The influence of Ripperda over the minds of the King and Queen of
Spain had reached its acmé. Isabella's enthusiasm for the new minister
was more like passion than patronage; and Philip's deference to him
possessed all the fanatic zeal of the devotee who worships the object
he has beatified. The King believed he had converted Ripperda to the
Catholic faith, and he exulted in the reclaimed heretic as a future
saint.
The minister's eye kept steady to one point; to raise the country
he governed, to the utmost pinnacle of earthly grandeur. But his
manner of conducting his projects, and demeaning himself after their
accomplishment, had suffered a rapid and extraordinary change since
he returned from Vienna. During his voyage from Genoa to Barcelona
he was attacked by a delirious fever, in consequence of the wound he
had received in his rencontre with the banditti of the Appenines. It
seemed to have jarred his nerves and affected his temper; or rather
to have taken off the curb which his self-control had hitherto kept
on the motions of his passions; but this alteration did not appear at
first. His habits of universal suavity prevailed for a time, until he
launched so deeply into business, as to forget all minor considerations
in its great results. He became not merely zealous, but impetuous in
the prosecution of his objects; not merely determined on a point, but
dogmatical in its assertion. He did not now persuade the Lords of the
Council, by his always subduing eloquence; but he commanded from the
consciousness of mental superiority, and the conviction of his power to
execute all his designs. The pride of the Grandees was incensed, and
the precipitation with which he urged forward all degrees of persons,
rather offended than served them. There is a restiveness in human
nature that resists compulsion, even to its own manifest advantage.
Ripperda saw no will but his own; he was sure of its great purpose,
and, therefore, stopped not to solicit the good from others, he
believed he could do more shortly himself. He went careering forward to
his point, overturning and wounding; but as he speeded on, he left a
train of enemies behind.
Even the King and Queen began to start from the patriotic despot they
had raised. Enamoured of his vision of happiness for Spain, he snatched
the prerogative too openly from their hands, and conceded privileges
to the people, novel to the Spanish laws. He dared to oppose the
extirpating power of the inquisition, by protecting certain Jewish
merchants from its fangs; and this being represented to Philip, as a
proof of his being a heretic in his heart, the monarch considered it
unanswerable, and determined to watch him narrowly. His most active
enemy with the Queen was Donna Laura; her nurse and confidant, an old
Italian, totally abandoned to avarice. Being irritated by his late
disdain of propitiating her as formerly, by successive magnificent
presents; she sold her interest in another quarter, and studied day
and night to destroy him in the favour of her mistress. She knew where
Isabella was particularly vulnerable; her vanity as a woman; and the
crafty dame had many stories to recount of Ripperda's early devotion
to Elizabeth. She insinuated, that it was rather to be near her than
to negociate for Spain, that he so willingly consented to go to Vienna
in disguise; and she easily corroborated her assertion, by turning
Isabella's attention to his gradually changing manner since his
return. But Isabella did not require to be reminded of the cessation of
his homage. Ripperda had lately omitted all those gallant attentions,
which spoke the lover, who may only dare to devote his heart and his
life to the pure object of his wishes, while she moves above him in
unsullied light, like Cynthia in her distant heavens.
Without adulation of this kind, Isabella could not exist; and it never
came so sweet from any lips as those of Ripperda; it never beamed with
so graceful a homage from other eyes. It was her delight to mingle
politics and chivalric devotion, in their long conferences. It was her
triumph, in the crowded court, to see his eyes fixed alone on her; and
to behold herself envied by her ladies as a woman, as much as she was
respected by them as their Queen. But when the change took place; and,
regardless of these useful arts, he became absorbed in his duties;
then, Laura taught her to believe he thought only of Elizabeth.
His enemies in the cabinet were quick to perceive when their devices
had taken effect on the King and Queen. Amongst the most formidable
of these illustrious conspirators, was the hoary headed Marquis de
Grimaldo, whose disgrace had preceded Ripperda's taking the supreme
chair. The old Grandee held a strict watch over his successor's
proceedings; and made it the business of his life to collect
observations on his minutest actions, and to misrepresent, or aggravate
them, to the ears of jealous Majesty. The Marquis de Castallor, who had
lost the office of Secretary at War, when the new minister absorbed it
in his ample grasp, joined with Grimaldo, heart and hand, to overthrow
his Colossal power. To this end they spread a distorted epitome of
his favourite views, amongst their retainers. These disseminated them
to the people, with proper commentaries, in dark hints and distant
observations. Ripperda was talked of as the son of a rebel; one who
had been born in a heretic country, and educated in its faith; who
had embraced the true church, merely from ambition; who was depriving
the Grandees of their privileges; and devising plans to reduce the
gentlemen of Spain to the rank of bourgeois and slaves, by turning
them to bodily labour and mechanic trades, and abridging them of their
evening siesta and morning revels under the shade of their groves.
While the fortress was undermining at home, they were not idle, who
were preparing to storm it from abroad. France, saw with apprehension,
His Catholic Majesty drawing such strict bonds with the house of
Austria. The States General were alarmed at the treaty of commerce.
England proclaimed a rough indignation at the demand for Gibraltar,
which Austria had made in behalf of Spain. And, it being reported
amongst the nations, that Ripperda's views were to compel by force,
what he could not obtain by negociation, his overthrow was considered
a common cause. The various silent armaments, which commenced on this
resolution, were represented in appalling colours to Philip; and as
the Court of Austria so slowly performed its part in the treaty, his
apprehensions were more easily awakened. The insincerity and insult of
this delay were doubled in effect by the private correspondence of De
Patinos to his father, who spoke mysteriously of the determination of
Charles's cabinet, from some hidden cause, not to perform any more of
their engagements.
Louis, meanwhile, unconscious of the storm that was circling round his
father's head in Spain, was stemming his way through the traversing
movements of his enemies at the Austrian Court. He contended firmly for
his political objects, but resigned himself with desperate despair,
to the current which bore his private happiness to destruction. He
had obeyed an intimation from the Empress, that Countess Altheim was
arrived, and prepared to name the day and hour for their nuptials;
and he went to her apartments to receive the abhorred appointment
from herself. She met him with all her smiles; for the memento of the
lowlines of her origin, presented to her in the domestic scene she had
just left, stimulated her joy at the prospect of being elevated out of
these humbling impressions, by the pomp of an illustrious marriage.
She had just quitted the bed of death, had just closed the eyes of a
respectable parent; and yet had vanity so steeled her soul to every
feeling of filial nature, that, banishing all, as a thing with which
she had no concern, she turned alone to views of splendid rivalry: and,
when Louis appeared, exultation in the full Court of the Empress swam
before her eyes with his entering form.
With unaffected rapture, she met his ceremonious salute, and softly
whispered, as his cold cheek touched hers, that she knew the object
of his visit. It was soon discussed. For Louis had hardly repeated
in words, what his promise to Elizabeth extorted, before her ready
favourite named the evening of the following day. He felt the paleness
of his countenance spread to his heart; and, without pulsation in his
veins, his lips parted in a vacant smile; and he suffered the glowing
hand she had put into his, to remain unnoticed in his motionless grasp.
At this moment, the Empress entered; and Otteline prevented any
involuntary exhibition of her resentment at the frozen demeanor of her
lover, by rising hastily, and as hastily informing Her Majesty that
she had obeyed her commands in naming her nuptials for the morrow.
Elizabeth read the despair of his countenance, as he started from
his seat at her approach; and, triumphing in her victory, she seemed
in that hour to forget all her inexplicable coldness, and to be as
gracious as ever. She embraced Otteline; and gave him her hand to kiss,
with repeated expressions of future confidence in the husband of her
friend.
The marriage was to be solemnised with unexampled magnificence in
the chapel of the palace; and the equipage which was to convey the
favourite to her husband's residence, was to be the gift of her
patroness. Louis summoned himself as well as he could, to perform that
with cheerfulness, which it was right to do at all; and, he conducted
himself, during the remainder of the interview, with respect to his
future bride, and extorted gratitude to her mistress.
The remainder of the day was passed in his official duties; but when
evening came, he could not endure his own thoughts; the anticipations
of to-morrow sickened and distracted him; and he rushed out, to fly
himself, and the image of her who had blighted all his prospects.
He hurried to the _Hotel d'Ettrées_; but the scenes of careless gaiety
he saw there, seemed only to chafe his mind. The sight of young men of
his own years; some, with similar pursuits, moving on with honour; and
others, worthlessly wasting their time; but all, free and untortured
by bonds like his; barbed him to the quick: and he was hurrying from
the splendid mockery, when in the outward saloon, which was almost
solitary, he was met by the Countess Claudine. She accosted him with
wonder at his early flight. In his eagerness to escape, he made some
senseless excuse. Laughing, she put her fair hand upon his arm, and
told him a little more civility to her, and a little less impatience
towards his intended bride, would, at that moment, be more becoming,
in the representative of the most gallant nation in Europe! Louis
rallied himself to reply in her own way; and putting her arm through
his, she drew him back into the rooms. In her brilliant discourse,
so sparkling with wit, so exquisite in sentiment, she united all the
varied powers of "_Bland Aspasia, and the Lesbian Maid_;" and Louis
felt grateful for the lively interest with which she, evidently tried
to amuse him, during the long protracted evening. But ere they parted,
while she was walking with him down an illuminated and solitary avenue
of orange-trees that led from the supper-room, she contrived to let him
know that every body wondered at his having persuaded Countess Altheim
to so indecorous a step, as to meet him at the nuptial altar before the
ashes of her father had been consigned to the grave. Louis repelled
this charge from himself; and declared his belief that Claudine had
received wrong information respecting the death of Monsieur de Blaggay,
as it had never been intimated to him. His fair companion shook her
head, and while she turned her full bright eyes upon his face, she
calmly said:
"Were you convinced of this fact, would you marry the woman who could
commit so unfeeling a sacrilege on the memory of her parent?"
Louis could make only one answer, and he did it with downcast eyes.
"These are questions, Madam, to which I can give no reply. At this
moment, I consider Countess Altheim as having every claim on me; and
her character is under my protection."
"Generous, de Montemar!" replied Claudine, "How have you been entangled
in this engagement! I see your heart, and I urge no more. But forgive
me, that I lament such a destiny for such a man? Had all men your
honour----"
She interrupted herself with a convulsive sigh, and wringing, rather
than pressing the hand she had unconsciously snatched, she parted from
him. Louis disbelieved the story of Monsieur de Blaggay's death; but
he was affected by the manner of his accomplished informer; and slowly
withdrawing through the now almost deserted rooms, mused on the variety
of human misery.