Three days after this discussion, Louis had just seated himself at his
morning task, when he heard a knock at the chamber door. This was an
unusual circumstance, for Gerard never approached with such signal,
but at the hours when his stroke was to announce the frugal repast in
the adjoining apartment. The Sieur always entered with his own key;
and this was a time of the day he never visited the Chateau. Louis
thought it could be no summons to him, and that probably Gerard had
accidentally occasioned the noise in passing. But in another minute, he
heard a second knock, louder than the former. He then rose to see what
it was, and to his surprise beheld Castanos; whom he had not seen, or
heard of, since his departure with the dispatches for Spain.
Hoping to hear news of his father; and that his letter to Don Ferdinand
had reached him in safety; Louis eagerly bade him welcome from Madrid.
With a deepened gloom on his always sullen countenance, Castanos
roughly interrupted him.--
"I am sent to tell you, Senor, that the Sieur Ignatius is at the point
of death."
"Impossible!" cried Louis, "he was not here yesterday; but I saw him
the evening before, in perfect health."
"Last night he was stabbed in the porch of the Jesuits' College,"
returned Castanos.
Louis's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, as grasping the arm of
his unfeeling informant, he seemed to demand, who had done it? For once
in his life, the morose Spaniard suffered his half-closed eyes to look
directly on the face of a fellow-creature. He was not insensible to
the horror depicted on Louis, and in more humane accents replied--
"Villains way-laid him in the porch at the outer gate of the College,
where he always quits his carriage. They closed on him: but he
struggled, and drew his dagger. The business, however, was soon over;
for the stroke of some heavy weapon felled him to the ground; and while
he lay insensible, to make sure work, they stabbed him, and fled. But
the drawn blood did a service not intended.--It recovered my lord
Ignatius from his swoon; and he managed to stagger to the gate, and
gain admittance. When I was sent for to his chamber, which was not till
this morning, I found surgeons and a priest with him; and they declare
his wounds dangerous."
"And am I not to see him?" cried Louis, forgetting his hard
task-master, in the image of a fellow-creature dying by murder; that
fellow-creature was his father's friend; and he repeated, "may I not
go to him?"
"I came to bring you to him," replied Castanos.
Shocked as he was by the horrid recital, Louis felt an emotion of
pleasure at this summons. To be to his severe, but he believed upright
guardian, a more soothing attendant than was in the power, if indeed in
the will of the rugged Spaniard, gave a generous satisfaction to his
heart. Having carefully locked the chamber which contained the secret
papers; that, whether the Sieur lived or died, his injunctions might be
equally respected; Louis accompanied his old conductor to a carriage
which awaited them in the court-yard.
While driving down the avenue, and crossing the esplanade into the
city, both Louis and his companion were lost in thought. At last
the former, hardly conscious of giving utterance to his meditations
suddenly asked Castanos whether he had any idea of the motive of this
horrid deed "Not robbery," replied the Spaniard; "they never stopped
for plunder. They wanted his life. And, I believe, we may curse the
jealousy of your father's political enemies for the motive. I brought
my dispatches from Madrid yesterday morning; and yesterday night these
daggers were at work."
"But how," returned Louis, "can the death of the Sieur Ignatius be of
such moment to my father's enemies, that they should load their souls
with this assassination, and leave my father alive?"
"Senor," said Castanos, "you know little of politicians. The agents
of such rivals are always in danger. So you will do well to look to
yourself."
"No man knows me in this capital."
"But some may know your employment; and that is the object of
grudge.--Since the stilleto has reached our master, we know not how far
it may be from ourselves."
Louis could not bid him not fear; for the assault on their employer
proved that danger was connected with their situation; and being
ignorant of what that situation really was, he could not foresee whence
the danger might issue, nor how it might be repelled. He therefore made
no reply; neither did he ask any more questions of a man, who, when he
did break his sullen taciturnity, was ever more inclined to engloom an
evil prospect, than to cheer it with a ray of hope.
The silence that ensued, was not interrupted till the carriage drew up
before a colossal column, surmounted by a bronze statue of the Virgin
Mary, and in front of which stretched the dark walls of the College. At
the portico they alighted.
"Here," muttered Castanos, "is the place of blood; and its marks are
yet on the stones."
As he said, Louis saw; for it might be tracked from the spot where he
supposed the Sieur had fallen, to where he rose and made his way to the
gate. Louis shuddered at such a proof of the most dreadful part of
the Spaniard's tale, and hastened to follow him through the porch. He
entered a large quadrangle, surrounded by cloisters. As they proceeded,
Louis perceived several persons in dark monastic habits, walking to
and fro under the colonades. When he approached, they eyed him with
curiosity; and when two or three were together, they whispered as he
passed. Castanos seemed vexed by this notice; but without remarking
on it, hurried his companion towards a great door at the extremity of
one of the cloisters. He struck it with his clenched hand, and it was
instantly opened by a man, who Louis recognised to be Martini, the
servant who had attended him in his only walk beyond the walls of the
Chateau. He immediately enquired whether the Sieur had undergone any
change since Castanos left him.
"No, Signor. The Superior of the College is with him now, but he is
impatient for your arrival."
"Shew me to his apartment," cried Louis; and following with fleet steps
the long strides of the Italian, the father of the Jesuits met him, as
he passed into the presence of the wounded Ignatius.
The chamber was then left entirely to the invalid, and to the
conference he had so strenuously desired to have with his secretary.
Louis advanced into the room. Ignatius lay on a low couch, which, from
its form and sombre appointments, looked more like a bier for the
dead, than a bed of rest for the living. It stood in the center of an
arched cove at the end of the apartment. Louis approached in speechless
awe. As he drew near, he saw the body of the Sieur extended under the
coverlid, in the position he should have expected had he been to find
him in his shroud. His head lay flat on the pillow, and was so veiled
in a black cowl, nothing could be discerned of his face, but his ashy
lips and grizzled beard.
Ignatius knew the step that so cautiously drew near his bed, and feebly
raising the arm, which his pupil now saw had lain enveloped in black
upon the dark coverlid, he put out his hand to him. Louis clasped it
gently in his, but forbore to speak. He felt himself pressed by the
cold fingers of Ignatius; and there was an expression in the touch
that said, he understood his sympathy. Louis bent his head to that not
silent hand, and put it to his lips.
"Son of Ripperda," said the Sieur, in a low agitated voice; "thou hast
a kindly heart!"
"The son of Ripperda," replied Louis, "could not feel otherwise
towards the friend of his father. But I would devote myself to watch
this couch, for the Sieur Ignatius's own sake." Again he felt his
hand pressed by the wounded man; and the smile, which was once so
beautiful, flitted over his shrouded countenance like a departing
spirit. Louis turned icy cold. He had never seen any one on a
death-bed; and that spectacle, which he believed was now before him,
shivered him to the soul.
"Louis," said the Sieur, after a pause, "I have not summoned you
hither, to wait upon the tedious hours of my recovery, but to perform
my part in the place, where jealousy of my success has brought me to
this. You must go to the Imperial palace; I am expected there in the
course of an hour; for none there yet know of this assassination. You
must see the Empress, and acquaint her with what has happened. With
difficulty I have written these few hardly legible lines, to assure her
she may trust you with any confidential paper or message to me; and she
too well knows my writing, to doubt their authenticity. My surgeons say
little to encourage hope, but tell Her Majesty, I feel a life in my
heart, that her enemies and mine have not been able to reach!"
Ignatius spoke this at intervals, checked at each sentence by internal
spasms from his most dangerous wound. But he shewed a vehemence at
the close, which his pupil had never before witnessed in his tempered
discourse. More than his usual caution seemed taken from his lips, and
as Louis apprehended the approach of delirium, he felt the hand which
still clasped his, flash at once into a scorching heat. The agitated
speaker gasped for breath, but after a momentary pause he began again,
and with rapid utterance went through a train of directions, to guide
his pupil in his conference with the Empress. In the midst of the most
energetic part of his discourse, his lip became convulsed, he suddenly
stopped, and dropping the hand he held, seemed as if seized at once by
the grasp of death. Louis sprang forward, to give air to the enveloped
face, but the moment Ignatius felt the attempt to withdraw his cowl,
he arrested the hand that touched it, and said in a stifled voice: "do
not be alarmed, I am not dying, but in pain. The villains struck well
through my side, but not quite home!--Go," continued he, "you will find
Martini in the anti-chamber. He has my orders to attend you to the
palace. You will then be conducted to the Altheim apartments; shew that
card to the page at the door, (it is written by the Empress's own hand,
to admit the possessor,) and he will immediately obey its command. In
those apartments you will see the Imperial Elizabeth."
Louis had been under no inconsiderable degree of surprize during many
parts of this discourse. Until now, he had supposed that the agency
of Ignatius was directed to some of the Austrian ministers, whom his
father probably wished to bring over to the present views of Spain.
He could hardly have suspected that so much caution and peril could
be connected with any negociation in which the sovereigns themselves
were principles; and that they should be principles, was astonishing
in itself. The Emperor's claims on the throne of Spain, and Philip's
repugnance to the Austrian possession of the Netherlands, united with
the pertinacious character of the two monarchs, and the usual turn
of human passions, would have made Louis affirm, that no political
adversaries could have been more naturally irreconcilable to amity
between them, beyond occasional shews of peace.
However the Sieur Ignatius had borne a reverse testimony. His pupil
could not doubt what he had said, and taking the credentials presented
to him, he was rising to withdraw, when the wounded man impressively
added; "remember, she alone knows that my secretary is Louis de
Montemar. In the guard-room, you will hear yourself announced as the
Chevalier de Phaffenberg."
Louis stood silent, without moving another pace to the door; "Oh!"
thought he, "another deception! How can that be right, which requires
so much wrong to support it!"
Not hearing his step, the Sieur guessed what was passing in his mind.
"I understand your hesitation," cried he, "though I cannot look on you;
the wound in my head, will not suffer my eyes to endure the light.
But Louis, you must not cross me at such an hour as this, with your
romantic prejudices. Should any want of caution discover you to the eye
or ear of an enemy, the blow that has only half reached me, may be made
sure; and the failure of our scheme at this crisis, would sink your
father's fame in everlasting dishonour."
"O! Sir," returned Louis, "I cannot connect dishonour with a scheme of
virtue, whatever may be its fortune! Is not my father labouring for
the happiness of Spain? For the peace of the world? If I had no other
repugnance, I cannot but shrink from giving up, even for an instant,
such a name as his."
"Louis," resumed the Sieur, his voice and manner evidently raised by
growing fever, "it is now in your power, and in yours alone, to keep
that name your distinction, or to brand it as your disgrace. Schemes
of policy have no character in the public mind, but according to
their issue. If success attend this of the Baron de Ripperda, it will
be sounded as a blessing to the nations; if it fail, obloquy will
proclaim it a conspiracy worthy their curses. Concealment now, is
present preservation, and victory hereafter. Remember, once for all,
that diplomatic simulation is no falsehood. It is expected; and is
no more a breach of honour, than an ambuscade in war. You are of the
Chateau Phaffenberg, while you reside in it. And thus we provide for
consciences of more sensibility than judgement. If there be sin, it is
on my head and your father's! Be satisfied with this, and depart on
your duty."
Louis placed his hand on his heart, as he replied, "my honour cannot be
satisfied by a quibble; nor my conscience with the responsibility of
another man. But it is possible I may overstrain the principles I hope
to live and die in; and therefore I obey."
As he left the room without further observation from the Sieur, the
virtuous pupil of the pious minister of Lindisfarne, folded his hands
together, and inwardly exclaimed; "these are labyrinths I never
expected to tread! and may the God I would not offend, be the guide of
my lips and of my actions!"
When he entered the anti-chamber, Castanos was sitting on a low bench
sulkily smoking a cegar, and Martini stood near him, discoursing in
a suppressed voice, but with vehement gesticulation. On hearing the
steps of Louis, the latter turned and caught up his hat.
"I am at your command Signor;" and without waiting for the order, he
led the way through the cloisters to the porch where the carriage
stood. Louis stepped in; and he followed, with the familiarity of a man
who felt his consequence in having been trusted with a confidence of no
mean bearing.
They drove on; and by the looks which Martini occasionally threw
towards him, Louis easily perceived his eagerness to be encouraged to
speak. Martini was as anxious to be always an orator, as Castanos to
maintain the character of a mute. But in the present case, Louis was
too much possessed with what he had just seen, and what he might soon
have to do, to be in any humour to gratify the conversational desires
of his conductor. In proportion as his frank countenance was inviting
to conversation, when he had no inclination to repel it; a dignified
reserve, which few persons would dare disturb, occupied every feature
when he wished to be left to his own thoughts. There was nothing severe
in the look, but it had the air of one accustomed to deference; and
though Martini would rather have met the social smile which Louis wore
on the Danube, he saw every thing to respect, but nothing to fear, in
the tacit command of his countenance.
Attentive to the Sieur's minutest injunctions, when Louis followed his
guide from the carriage into the palace, he folded his pelisse round
him, and drawing the fur of his winter-cap down upon his face, walked
on with little more than his eyes visible. On being saluted by the
officer in the guard-chamber, Martini announced Louis as the Chevalier
de Phaffenberg, who required to be conducted to the Altheim apartments.
A person was called to shew him the way, and as he turned to follow his
guide, Martini said aloud, "Chevalier, I await you in this chamber."
The man led him up the imperial staircase to a superb rotunda, whose
pillared arcades branched in all directions into long galleries of
equal magnificence. Through several of these, they took their way, and
in some of them, a few persons were seen passing lightly and silently
along, as if in the discharge of their respective services towards the
numerous august inhabitants. Louis thought of the palace of Thebes; and
as the smirking lips, but troubled brows, of these people met his eye,
he could not but think how base and how miserable is the coveted bread
of dependance.
He approached another of the many folding-doors which had led him from
gallery to gallery; and on opening this, his guide told the page within
to conduct the Chevalier de Phaffenberg to the Altheim apartment. "By
what authority?" asked the page.
The person from the guard-room had turned away on his return; but
Louis, without speaking, presented the passport from the Empress. The
youth bowed profoundly, and ushered him through a highly ornamented
vestibule, into first one, and then into another saloon still more
splendid. In the second, the page made another obeisance, and left him.
The Sieur had instructed him, merely to shew the imperial signature,
and not to ask for any body, but patiently to await, in this her
private _boudoir_, the arrival of the Empress. He had therefore leisure
to look around him, had his mind been sufficiently free from solicitude
to derive amusement from the endless varieties of art and nature
which decorated the place. In one part, an apparently interminable
conservatory, blooming with all the flowers of summer, wafted its
fragrance towards him. In another, opened a deep alcove of entire
mirror, which doubled the mimic garden; and in an opposite direction, a
stretch of canopied arches discovered chamber after chamber, till the
most capricious fancy might be sated with the gay variety.
Louis's eye hardly glanced along them, for he fell almost immediately
into an awful meditation on the scene he had just left, on the
probable death of the mysterious Ignatius; and, in the event of such
a catastrophe, what might be the consequence to his father. Would the
loss of so efficient an agent compel him to abandon his views? or would
he come to Vienna, and finish in person what his murdered friend had so
well begun? At the close of these melancholy cogitations, nothing but
gloomy images presented themselves; the dark-cowled priests flitting
around the bed of the dying Ignatius, and the dismal voice of Castanos,
presaging a similar fate to the Baron himself! In the midst of these
thoughts, he was startled by a sound in the adjoining chamber. He
looked towards it, and saw a lady, splendidly attired, approaching
him. Unused to courts, he hesitated whether he should go forward, or
await her advance; but as she drew near, the amazing beauty he beheld,
decided for him, and struck him motionless.
He had heard that the Empress was beautiful and young; but of any
thing like this bloom of youth, this splendour of beauty, he had no
expectation. It was more like the dream of the poet, than any _mortal
mixture of earth's mould_! He stood as one lost to recollection. The
lady did not seem less surprised, though certainly with less amazement.
On her first approach to him, when he took his cap from his head, and
his disengaged pelisse, falling back, discovered his youthful figure,
she retreated a step; but the next moment advancing, with a smile of
peculiar complacency, she observed, that "there must be some mistake,
for she came to meet a totally different person."
Louis tried to recover himself from the admiration her beauty had
excited, to the ceremonial due to her rank, and bowing with disordered
grace, he replied, "that he was sent by the person he believed Her
Majesty expected to meet in that chamber; and that he came a messenger
of distressing tidings. To say, that the Sieur Ignatius had been
attacked by ruffians, and was then lying in extremity at the Jesuits'
College."
The lady interrupted him; "Sir," said she, with an eager blush, "you
have done me the honour to mistake me for the Empress, whom I am so
happy as to serve; and being distinguished by my imperial mistress's
confidence, I came hither to request the Sieur Ignatius (whose
attendance she had required at this hour) to excuse her absence for
a few minutes. She is with the Emperor, and, when I deliver your
message, will expect you to await her commands."
With these words, the lady curtseyed and withdrew.
Louis gazed on the track through which she had disappeared. A vision
of some heavenly creature seemed to have passed before his eyes, to
give him assurance of what really did exist in the angelic world! The
apparition, the voice, had been seen and heard, and all was again
solitude and silence! Was it possible, he asked himself, that any thing
mortal could be so perfectly beautiful? that any thing earthly should
be too bright to look upon? Lost in the amazement of his senses, he
thought only of her; he had forgotten the majesty he came to visit,
and almost the disastrous tale that was his errand, when steps again
sounded in the adjoining apartment. He sprang towards the canopied
arch; the curtains were draperied back by two golden caryates, and his
eager eyes shot beyond; but another form appeared! another lady! of
beauty too; but blinded by excess of light, all other objects seemed
dark and indistinct before him.
She was less magnificently arrayed than her fair messenger, but
approached with so striking an air of dignity, that Louis could not
hesitate believing this must be the Empress. Respectfully meeting her
advancing steps, he bent his knee to her, as he presented the letter
from the Sieur. At the moment of her approach, his bewildered faculties
suddenly recollected that such was the attitude Ignatius told him, he
must assume in delivering his credentials.
The Empress stood still, and looked steadfastly on him for several
moments. Then taking the letter from his hand, in a voice of tender
commiseration, she bade him rise.
"The lady I sent hither, has informed me of your melancholy embassy,"
continued she, in the same gracious tone; "but I trust he is not
wounded past hope?"
"Not past his own," replied Louis, as he rose from his knee; "but the
surgeons are less sanguine."
With a troubled countenance, the Empress opened the letter and read it
hastily. She looked from its contents to its bearer; and fixing her
sweet but penetrating eyes anxiously on his face, said in a doubting
voice, "you are young, very young, for the trust I am called upon
to confide to you!" Still she looked on him, and still she spoke;
evidently without consciousness, uttering the remarks her observing
mind was passing upon his appearance. "A youth like you, must be too
fond of pleasure, to be a secure confidant! Too accessible--to much in
the power of circumstances. And at such a crisis too! But he tells me,
I may trust you as his son!"
Again she looked full at him. Louis's whole soul was fixed on that
look, and arouzed by its occasion. That the rigid Ignatius had given
such testimony of him, at such a moment, did not more surprise, than
determine him to perish, rather than dishonour it. He did not venture
to speak, but the expression of his eloquent countenance was more than
a thousand vows to Elizabeth.
She sighed deeply, and sitting down by a table, leaned her head upon
her hand. Louis remained standing where she had left him, regarding her
with respectful interest. At last she looked up, and waved her hand to
him to approach her.
"My heart is heavy," said she, "with the tidings you have brought
me. For, should my counsellor in all this, be indeed taken from me,
how incalculable are the difficulties into which I shall be plunged!
Nothing but full and complete success in the end, can excuse me to my
family and to the world, for the perils I incur in the progress."
Louis was silent.--Elizabeth resumed.
"You know to what I allude!"
"I know nothing," replied he, "but what the Sieur Ignatius has told
me; and that is, a general intimation of his possessing Your Majesty's
confidence: and that jealousy of so high distinction, he suspects to be
the cause of his present state."
The Empress took two or three turns up and down the room. She was
harrassed, and undecided, and often turned, to look again and again
upon the youthful secretary. She suddenly stopped.
"Did Ignatius tell you, who I know you to be?"
"He did.--That I am the son of the Baron de Ripperda."
As he made this simple reply, the pride he had in being the son of such
a father, seemed to encircle his brow with the before veiled diadem
of all his princely ancestors. "And where is your father?" asked the
Empress.
"At Madrid. And I cannot doubt that at such a moment, he would be eager
to hasten to the feet of the Empress Elizabeth; the generous truster in
his friend!"
The Empress shook her head--"Alas! Alas!" cried she; and again she
walked from Louis with a hurrying pace. For some time she continued
murmuring to herself, in a voice so low that he could not distinguish
what she said; but at last drawing near him, she again threw herself
into a chair, and spoke aloud. "You call me the generous truster in
his friend! I will be that to his son too. There is an honesty in
your countenance; an enthusiasm in your manner, so unlike a courtier,
that, I cannot but believe you trust-worthy! and, when _he_ says
it," added she, pressing the Sieur's letter in her hand; "it is
conviction.--Hearken then to me." Louis drew near.--And the Empress,
in a low but steady voice, imparted to him certain subjects of national
dispute between the empires of Germany and of Spain; and personal
rivalries between their respective sovereigns; which she and the Baron
de Ripperda, through the secret agency of Ignatius, were labouring to
reconcile. She intimated that her Imperial husband retained so much
of his ancient enmity to Philip; and the Austrian ministers were so
jealous of yielding advantage to the Spanish cabinet; she was obliged
to move towards her end with the strictest caution. Besides, she had
some collateral objects in view, which, if obtained, would not only
establish a cordial friendship between the two countries; but so
balance the power of the continent; that war, for this generation at
least, could hardly find a plea for disturbing the tranquillity of
Europe.
"Some of these plans," added she, "are more than suspected by my
enemies, and the enemies of my children; and since they have engaged
a certain wily English Duke in their interest, an hour does not pass
over my head without dread of the whole scheme being blown into the
air. Like an evil spirit, he can transport himself when and wherever
he pleases; and while he is invisible, work a train of mischief that
is felt through many nations. It was only yesterday that he returned
from one of his secret flights; from Paris, I suspect----" She suddenly
paused; and putting her hand to her head, appeared to muse for a few
minutes.
Louis's blood chilled at this mention of an English Duke. From what
Ignatius had said to him on the same subject, he was compelled to think
that the Empress could mean no other than Wharton. And, how strange it
was, that every person who had named that Duke to him with censure,
had all concurred in giving him some epithet of duplicity. Elizabeth
looked up, with an abrupt demand of her auditor, whether he thought the
assassination traceable to Duke Wharton? adding, that she did not know
a source whence it was more likely to spring.
"Madam," returned Louis, "I should as soon suspect it from my own hand."
She gazed on him, astonished.
"Yes!" repeated he, in a determined voice; "though it is possible that
Duke Wharton may be hostile to Your Majesty's politics; and even be the
personal enemy of the Sieur Ignatius; yet I know him too well, not to
stake my head on his abhorrence of a crime like this."
The Empress did not withdraw her penetrating eye from his face.
"I now remember," said she, "that it was he who spread the report at
the _Favorita_, that the Baron de Ripperda's son was at Vienna. He met
you on the Danube. But Ignatius assured me, you had never seen him
since!" "I never have.--And I never will, while he is an object of
suspicion to Your Majesty, and to my father's friend. But I must again
aver, as I would at the judgment-day, that Duke Wharton is incapable of
assassination."
"He shall be the better for your vindication," returned the Empress.
And then entering into a detailed communication, of what her new
confidant was to impart to Ignatius relative to the most open part
of their scheme; she gave him a letter, which she wrote, and sealed
in his presence, to acquaint the Sieur with the recent progress of
their more secret views. When she put it into the hand of Louis, she
said with much emotion, "the last courier from Madrid, wrought so
favourably on the Emperor, that I was even now conversing with him in
the highest spirits, when I was called to hear this danger of my noble
coadjutor!--Should I lose him at this moment, their daggers had better
have reached me! Louis de Montemar, guard his life, as you would your
own. You know not the value of the charge."
Louis received her command to be in these apartments the next day, at
the same hour, to give her tidings of the Sieur. She then presented her
hand to him to kiss, in sign of her favour to himself. He touched it
on his bent knee; and as she turned to withdraw, she told him a page
should attend him to the guard-room; but he must take such cognizance
of the passages, as henceforth to find his way in the palace alone.
Again she proceeded to the door, and again she turned round, and said
with agitated solemnity; "should any fatal change occur, come to me
to-night.--We will discourse together for the last time; and all that
I have said in this conference, you must regard as a dream--to be
forgotten!"
Louis silently bowed his head, and Her Majesty passed on. So crowded
were his thoughts with the events of the last six hours, he hardly
noted the time, though he did the situation of the ground, as the
promised attendant brought him to the guard-chamber.--Martini sprang
to meet him; and, a moment after, he had left the mansion of royal
splendors and luxury, to seek the cloisters of world-forswearing men!
All without, was darkness and assumed humiliation; but within, dwelt
the rulers of kings, the universal dictators, the all-compelling
Jesuits! Louis now entered, to visit one of the most extraordinary
personages that ever came within their walls; one, to whom the vast
machinery was all unfolded, by which these mighty workmen moved and
controuled the world.