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?