, he arrived at the _Palais d'Espagne_, and was immediately involved in a host of perplexing discussions. Ministers and messengers awaited him in various apartments. As supereminent talent, united with virtue and power, has a force almost omnipotent; the powers of Europe, who aimed at aggrandisement by dishonest policies and aggression, dreaded the master-hand of the new minister of Spain.

This was a fact, enforced on Louis, in each succeeding audience; but while the remonstrances, and even threats of the representatives of these princes, assailed him in their different hours of conference; other applicants, in the shape of consuls and agents passing to various countries, spoke of the Spanish trade, which now embraced the habitable globe; and added to the account, that while the sun of Ripperda's glory thus spread its rays over the whole earth; warming, cheering, and fructifying to the distant poles; he turned his careful eye, with all a parent's interest, to the internal policy of Spain.

By his exhortations and his example, he persuaded the grandees to come down from their sterile heights of indolent enjoyment; to disperse their riches by the patronage of genius; and to excite the people to industry by generously rewarding its labours. As for the people themselves, they whom the unworked-for golden tides from America had gradually sunk into stupid pride, and at last left to squallid poverty, he aroused them from their lethargy and laziness, by appearing to take pleasure in their interests; by visiting them in their towns and villages; and stimulating them to bring prosperity to them all, by the active labours of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce.

For nearly two centuries the Spanish people had been a nation of drones; they were now become a common-wealth of bees, and the hive filled with honey. The origin of the change was honoured as a god; and while,

"He raised his voice, and stretched his sceptred hand,"

perhaps he sometimes forgot that he yet was mortal.

But there is a pinnacle of human success and of human opinion, on which human foot was never yet permitted to rest. He who has attained it grows giddy, and the fiercest winds are summoned to blow him from his eminence. Man's enthusiasm in praise of a fellow mortal, is soon damped by the original sin of his nature--rebellious pride! and where he cannot find a mote in the eye he once thought omniscient, he will fancy a beam; and proclaiming the discovery, the supposed blind guide is at once thrust into utter darkness.

Such spirits were now at work against Ripperda, both in Spain, and in the rival countries; and their labour in undermining, and laying trains, was equal to the great object of their overthrow. Routemberg in the German Court, and de Castallor, (the father of de Patinos,) in the Spanish, permitted neither sun nor stars to set upon a pause in their deep and dangerous machinations. Their agents were indefatigable and subtle; and as they were various, and apparently insignificant, the work moved onward as surely as invisibly, to the object of its aim.

The Empress was now assailed, daily and hourly, with information, which none would have dared to hint, had she not betrayed to her husband, some signs of doubting the perfect sincerity of Ripperda. A thousand things were brought forward to prove his entire devotion to his new country; the devotion indeed, of ambition; for it was made apparent to her, that he was now its actual sovereign. Philip was a puppet in his hand; and the queen, who had exalted Ripperda to such despotic power, was to be propitiated, by every sacrifice to her caprice. One of her humours was to unite the son of her minister, with a niece of the widowed Queen of Saint Germain's. It was represented to Elizabeth, that Ripperda had sanctioned the pragmatic deed, not so much to gratify her, as to flatter the ambition of Don Carlos, in making him the husband of the future Empress; and that his reconciliation to Duke Wharton, who was alike the emissary of the Stuart, and of the Bavarian factions, might now be accounted for: though the termination of such complicated and opposing views were certainly beyond calculation. These, and other innuendoes, and references to the remaining articles, public and private, of the late treaty, were amply descanted on; and the misled and irritated Elizabeth, (the more irritated, on account of her personal regard for Ripperda,) was wrought to so high a pitch of indignation, that she did not deign to answer either his, or the queen's letters on the premature congratulation and withdrawn consent.

She resolved to harass them on one object, and to disappoint them in the other; and while she countermanded the preparations for the betrothment of her daughter, she hurried every arrangement for the marriage of her favourite. From the hour of her last interview with Louis, she never admitted him to her presence; but she wrote to Otteline to hasten her return to Vienna, although she knew her venerable father lay at that time at the point of death.

Elizabeth now took as much pains to proclaim the intended union of Countess Altheim, with the son of the Duke de Ripperda, as she had before been cautious to conceal it. The astonishment it excited, broke out in wonder from some, and lamentations from others. It was the conversation of every circle; and discussed according to the dispositions, or views of the speakers. Princess de Waradin wept over her disappointed wishes for her daughter; and Countess Lichtenstein railed at the mortification of hers. The women, in general, were incensed at such a triumph, for a woman they despised; and the men smiled on each other, at the young minister's folly. Count Sinzendorff alone felt no surprise; for he had seen Louis's entanglement, from the moment he knew of his renewed visits at the Altheim apartments. He, therefore, did as he said; made no further observation, but conducted himself to his young friend with grave distance. Louis, understood it; and durst not, then, offer an apology, by revealing the truth. Now, the Empress had declared it; and Louis felt, that all knew his shame, in having pledged himself to the most venal, most contemned woman, in the German Empire!

Letters arrived from Otteline, which told her patroness that her invalid was no more; and that a certain day should see her at the feet of her mistress. Elizabeth suppressed the death of the old man, resolved that nothing should delay the ceremony which should make Louis her favourite's vassal for life; and the only time she condescended to notice him before the arrival of his bride, was to name the day, and command him to prepare for his nuptials. He bowed in silence, and she passed on.

He had written a distinct account to his father, of the Empress's charges against him, and of her inexplicable conduct to himself; he had also enforced the necessity of fulfilling their mutual engagements to Countess Otteline; and affirmed his own intention of immediately obeying the commands of Elizabeth to that effect. Having dispatched this letter, he prepared to go through the unavoidable sacrifice with propriety and composure of heart; and he determined to act by her with forbearance and kindness, though he felt that it was to a living death he was consigning that heart; he was preparing himself, as one wedding the cold tenant of the grave.

From meditations such as these, he walked abroad into the open air of a retired glade, diverging from the gardens of the _Palais d'Espagne_, towards the Danube. The evening gale was fresh and cheering, but still the load was on his soul; no breeze could waft it hence, no sigh could shake it from its deep adhesive lodgement.

"I contemned love!" said he, to himself; "I despised the tranquil and blissful joys of heart meeting heart, in the tender and pure relation of wedded affections. I must aspire to the agitating transports of self-devotion, in scenes of sacrifice and peril! I must be all for glory, or be nothing! And now, I bleed in soul, for glory, and the result of this proud, unnatural heart, will be nothing! O, no; the worm is there that never dies! The consciousness of having taken to my bosom, a creature I despise; a woman, whom the world derides; and who paralizes every feeling within me, of father, husband, friend. Yes, ennobling love, honourable marriage," cried he, "you are revenged!"

He went on, ruminating on the vain shadow, into which his over-heated ambition to act and to be distinguished, had involved him. He had been bewildered in its intricacies,--but not intimidated by its thunderings and its lightnings; he had pressed forward in the visionary atmosphere, till the gulph met him; and, alas, in what early youth did it betray him to this deep destruction!

He was returning homewards through an umbrageous aisle of chesnuts, which led by the backs of the superb gardens, when he saw Duke Wharton turn suddenly into the same avenue. There was not a creature in it but themselves. Wharton and he were approaching each other; but the Duke was walking musing forward, without raising his eyes, as in the abstraction of thought, he was dashing away the pebbles in his path, with the point of his sword.

The instant Louis beheld him, Elizabeth's accusations against his father rushed to his mind; but their confutation came in the same moment. He remembered how his father had execrated this noble enemy, even at the time he declared his worth. He remembered his father had acknowledged to him that the wine he drank at the Cardinal's had affected him as wine never did before, and maddened his blood. In this mood, he pressed insult upon Wharton, and Wharton revenged himself, by screening his adversary from blame, and apologizing as the offender! Ripperda, having brought himself to relieve his proud sense of obligation, by this avowal to his son, had commanded his silence on the subject for ever; but the remembrance was anchored in his heart.