The information which Louis brought to the suffering Ignatius, did not
fail to heal the worst wound his enemies had inflicted; suspicion,
that their machinations had reached the mind of the Emperor. When
the surgeons visited their patient in the evening, they gave a more
favourable report on his symptoms with regard to fever, which was the
threatening danger of the morning. The manner of his passing the night,
they thought would be decisive for hope or fear, and Louis entreated
permission to attend his couch until day.
The Sieur peremptorily put his negative on this proposal. But Louis
was steady in not being denied watching by the side of Castanos in the
anti-room. Martini, with a surgeon and a priest, remained all night in
the cell of Ignatius; and that he slept most part of the time, Louis
was satisfied; as, with his strictest attention, he could hardly hear a
movement within.
Castanos, and his anxious companion, kept true vigils. The act was
the same, though the motives were as different as the two men. In
one of the dreary pauses of the night, when the intensity of Louis's
meditations, on the various objects which bore upon the event of the
present hour, had wearied his unrested spirit; he observed Castanos
shake the exhausted embers from his pipe; and desirous of asking
some questions respecting the fate of his packet to Don Ferdinand,
he thought he could not have a better opportunity, and while the old
Spaniard was twisting out his tobacco, he addressed him in a low voice.
"Senor Castanos," said he, "you were so kind as to deliver a packet
from me to Don Ferdinand d'Osorio, into the hands of my father?"
"No," returned he, "your father was not at Madrid."
"Then, what became of my packet?"
"It was sent with the dispatches, to where he ordered them."
"Then I may assure myself of its safety?--and that my father was well?"
Castanos had resumed his pipe, and made no answer. After the second
volume of renewed smoke had wreathed away from his sullen features,
Louis addressed him again.
"But of course you saw my father, before you left Spain? Under the
present anxious circumstances, it would particularly cheer me to know
that he is well."
Castanos drew in, and puffed forth another cloud; then indolently
sliding his words out of the unoccupied corner of his mouth, he sulkily
replied, "Senor, the less, in the present circumstances, you talk
of your father; the better for the object of your anxiety, and for
yourself!--Walls have ears."
With this apothegm, he resumed his smoking with redoubled energy, and
Louis submitted to the silence imposed.
A few hours more, and the dawn brought a more communicative comforter
from the inner chamber. Martini issued forth with smiling lips, to
announce that his master's symptoms were those to please the doctors,
for that he had just awoke with little remaining fever. The priest and
surgeon soon after appeared, bearing the same testimony; and the latter
communicated the Sieur's commands, for the Chevalier de Phaffenberg to
attend him immediately.
Though Louis shrunk from answering to the name, yet he hastened to
obey. Again Ignatius took his hand, but it was no longer with the icy
tremor of expiring life, nor the burning clasp of raging fever; there
was languor, but not death, in the pressure; and with heart-felt joy
Louis congratulated him on the certain hope of his recovery.
"It is well," replied the Sieur, "and we shall not be ungrateful for
it, where thanksgiving is due. But we must now proceed to business.
They tell me, my wounds are too deep, to give prospect of my quitting
this couch for many days. Our affairs will not brook that time. Your
duty at the Chateau, and mine at the palace, must continue to be
discharged, and you must perform them both."
Louis's assent was as prompt as the delight with which he embraced
active service. And if the idea of the bright form he had seen only
for an instant, did flash across his mind with a hope of beholding it
again; the passing thought was too transient to materially alloy the
pure zeal with which he pressed forward to his new duty.
The Sieur then told him to return to the Chateau for certain of the
completed papers, and to bring them without delay, for his further
orders. As the carriage was now directed to be always in readiness for
the Chevalier de Phaffenberg, Louis found no tardiness in transporting
himself back to the Chateau, and thence to the College again.
On his return, he found the surgeons in the invalid chamber,
remonstrating with their patient against seeing his secretary again
for that day. But Ignatius was inflexible, and to prevent encreasing
the evil by further opposition, they withdrew. Louis obeyed the beckon
of his governor to the side of his bed, and there he received his
instructions respecting the papers he had brought. He disposed them
into several packets, and putting them into as many small leather-bags,
sealed them, and addressed them according to his orders.
At a particular hour, he was conducted by Martini to a dungeon-like
cell, in a distant and obscure quarter of the College, where the
Italian introduced him to a grey-headed brother of the order, who had
been entrusted by Ignatius with this part of the business. His office
was to receive, and to bring in succession, the messengers of the
correspondence which Louis held in his hand. The venerable Jesuit told
him, that several were then in waiting, but in separate cells; for no
one was to know of the other, and each were conducted out by different
passages.
Louis remained three hours in his gloomy hall of audience, before he
had seen every body he ought to see, and had delivered to them all
the packets of which they were to be the bearers to some of the most
distant nations in Europe. He gave no further account of the Sieur's
absence, to these foreigners, than that he was suddenly indisposed. An
idea of his danger might have had ruinous effects on the purposes of
this various correspondence.
As the time drew near for his attendance on the Empress, Louis returned
to Ignatius, to receive his further commands. This interview was brief,
but pregnant with matter; and included instructions for a conversation
with another personage, to whom the Imperial Elizabeth would see the
necessity of introducing their young negociator.
Louis had now no reason to complain of want of trust, in those who
commanded his services. The Empress was so impatient to hear his
report, that he found her awaiting him; and his communications were so
satisfactory, that she at once dismissed her worst fears for the Sieur,
and entered into a circumstantial discussion of his message, comparing
its expectations with what had passed between the Emperor and herself
on the last overtures brought by Castanos. She was not the direct
agent to her husband in these affairs; for His Majesty had not the
most distant suspicion of her interference with any of the ostensible
negociators; therefore, all that she appeared to do, was by apparently
accidental remarks; but they were so managed, as very often to decide
a fluctuating question. He had never admitted the Sieur Ignatius
to a personal audience; who, he however, respected as a Jesuit of
talents, employed by the Spanish sovereigns to compromise secretly with
Sinzendorff; the Imperial chancellor. The Emperor usually talked with
the Empress on all that passed between him and Sinzendorff: and she
made ample use of her influence in suggestion, and persuasion towards
the leading objects of the Spanish propositions. Besides the brilliancy
of her ostensible motive, to see her husband be the second _Cæsar_ to
close the _gates of Janus_ on mankind! she had two private views, in
gratifying the demands of Spain: to obtain the guarantee of so leading
a power to the _pragmatic sanction_, which would establish her own
descendants, male or female, on the throne of Germany; and to complete
the cession of Philip from the cause of James Stuart, by which her near
kinsman, George of Brunswick, would be more firmly seated on that of
Great Britain.
An active enemy to the first of these projects was then residing at
Vienna, in the person of the widowed Electress of Bavaria. Being
the daughter of the late Emperor Joseph, (who died without a son,)
she believed, if the female line were to inherit, that she and her
posterity had every way more right to the succession than any daughter
of the present Emperor, who was the younger brother of his predecessor,
her father. To avert these claims, the present Emperor, Charles
the Sixth, devised the act of settlement, (called the _pragmatic
sanction_,) on his own female posterity, in default of male issue; and
to this, he was moving every wile of policy, to obtain the guarantee of
the great European states. Fonder of artifice, than of plain dealing,
Charles made promises he never intended to perform; though he hoped by
their means to purchase the acquiescence of his brother monarchs. Spain
had been once attempted in this way; but Philip's resentments against
his former rival were not to be appeased. He joined France in thwarting
all the Emperor's plans. And as he not only withheld his assent to the
proposed act for the Austrian succession, but was actively hostile
to that of the new King of England, the Empress concluded that he
had extended his animosity to her, and was altogether jealous of the
further aggrandizement of the House of Brunswick. But when the Baron
de Ripperda, (whose brilliant wit, and diplomatic magnificence at her
father's court, had been the first object of her youthful admiration,)
when he quitted Holland for Spain, and gained the confidential ear
of its king; then the Spanish cabinet seemed to turn a colder aspect
towards the setting star of the Stuarts; and the hopes of the Empress
settled on the newly-rising minister of Spain.
The same policy which united the friends of the pragmatic sanction with
those of the reigning king of England, brought the supporters of the
Bavarian pretensions into joint interest with all the adversaries of
the house of Brunswick, and consequently into strict friendship with
the intended restorers of the line of James. To keep the negociation
between the sovereigns of Spain and the Empress, from the cognizance
of these two latter parties, now so determinately united, was
indispensible to its ultimate success; for the Emperor was too jealous
of a prince, who had once gained over him a great advantage; and too
personally attached to ancient Austrian prejudices, not to be very
accessible to the diplomatic subtilities of the adverse faction, should
they have timely notice to make the attack.
The Empress expressed herself to this effect; but there were still
some secret measures between herself and Ignatius, which she did not
think expedient to notice to their young confidant; and when she had
explained all that she deemed necessary for the present, she told him
he must go to the apartments of Count Sinzendorff, where that minister
was now expecting him. She drew from her finger a ring that the Count
knew, and which, on being presented by Louis, would be sufficient
assurance that he was visited by the right person.
"But recollect," said she, "the chancellor is ignorant that you are of
more consequence than the mere secretary of the Sieur Ignatius. I told
him your name is Phaffenberg; and take care you do not give him, or
any one else, reason to suspect you have any other."
Louis bowed; and her air of cautionary command, dilating into a smile,
she added, "to-morrow, and every day, attend me here at the same hour,
until perfect recovery restore your guardian to the full performance of
his own duty."
The Empress's description of the situation of the chancellor's
apartments in the palace, was too accurate for her ambassador to
mistake his way; and, without impediment he found himself ushered into
the presence of Count Sinzendorff. He recognized the ring, which the
young secretary respectfully put into his hand, and without preface or
circumlocution, entered at once upon the assassination of Ignatius,
and the consequences to be drawn from the attempt. To detect the
perpetrators was impossible, as the necessity for concealment in all
that related to the negociation of the Sieur, extended to his person;
and to make a stir in search of the ruffians, would only direct the
eyes of their employers, where to dare a second attack.
The chancellor then opened the communications he wished to be
conveyed to Ignatius. They principally consisted of certain demands,
besides that for the pragmatic sanction, which His Imperial Majesty
persisted in making on the King of Spain, before he would propound to
his ministers, what he styled, the very high requisitions from the
Spanish side. The chancellor followed this up, with remarks on his own
difficulty in preparing the minds of some of the most stubborn of these
ministers, whom he could hardly bring to apprehend even the possibility
of such measures being ever proposed to them.
From the plain and well-digested discourse of Count Sinzendorff,
Louis derived a clear idea of the scheme in negociation; which, if
brought fully into effect, did indeed promise universal benefit. In
the constrained confidence of the Sieur, there was always so much
mystery; and in the hurried communications of the Empress, so much
confusion; that, until now, he could only see as afar off, a mass of
anticipated events whose misty obscurity rendered some mostrous and
most indistinct. But now he comprehended, not only the magnificence
of the mutual greatness of Austria and of Spain; but the foundations
of prosperity and peace for Europe, so long threatened with the
interminable miseries of hereditary wars. His soul, devoted to noble
contemplations, was roused to all its wonted ardour by these views;
and, vibrating to the tone of his father's declared motive, which
the chancellor had incidentally quoted; he made some remarks on
the proposed measures, that did not less astonish than please that
consummate statesman.
Count Sinzendorff saw that it was no hireling secretary Ignatius had
dispatched to him. The air and language of Louis were too elevated
to belong to a man born in dependance; and the chancellor read in
the intelligence of his eye, and the peculiar attention of his
countenance, as he respectfully listened to what was said, that he was
still unapprenticed to the mechanism of politics. He felt the soul
of patriotism, but he was not yet aware of the machinery, which, in
this world of artifice must be its body! A few general sentiments of
political virtue, uttered by the Count, elicited its purest principles
from the lips of Louis. His own glowing words had given the tone he
thought he had taken from the chancellor, who, in fact, only admired
the enthusiasm he reflected, and pitied what he admired. "It is _first
love_, amiable youth!" thought he, "which must give place to a more
worldly bride!"
That this singularly noble young man, both in appearance and manner,
should have been introduced to him by the Empress and the Jesuit
Ignatius, as a common secretary, and by the name of Phaffenberg;
(a family, whose folly and extravagance had long ago sent it into
obscurity!) did not so surprise Sinzendorff, as it confirmed his
suspicion, that he saw the son of some great man in this interesting
novice; and his shrewd guesses did not lead him far from the mark. He
smiled inwardly, at the useless deception which the Empress thought
to put upon his penetration; and determined to allow her to believe
he was as blind as she wished. Before he and the object of his doubts
separated, it was fixed, that every night, at an hour before midnight,
the latter should attend in the Chancellor's apartments, to be the
medium of communication between him, Ignatius, and the Empress.
When Louis returned from his long and double embassy, all he had to
impart was listened to without interruption. For when he began his
recital, the Sieur apprised him, that in transactions of this nature,
it was so necessary to recapitulate every word that passed; and as
nearly as possible, describe the manner of saying it, that he would not
confuse his recollection by a single interrupting remark. When Louis
finished speaking, all his guardian said, was--"It is well." and then
bade him return to the Chateau for the remainder of the night.
He had a task to perform there before he slept; and similar ones
would henceforth lengthen his visits to a late hour every evening,
as long as his double duty lasted. He was to register all that was
said in his presence, by the Empress and the Chancellor. And he was
to make duplicates of this diary, into the cypher he had been so long
accustomed to copy; and to understand which, the Sieur now gave him a
key. Every night he was to return to the Chateau, and every morning
make his appearance at the College.
The two following days passed in the same round of duties; but there
was a difference in the third, which made it remarkable to Louis, and
gave a new character to those which succeeded it. He again beheld the
beautiful friend of Elizabeth.
Not having seen her since her first transit across his then cheerless
sky, the starry brightness of that glance only occurred to him
afterwards, like the fading image of a delightful dream. Absorbed in
the great interests which now occupied him, he was thinking of nothing
less than her, when, on entering the _boudoir_ to await the Empress, he
was surprised to see her accustomed chair filled by another lady; and a
lovely girl sitting by her, busily employed on the table. He started,
and the lady, hastily throwing back a lace veil, which shaded her
face as she bent over her companion, discovered to him the beautiful
creature he hardly expected to see again. She apologized for having
permitted her own, and the Arch-Duchess's occupations, to make her
forget the hour in which these rooms ought to be left to his use;
and, taking the Princess's arm, had even passed into the next chamber,
before he could recollect himself so much as to feel that he stood like
an idiot, without having uttered a word of the commonest civility, in
answer to her graceful address. He then flew after her; and spoke, he
knew not what, in explanation of his remissness; all the while walking
by her side in a strange disorder of feelings, till reaching a small
door in almost the farthest apartment, she turned round, and with a
dignified bend of her neck and a dimpled smile, granted him her pardon,
and disappeared with her fair charge.
Louis paused a moment, looking at the closed door through which she had
passed; and then returned to the _boudoir_, with his senses all in a
maze. His heart, which had never beat before at the sight of womankind,
throbbed in his breast almost audibly. Such an eye, as its soft lustre
fell upon him, he had never met before; he felt its rays in his heart.
And then, so finely composed a figure! Such matchless grace in her
shape and snowy arms, as she led the young princess along. And the
golden tresses which mingled with the white veil upon her neck, made
him think of the peerless Helen, whose divine beauties compelled the
admiration of the very empire she destroyed.
Full of these imaginations, the more he thought, the farther did his
mind wander from the business which brought him there:--and, when
the Empress did make her appearance, it was with difficulty that he
recalled his senses to the subject of the interview. In one of her
pauses, she noticed his abstraction. She remarked it to him. A bright
crimson flashed over his face. She repeated her enquiries. Louis was
astonished at his own emotion; but without seeking other excuse, though
with deepening colour, he said, he feared he had behaved rudely to a
lady who had just left that apartment: but he was surprised, at meeting
any but Her Majesty; and he had not yet recovered from his confusion.
Elizabeth bade him describe the lady. To do that, he felt was
impossible; though, on the demand, his ready heart repeated its
pulsations; and looking down, he merely answered, "she was with the
Arch-duchess." The Empress smiled. She now knew whom he had seen;
and by his disorder, had no difficulty in guessing the cause of his
abstraction.
"The lady," returned she, "is the Countess Altheim; to whose care these
apartments are consigned, as my first _lady of the key_. She is also
the governess of my eldest daughter, whom you saw; and whom I wish her
to model after her own graces!"
Louis unconsciously sighed, as he bowed to this information; and
Elizabeth, thinking she understood his meaning, with a smile still
more gracious than the former, added--"she is a widow, though so
young:--and has hitherto loved me too well, to be persuaded from my
service by any one of the numerous solicitors for her hand."
Louis felt another impertinent sigh rising to his lips, but he
smothered it with a gentle effort; saying inwardly--"What is all this
to me!" and made no answer to the Empress, but a second bow. She
immediately passed to the subject of his audience.
In returning to the College, he would not suffer himself to dwell a
moment on the image of the beautiful Countess. But he was not permitted
to keep his wise resolve of dismissing it altogether from his thoughts;
for the bright original found occasions of repeating the impression day
after day.
She sometimes awaited him with preparatory messages from the Empress.
At other times he surprised her and the young Princess at their
studies. But at none of these meetings could she be prevailed on to
linger a moment. When she had to deliver a message, she hastened away
as soon as it was uttered. And when he broke on her accidentally, the
instant he had caught a glimpse of her white arms moving over the lute,
or had heard the trill of her exquisite voice warbling through the
rooms, she would rise in disorder, and hurry from his ardent entreaties
in so sweet a confusion, that it was sure to fix her idea in his mind
till their next rencounter.
Louis felt the truth of the observation, that "The secret to interest,
is to excite curiosity, and never satisfy it." He was ever asking
himself, why the charming Countess, the worshipped of so many hearts,
should be so timid to him? Or rather, why she should thus fly, as
if with aversion, one whose heart was so well prepared to admire
the graces of a mind, which, the Empress had assured him were equal
to those of her matchless person. He had never seen any thing so
beautiful as that person! And in so fair a temple, he could not
doubt, as fair a spirit must dwell. He longed to converse with it; to
understand all its loveliness; and to feel his heart sympathise, as it
was wont to do in holy Lindisfarne, with all the pure intelligence of
woman's mind. It was not of love he thought; for though he respected
the sentiment, hitherto he had never felt its touch; and, as he had
devoted his admiration to all that would take him out of himself, he
had always regarded the winning of a female heart, as but a secondary
object in the aims of his life. "Ah, never," has he often said, "would
I give my _noon of manhood to a myrtle shade_! Woman's love was given
to be the helpmate of man, but his folly makes her the tyrant!" In this
case, as in others, Louis was yet to learn.--How wise is speculation,
how absurd is practice!