The first thought that occurred to Louis next day, was a wish to
enquire at the door of the Bavarian Palace, after the health of its
noble inmates. The frank and ardent gratitude of the illustrious widow,
had interested his feelings; and, adding to this, the undescribable
attaching quality which lies in an obligation, such as that he had
conferred on the Electress, seemed to draw him towards her with an
irresistible attraction. Benefits and gratefulness, when interchanged
by generous natures, are bonds, garlanded in paradise. They draw, by
invisible cords, but their rivets are eternal. Gratitude looks up with
endearing confidence to the bestower of its good; and the consciousness
of yielding protection, like the divine source of all benevolence,
fills the heart with a sweet tenderness towards its object.
With all this in his thoughts, Louis allowed prudence to put his wishes
to silence; and he left it to accident, to inform him of the health or
indisposition of them he had preserved.
His official duty of this morning passed with a deputation from the
merchants of Ostend. He had received his father's commands to that
purpose, to hold a conference with them respecting the sanction which
the Spanish Monarch had granted to their Indian trade, to the great
umbrage of the mercantile interests of Great Britain and Holland. The
Emperor had insisted on this guarantee of Spain; and the Queen, with
her usual impatience, ordered it to be accorded without reserve. But
Ripperda, when he yielded to the temporary necessity, had guarded it
with a clause in the privileges, to which Charles as well as themselves
continued to object. To know the result of the Spanish minister's
further deliberation was the cause of their present embassy.
When Louis had discussed the affair with the merchants, their president
retired with the young negociator, to sign, in the name of the company,
several papers, which Ripperda had left for that purpose. Louis and he
were then alone. When the merchant had endorsed the deeds, he took two
caskets of different sizes from under his vest.--He unclasped them, and
laid them open on the table. They contained unset jewels, of a value
that seemed incalculable.
"These, my Lord;" said he, "are poor tributes of the high consideration
in which we hold the able conduct of the Duke de Ripperda, and his
secretary of legation, in this troublesome affair. I am empowered by
my colleagues to say, that the larger casket is worth 30,000_l._, and
the lesser, 20,000_l._ But were they millions, they would be inadequate
to repay our boundless obligations to the Ambassador of Spain:--and on
the renewal of our guarantee, every seven years, we will give the same."
This kind of gratitude was so little foreseen by the Duke de Ripperda,
he had not given his son any directions respecting it. Louis did not
feel that he required any:--It was not the gratitude that softened
and subdued his heart. He closed the caskets, and putting them back
into the hands of the merchant.--"Sir," said he, "the Ambassador of
Spain, and his Secretary, are sufficiently repaid for the discharge
of their duties to their country, and to the world in general, by the
approbation and prosperity of those they serve. Rewards of any other
kind, they cannot accept; as they neither understand, nor value them."
The dignity with which Louis said this, as he laid the implied
bribe from his hand, struck the president for a moment speechless;
but hastily recovering himself, he held the caskets forth a second
time, and was opening his lips to enforce their acceptance, when
Louis, rather haughtily, as well as sternly, put out his arm with a
repelling motion, and interrupted him.--But in the moment he spoke,
Orendayn entered the apartment to pass through. Seeing it occupied,
he apologized, and hastily retreated, though not so fast, but his
sordid eye caught the glittering treasure. Louis resumed. "Sir," said
he, "do not irrecoverably offend the son of the Duke de Ripperda, by
shewing him that you have mistaken his father! If either he, or I,
have influence in these affairs, when the guarantee is to be renewed,
we must forget that we have heard of, or seen these caskets, before
we can put our hands to a second grant. You will excuse me now, Sir,
if I withdraw." With the word, he bowed and left him. The confused
merchant gathered up his caskets and his charter, and, with the air of
a culprit, stole out the room.
At the usual hour of stirring abroad, Louis bent his course to the
Princess de Waradin's, to enquire of her health after the late alarm.
As he drove along, he passed the crowded ruins of the Opera-house, now
lying a smoking mass of stone and smouldering timber. He shuddered to
think, but for his perseverance, the amiable boy he had seen, would
have been left a helpless orphan; and the lovely mother, who had led
him to behold her son as he slept, at this moment a blackened corse
under the steaming pile before him. That he had been instrumental in
saving two fellow-creatures, from so horrible a death, dilated his
bosom with aweful gratitude; and when he alighted at the house of the
Princess de Waradin, he sympathised with unaffected piety, in her
thanksgivings to heaven, for the escape of herself and her daughter.
Amelia was indisposed, and in her chamber. Her mother did not lose the
opportunity of enforcing upon Louis, her daughter's conviction, that
she owed the preservation of her life to him. He combated the idea
with frank eagerness, shewing the little share he had in exertions, in
which so many had assisted. But it was useless for him to disqualify
those claims on her gratitude she was determined to think he possessed;
and, insinuating that Amelia alone could repay them, he felt more
embarrassed than gratified with her flattering pertinacity.
The views which the Princess de Waradin had upon Louis, made her use
every maternal art to domesticate him in her family; but the hurrying
vortex into which he was plunged, rendered that impossible. Every
house of consequence at Vienna was open to him; and in all he found
different orders of amusement, according to the character of the
several sets. Though the rank of these circles might be on the same
level, yet the component parts, by an involuntary attraction, formed
themselves into distinct societies, according to their different
degrees of constitutional gaiety, mental qualifications, or hereditary
prejudices. In some, he was wearied by everlasting state ceremonies,
and the stiffness and stupidity inseparable from a superstitious regard
to formalities. In others, he was occasionally entertained, interested,
or disgusted, in proportion as he met with amiable manners, personal
kindness, or riotous excess.
To kill time seemed the great purpose of amusement, in the world to
which he was now introduced. Whether he dined with statesmen, with
military, or with philosophers; though the conversation at table might
be to his soul's content; of "battles fought, and glory won;" of the
"gordian knot" of policy; or the high-reaching thoughts of those who
analyse the universe:--still the evening ended the same. They all
proposed adjourning, some to one place and some to another; and many to
scenes of idle dissipation, against which his taste revolted. However,
he remembered his father's advice, "to wear his own superiority,
meekly!" and seldom refused to accompany them to places, whence he
generally returned wearied, offended, and displeased.
The gambling table; the board spread to excess; the smiles of
meretricious beauty; all were found, in the scenes to which his new
acquaintance introduced him. He thought, "If of such stuff be the
pleasures of young men, it is well they are dissipations of mind, as
well as of time; else, how could reflection bear the retrospect of the
best hours of human life, spent in such base vassalage to the lowest
propensities! It is a disordered state of being, in which nothing
is seen, and felt, and heard, but through the medium of delirium. I
cannot mingle with it; I cannot make this sacrifice of my time and
feelings, even to comply with the wishes of my father."
He wrote to Ripperda, to this effect. But the answer he received, would
not permit him to withdraw. The Duke told him, that he was called
upon to know, and to act with mankind; and how could he do either,
if he only saw them at their hours of form? He must attend them in
the undress of their minds; when the passions unveiled their hearts.
There would then be no need of a window in the bosom, to understand
how each man might be stimulated or restrained. With regard to his own
situation in this crucible of character; as he felt disgust at what was
temptation to others, he ought more readily to submit himself to the
apparent trial.
"You have genius, and distinction sufficient, already," added
Ripperda, "to create jealousy enough. If you have a mind above the
common recreations of man, let that be, I repeat, to the private
satisfaction of your own heart; it will keep your judgment cool, and
your proceedings independent. But while you act with men, and would
incline them to your purpose, you must appear to partake their nature.
Let me hear, when I return, that you go wherever you are invited. Your
companions will be too much absorbed in their own pursuits, to mark
whether you are an actor, or a spectator; but go with them."
Louis compared these principles with that of Wharton, _I mingle with
the dross of the earth, to extract its gold!_ They were the same; they
were specious to the adventurous virtue of youth: and rinding his
partiality to the English Duke, strengthened by this sympathy in maxim
with his father, he more readily determined to struggle against the
delicacy of his taste, and to pass through things so discordant to him,
with sealed ears and eyes. During the lengthened absence of Ripperda,
which was prolonged by the Emperor much beyond the time he proposed;
Louis saw all that a luxurious capital could present to the seduction
of youth and affluence. There were circles of dissipation, of a higher
class than those to which he had first been introduced; and these were
at the houses of a class of nobility, who lived to pleasure alone.
If vice were there, she was arrayed by the graces, with splendor,
and softness, sophistries, and flatteries, to make man forget he was
mortal, and had ought to do in life, but sail with the fabling syrens,
down the silver sea of time. No voice of sorrow was ever heard in its
air; no sigh of care ever breathed on its flowery shores; no tear
ever dimmed the eternal lustre of that sky. Human nature's curse of
travail and woe; man's distresses, and sympathy for pain, were all here
excluded. The blest inhabitants lived for themselves alone; and all
was revelry, from the rising to the setting sun; from moon-light, to
the morning star. But Louis had a heart and a soul, as well as eyes and
ears; and still he found no satisfaction in such waste of enjoyments.
The bosoms that panted there, beat with animal life alone; and the
souls which animated their bodies, were asleep in their vapoury cell.
As he passed through the crowded chambers, in which his spirit felt
a happy solitude, the conversations of Mr. Athelstone often occurred
to him; and he leaned pensively against many a rosy-wreathed arcade,
musing on the prophetic lessons of his earliest friend.
All around was prosperity and enjoyment. But he recollected, that his
uncle had said, "sweet are the uses of adversity!--Bitter to the taste,
but aromatic in effect, they preserve nature from corruption. Man, in
the indolence of repletion, breaks out with infinite disorders; and
like the ocean, whose constant motion keeps its waters pure, requires
exercise of mind and body. If it be not active to good, it will be to
evil, for what lies between is stagnation. Unchanging prosperity cloys
by possession; and the sated spirit looks around for new excitements.
It is then that the passions and the appetites wander abroad in the
stimulating search, and are easily tempted to forbidden paths." The
Pastor of Lindisfarne had once paused on the page of Shakespeare, which
his nephew was reading to his cousins:--
"Yet marked I where the bolt of _Cupid_ fell!
It fell upon a little western flower;
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound;
And maidens call it _Love in Idleness_."
"Not love, my children," cried the venerable instructor; "love was
bestowed by heaven on man, to be a help-mate to his labours. It is
wantonness, that is the offspring of idleness. But the _son of the
bondswoman_, arrays himself like the _heir of promise_, and the sons
and daughters of earth, are a while mocked by his pretensions!"
When Louis saw this scene performed before him, he thought how
melancholy it was to behold the cheat; how wretched to see the
blessings of life transformed into its bane. To view men and women of
rank and talents, and abundant power to become the benefactors and
examples of mankind, immerese all in one broad system of selfishness,
till a dangerous delusion spread over every faculty, and the character
exhibited one mass of sentimental weakness, intemperate passions,
splendid follies, and hardened vice!
In many of these parties, Louis met Duke Wharton; but he never staid
more than a few minutes, though those few were hailed by an adulation
that might have detained a prouder spirit. He ever left sighs behind;
and Louis shared the regret; though still his friend passed him by
unheeding; except, sometimes by a smile from a distance, or a glance of
the eye, as they mingled in the crowd.
By a similar wordless communion, Louis found the impression he had
made on the Electress, was not effaced. In riding through the Prato,
he often met her carriage; and she always leaned forward, with looks
he could not mistake; and when she thought herself unobserved, she
kissed her hand to him, with all the eagerness of suppressed, but
ardent gratitude. He generally gazed wistfully after her carriage;
for the image of Wharton united with her idea. He was her counsellor,
her friend. How great must be her qualities, to have secured such a
distinction!--Louis would not believe that she could have been privy to
the murderous policy of some of her agents: he had seen enough in his
last interview, to excite his fancy to complete the flattering picture;
and where his imagination kindled, his heart was too apt to glow.
Things were in this state, when the Imperial family, and with them the
Duke de Ripperda, arrived suddenly from the country. As soon as he
alighted at his own house, Louis flew to welcome him.
"Follow me," replied the Duke.
Louis saw a contraction on his father's brow, which he noted as a
herald of disagreeable tidings, yet he did not linger in obeying. They
entered the saloon.
"I see you anticipate what I have to tell you," said the Duke. "The
Empress is resolved on your marrying her favourite."
Louis was momentarily shocked by this announcement, but rallying
himself with the hope that he had offended Otteline past forgiveness,
he answered; "could I be weak enough to second the Empress's wishes;
after what I said to Countess Altheim in our last conference, she must
reject me." "If she loved you she would. But as it is all one to her,
by what means she ascends to distinction; she cares not whether it be
on your heart, or over her own delicacy. The Empress, too, forgets
her own consequence, in eagerness to aggrandise her favourite. She
protests that you have given Otteline every proof of attachment; that
circumstances demanded it; and your honour is pledged to redeem the
reputation she has lost on your account."
As his father recapitulated her patroness's discourse, in which, more
earnest than judicious, she allowed too much of the selfish aim in
the views of her friend to be seen; the entire remains of Louis's
infatuation, (which still lurked in the shape of pity), passed away
like a mist; and with faculties, at once cleared from every suggestion
of vanity or tenderness, he strongly declared that he never would
marry Countess Altheim. He allowed, that he had shewn too many signs
of headlong passion; but he repeated, in his extremest phrenzy, he
had warned her that he was at his father's disposal alone: and, for
her reputation being sacrificed, that could be no longer an argument,
since the avowed object of his visits to the Empress would sufficiently
confute the slander grounded on them.
"It must not be avowed that your discovered visits to these apartments
were to the Empress. The Emperor knows that you negociated with
Sinzendorff; but am I to remind you, that should he ever suspect her
private interference in the affair, his latent jealousy would find its
object, and the consequence I need not repeat."
"Then," exclaimed Louis, in a sudden agony of spirit, "I am lost!"
"Not if your father can extricate you," returned the Duke; "but I fear
you must marry her."
Though his heart had just told him the same, the words uttered by his
father were like a death-stroke; and knocking his clenched hand upon
his breast, he groaned aloud.
"De Montemar," said the Duke, "does not the spirit you so devoutly
dedicated to glory, does it not suggest the means of performing this
hard act of duty to your country; and yet not allow it to trouble you
beyond the present hour?"
"Impossible," returned he; "in marrying the Countess Altheim, I shall
marry my disgrace and my abhorrence."
"The act must pass for that of headstrong passion; or, perhaps, a
little more in your own way, as an act of romantic justice to the woman
who has incurred dishonour for your sake.--Passion always finds its
apology with men; so the world may smile, but it will forgive you; and
when she is your wife----"
"My wife! never, never!" interrupted Louis, "my name shall never be
rendered infamous by giving the world to suppose that it was possible
for me to make her my wife, whom even her future husband could
persuade from virtue. How could the Empress sully her matron-lips with
the vile suggestion? I never dishonoured the Countess Altheim, in word
or deed; and I will not act as if I had been such a villain. I will not
brand myself as a seducer, a dupe, or a madman! One of the three he
must be, who unites himself to the reputation she has incurred, by her
own arts and follies alone!"
The Duke permitted him to exhaust himself before he again spoke.
Equally averse with Louis, to his son's union with the mere minion of
any crowned head, he was aware that open opposition in this instance,
would embarrass all his other objects. The Queen of Spain's fury
against France, and her eagerness for revenge, had put the Spanish
interest totally into the power of the Empress. In her first rage, she
had written a letter to Elizabeth, of unguarded relinquishment; which
Ripperda vainly attempted to qualify. The Empress saw the advantage
Isabella had yielded, and in spite of her friend's representations, she
maintained it in the amplest sense. Spain had, therefore, by the fury
of its Queen, given up all check upon the non-execution of the most
momentous articles in the treaty. She soon found the effects of her
rashness; and in letters of despair to Ripperda, acknowledged that it
now wholly depended on his fidelity and contrivance, whether Austria
should fulfil its engagements, or the business end in loss and disgrace.
Another reason, besides her infatuated attachment to the companion
of her childhood, urged Elizabeth to insist on the engagement of de
Montemar with Countess Altheim, Ripperda marked her manner; and foresaw
the vexatious delays she would throw in the way of the execution of the
treaty, if he should appear to thwart her wishes. When she arrived
from Baden, at the Luxemburg, it was not long before she granted him
a private interview; and, notwithstanding all the influence of her
partiality in his behalf, when he attempted to give his own reasons
against his son marrying at so early an age, she turned on him with
a look and demeanour, more like that with which Catherine de Medicis
repelled the insinuations of Cardinal Mazarin, when he sought to betray
her into sanctioning a marriage between his niece and the king; than
the familiar confidence with which Elizabeth had always regarded the
Duke de Ripperda. Ripperda understood her suspicion, and her scorn; and
had he not possessed a political self-command, equal to his towering
pride, the reply of his eyes and his voice at that moment, would have
severed a friendship which had lasted eighteen years, and dashed to
atoms the present vaunted fabric of peace to Europe for succeeding
generations. He affected not to have observed the air with which she
had uttered these otherwise innoxious words.
"Your son is old enough to be the colleague of politicians; and surely
he is not too young to be the protector of an amiable and tender woman,
whose only strength lay in my love, and her spotless name. The last
she has lost through his handsome face, her fidelity to me, and the
malignancy of the Electress of Bavaria; and, my love, and his honour,
must and shall restore, what he and I have destroyed!"
In short, she gave him to understand, more than had ever passed
between Otteline and his son; but sufficient to convince him, that she
considered Louis bound beyond release; and that his attached mistress
was so assured of the same, there was nothing on the earth could induce
her to withdraw her claim. She accused Louis of cold, dissembling
vanity; treated with disdain the high principle which had impelled
his rejection of her friend; and added, that she should influence the
Emperor not to permit the reversionary investiture of Don Carlos into
the possession of the Italian Dukedoms, to take place on the person of
Louis, till Otteline should appear at the ceremony as Marchioness de
Montemar.
After this insinuation, Ripperda saw there was no resource but to
dissimulate and gain time. But, knowing the sincerity of his son in
all his transactions; he found it necessary to alarm his delicacy and
honour, to induce him to embrace, without consideration, any prospect
of escape from so disreputable a union. The base exaggerations of
Otteline, in her representations to the Empress of his conduct, and his
own desperate entanglement with her, wrought him almost to phrenzy.
The Duke owned, that as circumstances were, there was a necessity
for the marriage; or, at least, an appearance of preparing for its
celebration. Should events compel the ceremony, Louis might extricate
himself from its domestic discomforts, as soon as the affairs between
the two countries were brought to a happy consummation. He might then
leave his bride, and never see her more; being well assured, that she
would be fully satisfied in the enjoyment of her new rank, by the
side of her infatuated mistress. But this was taking the case at the
worst, for could they mislead the Empress and her favourite by apparent
compliance, and real delays in the performance, events might start
forward to elude the whole.
"I cannot, Sir," cried Louis, "I cannot compromise myself one moment on
so abhorrent a subject! How could I look up, if I were to be pointed at
wherever I moved, as the future husband of this justly contemned widow
of Count Altheim? My Lord, command me in every thing but this! Send me
from Vienna,--banish me where you will, but do not entangle me farther
with that insidious woman! Do not subject me to the consciousness, that
I am any way deserving the punishment of being ensnared beyond the
power of extrication."
"Louis," replied the Duke, "there is nothing that I can command, or
counsel you to do, to unite the preservation of your private freedom,
with your public duty, but a temporary system of deceiving the Empress
and her favourite. When you entered a political career, you engaged
on oath, to sacrifice every thing; your bosom's passions, and even
your reputation with men, to the service of your country, should it be
demanded. You are now called upon to perform the first part of this
vow."
"Yes, Sir, but I did not engage to sacrifice my conscience. That
belongs to God alone; and, I will perish, or keep it so."
"Then you must marry the Countess Altheim," calmly, rejoined his father.
"In the hour that I do," replied Louis, "I shall have given my heart's
dearest blood to the country I have never seen! to the country I will
never see! I will abjure the world, and retire to die a despised
wretch, where I may not hear the derision I have plucked upon the name
of de Montemar."
"And will that be obedience to your conscience?" asked the Duke, "if
so, mark its inconsistency, and sometimes doubt its text. Before
I quitted the Empress, I brought her to apologise to me, for the
offensive innuendos she had dropped at the beginning. I brought her to
tears, when I reminded her how I had served her and her daughter, in
the establishment of the Pragmatic Sanction. But before I accomplished
this conquest over a self-willed and powerful sovereign, I removed
every impression from her mind that I had any other objection to the
proposed union, than your youth, and the lady being so much your
senior. In the moment of reconciliation, I smoothed your path. I
alledged that my duty towards my new country, obliged me to write
thither, to ask permission of the King and Queen of Spain to form a
foreign alliance, before I could formally give my consent. In this, the
Empress acquiesced. Here then, is one delay secured. Meanwhile, should
you appear to concur heartily in the arrangement, I have little doubt
of winning upon Elizabeth to grant the investiture before the messenger
can return; the engine will then be restored to our own hand; and we
may protract and excuse, and finally break away without danger."
"No, Sir," replied Louis, "I abhor this marriage, because of the want
of all honourable principle in the woman who had infatuated me; and I
never will move one step to avoid it, by becoming the thing I abhor. If
my liberty is only to be regained by acting a falsehood,--a treacherous
falsehood! I submit to my cruel destiny, and I will marry her."
"That is to yourself alone," replied the Duke, rising from his chair
with a disturbed, and even a severe countenance. "But, remember, it is
your duty to await the return of my messenger from Spain."
"I will wait, my father, as long as you please. But, I repeat, it is
with no purpose to deceive. If I ever appear again in the presence
of the Countess Altheim, to permit her to consider me as her future
husband; it must be with the intention, on my part, to become so at the
prescribed time. My weak vassalage to beauty has brought me to this;
and heavy will be the punishment, but it is more tolerable than my own
utter contempt." "You must visit her this evening."
"Not alone, my Lord! That never shall be exacted from me. Till she
bears my name, no power shall compel me to be alone with her!"
"Who, then, must be your companion? I cannot."
"Tell the Empress, I demand it of her tenderness for the Countess's
honour, that some person be always present when we meet. Should I ever
find it otherwise, in that instant I will withdraw."
"In that, you are right," replied his father; and quitted the
apartment.