Whether Duke Wharton disdained to mention again the name of the friend
who had unquestionably fled him, or how it happened that no notice
transpired of this second rencontre, Louis could not determine; but
as several days passed without receiving any intimation of it at the
palace, he hoped it was buried in the mind of the Duke; and that only
between themselves it would hereafter be mentioned.
The Sieur was still a prisoner in his cell. The more eager he became to
resume his diplomatic duties, the more his recovery was retarded. Twice
in the course of a fortnight, the anxiety of his mind had inflamed his
wounds to jeopardy. Louis said every thing that cheering anticipations
could devise, to assuage this impatience. But his own perseverance
in his double, nay treble duty, at the college, the palace, and the
chateau, did most to satisfy the Sieur, by proving that he had not
employed an inefficient agent.
Couriers arrived, and were dispatched, with propositions and
acquiescences, which every time brought the grand object nearer to a
close; and Louis's encreasing labours were rewarded every day by the
sunny smiles of the bewitching Otteline. The Empress seemed to have
forgotten what had passed between herself and the young secretary,
respecting her; and the favourite herself, as if unconscious of having
been referred to, continued to him those ineffable attentions of eye
and ear, which, without a word, are the most eloquent language of the
soul. He saw her beautiful, had witnessed her accomplished; from the
Empress he heard of her endearing virtues; and under such impressions
he hourly felt the influence of her magnetic looks, of the gently
struggling sighs which were breathed near him, as she bent at his side,
to perform any little task appointed by her smiling mistress.
He had conceived a high idea of the virtuous female character, from
his sweet cousins, the companions of his youth; and loving them with
a brother's pride, whenever the image of a more exclusive attachment
would obtrude itself upon his fancy, it always arrayed itself in a
form beauteous as theirs; and united all their endearing qualities in
the visionary claimant on his heart. But amongst the daughters of peer
or commoner, who added to the winter festivities of Morewick-hall, or
welcomed bright summer on the rocks of Lindisfarne, no such miracle
of a romantic brain ever presented itself. Many of them were fair,
amiable, and engaging; but all were inferior in some indispensible
grace, to the noble Cornelia or gentle Alice: and when those charming
sisters continued to rally him on his invulnerable heart, he would
plead guilty to the charge; declaring it was all divided between
fraternal love for them, and, he trusted, some future friendship with a
brother mind of his own sex.
The month he passed in the highlands of Scotland, made him believe
that he had found this treasure in the accomplished Wharton. The
Duke courted his confidence. And from one so full of every elevated
sentiment, of every enchanting gaiety, of every demonstration of
regard, could he withhold it? No; he loved him, as he was afterwards
too well inclined to adore the resistless Otteline, with all his
imagination, all the ardour of restrainless enthusiasm.
His _beau ideal_ of the female form was far surpassed by what he saw in
his first interview with the Countess Altheim; and the image of perfect
beauty being once impressed on his senses, it was easy to stamp belief
on every shew of its intellectual loveliness. At first, he regarded
her faultless lineaments, with little more than the same delighted
taste with which he used to gaze on the admirable forms from Italy,
which embellished the galleries of Bamborough. But when those eyes, so
beautiful in themselves, were turned on him with a glance that conveyed
her soul to his, then the ethereal fire seemed to have shot from heaven
on the fair statue, and he felt its electricity in every vein.
One morning, after the Empress had retired from the saloon, Louis
remained, by her orders, to make minutes of some particulars in
their discussion. The Countess Altheim sat near him, awaiting the
memorandum she was to convey to her mistress. He pursued his task with
a diligence, neither his employer, nor her favourite desired; but he
began to tremble on meeting the eyes which now so kindly beamed on
him; and, inexplicably, (as were the feelings with which he enjoyed
and dreaded their powerful appeals to his sensibility,) he shrunk with
alarm at the most distant whisper of his heart, that _now he loved_!
While he still sat, busily writing, with his eyes rivetted to the
paper; and the fair Otteline's on him, with a look that was almost
indignant at his perverse industry; the door opened, and a lady, in
deep mourning, and half fainting, was supported into the room by an
attendant of the same sex. The Countess was transfixed to her seat.
But at sight of a woman in such a state, Louis forgot at once the
_Imperial boudoir_ and his own secret visits there, and hastened to her
assistance. The Countess recovered her presence of mind in the same
instant, and approached the invalid; but she had glanced her eyes on
Louis as he drew near, and had already accepted the use of his arm.
Between him and the other lady she was conducted to a sofa. In a voice
of profound respect, but with evident vexation, the Countess enquired
how her Imperial Highness had been affected, and how those apartments
were so fortunate as to be honoured by her presence? The attendant lady
answered for her mistress, who still leaned her head on the shoulder of
Louis, that she was returning from a visit to the Arch-duchess Maria
Theresa, when becoming suddenly faint, she turned into the Altheim
gallery, in hopes of meeting the Countess, and obtaining some _eau de
Cologne_.
The anticipated restorative was immediately produced; and the Princess,
having taken some, soon after re-opened her eyes; and relinquished her
hold on her respectful supporter. Her lady-attendant and the Countess
vied with each other in felicitations on her recovery; and while the
latter was pressing the use of several pungent essences, Louis, who
hoped his assistance had passed unnoticed, was gliding out of the room:
but the still languid invalid caught a glimpse of his retreating
figure, and abruptly interrupting the Countess, requested her to call
her friend back, as she wished to thank him for his services.
Otteline obeyed; though he saw by her altered countenance, it was
with reluctance; however, he turned to the soft summons of her voice,
and approached the sofa with a modest bow. The Princess directed her
large dark eyes upon the figure and face of Louis; both of which
surprised her, as they were strange to the court, and yet possessed
_un air distingué_ too pre-eminent, she was sure, to belong to any man
attending there in a dependant quality.
"Sir," said she, "your politeness has been very useful to me; and I
desire to know to whom I am obliged."
He bowed, but it was in confusion.--He felt that his tongue would
blister, in uttering the first falsehood, he had even implied, in his
life. Supposing that this disordered silence arose from a flattering
awe of herself, Her Highness turned with a smile to the Countess, and
demanded of her, the name of her friend.
"The Chevalier de Phaffenberg," replied the favourite with a rising
colour.
"Phaffenberg!" repeated the Princess, "I thought that noble family was
extinct.--Of which of the brothers, Ernest or Rudolph, is he the son?"
Her eyes addressed the question to Louis; but his confusion encreased,
and he did not look up to meet them. He even made a step towards the
door; so incapable was he of supporting the representation of the
Countess, by any direct deception from his own lips. She did not
observe his changing complexion in vain; and bending to the illustrious
questioner, whispered something in her ear. Her Highness more than
smiled as she listened; she laughed, and nodded her head in sign that
she understood her; then turning to Louis, again addressed him.
"Chevalier, I will not detain you longer. Your politeness would
honour the best blood in Germany; and I shall be happy in having an
opportunity of proving that I think so. You know where to find me, and
may any day call upon my best power to do you service."
Grateful for being released from farther enquiries, Louis bowed again
respectfully to the Princess, but still in silence, and hastened from
the apartment.
On his return to the Sieur, he refrained from chafing his present
anxious state, by setting him on the rack to guess who this lady might
be, who had so unluckily surprised his secretary in the Empress's
_boudoir_; and whether the accident would be productive of vexation to
their proceedings, or die away, a mere indifferent circumstance. On
the illustrious invalid herself, Louis would not have cast a second
thought, after he had rendered the assistance due to her sex and her
indisposition: but his gratitude towards the prompt attention, or
rather intuitive knowledge of his feelings, evinced by the Countess,
kept the whole scene in his mind during the night; and filled him with
impatience for the morning, when he might, silently at least, intimate
to her some perception of the gratefulness which possessed him.
He went earlier than usual to the palace, on the succeeding day, both
to make his apology to the Empress for having left her memorandum
unfinished; and in hopes of having a few minutes, in which to imply
to the amiable favourite, the sentiment with which her goodness had
inspired him. But it could only be implied generally; to particularize
the obligation, would be to betray that he was other than the Chevalier
Phaffenberg: then why did he wish to find her alone? He had no
distinct apprehension, why this hope speeded him forward; only, he
certainly felt a warmth in his bosom, while meditating on the past
scene, more congenial to his nature, than all the raptures her various
graces had before awakened. The promptitude with which she gave his
supposed name, and the delicacy with which she had perceived his
repugnance to answer the Princess, and had screened him from further
interrogation; appeared to him a testimony of quick interest in his
feelings, a reading of his mind, a sympathy with its thoughts, that
demanded his utmost gratitude:--but it had obtained something more. He
sighed as he approached the palace, and said to himself, "Such kindness
speaks to me of home; of dear, distant Lindisfarne,
"Where heart met heart, reciprocally soft,
Each other's pillow, to repose divine!"
As he wished, he found. The lovely Otteline was alone, but in a mood
of unusual pensiveness.--She was leaning her head upon her arm, when
he entered; and there was a flush about her beautiful eyes, as if she
had been weeping. She started on seeing him, and rising hastily, as if
to disguise the chagrin which hung on her brow, said two or three gay
words of welcome.
The discordant expressions in her face did not escape the watchful eye
of growing passion. He ventured to utter a fear, that she was not well;
or that something had happened to disturb her tranquillity.
"Nothing," replied she.
He looked incredulous; and she added with a smile, and a sigh,
"Chevalier, if you would preserve your quiet, never enquire into the
caprices of a woman."
"Then it is the caprice of some woman, which now disturbs yours?"
exclaimed he, "Is it possible that the Empress can have given pain to
one she so entirely loves?" "Not the Empress," replied the Countess
eagerly, as if in haste to exonerate her benefactress; "she is all
graciousness. But the Electress of Bavaria! She you so unfortunately
assisted yesterday in this room; it is from her, that I have met with
insult."
"Insult!" re-echoed Louis, "Impossible to you!"
"I wish it were so," replied the Countess; "but many causes make me an
object of envy to that malicious Princess; and now she has triumphed."
"Again, I must say, impossible!" cried he, "for how can she, or any
woman, triumph over the Countess Altheim?--Your virtues----"
"They are my own," interrupted she, casting down her eyes; "but my
reputation is not; and yesterday put that into her power."
Some apprehension of what the Countess would not add, gleamed upon her
auditor. "How?--Why?" cried he.
She looked up in graceful disorder, and evidently assuming vivacity,
said with a sportive smile, "Chevalier, you are alarmed! But, indeed,
it is without reason.--Believe it, my caprice, if you like; and let us
dismiss the subject! It is doubling vexation to impart it."
This generous sentiment excited him the more to persevere in knowing
the cause of her ill-disguised distress; and with encreased earnestness
he conjured her, only to satisfy him on what she meant by saying, that
yesterday had put her reputation in the power of the Electress of
Bavaria?
With mingled seriousness and badinage, the Countess attempted to put
him from his question; but it was done in a way rather to stimulate,
than to allay his suspicion that he was concerned in her vexation; and
therefore, he thought himself bound in honour, as he was impelled by
his heart, to press an explanation.
"I was a weak creature," returned she, "to drop any thing of all this
folly to you; for, indeed, you will think it nonsense when you hear
it!--Only a woman's delicacy is so very sensitive."
"Try me," replied Louis, forcing an answering smile.
"Then be the consequence on your own obstinate head!" said she, with a
glance of tender archness; but immediately casting down her eyes, as if
she feared they had told too much; in the same gay tone she continued.
"On my mentioning to my Imperial mistress, the mal-a-propos
indisposition of the Electress of Bavaria, Her Majesty commanded me
to go the same night, and make the Electress a visit of enquiries. I
found Her Highness without trace of illness, in her customary violent
spirits, and eager to seize on any new subject for mirth. I had hardly
delivered my message, before she began to rally me on your account;
and asked so many questions respecting the object of your presence in
my apartments; and, indeed, about your family and views in life, that I
absolutely was lost in confusion."
The Countess paused for Louis's reply; but he was incapable of making
one; and only answered her kindled cheeks, with a crimson deeper than
her own. She had glanced on his countenance, and in softer accents
resumed.
"I might have extricated myself from the volatile Electress, had not my
embarrassment been instantly observed by that mischievous Duke Wharton;
who stood by laughing all the time, and prompting his only too well
inclined mistress."
A new apprehension shot into the mind of Louis; and instinctively
keeping his eyes directed to the floor, he said, with a half smile,
"and what did Duke Wharton prompt?"
Had he ventured one glance upward, he would have seen the eyes of
the Countess rivetted upon every feature of his face, with a steady
investigation of what they might betray; while the managed tones of her
voice spoke only the accents of half discovered tenderness; or, more
often, the apparent assumption of a gay contempt of the raillery she
described.
"He was alone with the Electress, when I was announced;" replied
she, "and that gave Her Highness a hint to begin my persecution, by
affecting to whisper him, that my intrusion would tell no tales, as she
had surprised me that very morning _tête a tête_ with----I will not
repeat the silly names of gallantry she called you; but they excited
the curiosity of the Duke: and then she described your person as
accurately as if she had been a sculptor. As her Highness proceeded in
her details, I thought Wharton had lost his wits; and when she summed
up her account, with naming you as the Chevalier de Phaffenberg, he
fell into a convulsion of laughter that amazed her as well as myself.
"Then began such cross questionings and remarks; such banter from the
Duke; such broad surmise from the Electress; that, as I would not
betray the secret of my Imperial mistress, by acknowledging your visits
are to her, (for visits, Duke Wharton has discovered them to be!) I was
obliged to assent to Her Highness's jeering insinuations in another
quarter.
"At first I combated her charge," added the Countess, perceiving
something in the countenance of Louis, that partook more of rising
displeasure, than of gratified emotion; "I attempted to speak of your
presence having been merely accidental; but Duke Wharton, with a sly
laugh exclaimed, _I am a star-gazer, Lady; and know that fate, not
chance, guides this son of Latona, by noon-tide, and the glimpse of the
moon, to a certain palace!--But what his errand is, I am too discreet
to whisper._"
Convinced that Wharton had, indeed, recognised him in the Electress's
description; and, indignant that the friend, from whom he expected
nothing but generosity, should thus play with a situation he must see
was meant to be concealed; Louis replied with resentful scorn. "But you
treated such light impertinence, with the disdain it merited?"
"I tried to do so," returned she, seeming to relapse into painful
seriousness; "but the raillery of the Duke, and the knowledge he shewed
of your movements, alarmed me for the secret of the Empress; and then
the cruel alternative! the Electress casting all those visits to my
account, with insinuations----I cannot speak them."
Her eye had caught the flashing light of her auditor's, and abruptly
stopping, she covered her face with her hands. He stood motionless
with indignation. At last forcing words from his quivering lip, he
exclaimed; "Madam, I conjure you, tell me how the Electress, how Duke
Wharton, could dare to couple your reputation and my presence with
slander! and at all hazards I will disprove it."
"Oh, no;" returned she, "you must not disprove, what duty to my
Imperial mistress would not allow me to deny."
Louis did not believe he had heard her distinctly,--he told her so. But
she repeated what she had said; assuring him, with encreased agitation,
that where she so entirely loved, as she did the Empress, her life was
the least sacrifice she would make to preserve her interests. He gazed
on her with doubtful admiration.
"But to be silent at an aspersion on your fair name! that, Madam,"
cried he, "can never be a duty in your sex. A man may redeem himself
from obloquy, a woman never can! and, if I am implicated in sullying
your honour, I repeat again, I will disprove the slander at the peril
of my life."
"That can only be done between man and man;" said the Countess, in a
collected voice; though inwardly alarmed for the consequence of a duel
between her lover and the Duke. "And here the provocation came from the
opposite sex. Duke Wharton merely amused himself with my confusion,
after the Electress had presumed to make her charge. But were it
otherwise, a violent assertion of my honour is beyond your power. Your
life, Chevalier," added she, raising her eyes to his face, "is your own
to give! but not the safety of the Sieur Ignatius; not the honour of
the Baron de Ripperda; not the future happiness, public and private, of
the Empress Elizabeth! These, and the other momentous interests you are
so well aware of, all depend upon keeping secret from the Electress
of Bavaria and her counsellors, the purport of your visits to these
apartments. You could be admitted but for one of two reasons: to me,
or to the Empress. And when hardly pressed by Her Highness last night;
to avoid the treason of betraying my mistress, I was obliged,----" she
turned away her blushing face as she added, "not merely, not to deny,
but to sanction the suspicion, which caused the tears in which you
surprised me."
Louis stood paralyzed at this last disclosure. But when he saw that
tears flowed afresh from her eyes, and streamed down her flushed
cheeks, as she moved from him to leave the room; he flew towards her,
and catching her by the gown, implored her, in an agitated voice, to
stop and hear him. She turned on him with a look of gentle reproach, of
dissolving tenderness, that bereft him at once of all consideration;
and what he said, what he avowed, he knew not, till he found her hand
clasped to his lips, and heard her say--"After this, I need not blush
to turn my eyes on the only way that can now redeem my name!" She spoke
with an enchanting smile, and added, "It will disprove the slanderous
part of our adversary's accusation, without betraying our cause; or
risking a life, perhaps too precious to me!"
Before he could reply, she heard the steps of Elizabeth in the
adjoining chamber; and sliding her hand from his impassioned grasp,
disappeared through the conservatory. He was in so much agitation when
the Empress entered, that she perceived it; and guessing the cause, did
not notice it; but, wishing her favourite full success in this her own
peculiar affair, she dismissed that of politics in a very few words;
and graciously received Louis's excuse for the unfinished minutes
of the day before. As he proceeded to the Chateau, where he was to
complete some transcripts before he returned to the College he tried
to think on what had passed, but all within him was in tumult. The
hours of his labour, and of his meditation, were the same; he could not
tranquillize the strange whirlwind of emotions which raged in his mind.
He recalled, again and again, before the tribunal of his judgment, the
particulars of the scene which had just passed; but they appeared in
such broken apparitions, that he could reduce nothing to certainty,
nothing on which he could lay his hand, and say, "It is so."
At one moment, indignation fired him against the part Duke Wharton had
taken in it; and, in the next, he arraigned the wayward fate, which had
compelled him to merit all the Duke's resentment, by his own apparently
insulting conduct in the palace gallery.--Then his imagination, all
in a blaze, ran over the celestial charms of the exquisite creature,
whose unreceding hand he had pressed to his lips--to his heart! He felt
her eye-beams still agitating its inmost recesses; but he did not feel
that heart quite consent to his often-repeated exclamation--"She loves
me--and I am happy!" He did not feel that instant union of spirits;
that ineffable communion of heart with heart, and soul with soul, which
he had ever believed the pledge of mutual love:--That mystery of the
soul, which, even in earth, asserts its immortal nature! The beautiful
Otteline was still a beautiful surface to him; an idol to be adored.
But he found not that sense of perfect sympathy, shooting from her dear
presence through all his being, which would make him cry aloud, "I love
her, and her alone!"
Dissatisfied with himself for this fastidiousness, when he ought to
have been all transport, he turned to the hour of meeting the Sieur,
with the feelings of a man in a dream, from which he was doubtful that
he would not be glad to awake.