Though Ripperda had made it a point with the Empress, that there should be no public intimation given of the proposed marriage of her favourite with his son, until the Queen's consent should arrive; it is probable Her Majesty might have sent it abroad by a private whisper, had she not seen the prudence of not stimulating the ill offices of the Princess de Waradin, and others, by any hint that the heir they courted for their daughters was promised to their proudest enemy.

When Elizabeth appeared to grant this silence as a favour, she insisted that it should not deter Louis from making his daily visits at the Altheim apartments; it was a respect due to the amiable forbearance of his future bride; and it should always be in the presence of one of her confidential ladies, who was also a friend of the Countess.

Louis had now abandoned himself to his fate. But he had hardly given full sway to compulsive duty, and to the pleasing credulity that was re-awakened by compassion, before a thousand circumstances arose, to bid all his former repugnance return. The veil of imagination had been too forcibly rent from his eyes, ever to pass again between him and the object of his past idolatry. Unblinded by its delusions, every succeeding day shewed him clearer views of a character she vainly sought to disguise in assumed sentiment and delicacy. He perceived that her defects were not merely those of a perverting education, but of a radically warped mind. She had no spontaneous taste for moral greatness. Grandeur was her object; but it was that of station, of splendour, of dictating power. But still she loved him! loved him with a devotion, a fondness, a bewitching fascination, that, at times, made him almost forget she was not the perfection that might have been the mistress of his soul. The beautiful deception never lasted many minutes; and his heart sighed for its partner, with a sterile consciousness that spoke of desolation, and dreariness, and solitude, through the whole of his after-life.

In moments like these, how often has a frequent quotation of his Pastor-Uncle occurred to him! "He that does a base thing in zeal for his friend, burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together. Such proof of love is conspiracy, not friendship!"

In the midst of this banishment of his hopes, from ever knowing the sweets of domestic comfort again, he received large packets from the dear home, where his best instructor presided, and where perfect happiness dwelt with humility and innocence. The counsel of the venerable man strengthened him in every disinterested rule of life; but the letters of his aunt, and his cousins, made his yearning heart overflow with rebellious regrets. The spirit of virtue and of tenderness breathed through every eloquent line that dropped from the pen of Cornelia.

"Ah, sister of my soul!" cried he, "I could fly with thee into the bosom of paradise! Here is all celestial purity, all divine aspirations! and I wished to wander from such a heaven! I longed to busy myself in the ambitious turmoil of the world! I am in that world; and, what is my achievement? I find myself chained to the foot of a woman, my noble Cornelia would despise! I dare not confess to those who love and honour me, so degrading a disappointment of their hopes."

He turned to the gentle accents of his sweet Alice, breathed in a letter which had been wet with her grateful tears. Don Ferdinand had complied with her petition. He had written to her mother, and avowed his love for her daughter. But throwing himself upon her pity, he implored her not to betray him to his father; and to assure her that he meant nothing disobedient to him, nothing clandestine to her in the demand, he released Alice from every vow, only reserving one claim on her compassion; to be allowed, at some future day, to throw himself at her feet; should the issue of certain circumstances, which still gave him the privilege to hope, hereafter induce his father to consent to his happiness.

Alice added that her mother had written to Don Ferdinand, that she pardoned what had passed, in consideration of the amplitude of the restitution; that she should preserve his blameable conduct from his father's eye, since it was repented of, and relinquished; but, that he must not suppose she yielded any encouragement to the continuance of his attachment for her daughter, as she desired, that here all correspondence must cease.

"But," added Alice, "I know he will be true to what he has written; and I know I shall always love him dearer, for having taken that dreadful load from my heart. I am therefore quite sure I shall be content to await his father's consent, should it not come these many years. If you knew how happy I am now, since I can lift up my eyes in my dear mother's presence, and no longer feel ashamed at being pressed to the affectionate bosom of my blameless sister; you would be ready to pour as many tears of joy over the welcome of the little strayed lamb, as your kind heart shed floods of sorrow that melancholy night, when you found her so sadly wandered from her fold! Oh, my Louis, shall my gratitude to you ever find words to express it?"

Mrs. Coningsby's letter was not less energetic in thanks to her nephew for the judicious advice he had given to her almost infant Alice; and for the activity of his exertions, to bring it to effect.

Louis smiled with glistening eyes, over these letters; for he was yet to learn the science of forgetting his own privations, in the fullness of others. The comparison now only aggravated the pangs in his breast; and rising from meditations that subdued, agitated, and maddened him, he rushed into crowds for that dissipation of thought he vainly sought in the exercises of study, or the fulfilment of his official duties.

Count Koninseg had lately introduced him to a house, in which he moved about at perfect ease, and met with every gratification to put his usual indifference to gay society, to the test. It was the abode of the Count d'Ettrees, a French adventurer of rank, whose wife and sister formed an attraction of wit and beauty, that rivalled every other assembly in Vienna. Under their magic auspices, every amusement was presented that capricious fancy could desire or devise; and all lavished with a splendor of luxury, and an elegance of taste, which must soon have been exhausted, had not the fountain as it flowed returned by another channel to its native bed. Count d'Ettrees drew a revenue from that spirit for play, which his display of means excited in his guests.

Louis could never be induced to touch a card, or the dice-box, despising them both as sordid and senseless in principle; but found ample entertainment in the conversations of, indeed, an epitomised world. In these assemblies he saw persons from all countries and of all parties; but they were the chosen of all. For, to make the attraction the greater, so select was the Count in the rank and pretensions of those whom he admitted, it was deemed the highest proof of consequence, and of being un bel esprit, to be seen in this privileged circle. The Countess Claudine and her sister-in-law, Angelique d'Ettrees. were ostensibly women of character, and really women of talent. But, while all around shewed a gorgeous pageant of amusement, wit, and genius; ruin lurked in the rooms, dedicated to play; infidelity and pride animated the philosophic colonade; poetry and Voltaire, Rousseau and bewildering sentiment, discoursed alike with talents, or with beauty; and vice sapped the unwary footstep where-ever it trod.

At present, Louis was too self-absorbed by the struggles within him, to look deep into what was passing around him. It was sufficient for him that the varying intellectual enjoyments of the place, wrested him from his thoughts; and he gave himself up to all their power with a desperate avidity. He found his mind roused and exercised, by discussions with men of genius; he was delighted with the brilliant wit of the women, and the graceful frankness of their manners; and, perhaps, he was unconsciously propitiated by the indirect flattery which was offered to himself, by the Countess and her sister, and which, being paid to his talents alone, he received without suspicion.

One evening, while he was thus engaged, he observed de Patinos and Duke Wharton enter together. It was the first time he had seen the Duke in the hotel d'Ettrees. The Spaniard descried Louis at the same instant, as he sat between the Countess and her sister Angelique. De Patinos drew his arm almost immediately from Wharton, and approached the group; but when near, he stopped, and turned away, casting a furious look at Ma'amselle d'Ettrees. She soon left her seat, and Louis afterwards saw her and the Spaniard in close conversation, while they, at times, turned round and glanced at him, as if he were the object of their discourse. De Patinos seemed very sullen, and Angelique very earnest. Soon after they parted, with a sarcastic laugh from the Spaniard, and Ma'amselle mingled with the crowd.

Without any known cause of offence, a tacit acknowledgement of mutual dislike was shewn by Louis and de Patinos. For some time, their civilities had been merely confined to a cold bow at meeting in the Palais d'Espagne; when they met elsewhere, they passed as strangers. Baptista Orendayn was de Patinos's shadow in all things. But the conciliating manners of Louis, and (when he could emerge from his bosom regrets) his brilliant powers of amusement, had won the other Spaniards to court his society, and regard him with more confidence. This desertion from his party, incensed de Patinos the more; and a lurid fire burnt in his angry eye, whenever it encountered his admired rival.

As Louis left the side of the animated Countess d'Ettrees, and was passing away through the rooms, in a crowd of attendants rather than of company, his shoulder pressed against that of Wharton. They turned their heads, and their eyes met. Louis snatched his friend's hand, and in the grasp, the embrace of his heart was felt. Wharton's luminous smile played on his lip, as he whispered.

"Something better than the garden of the Hourii! Socrates, or Alcibiades de Montemar?"

Louis did not answer, for at that moment he met the glance of Orendayn, who was just entering. He bowed with obsequious lowliness, both to him and the Duke, and passed on. Wharton and Louis had withdrawn their hands at the same instant they caught his eye; and the Duke turned into the circle. They were conscious however, to having been observed, but whether with a malicious or an indifferent observation, Louis did not pause to think on. Indeed, persons of all parties conversed so indiscriminately in this Elysian society, where nothing seemed considered but the free enjoyment of all which was delightful in the human mind, that he saw nothing to apprehend in the simple circumstance of having been known to speak to Duke Wharton in so privileged a scene; and for any inferences, which the busy ignorance or ill nature of Orendayn might chuse to draw, it could be a matter of no consequence, as most of the Spanish grandees in Ripperda's suite conversed openly with Wharton; and Orendayn, though a nobleman, was known to be a character of contemptible craft and falsehood.

Thus, Louis continued to throw away the time that was once so precious to him. But it was no longer the friend, with which he joyed to "take sweet counsel," and lay open a bosom that knew no guests but hope and exultation. It was become a heavy monitor of remembrance, to remind him in solitary hours, of the blank his youthful infatuation and hard destiny had made of his present and future days. His official duties done, his home saw him no more, till their recurrence recalled his steps, or the hour of rest demanded him to his pillow.

An hour, each morning, was passed in the Altheim apartments, where the Empress often met him with unvarying graciousness; and Otteline received him with as stationary smiles. But the vesture of art cannot elude the penetration of every day. In spite of her vigilance, he became master of her secret; and, no longer deceived into self-complacency, by the idea that she loved him, he saw himself consigned to be the prey of frigid, unfeeling, circumventing ambition. From her, he rushed to Princess de Waradin's, to his military associates, the Hotel d' Ettrees; or into any vortex that would hurry him from himself, and present him with other meditations than Otteline and his misery.

The Empress and Ripperda were now sailing forward on the unruffled sea of success. He had brought her to yield him such implicit confidence, that she exerted her own influence with the Emperor, to hasten the investiture of Don Carlos in the Duchies of Parma and Placentia. Charles promised that the official documents should immediately be finished; and the ceremony be performed with the earliest dispatch. He put into the Duke's hand, his final renunciation, for himself and his posterity, of all claims on the succession of Spain; and he gave him written bonds for the payment, at certain seasons, of a large debt of many millions, owed by the Empire to the Spanish monarchy. He also signed several new articles to the secret treaty; one of which was, to relinquish the Netherlands to Don Carlos, as a dowry with his intended bride.

About this time Cardinal de Giovenozzo arrived from Rome, on a special mission from the Pope; and with the usual caution of the reigning Pontiff, all parties were to be conciliated to the measures he proposed. To this end, his first proceeding was to collect round his table the foreign Ambassadors, and the leading men of the different factions at Vienna.

At one of these entertainments, it chanced that the Duke de Ripperda and the Duke of Wharton were placed at the same table. If there were any man in the world whom Ripperda absolutely hated, it was this rival of his politics; and he hated him, because he was the only man, who had ever effectively crossed them. But while he cherished this hatred, he would not own to himself that it was mixed with any fear of the talents he affected to despise. He, therefore, took no notice of the Duke at table, but by a stiff bow; and he would not, even have granted that, had it not been at the board of the representative of the Father of Christendom, where such mutual recognition of universal brotherhood in the Catholic church, was a regular ceremonial.

During dinner, some observations were made by Wharton, respecting the balance of power in Italy, which extracted two or three angry flashes from the eye of Ripperda; but he disdained to appear to attend to any thing advanced by him, and continued, with an air of indifference, drinking wine with the British Ambassador, and conversing with the Cardinal at whose right hand he sat. The animated Wharton proceeded in his remarks, at the end of the table he occupied; and in a strain of argument and eloquence that gradually attracted every ear, until even Giovenozzo himself bowed without reply, to some passing observation of Ripperda, and bent forward to catch what Wharton was asserting relative to the Pontiff's rights, in the transfer of principalities in Italy.

This temporary triumph of the English Duke, over the imposing presence of Ripperda, stung him to the quick; and, for a moment he laid open the wound, by the impatient scorn with which he glanced on the resistless speaker. The Portuguese minister, who sat next him, remarked on the powerful consequences of the last argument of Wharton. Ripperda contemptuously replied.—

"Wind is sometimes mistaken for thunder."

Wharton caught the words, and with a gay but pointed laugh, looked towards the top of the table.

"Jove wields both in his rod; and the lighter the stroke, the quicker the smart."

"When the bolt is launched against presumption," retorted Ripperda, "it harrows up the dirt that blinds the multitude."

Wharton smiled. "I have no ambition to be the glorious malefactor!"

And bowing to the Duke, the reference could not be mistaken. Some of the company did not repress the answering smile that flickered on every lip. It was too much for the incensed pride of Ripperda, and starting from his chair he turned indignantly to the Cardinal.

"When Your Eminence understands the distinction between the accredited representative of the King of Spain, and the lurking emissary of a dethroned, and medicant Sovereign; then the Ambassador of His Catholic Majesty may appear where he is not to be insulted."

Every person had risen from their seats in consternation; and Giovenozzo, not the least alarmed of the party, seized the Duke's arm, and began a confused apology for the attention he had paid to Wharton; and even attempted an excuse for the English Duke.

"I beg Your Eminence, not to trouble yourself with my apology," cried the unruffled Wharton;—"I meant all I said. And, I am obliged to the candour of the Spanish Ambassador, for so publickly declaring the distinction that is indeed between us! He is the representative of a King in the plenitude of power; at the head of the fountain of riches and honours; and the stream flows bounteously! I am the lurking emissary of a dethroned and mendicant monarch: but it has not yet been my good fortune to play the successful Gaberlunzie in the courts of rival sovereigns, or to beg alms for my Prince, at the gate of the Duke de Ripperda!"

Ripperda, turned on him with an eye of flame. His soul was on fire; and, at that moment insensible to every thing but the expression of his burning hatred, he sternly exclaimed:

"Were not Duke Wharton as impotent as he is vain, I might stoop to chastise what offends me: but I pardon, what I pity."

"And I," replied the Duke, "am proud to imitate so great an example!"

Ripperda, almost beside himself with wrath, struck the hilt of his sword fiercely with his hand. Wharton turned gaily on his heel, and asked some indifferent question of the Duke de Richelieu.

The Cardinal followed Ripperda out of the apartment. Alarmed at the consequence of suffering him, who seemed to hold the balance of Christendom in his hands, to quit his roof unappeased, he drew the enraged Duke into another room, and vainly tried to assuage his fury. Ripperda's pride was in arms, at being so insolently braved before all the nations of Europe, in the persons of their Ambassadors. He was angry with himself, at having shewn himself susceptible of insult from the man, it was his policy to teach others to despise; and in a disorder of mind he had never known before, he poured on the Cardinal all his resentments against the Duke and himself. He saw that nothing could redeem him to the vantage ground he had so intemperately abandoned, but an ample and formal apology from Wharton; and, he told Giovenozzo, he must force the English Duke to make that restitution; else he should act from a conviction that they had been invited together, to insult the politics of Spain in the person of its minister.

The Cardinal feared Ripperda; and flattered himself, that he might work upon the zeal and good-nature of Wharton, to serve the interest of His Holiness by this concession. When Ripperda arose to withdraw, on being informed that his carriage was ready, Giovenozzo attended him to the foot of the stairs, and absolutely promised to bring him the demanded apology next day.

But unfortunately, the company in the dining-room, supposing that Ripperda had been sometime gone, moved to depart also. In the hall, Wharton again met his proud antagonist; and, in the instant when most unhappily the spirit of discord seemed to have extended itself to their respective domestics. Wharton's carriage and that of Ripperda had drawn up at the same moment; and their coachmen were disputing the right to maintain the door. From words, they had recourse to whips.

"A comfortable way of settling a controversy!" exclaimed Wharton, who stepped forward, to order his servant to draw off; but Ripperda, who felt the late scene festering in his heart, and supposing a different intention, and a new affront in the Duke's prompt advance; cried aloud, with an air of derision:—"Less haste, my Lord! or the whip of my coachman, may chance to brush Your Grace's skirts!"

"If it did," replied Wharton, with a glance that told he understood the remark; "I should know where to repay the impertinence."

Ripperda was again in a blaze.

"Insolent!" cried he.

Wharton, who had checked his advancing step, on the first word from his antagonist, now leaned towards him; and whispered:

"The lion may be chafed beyond its bearing! It is possible for the father of Louis de Montemar to go too far with the Duke of Wharton!"

This assumption of forbearance to him, Ripperda felt as the climax of insult; and starting back, with all the pride and resentments of his nature rushing through his veins, he touched the hilt of his sword with a significant glance, and in a subdued voice, replied:

"If you do not shroud cowardice under the name of my son, you will follow me!"

This had cleft the threatened cord; and, in one moment the two Dukes had vanished through the colonades of the hall, into an interior and lonely court of the building.

In the same instant they found themselves alone, the drawn sword of Ripperda was in his hand, and he called on Wharton to defend himself. There was no time for further forbearance or parley. Wharton had hardly warded off the first thrust of his determined antagonist, before a second and a third were repeated with the quickness of lightning. The glimmer of the lamps, which lit this little solitary quadrangle, marked each movement of the weapon with a gleam on its polished steel; and Wharton continued rather to defend than attack. But a noise of approaching steps, withdrawing his attention for a moment from his guard, a desperate lunge from the infuriate arm of his adversary, ran him through the breast, and he fell. The blood sprang over his hand, as he laid it on the wound.—His proud destroyer stood confounded at the sight.

"I forgive you my death!" cried Wharton, "but I guess your son will not. Rash Duke, to you he dies in me!" The tongue of Ripperda clove to the roof of his mouth; and in the next instant the Cardinal and the French Ambassador appeared at his side. As the bloody scene presented itself, Giovenozzo shut the door, and bolted it behind him, to prevent further entrance. Richelieu hurried to the prostrate Duke, and spoke to him. Wharton looked up, and in hardly articulate accents, said, "bear witness, Richelieu, that I acquit the Duke de Ripperda. He was in wrath, and I provoked him. Let not his high character be dishonoured by my death."

This was the first time that Ripperda's lofty consciousness of consistent greatness had ever shrunk before the eye of man; he could not brook the strange humiliation, and with asperity he haughtily exclaimed; "my honour does not require protection. I know that I have been intemperate and rash. But let the world know it as it is: I have done nothing that I am not prepared to defend." Wharton raised himself on his arm to reply; but in the exertion he fainted and fell.

The Cardinal, (in consternation at the report he must give to the Pope of such an affray under his holy roof,) implored his implacable guest to pass into the oratory, which was on the opposite side of the court, and await him there, till the French Ambassador and he had borne the insensible Wharton to a place where his state might be examined.

Ripperda complied in silence; and Giovenozzo, wrapping his scarlet scarf around the bleeding body of Wharton, between him and Richelieu, bore him round the back of the oratory, into one of the penitential cells. His Eminence having been a brother of the Order of Mercy, understood surgery; and staunching the Duke's wound, so as to leave him for a short time in safety, though still insensible; he came forth with Richelieu. The French Duke gave him his word of honour, that if Ripperda could be induced to keep silence on this terrible affair, whether Wharton lived or died, the secret should never escape from him.

Richelieu had his own views in this secrecy; and took his part, in returning to the hall to quench suspicion there. Those who had lingered to know the issue, with what degree of credence suited them, listened to his hasty account, that he and the Cardinal had just arrived in time to laugh at their zeal; for Wharton had given a merry explanation of his ill-timed raillery to the Duke; laying it to the account of the Cardinal's bright Falernian; and Ripperda, with the dignity of a great mind, having accepted the apology; no more was said about it.

All appeared to believe this statement, for there was no disputing the word of honour of an ambassador!—But there were a few drops of blood on the point ruffles and bosom of Richelieu; which, being observed by Count Routemberg alone, told him a different story; and he remained a few minutes behind the rest. When the hall was cleared of all but himself and the French minister, he did not speak, but pointed significantly to the testimonies on the ruffles and frill. Richelieu was hurrying out some excuse, invented on the moment; but Routemberg, (who was president of the Emperor's council,) whispered something in the embassador's ear. They both smiled, shook hands, and parted.

When Ripperda returned to his palace, he entered the room where his son was completing some especial communications to Spain. Louis put them into the hand of his father. As he did so, he beheld that form and face which, a few hours before, had left him gallantly habited, and bright in lofty complacency; now discomposed, pale and haggard. He gazed on the alteration with surprise, while Ripperda seemed to read the dispatch with a moveless eye. "It will do," said he, laying it on the table. He mechanically took up one of the candles, and was turning away to his own chamber. Louis could keep silence no longer.

"You are ill, my Lord!" cried he, "or something terrible has happened!"

"What is there terrible to have happened?" returned Ripperda, pausing as he approached the door, and looking on his son.

"Nothing, that I can guess," replied Louis, "but your looks, my father, are not as when you left me!"

"How often have I told you, de Montemar," returned the Duke, "never to guess at a stateman's looks! I have come from a party of many vizards, and you must not be surprised that mine has changed in the contact. I am well; let that satisfy you."

With these words the Duke withdrew.