"_My dear de Montemar_,
"I should be ashamed to confess the justice of all your remarks on my
conduct with regard to your sweet cousin, my ever-beloved Alice, could
I not at the same time assure you that I have obeyed her wishes to the
fullest extent, and followed your advice implicitly. I have written to
her, and to Mrs. Coningsby; and she is perfectly free: every bond is
relinquished, but that of the heart. If her's be as firm as mine, we
may confidently await the holy vows, which, I trust, will yet unite
us.
"You must have seen enough of my excellent father, to know that
he has one error amongst his many perfections; and that it is an
irreconcileable abhorrence of the Protestant religion. However,
though I should despair of ever bringing him to tolerate its tenets,
I have a hope of compassing his consent to my marriage with its
gentle professor. Marcella, my only, and very dear sister, (and
who was intended from her cradle for a nunnery,) must assist me in
this project. She loves me ardently; and her power with my father,
except on one point, is almost omnipotent. It is this point, on which
I ground my proceedings: she must obey him; and may gratify her
enthusiastic nature, by serving me against herself. Her doom, poor
girl! is rather a hard one, as it was absolutely fixed before she was
born. My father's youthful passions, (which are now hushed to such
monastic stillness!) were the cause of her dedication. I will tell
you the story; and then you may judge of my chance of success through
her means.
"When my father was a young man, his character was too much like my
own, self-willed and impetuous; and in affairs of love, as you will
see by the sequel, he was even more determined than his son. At an
early age, he acquired a great reputation in the army; and at the
conclusion of the war in Italy, went on a party of pleasure to Vienna;
then the gayest city in the world.
"During the reign of the Austrian monarchs in Spain, many of our
grandees intermarried with the German nobility. It so happened between
our family and that of the Austrian Sinzendorff's. My father, then
full of life and enterprize, went to the old Count Sinzendorff's. The
present Chancellor of that name was then young and thoughtless; and
boasted to his cousin, of the great beauty of his youngest sister;
who his family had chosen to sacrifice to the fortunes of the elder
branches, by consigning her to a nunnery at the age of nineteen.--My
father accompanied Sinzendorff to the convent, where they passed
some hours with the beautiful novice; for she had yet four months
of probation, before she was to pronounce the irrevocable vows.
Suffice it to say, a mutual passion was conceived between the two
cousins, and my father persuaded her to elope with him.--They fled
into Switzerland, where they were married. In the course of time,
absolution for the sacrilege was obtained from the Pope; but my father
could never obtain it from himself.--His wife's first and second
children died in the birth. They were both daughters. He believed it
a judgment on his crime, and tried to reconcile offended heaven, by
making a vow, that should his next infant be spared, and of the same
sex; and he live to the appointed period, he would dedicate it to a
monastic life, at the same age in which he seduced her mother from
the altar. The next child was myself. Two or three more infant deaths
intervened before the birth of Marcella. But from the hour in which
she saw the light, and continued to live, a golden crucifix was hung
to her neck, and she was always addressed by the name of the little
nun.
"As she grew in beauty and sweetness, my mother regretted the
determined immolation of her child; but my father would listen to
no pleadings, to spare such variety of excellence to the world. He
demanded the sacrifice for the appeasing of his conscience; and poor
Marcella, though educated with all the accomplishments of her sex,
and full of as many graces as ever charmed in woman, silently awaited
her gloomy destiny. I remember having often seen my father stand
impenetrable to my mother's reproaches for consigning all this youth
and loveliness to the cloister, and then he has calmly answered:--
"Antoinetta, I have covered the blameless offering with all these
garlands, to render her a more costly sacrifice at my hands; to make
my heart drop blood when she is led to the altar; and then, your sin
and mine, my erring wife, may find a veil!
"My mother doated on my sister, and she could not see the justice
of expiating her own offence, by the misery of her child.--In this
spirit, she too, made a vow; and that was, never to be separated from
her daughter, till her father's cruel dedication shut her from the
world. By a most unhappy fatality, the governess my mother engaged
for Marcella when a child, was the widow of one of the illustrious
cavaliers who came to the continent, with your James II. She was a
learned and a pious woman, and brought up my sister in all her own
principles.--My father led too busy a life, to investigate deeper
than the fruits; and those, he said were good. But a year ago, the
English lady died; and on her death-bed, she declared herself a
Protestant! In short, Marcella had been too long under her tuition,
to become a willing _devotee_ to the monastic rites of the Romish
Church. A superstitious horror of this discovery prevented my father
questioning her on the subject; but he proposed her immediate removal
to a convent. My mother opposed her vow to his; not to suffer her
child to leave her, till the time of her being professed.--Marcella
cast herself on her knees, and implored, by every thing sacred in
earth and heaven, that her father would not compel her to take vows
against which her soul revolted. She engaged to live a life of
celibacy; and never to see any persons but her own family; if he would
spare her those dreadful oaths, and allow her to remain for ever with
her mother. But in the essential point, my mother and sister pleaded
in vain. He granted her continuance at home, till the year of her
noviciate; but that year must come, and it will commence next January.
"Being aware, from my father's pertinacity on these subjects, that
if my sister does not then resign herself to her fate, she will be
dragged to meet it, (though he would rather purchase her free consent
at any price;) I determined on trying to turn her sad destiny to my
happiness. When I pledged my faith to your dear cousin, I did it
under a belief that I could persuade Marcella to do that willingly,
which she knows she must do, even under violence. I want her to make
my father's sanction to my marriage with Alice, the condition of her
performing all his vows, without further hesitation!
"On my return from Lindisfarne, (without then venturing to open my
whole mind to her on the subject,) I prepared the way, by describing
the dear family at the pastorage, in such colours as to excite her
particular interest for the fair and tender Alice. My mother's
gratitude was eloquent towards Mr. Athelstone and Mrs. Coningsby; and
again and again she wished to see the latter and her daughters in
Spain, that she might repay them in some sort, for their cares of her
son.
"My father and I soon came to Sardinia on public affairs; but we
return to Spain in the autumn. I shall then unbosom myself to
Marcella; and, I doubt not, she will concede that to my happiness,
which, should she withhold it, would only leave me to misery, without
prolonging the time of her own liberty.
"At present she is leading an almost monastic life; and the difference
cannot be great, whether it be past in a real cell amongst the
Ursulines, and daily cheered by visits from her mother; or in a
cloistered apartment at home, which is fitted up with every similar
austerity, and has no advantage but the nominal distinction of being
in her father's house.
"I hope every thing from Marcella's _free consent_, and consequent
influence with my father; and, when it is given, dear de Montemar, (if
you are not too absorbed in politics and Imperial favour, to continue
your interest in the happiness of faithful love!) you shall hear again,
from your sincerely obliged friend,
"Sardinia. _Ferdinand d'Osorio._"
Louis closed the letter, with every warm wish for the happiness of
his endeared Alice; but while he joined the man she loved, in the
heartfelt orison, he could not but regret the strain of selfishness he
saw throughout his character. He hardly pitied the amiable Marcella,
in the destiny she appeared to deprecate, and to which her brother so
coolly rivetted her reluctant hands, while he pretended to deplore her
fate. In the state Louis was in, between man's perfidy and woman's
wiles, any refuge from the world, seemed a heaven to him. The passions
and opinions of youth are in extremes; all delight, or all misery;
all virtues, or all crimes; no happiness but in rapture; no grief but
in despair. But Louis's griefs were now heavy enough, not to need the
overcharging of fancy; and when he thought of all that he had suffered
since his last fearful meeting with Wharton in the garden, he could not
but exclaim,
"Oh, that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away, and be at
rest!"
He was scared from the world by its vices; and sometimes longed to
repose his wearied spirit in the grave. But he was now only entered
into the lists; the contest was only begun; and he must brace his
sinews to continue the combat, for which his ambitious soul had panted
while he lay in the peacefulness of his native home!
On the very morning, whose evening was to see him perform his extorted
vows, to her who had once been the object of d'Osorio's passion, two
couriers arrived from Spain. The one was Castanos, who came to Louis;
the other was from the Marquis de Castellor, and went direct to Count
Routemberg.
The volcano had burst; and all the power, and all the honours of
Ripperda were swept away! De Castellor was now in his seat; and when
Castanos came off; the Duke was stunned into stupor, overcome by the
illimitable ruin.
Of the particulars of the catastrophe, Louis did not hear, till he
could question Castanos; for the Spaniard, knowing the tidings of the
packet he brought, had presented it in silence and withdrew. Louis
opened it impatiently; and took out his father's letter. He could
hardly expect it to be an answer to his warning epistle, for the time
appeared too short for an interchange of messengers; but eager to know
the complexion of things in Spain, he broke the seal. The letter was
brief, and scarcely legible; but it was sufficient to announce the
completion of his worst fears: that his father was no more the minister
of Spain; that he was abandoned by the King; insulted by the nobles;
and outraged with every species of ingratitude by the people he had
served to his own overthrow!
The bolt was then fallen! And, every hand in which his father trusted,
had assisted to launch it!
Louis was transfixed with the letter in his hand. Now it was, that he
saw the world unmasked before him; now it was, that he saw the views of
life unveiled; now it was, that all creation seemed to pass from before
him with a frightful noise, and he stood alone in chaos. The smiling
face of man was blotted out; gratitude, virtue, were annihilated; and
life had no longer an object! What had his father been? All that was
noble and disinterested. What had he done for Spain? Redeemed her from
poverty, contempt, and suffering; to riches, honour, and happiness.
And what was his reward? He was cast, like the reprobate angel from on
high, and trampled upon by his conquerors, as though his actions had
been like him he resembled in his fall!
How long he sat in motionless, sightless gaze, upon the fatal letter,
he knew not; but he was aroused by the entrance of his secretary, who
informed him Count Sinzendorff awaited him in the next chamber.
Louis saw he was now called upon to breast the first wave that was
to break on him from the deluge which had overwhelmed his father. He
rallied his mental strength; and, looking upwards, to implore the
staying hand from above, he proceeded with the composure of inevitable
ruin, to the presence of the Chancellor. The virtuous statesman
advanced to meet him, while his countenance proclaimed that he knew
all, and sympathized with its victim.
Their conference was short; but it implied to Louis, that his delegated
reign, as well as that of his father, was at an end. Sinzendorff had
been in the Imperial cabinet, when Routemberg laid his dispatches
before the Emperor; and to spare the upright son of Ripperda, some
rude disclosure of their contents, the Chancellor took upon himself
to inform him, that he was to transfer his portfolio to the Count de
Monteleone, who had just arrived at Vienna.
On Louis thanking the minister for his generous interference,
Sinzendorff took his hand.
"I will always bear my testimony to the fair dealing of the son, and to
the disinterested conduct of the father, though we should never meet
again."
Even while the words were on the lips of the chancellor, a message
arrived from the Empress to Louis, to hasten his attendance at the
Altheim apartments.--He smiled gloomily, in answer to Sinzendorff's
smile of dubious meaning.
"I had forgotten!" said the chancellor, "you have yet a fair bond to
Vienna; and this need not be a parting day."
"It is a portentous day, of most unpropitious nuptials!" replied Louis,
hardly knowing what he uttered; "but every day, and every where, I must
be honoured in the approbation of Count Sinzendorff."
The hour was beyond the time in which he ought to have been in the
imperial boudoir, to await the hand of his intended bride. What change
in her wishes, his changed fortune might produce, he thought not of. In
a postscript to his father's letter, he had found hastily written:
"Events prove that you have done right with regard to the Empress's
friend, if she is now your wife." This approbation, was a new bond
on the sacrifice; and he threw himself into his carriage, to obey the
peremptory summons of Elizabeth!
All was solitude in the first three chambers of the Altheim apartments.
As he hurried forward with the desperate step of a man, who had lost
so much that the last surrender was a matter of no moment, he saw the
Empress in the fourth; but she sat alone. Louis bowed at the entrance,
and again as he drew near. She was pale as himself; and did not look up
while she addressed him.
"You are come, thus tardily, to ratify your vows? To redeem your
pledged honour?"
"I come to obey Your Majesty's commands," replied he.
"Your vows may be returned to you;" answered Elizabeth, "but the honour
that was never your's, cannot be redeemed." "Dare I say," replied
Louis, "that I do not understand Your Majesty?"
"And yet the words are plain," returned she, "they are to tell you,
that low as Ripperda has fallen, he never can reach the depths of his
son."
"Madam," exclaimed he, "I am now a ruined man! the malice of his
enemies has cast my fortunes, with my father, to the ground; but he
shall not be humbled in his son. Virtue is the soul of his being,
virtue is my inheritance; and I implore of Your Majesty to say, of what
I am accused? Who are my accusers?"
She looked up; and mistaking the ravages of anguish on his fine
countenance, for those of guilt, she shuddered with a loathing
sensation, and answered indignantly.
"How dare that false tongue profane the name of virtue, by connecting
it with that of your father and yourself?--The world teems with your
accusers; and he bears witness to their veracity, by not having
ventured one line to me in his defence."
She then steadily ennumerated the Duke's imputed treacheries. That it
was past a doubt, his clandestine coalition with the Duke of Wharton;
that their secret meetings had been traced; that he had commenced a
correspondence with James Stuart; and that, from what motives, his mad
ambition could alone tell; it was well known he was playing in Madrid
the counterpart of Wharton's political game at Vienna. In short, he
covertly abetted every machination against the Empire, and the house of
Brunswick:--"and," concluded the Empress, "I am constrained to believe,
that, to me and mine, his overthrow is as timely, as it is irrevocable."
This charge on his father transported Louis beyond the forms of
ceremony; and with all the eloquence of truth and filial piety, he
burst forth into a defence of his integrity, which, to any other
than the possessed ears of Elizabeth, must have carried resistless
conviction; but with an impetuosity equal to his own, she interrupted
him:--
"Cease!" cried she, "Hard, unblushing parricide of all thy father's
fame! Dissembling, cozening de Montemar! In every word, and look,
and gesture, I see the tempter of Ripperda's ruin! He was Honour's
self, till he brought the serpent to his bosom, in the shape of his
perfidious son. Shame to thee, young man, and think of the price for
which you sold him to Duke Wharton."
Louis was confounded by this charge upon himself, as the instigator of
his father's asserted treasons; but he did not shrink, or withdraw his
assured eye from the face of the Empress.
"That Wharton was my friend," said he, "I did not withhold from Your
Majesty; that my father was, and is, his implacable enemy, I have just
affirmed: and that it is not in the power of Duke Wharton, or of any
other man, to draw us from our allegiance to Spain, and our fidelity to
you--name our accusers, and I am ready to maintain it with my blood."
Elizabeth had now restrained the feelings, which some pleading
recollections of Ripperda had awakened, and with haughty composure, she
replied:--
"You may revenge the discovery of your falsehood, by the lives of your
accusers; but the times are past, when truth was proved by bloodshed.
Yet, as you demand it, I shall not refuse you knowledge of your crimes.
They are simple, but they are comprehensive.--First, your nightly
visitations to the Electress of Bavaria, under the disguise of the
Chevalier de Phaffenberg!--"
"It is false!" cried Louis, placing his hand on his heart, and looking
up to heaven; "by the eternal judgment, I swear it is false!"
Elizabeth raised her hands in horror.
"Matchless villain!" cried she.
Then frowning terribly, with a redoubling detestation in every feature,
she rapidly continued:--
"And have you the audacity to swear, you never visited her at all?
That you did not steal from her house by a secret passage, on the
night of the destruction of the opera-house? That you have not had
clandestine meetings with the arch-counsellor of her treasons? And that
this rebellious pair, have not stimulated your presumption, to draw my
daughter to disgrace her rank by listening to a passion from you?"
Louis was too much appalled by the two leading charges, to shew any
surprise at the third. Had Wharton then betrayed that they had met?
That the preserver of his mistress, had once entered her palace?--The
blood which mantled on his cheek at the accusation, faded before this
direful suspicion; and his eyes, dropping under the indignant beams
of the Empress, told her that in this instance at least, his face was
honest.
"You do not dare repeat the perjury!" cried she; "leave my presence."
"Not as a guilty man!" cried he, looking up with the bold desperation
of innocence; "I have now, nothing to gain or to lose with the Empress
of Germany, but my honour; and again I affirm, that under no name but
that of Louis de Montemar, did I ever enter the palace of the Electress
of Bavaria. I never did enter it but once, and that was on the night
Your Majesty mentions. I have also met the Duke of Wharton, by
accident, in the courts of this palace, and in various assemblies; and
by compulsive necessity, twice in the garden of the chateau:--but we
never meet again!" Here Louis stopped. For these charges had so struck
on his heart, (as he believed they could only have been inflicted
by the threatened vengeance of his friend;) that he forgot the one
respecting the Princess.
"You own that you have visited the Electress, and communed with her
emissary!" cried Elizabeth, "avow your object, and it will answer
to the point to which your effrontery has not yet spoken. Was it to
dethrone my husband, and make my daughter a prisoner to the Bavarian
Empress? It would have crowned the adventure, to have rewarded her
champion with the hand of a captive Princess!"
Stung to the soul, Louis threw himself at her feet, to proclaim his
innocence of all these inferences, before heaven and her. But she
started back, as from a viper in her path.
"Base hypocrite!" cried she, "I am not to be moved by subtilty.--I
know how you dedicated that attitude to the dishonour of your future
sovereign. But she is now rescued from your arts--this foot crushed
your pernicious resemblance, as the heaven you outrage, will one day do
yourself. You may grovel in the dust, but I will hear no more."
Louis rose calmly from his knee.
"Empress," said he, "I solicit for justice no more; but I owe it to
my honour, to declare, that my presence in the Bavarian palace was
occasioned by a service I had accidentally performed to one of its
inhabitants. My meetings with Duke Wharton were an attempt to penetrate
into a conspiracy which I knew was forming against my father; but
I failed in my purpose. The enemies of the Duke de Ripperda have
annihilated his political life, and plunged his son into the same abyss
of calumny; but I am not yet sunk to baseness, nor hypocrisy. It was
not to the Empress of Germany I knelt, but to the power of justice
in her person. But that is past; and I feel, that could birth give
dignity, my ancestors of Nassau reigned in this very palace! And, if
devotion to their successor, be a virtue in their posterity, mine have
been faithful to the Emperor, to the last article in the treaty; and I
have been devoted to Your Majesty, to the sacrifice of my happiness.
This we have done! But, young as I am, I have lived to see, that when
power is lost, birth is nothing; and virtue, nothing, but to the
possessor's heart!"
The face of Elizabeth blazed with resentment.
"And this is your answer to your daring passion for my daughter?"
"The Emperor knows, I never dared to love the Princess," replied Louis,
"and to the honour of his Imperial word, I refer Your Majesty."
Louis bowed with a backward step, as he was preparing to withdraw.
"Incomparable insolence!" exclaimed she; "stop, and know that he is
your accuser!" Louis smiled with so insufferable an air of scornful
superiority, that she was momentarily struck dumb; but violently
extricating her powers of speech, she sternly replied:--
"Every aim of that towering spirit is known to him and to me; but every
aim is crushed!"
"Human power cannot crush my aims!" rejoined Louis; "they are to
uphold my father's honour and my own truth. And while he deserves the
reverence of the world, what can prove that they are lost!"
The Empress's hand was on her beating forehead, but she turned, even
fiercely to his question.
"The position in which he now lies, by the determined falsehoods of
his son!" replied she, "return to him, covered with dishonour; return
to him, bearing the curse of the friend of his virtue--of the mother
of Maria Theresa! Return to him, spurned by the Countess Altheim; and
abhorred and stigmatized by all honest men!"
Elizabeth left the blameless victim of all this wrath, standing in
the middle of the floor. Every word she breathed, every anathema she
denounced, seemed urged by the quick revenge of Duke Wharton! All
justice, all fair inference was denied him! His father and himself were
alike shut out from the bosom of friendship; were alike betrayed by
them in whom they had most confidently trusted! The burthen was almost
too much for him to bear. And rushing from the apartment; he knew no
more of what he said or did, till he found himself thrown upon a chair,
and alone, in his own chamber.