The Countess was indeed accomplished; and most accomplished in the art
of charming. The noble Cornelia, and the tender Alice, knew nothing of
her science; and of what spirit it was, the heart of their cousin had
yet to prove.
On the day of his first appearance at the palace, she had only to
behold his singularly fine person, to think him the handsomest
young man who had ever entered there. But the fair Altheim was not
particularly attracted by the charms which most pleased in herself; and
she would never have sought a second glance of the graceful secretary,
had she not accidentally attended to a discourse between her imperial
mistress and the chancellor, wherein the latter, (being piqued by a
quotation from Ripperda, which the Empress made, to confute one of his
political arguments;) rather sarcastically gave hints that he suspected
the wounded Jesuit had got something more illustrious in his diplomatic
novice, than he chose to acknowledge. Elizabeth affected to see nothing
peculiarly distinguishing in the manners of the secretary; but when
the chancellor had withdrawn, she let some ambiguous expressions
escape her, in the triumph of having baffled his penetration. These
intimations were not lost on the Countess. And on the day following
that in which she and the Arch-Duchess had retreated from Louis in such
haste, the Empress could not forbear telling her in what an amazement
of admiration she had surprized him; adding, "He is a conquest worth
_more_ than a haughty beauty's _smile_!"
Elizabeth smiled as she said this, but remarked no further. It was
enough for her fair confidant; who, if her soul possessed any passion,
did not scruple to own it was ambition. To gratify this, she had given
her blooming beauties, at the age of seventeen, to the superannuated
Count Altheim; a man of high family and great riches, but who had long
survived every faculty, but that of dotage on any pretty face that
would endure the incense of an habitual idolater of youth and beauty.
At that early age, she had been sent for by the Empress, who loved her,
from her having been the only daughter of the respectable woman who had
been her nurse; and in consequence of which the pretty Otteline had
been brought up as the favourite play-thing of the Princess; but the
gracious Elizabeth soon regarded her with the tenderness of a sister;
and on the death of the venerable mother, embraced the opportunity to
have the companion of her youth brought to Vienna. Otteline de Blaggay
was many years younger than her Imperial mistress, and far transcended
that beautiful Princess in every personal grace. But as the prejudice
in favour of high birth is so great in Austria, that a mis-alliance
is considered as indelible a disgrace, as a moral dishonour; none of
all the illustrious courtiers who contemplated, and sighed for the
possession of the lovely Otteline, ever thought of making her the
sharer of his rank. A thousand gay adventurers pressed forward, to
gratify their passion for beauty, and to excite an interest in their
behalf with the Empress, by making her favourite their wife. But
Otteline knew herself to be despised, though worshipped. And as rank
was all she wanted, to set her in every respect above the women who
envied her charms, and therefore looked with double contempt on her
untitled name, she resolved to marry for rank, and for nothing else.
Within a few months after her arrival, the old Count Altheim became
infatuated with her beauty; and, intoxicated by her smiles, dared
every obloquy to raise her to the station her lofty spirit seemed so
calculated to dignify. The Empress felt the situation of her favourite,
and, having joyfully pronounced her consent; the no less delighted
Otteline gave her hand to the Count in a splendid espousal, at which,
not merely her patroness, but all the Imperial family were present.
While the fond husband lived, his young Countess was the brightest, the
loveliest, the proudest of the court. Elizabeth exulted in the homage
the haughty Austrians were at length obliged to pay her _eléve_ and
country-woman; and to render it more complete, she determined that an
application to the Countess should be the only avenue to her Imperial
favours. But the Count died; and according to the law at Vienna, that
on the death of her husband, the wife loses whatever rank she may
have acquired by her marriage; the Countess Altheim, though a richly
endowed widow, found herself at once thrown back into all her former
insignificance. This reverse was doubly galling, since she had been
on the heights of consideration; and had trod that elevated path with
a step not much less imperial than that of the Empress herself. To be
contemned now, was mortification almost to madness. But the beautiful
mourner had lived too long in courts, to permit her rivals to perceive
the complete victory events had given them over her. Affecting a wish
for retirement after the death of so adoring a husband, she lived
secluded for a time; loftily leaving that world, she was aware, would
have scornfully excluded her: and when the assumption of inconsolable
grief was no longer feasible, Elizabeth appointed her to the high
office of presiding governess over the Arch-Duchess Maria-Theresa. This
afforded her a dignified plea for still abstaining from the assemblies
of the court; though in private parties she sometimes permitted herself
to be seen. Yet this was a rare indulgence;--that the novelty of her
unequalled charms, whenever she did appear, might continue to give her
successive triumphs over the envy of her proud rivals;--and the effect
was ever what she expected. She was then twenty-six, and though in the
meridian of her beauty, she foresaw that the time approached when she
must resign this, her sole sceptre of power, to some younger hand. What
then should she be? She could not endure to dwell upon the answer; and
again turned her views to some elevating alliance. To think of another
Austrian connection, would have been waste of time, and a hopeless
speculation. She must direct her attention to some of the numerous
noblemen from foreign countries, who visited Vienna. This plan was
hardly determined on, before the arrival of the Marquis Santa Cruz gave
the wished-for victim to her ambition in the person of his son Don
Ferdinand d'Osorio.--Young, handsome, susceptible, and of high rank!
It was an opportunity not to be neglected; and a few interviews with
him at the _petits soupés_ of the Baroness Hermanstadt, put to flight
every remembrance of the dove-eyed beauties he had so lately sighed
for in the groves of Italy. Lost in the blaze of her attractions, he
soon lived only in her presence; and drew from her a confession, that
she awaited his father's consent alone to become his bride. But she
was a Protestant, and she was of ignoble birth; two disqualifications,
which the Marquis's bigotry of faith and of ancestry could not be
brought to excuse. In anguish and hope, Ferdinand flew to the feet of
his adored Otteline, and implored her to give him her hand, in spite
of his inexorable father.--She knew the degrading consequence of such
a compliance. She saw the point to which the passions of Ferdinand
were hurrying his reason; and to throw it at once on that dreadful
extremity; and by that phrenzy of despair alarm the Marquis, and compel
him to save the senses of his son, by consenting to the marriage; to do
this, she exasperated the agonies of her lover's mind, by appearing to
regard the proposal for a clandestine union, as an insult from himself.
When she allowed herself to be convinced of the contrary, still her
indignation continued, though directed to a different object; and she
declared, that her wounded honour could never be appeased, nor would
she consent to see Don Ferdinand again, till he should bring her the
Marquis's only adequate apology for the disgrace he had presumed to
attach to her alliance.
Ferdinand departed from her, almost insane; and in that condition
threw himself upon the mercy of his father. But the good Catholic,
and Spanish Grandee, was not to be moved. And the frantic lover,
being denied admittance at the door of his proud mistress, he flew to
unburthen his distracted soul to their mutual friend, the Baroness
Hermanstadt.
The narrative that follows is of more common, than agreeable detail.
The Baroness was one of those women who are a blot on their own sex,
and a blight to all of the other on whom they fix their rapacious
eyes. Abandoned to ostentatious expence, no means were rejected, by
which she could gratify the vanity her own fortune could not supply;
and while her friend looked abroad for an ennobling alliance, to give
her rank, she laid snares for dishonourable engagements, to furnish
her with gold. Her iniquitous proceedings had hitherto been so warily
managed between herself and her dupes, that no one else suspected her
of error.--She was generally received in the first circles of Vienna,
and hence had a wider field from which to select her victims. The
thoughtless expenditure of the son of Santa Cruz, had for some time
tempted her rapacity; and the opportunity presented itself of making
it all her own. She was an elegant woman, and an animated companion;
and soon made the distracted Ferdinand forget the pretended disdain
of managing ambition, in the delusions of practised art and soothing
flattery. Intoxicated with what he believed her generous oblivion of
herself, in voluntarily sacrificing every duty to her newly-avowed
passion for him; he was-only awakened from his trance of vice, by the
information that her husband, a rough Hungarian General, was returning
from his post on the Turkish frontiers. She would gladly have exchanged
this poor and rugged hero, for the soft prodigal, she had bereft of his
better reason; and she made the proposal to him:--To fly with him,
before the Baron could arrive; and that henceforth their fates should
be one. As she clung round him, making the insiduous proffer, a gleam
from his long banished reason seemed to visit him from on high; he
shrunk with horror from an everlasting engagement with such a woman.
Though the slave of her allurements, she was not the mistress of his
soul, and he dared to deny her. Then all her assumed persuasiveness
was cast aside. She insisted on flight, with a vehemence that turned
her passionate love to threatening fury; and closed with holding a
pistol to her head, to extort his assent, or to end her existence. He
wrested the weapon from her hand; and oppressed with his own bitter
consciousness, left her in a storm of frantic upbraidings, to the care
of her confidential maid.
From this disgraceful connection, it was, that the Marquis Santa Cruz
had borne away his son. As soon as the extraordinary disorder of
Ferdinand, and consequent enquiries, had made the Marquis aware of
these circumstances, he saw the necessity of hurrying him away from the
machinations of a wicked woman, too well practised in the ruin of the
youthful mind; and too ready to make the credulous Ferdinand a lasting
prey.
Meanwhile, the disappointed Countess Altheim, foiled by her perfidious
friend and versatile lover, broke with the one, and really disdained
the other. And though she never condescended to enquire about either,
after the double desertion was known to her beyond a doubt; yet she was
not insensible to some feeling of gratified revenge, when she heard
that Ferdinand had abandoned her rival, and left the country.
The Marquis hastened with his remorseful son, to Holland and to
England. But the pangs of his repentance had not struck at the root of
his crime. He mourned the act of guilt, not the empassioned nature
which impelled it. He cursed the hour in which he had ever met with the
Baroness Hermanstadt; but he did not condemn the headlong impetuosity
with which he yielded to every impulse of self-gratification. The only
son of his parents, and heir to immense revenues in both hemispheres,
he had been indulged in every wish, till he believed he had no duty
in life but to enjoy all its blameless pleasures. But when personal
gratification is the principle of existence, the boundary between
innocence and transgression is often invisible. Ferdinand had more than
once trembled on it. He had now overleaped it.--And though racked with
self-abhorrence at what he had done; and hoping, by deeds of penance to
repass it; yet he fostered in his heart the passions which had betrayed
him: and even found a new temptation for their excesses, in the land of
his penitential pilgrimage. By a strange coincidence of fate, while he
was sowing tares in the happy fields of Lindisfarne, Countess Altheim
was preparing a similar attempt on the peace of its darling Louis.
The beautiful Otteline was as widely different from the character of
her false friend, as unsunned snow from the molten lava of Vesuvius.
She sought for nothing in her union with Ferdinand, but the rank he
would bestow on her. His riches and his love were alike indifferent
to her. And when she turned her eyes on the handsome secretary of
Ignatius, she had no other idea in her meditated attack on his heart,
but what aimed at sharing a birthright, which the Empress had assured
her, would exceed her proudest wishes. Notwithstanding her incapability
of loving, and indeed of feeling any emotion but those connected with
her ambition and its disappointments; she was so keen an observer, and
so fine an actress, that he must have had an _Ithuriel_ eye, who could
have distinguished the counterfeit from the real, in her pretensions.
Having made her first advances on Louis, by a retreating manoeuvre,
she perceived that her personal charms had made their intended
impression; and that she had only to produce the graces of her
conversation, to complete the conquest. On subjects of general taste,
she was mistress; and in every department of human knowledge that
belongs to worldly wisdom, she was perfectly informed. If sympathy
did not give her anticipation of her lover's thoughts, self-interest
endowed her with tact to glide into his opinions; and she did this
so adroitly, as to make her echo appear the leading voice:--Her
accomplishments were likewise brought into play; and the Empress did
not disdain to partake the management. Once or twice, she detained the
Arch-dutchess and her governess in the room, to call forth some natural
or acquired charm in the beautiful instructress; and when the blushing
Countess withdrew, Her Majesty usually made some observation on the
inimitable perfections of her character, and the engaging modesty by
which they were so constantly veiled.
In one of these interviews, when Louis was gazing with his soul in
his eyes after the departing steps of the too exquisite Otteline, the
Empress, with a peculiar smile, ejaculated,--"She has lately become
enamoured of politics.--And should she negociate for herself, adieu my
right in her possession!"
Louis felt himself turn pale, but he did not reply.--Though his
Imperial Inquisitor thought his looks were sufficiently expressive,
she was determined to carry away a direct avowal; and with a little
archness, she added, "But you, perhaps, doubt her powers?"
He coloured as he replied: "I believe the Countess Altheim may command
just what she pleases." "Indeed!" cried the Empress, "then you must
not be my minister. If she negociate against me, I see where my
interest would be."
Elizabeth smiled again, and with an expression that Louis could not
resolve into any positive meaning;--but it was unpleasant to him, and
gave him an impression of being played upon. A confused recollection
of the Sieur's exordium against the power of beauty, suddenly occurred
to him; and with rather a more offended air than is often ventured to
an Empress, he said; "believing that the Countess Altheim would always
please to command what is right, I did not suppose her influence could
ever be actuated against the interests of Your Majesty."
The soft colour on Elizabeth's cheek, mounted to a proud crimson.
The words were compliment, but the manner reproof. She regarded the
audacious speaker with a look of astonishment. His eyes were now
directed to the ground. She felt she had been reproved; and by a youth!
a boy! The son of a man, who, if her confidant and coadjutor, she was
also his! and, from circumstances, so much more in her power, than
she in his; that, at any moment she could ground his chariot in the
quicksands; and give him a fall as deep, as that which had sunk for
ever the fortunes of his predecessor, the great Alberoni!--And yet the
son of this man, so perilously placed, so dependant on her will, durst
presume to be offended with an innocent freedom she had condescended
to take with his feelings!--He had dared to imply to her, that she had
trifled with him beneath her dignity; and still he stood before her
with a mien of more true respect, than any she was accustomed to meet
from the most obsequious of her vassals!
With a haughty swelling at her heart, the Imperial Elizabeth ran
through the first of these suggestions, but as she contemplated
the countenance of the speaker, so noble, so modest; she found a
more ingenuous sentiment arise. She had then, for the first time in
her life, beheld the unveiled face of simple truth! the situation
was strange to her; but there was a charm even in the novelty: and
again smiling, but with an air in which all the distance of her rank
was conveyed, she graciously said, "there was something besides
compliment in that speech of your's, de Montemar; but I forgive you."
She stretched out her hand to him, in sign of full pardon; and as he
respectfully touched it with his lip, she added, "you would make a
better counsellor than a courtier; but if you mean to be a statesman,
you must unite both."
He bowed as she turned away; and said to himself, "then I must mean to
be, what I never can be. If the world is not to be governed without the
moral degradation of its governors, my ambition to be a ruler must
follow Orlando's wits to the moon!"
Gracious as the Empress looked and spoke, he yet saw that he had
been on the verge of giving her mortal offence. His Pastor-uncle had
often told him, the atmosphere of courts was cold, in proportion to
their elevation: it was as withering to every honest demonstration
of the heart, as the icy peaks of the glaziers, to the verdure which
would flourish in the vallies! Louis did not then quite believe the
representation; but he now remembered the lesson, and sighed to find it
true.
Musing on the causes and consequences of so unnatural a state of
moral existence, he passed hastily through the galleries. The day
was unusually warm for the season, and the heat of the stoves made
the unventilated air so oppressive, that absorbed in thought, he
unconsciously complied with his bodily feeling; and, with his cap still
in his hand, he allowed his pelisse to fall open from his figure, as
he hastened down the passages. As he turned into an obscure lobby,
by which he avoided the public guard-room, he passed the bottom of a
flight of steps. Two persons were coming out of a door at the top. He
did not observe the circumstance, so profound was his reverie, till he
heard the voice of Wharton exclaiming, "'tis he, by Heaven!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Louis sprang forward; but not to meet
his friend. He disappeared from the passage, at the very instant he
heard the Duke throw himself over the rails of the stair, and call in
louder accents, "De Montemar! De Montemar! Stop, for God's sake! It is
Wharton who calls you!"
But Louis continued to fly, and Wharton to pursue, till the former
abruptly turning through a small postern into the street, darted into
his carriage; which always awaited him at this obscure entrance. It
was just wheeling into the mob of attending equipages, when he beheld
the Duke issue from the gate, and stand gazing around in search of his
faithless friend!
"Faithless, I am not, dear, insulted Wharton!" cried Louis, aloud,
though unheard by him he apostrophised. "But you have seen me desert
you! Fly you, in spite of the sacred adjuration with which you would
have recalled me! Oh, what do you now think of ungrateful de Montemar?"
At that moment he saw the Duke strike his forehead, as in the vexation
of disappointment; and in the next, the turn of the carriage snatched
him from his sight.
Louis now began to arraign his own carelessness, in having erred so
unpardonably against warning, as to permit any abstraction of mind to
divert him from the indispensible concealment of his person. Angry
with himself, and vexed to the soul that his negligent reverie had so
immediately incurred the evil most deprecated by Ignatius, the wormwood
in his heart for a moment distilled over every other object, and with
a bitterness unusual to him, he exclaimed, "Why did I forget that a
man sworn to politics, has immolated body and mind? Neither love nor
friendship, nor the reasoning faculty, are for him. She is his deity,
and must command all his thoughts! Had I properly recollected this
detested creed, coiled like Satan in his serpent-train, I might have
passed through the dust, unnoticed by the erect eyes of Duke Wharton!"
Perhaps, the consciousness that his own nature had caught some of
this abhorrent system of disguise, excited temper, as well as regret,
in this moody exclamation! His soul was naturally brave and frank;
but the mysterious language of the Sieur had touched him with a
kind of superstitious dread on certain points; and he now shrunk
from mentioning this rencontre to any one. He knew it would fill
Ignatius with alarm for their secret; and in the present state of his
slowly-closing wounds, all agitation was dangerous. To name it to the
Empress, might not only re-awaken her suspicions of the Duke, but
excite her to precautions hostile to his safety. Louis thought, and
re-thought over these circumstances; and, as his perturbed feelings
subsided, and gave him clearer judgment, he fully determined on
silence. He flattered himself that no ill could proceed from this
concealment; and while he resolved to be more circumspect in future, he
believed that Wharton was incapable of any act which could implicate
his friend, and might be justly feared. He did not hope that the Duke
could suppose that either now, or on the Danube, he had mistaken any
other person for him. He might have been persuaded to say the mistake
was probable; but Louis could not believe the possibility of his
having ever thought so. For, could any one make him think he had not
seen Wharton on the Danube; that he had not heard his voice calling on
him through the passages of the palace?
"Oh, no," cried he, "there is an identity which never can deceive the
heart! You know that it was Louis de Montemar you saw, that it was
Louis de Montemar who fled you! But a day will come, I trust, when
you may know all; or at least, when you shall see cause to grant to
me, that I could not do otherwise: and that one essential in true
friendship, is sometimes to confide, even against the evidence of our
own senses."
With that romantic faith, Louis had confided in the purity of Wharton's
attachment; and he believed that Wharton would not be less generous to
him. But Louis was enthusiastic, and judged men with that deference
to oral wisdom, which hangs on the precept of virtue, as if it were
virtue's self. He was yet practically ignorant, that a man's taste for
moral excellence might be as exquisite as that which modelled the life
of Addison; and his conduct be as foreign from his theory, as that
which debased the genius of Richard Savage. Hence, Louis formed his
opinion of his fellow-creatures, rather from the sentiments he heard
them utter, than from the actions he was told they performed. He could
not be mistaken in the one; misrepresentation, or misapprehension of
motives, might pervert the other; and thus he more often made a good
sentiment the commentary on a dubious action, than tried the principles
of the sentimentalist, by the rectitude of his conduct. Indeed, he
was not thus liberal, merely from never having supposed the absurdity
of men admiring a principle they are determined never to adopt; but
from an ingenuous pleader in his own breast, whose still small voice
continually whispered to him, "Why should I conceive the worst of
others, when my own conduct so often falls short of my best intentions!
nay, frequently turns so blindly aside, that I wonder to find myself in
the midst of errors, when I most intended to do the perfect right! But
the heart's weakness, the impatience of the will, the frowardness of
the temper! how can I feel these within me, and not judge with charity
of appearances in others?"
"And you, dear Wharton," cried he, "are now called on to judge me
charitably. To believe any thing of me, but that I could treat you
thus, from the dictates of my own will."
How Wharton did judge of the conduct of Louis de Montemar, after events
were to prove. Louis was right in believing him sure of his friend's
identity, both on the Danube and in the palace gallery. But in the
first instance, as he saw him no more, he supposed that some cause must
have hurried him from Vienna; and he did not think it worth while to
press the matter on those who denied it. But now, that he had not only
seen him again, but seen him fly his sight and his voice! Here indeed,
Wharton could hardly credit his senses. And he was still standing
in the porch, gazing after the various passing carriages, when the
companion he had broken from in his pursuit, rejoined him.
He enquired of the Duke, who the person could be, he was so eager to
overtake; and remarking on the oddity of so determined an avoidance,
exclaimed, "He must have been gone in an instant; for though I heard
your exclamation, I never saw to whom it was made."
"Then I have probably been racing after a ghost," replied Wharton,
stifling his chagrin under a gay laugh; "but if it have aught of
mother-earth about its airy sides, I will grapple with it yet."
His companion replied in the same strain, observing, that had it not
been for the over-topping figure of the Duke, he might have had a
glimpse of the nimble-footed apparition. But soon observing that the
curved brow of Wharton did not well agree with the merriment on his
lip, the gentleman looked more serious, and again asked the name of
the fugitive. Perceiving that his companion had not attended to the
words of his exclamation, whatever he had done to its sound, the Duke
carelessly answered, "It matters not; he is only a scape-goat, with
more sins on his foolish head than he thinks of!"
"But his flight vexes you?"
"Because he is so good as to bear away my sins on his pate, and I am
not in a humour to be tired of their company."
"He is your confessor then, and was flying from his duty?"
"You have it," returned the Duke, in a low whisper; "and for my
conscience's sake, without further comment, let us allow him to go to
the devil!" The gentleman shook his head incredulously; but added,
laughing, "I am too good a catholic to pry into mysteries, sacred or
profane." And Wharton, seeing he suspected some affair of gallantry,
with a glance to corroborate the idea, laughed also, and passed to
another subject.