The second night after Louis had left the port of Genoa, the vessel
which contained him was blown to sea by the severity of the weather;
and drove about, contending with the tempest, far from the coasts of
Spain, for one and twenty days. Each succeeding day seemed an age,
to the heart of a son, impatient to console and cheer a suffering
parent under his undeserved misfortunes; and sleep seldom closed those
vigilant eyes that were ever watchful for a change in the wind; or
for some repose in the turbulent element, which bore him along with
unstemmable fury from the shores he sought.
Again and again he questioned Lorenzo on every particular of what had
occurred, propitious or adverse, during his father's administration;
and on what befel him after his most atrocious overthrow. Sometimes his
anxiety to join him became so uncontroulable, he was ready to throw
himself into the waves, to breast their torrent towards the Spanish
shores; at other times, he called upon himself to endure the hard trial
Providence had laid upon his filial patience; and to await its good
time of bringing him to the side of his father.
At last the storms changed their direction; and though equally
boisterous, blew the little vessel with velocity towards the Balearic
Isles. To persist in stretching for Barcelona would have been madness
in such desperate weather; the commander, therefore, determined to make
the nearest Spanish port. As the ship approached the coast, and Louis
for the first time beheld that land, which had so long been the bourn
of all his wishes; first, as the theatre of his father's fame, and
the stage where himself was to contend for the same deathless prize!
then as the spot that contained that father, stripped of every outward
honour, and excluded from all hope, but in the dutiful devotedness of
his son! He gazed on it in a strange tumult of mind. It was the land of
his forefathers; and with what views, with what feelings, was he first
to set his foot upon its shores!
Its high and abrupt outline cut the horizon between sea and sky, like
a superb citadel of mountains, guarding its rich Hesperian vales. When
he saw the golden clouds rolling from the sides of those stupendous
natural bulwarks, as the descending car of day plunged into the
refulgent main, he thought of his father's setting sun; of his last
beams gilding the country he loved; of that fair country, opening
before himself; as he had anticipated, luminous in glory, like the
unfolding gates of paradise! But even while he gazed, and mused, and
felt a pleased augury in the splendid show, the golden hues faded from
the ethereal amphitheatre; the clouds, darkening in their shapes,
collected around the headlands; and in grey and sombrous masses rested
on their tops, till a fierce and eddying wind from the south-east,
dispersed them in one wide and obscuring mist over the whole scene.
Louis drew a deep sigh, and turned from the side of the vessel.
Next morning it anchored in the bay of Valencia. The business of
disembarking and of resuming his journey by land, direct to Madrid,
prevented all particular reflection, till he got into the carriage.
Lorenzo deemed it prudent not to say, at any of the post-houses, or
towns he passed through, who was his companion; and, though Louis felt
he was stealing into the country of his ancestors like a stranger
and a spy; yet, by this discretion, they travelled rapidly towards
the capital of Castile, without any unusual impediment, or even the
knowledge that Ripperda had been removed from the protection of the
British ambassador.
Whether he were passing over plain or mountain, cultivated fields, or
barren tracts, all were the same to Louis, while his eye was fixed
alone on the one object of his journey. He entered the barriers of
Madrid at midnight; but nothing could prevent him driving immediately
through the city and the northern gate, to the British residence.
When the carriage drew up to the portico, another had just driven away;
and through the yet open door, Lorenzo saw the Ambassador passing
through the hall. In a moment he was out of the carriage, and Louis
followed him. The porter was asked by Lorenzo, to conduct the Marquis
de Montemar to his Excellency. General Stanhope had just entered his
saloon when Louis was announced. Stanhope started at the name, knowing
it was that of the son of Ripperda. Louis approached him; his hat was
in his hand; and with hardly articulate accents, instead of what he
meant to say, he could only utter the agitated words--
"My father----"
That countenance could never be once looked upon by an unprejudiced
eye, without making an immediate interest in the heart. Though now worn
and pallid, Stanhope felt its power. He saw all the son in its haggard
lines; he heard all the son, in those few indistinct sounds.
"You expect to find your father, here, Sir?" replied the General.
By the manner of this question, Louis apprehended something of what had
happened, and with inexpressible alarm, he replied:
"And where is my father?"
"To the eternal disgrace of the cabinet of Spain," returned the
minister, "its orders violated the sanctuary of my house; and by an
outrageous execution of a most unjust decree, tore him from his bed,
and immured him in the Alcazar of Segovia!"--
Louis did not stagger under the shock of this intelligence; he firmly
replied;
"I am to understand from this, he is in prison?--On what pretence?"
"Treason against the state," returned Stanhope; "but they cannot make
their charges good. Visible facts outweigh false swearing; and though
Duke Wharton has been their counsellor night and day, nothing can be
proved against your father, but that he once was a heretic, and that
you are the same."
"Duke Wharton?" repeated Louis.
"Yes;" rejoined the ambassador, "he made a shew of rescuing the Duke de
Ripperda from the fury of the populace; but it was only to betray him
to the ministry. He left him in my house, and then drove to Grimaldo,
to tell him where to find him."
Louis sunk into a seat; and remained, with his hands locked, and his
teeth fixed in aiguish death-like coldness, while the ambassador
continued his account of the affair.
He assured his agonized auditor, that notwithstanding the
circumspection of the present ministers, to conceal their
correspondence with the English Duke, he had ascertained the fact of
its having preceded the fall of Ripperda several months; and that it
was Wharton's task to draw Ripperda into all the situations, which had
been wrested to his disadvantage. In consequence of such manoeuvres,
it was represented to the King, that Ripperda had privately conferred
with Wharton in a pass of the Carinthian mountains; and that at some
other place, an affair of secrecy was discussed between them, at which
Richelieu the French ambassador was present. These things were told to
Stanhope by an authority he could not dispute, but must not mention;
and the same informant added, that whatever were the objects Ripperda
coalesced in with Wharton, the cause of James Stuart was not one; for,
it was in resentment of Ripperda's refusing to embrace his views there,
that Wharton betrayed his correspondence with the Duke, and alleged
against him treasons of other, and terrible tendencies.
Stanhope observed, that from some of the present ministers being
secretly inclined to the Stuart cause, he well understood why Duke
Wharton had abandoned all bonds of honour to maintain them in their
seats. But could he have found any signs of a changing principle in
Ripperda, it was not to be doubted that he would have preferred a
single auxiliary of such mental strength, to any combination of more
feeble powers. Before Stanhope thought proper to repeat to the fallen
minister, what had been confided to him respecting his pretended
deliverer; Ripperda had spoken of Wharton's conduct in his rescue,
as a deed of generosity that left him no words in which to express
his admiration. Stanhope then disclosed the relation of his secret
informant; and ended with denominating the alleged previous meetings,
as either falsehoods of his enemies, or, the confession of them, an
unexampled instance of perfidy in the English Duke. Ripperda, at first
listened incredulously to the charges against his deliverer; but when
the rencounter amongst the Carinthian mountains was mentioned, and some
other corroborating circumstances followed that disclosure, the Duke
abruptly exclaimed,
"It is all perfidy, for the facts are true!"
At this part of the narrative, Louis turned his powerful eyes upon the
ambassador. Stanhope thought he read their suspicions.
"Hear me to an end," continued he, "and you will find the whole
perfidy belongs to the Duke of Wharton."
Louis dropped his heavy eye-lids over those scathed eyes, which he
would have been glad to have closed in death; and bowed without a
word. General Stanhope then repeated to him, all that the impassioned
resentment of Ripperda had excited him to avow. He declared his ancient
and inexorable hatred of Wharton and his politics; he boasted that the
transaction to which the Duke de Richelieu was privy, had been one of
mutual vengeance; that he quarrelled with Wharton at the Cardinal's
table, and the same night took his revenge with the sword.
Louis put his hand upon his burning forehead.
"I failed of reaching his heart," said Ripperda, "but my sword went
so near it, we believed him slain. He was taken up for dead; and
Richelieu and the Cardinal conjured me to hush the affair. I obliged
them; and heard no more of him, till like my evil genius, he appeared
in the very mountains he speaks of; and under the darkness of night,
returned to me the dispatches, which, I doubt not, his own emissaries
had taken from my courier. I did not know it was him till several hours
after his departure. The mantle the supposed outlaw had worn, was then
brought to me; and I recognized it to be that of the Cardinal, in which
I saw him wrap the senseless, body. His blood was on it.--Stanhope,
we were enemies!--always mortal enemies. Think then, what must have
been the revulsion in my breast, when he I had assailed to such
extremity, rescued me from the murderous rabble, and brought me to the
unquestionable refuge of your house!"
Stanhope subscribed to the reasonableness of the Duke's first
impressions, as the immediate effect of such supposed generosity. But
since it was proved that Wharton was actuated by the reverse of a
generous motive; that he had busied himself in the secret counsels of
Ripperda's public enemies; and had gained the ear of the Queen, so
far as to influence the rejection of every letter from her once prime
favourite: and not satisfied with these treacheries, had even had
recourse to representing circumstances which contained no offence in
themselves, under colours so invidious, as to wear whatever treasonable
shape he chose they should assume.
"What," asked Stanhope of the Duke de Ripperda, "what are you to think
of such a man?"
"As the most accomplished villain that ever disgraced the name of man,"
cried the Duke.
And then, without further hesitation, he opened out the whole of
Wharton's converse with him, during the half hour they were alone
together in the British residence. It was to urge him to revenge
himself on his implacable foes in Spain and Austria, by immediately
embracing the Bavarian and Stuart claims. He argued, that should he
take this step, France and Prussia, three parts of Germany, and all
Italy, would contend for his guiding hand.
"In short, his persuasions were such," added Stanhope, "that your
father owned to me, did he not connect honour with revenge, he would
have been tempted to accept his offers; but, he said, he had determined
to die as he had lived, by his principles; and he rejected all. The
consequence was, the disappointed emissary of these double treasons,
immediately accused him of his own crimes. And, that he might never
meet a second chastisement from the man he had betrayed, it was he that
urged Grimaldo to hold your father in perpetual imprisonment."
The substance of Wharton's proffers to his father were so like those he
had made to himself; and their rejection having been followed up by the
very conduct he had threatened in the chateau garden,--"Ripperda and
de Montemar shall find what it is to have Wharton for an enemy!" Louis
could not doubt this treacherous vengeance being a fact; and crying
within his soul, against him who had perpetrated so black a revenge,
he started from his seat. The expression of his face was terrific; the
image of sweet humanity seemed blotted from it; and with a burning
eye, and a complexion of death, he turned from Stanhope; and totally
forgetful of his presence, took a pistol from his belt.
The Englishman grasped his arm.
"Marquis, what do you intend?"