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.