Wharton left Vienna, the morning after his separation from Louis in the
garden of the chateau. From that day, Louis moved through his duties
like a man in a dream. He had dispatched a special courier to his
father, with as much of the conspiracy, as he had collected from his
now estranged friend; and he confessed how the whole might have been in
his possession, could he have brought his conscience to accord with the
condition.
Hoping that even this obscure intimation might be some beacon to
his father; himself went perturbedly on; racked with suspence, and
feeling alone and unarmed amidst a host of ambushed foes. Except when
obliged to go abroad on business, he shut himself within the walls of
his house; for he now doubted every man who approached him; and the
specious courtesies of women were yet more intolerable.
The Empress did not condescend to intimate how she had considered
his proposition respecting the ceremony of her daughter; but she
sent her chamberlain to inform him, that the Emperor had fixed the
day of her favourite's nuptials, when they should be solemnized in a
private manner. Louis loathed the very characters of Otteline's name;
and shuddered at any new bonds to a society, associated to him with
every disastrous remembrance. His soul was stricken; and the evils
which appeared in visionary approach before his father's path, and
his own, seemed too big for conflict. He felt he could have sustained
the fiercest fields of war; could have died with an upward eye, and
an exulting spirit on its honourable bed. But to be a hero under
the attacks of the coward breath of man; to stand before an obloquy
that threatened the annihilation of his father's glory, and his own
respected name; was more than he dared to contemplate: and in appalled
expectation, he mechanically prepared to obey the unwelcome behests of
Elizabeth.
He was giving his slow orders to a _maitre d'hotel_ respecting
some arrangements for his future bride, when a letter was put into
his hands, which had come by a circuitous route from Sardinia; and
which he ought to have received a month or two ago. It was from Don
Ferdinand d'Osorio. Until the public reception of Ripperda at Vienna,
Don Ferdinand was ignorant where to address the cousin of his beloved
Alice; and to express, what he felt, his sense of the justice of her
appeal against his extorted bonds; and to acknowledge the delicacy with
which Louis had seconded her remonstrances. When he heard that the
Marquis de Montemar was in Germany with his father, he lost no time
in writing; and entrusted his letter to a Sardinian gentleman going
to Vienna. But the traveller took a wide tour; and did not bring the
letter to its destination until two months after its date.