The next day, being a religious feast of the Moors, it was midnight before the christian crew thought it safe to draw towards the shore. They then ran their bark into an obscure creek, about a league from the town of Tangier. A dull flame, which gleamed on the summit of the rock, as if feeding on its surface, was the mariner's guide through the intricate navigation. The cliffs were high and close; therefore all was black darkness, excepting where this phosphoric beacon opened its wandering fires.

A dead silence was maintained, during the working of the little ship into its place of refuge; and, not until its bulging sides grated against the point of landing, did Louis receive any intimation of their being near the place of disembarkation. Martini pressed his arm, and whispered—

"We must now go on shore; but continue silent, till we reach the Hambra."

Rodrigo and the Italian jumped from the head of the vessel, upon the land. Louis followed his conductor; leaving Lorenzo in the ship. For nearly an hour, the cautious tread of their footsteps was all that disturbed the profound stillness. They passed many low, flat-roofed dwellings, whose inhabitants were shut in from even the light of the stars, performing the last rites of their solemn feast. Such gloom was in memory of the shadows which enveloped their prophet in his flight from persecution; and to invade it by noise or intrusion, would have been deemed sacrilege; and the blood of the transgressor must have expiated his offence.

After their almost unbreathing passage along this populous road, they struck into an avenue of date trees, and stopped before a building of more spacious dimensions. Martini turned a key in a small arched door, and gently opening it, they all passed through a short paved arcade, into a court open to the sky, and dimly lighted under its pillared aisles at the sides, with four painted lamps. A fountain in the centre was discovered by the transient sparkling of its waters as they dashed into a marble bason below.

Here silence was broken; and Martini told Louis, that although his father was under that roof, he durst not introduce him immediately to his presence. In the Duke's present exasperated state of mind, such an abrupt entrance might destroy at once, every object of the interview; and therefore he conjured him, to wait until His Excellency were at least apprised of his arrival.

Louis had no resource but to remain where he was. He had too much dependance on the honesty and discretion of Martini, to doubt his prudence in this precaution. If the gloom around him were great, that in his mind was of a deeper shade. He was alone; for the smuggler had followed Martini. An hour elapsed in this irksome solitude. He listened for the sound of a voice, or an approaching step; but the silence continued unbroken. His suspense became intolerable; composure was no longer in his power to assume. He paced the mosaic floor, with every agitating conjecture; envying even the feelings of anticipated murder, with which he awaited the first mysterious interview in the lonely chateau of Phaffenberg. At last, the Italian and Rodrigo appeared at the extremity of the court. The smuggler turned away through a dark colonnade; and Martini advanced to Louis, who had darted towards him.

"Follow me, Signor; my Lord consents to see you."

It was a cold welcome; but Louis thought not of the words, since the permission was granted. He hastened through the arcades, to a large curtained door.—Martini drew it back, and Louis beheld the honoured object of his long and filial pilgrimage. The Duke was standing with his back to him, reading a scroll of paper. Nothing that was not purely the son, was then in his labouring heart; and he was advancing to throw himself at his father's feet, when Martini spoke:—

"My Lord! The Marquis de Montemar."

Ripperda turned his head.

"Let him wait my leisure," and, looking on the paper again, sternly resumed his reading.

Louis stood.—The face of deadly paleness, the eye's livid flash, and the deep, emaciated lines, furrowed with every trace of the burning volcano within, filled him with a dismay, even more terrible than the fierce estrangement this reception announced. But it was only for a moment that his astounded faculties were transfixed by the direful apprehension. He was his father still; his noble, injured, suffering father! and, rushing forward, he flung himself on his knees before him, and covered his face in his robe; for the hand he would have grasped was withheld.

Ripperda's breast was locked.—

"What is it you require of me?" said he, "The minion of two Queens must have some reason for bending thus low, to the man the one has dishonoured, and the other betrayed!"

Louis looked up in that implacable countenance: He attempted to speak, but no sound obeyed. He struggled for his father's hand, and wrung it to his heart. Ripperda stood cold and collected.

"What would you yet seek of me? I have no longer fame, nor riches, nor power to bestow. These were your idols! Deny it not! They were my own! I found their food ashes. But the draught that turned my blood to poison, was the desertion of my Son."

"Hear me, my father!" at last burst from the lips of de Montemar, as he clung around that august, but torpid frame. No warmth glowed there, but the gloomy flame of vengeance; no responsive throe whispered there, that sympathy and forgiveness were within. The very stillness with which he suffered, without returning or reproving this agonized embrace, smote his son the more severely to the soul. Yet he thought he saw more resentment, than the object of his lately conceived apprehension, in the stern calmness of his father; and hoping to prevail by reason, where reason yet reigned, in a less agitated voice, he repeated.

"Hear me, and then condemn me! or believe me, and acquit me, before the tribunal of Heaven and your own justice!"

Ripperda, with the same unmoved air, replied:

"Speak what you have to say; I will attend."

He pointed to a sofa, for Louis to sit. He obeyed; and his father sat opposite to him, folded in his mantle. His eyes were bent to the floor, except when he occasionally turned them in deep suspicion upon the earnest narrator. Not one oral remark escaped him, till the communication was brought to an end. He then looked up, and slowly pronounced:

"Tis well; and the tale is marvellously told: But I have no connection with its truth, or falsehood."

"Yes, my father!" returned Louis, "It contains your justification; the acquittal of your son; and the atonement of your repentant sovereigns!"

"My justification is here!" exclaimed the Duke, proudly striking his breast, and starting from his seat. "And for atonement! Heaven and Earth cannot atone for my injuries. Tell your Queen, that William de Ripperda was not born to quail to any man; nor, to hold his honours, by flattery to a woman. I served the country of my ancestors for its own sake; neither in homage to her, nor to the King. I devoted myself to the prosperity and peace of the world. But they rejected peace: And, they shall find a sword! All have spurned me! I am thrust out from Europe. And, when I have found a land of refuge, they would ensnare me to return! And, I will return! Return with desolation and death! For Christendom, ungrateful Christendom, has sinned beyond my wish to pardon."

"How am I to comprehend you, my father?"

"You cannot comprehend me. I would not be comprehended by a Spaniard! You were once my son. And, you have satisfied me, you meant to be loyal to me: But you cannot serve two masters."

"What master would oppose my serving my father? If you mean the King of Spain, your own inexpugnable honour would not raise an arm against him; and he will not, cannot, prevent me dedicating my life to you!"

"My honour, Louis! Christian Knights have honour! The King of Spain has honour; his ministers, and those of Austria have a thousand honours! But where were they all when my inexpugnable honour was calumniated and betrayed? Where, when the man they durst not bring to an open trial, was committed to the dungeons of the Inquisition, to be silently, and securely, murdered?"

Louis acknowledged the justice of his father's indignation against the ministry of Spain; yet enforced the Queen's persuasions for his return; and dwelt on the glorious result of the public trial she had absolutely promised him; and his own consequent satisfaction in pronouncing a general forgiveness on the misguided people, who were still the objects of his paternal love.

Ripperda walked the room during this discourse; and when it ended, gave no other reply to its arguments, than pronouncing a brief and solemn curse upon the whole land. Louis shuddered, as he gazed on the working brow of that still noble countenance; and with a self-control, that surprised even himself, commenced a new train of persuasions, to induce his father to resume his first intention of passing over to Gibraltar. He laid before him the advantages of seeking an asylum in England; where he might live with honour in the bosom of his family; and under the protection of a Government constituted to revere his virtues.

"But here," said he, "what can your free spirit expect in a land of slaves?"

Ripperda drew near him. That mouth, on which the graces once played, was distorted by a smile of such triumphant malice, that his son recoiled.

"In the name of God, my father! what is it you intend?"

"I will tell you Louis;" returned he, "when I hear you repeat your oath to adhere to your father against Earth and Heaven. Grapple with me, my son, in this overthrow of our oppressors; and the name of Ripperda shall redeem itself!"

The eyes of Ripperda shot terrific fires as he spoke; and Louis, direfully convinced of his fears, answered with assumed calmness:—

"All that the laws of Earth and Heaven, and my own devoted heart, dictate as duty to my father, I am ready to perform. To follow you whithersoever you go; to abide with you, even in this worse than wilderness, if it be your decisive will!"

Ripperda walked several times up and down the apartment. Several times he glanced suspiciously towards his son; and stopped opposite to him, as if he were going to speak; then turned away, and resumed his perturbed pace. A consuming impatience inflamed every feature; and, once or twice, he took out his watch, and looking at it, muttered to himself.—At last, abruptly drawing near his son, he snatched the cross of the Amaranth from his breast, and scornfully exclaimed.—

"If you would belong to me, forswear all of which this is the emblem."

Louis was dumb.—The Duke resumed with wild solemnity.

"One night in the Alcazar,—when my gaolers had left me no other light than my injuries,—I bethought me who raised those walls!—In the black darkness of my prison, I saw a host,—they who fell in the passes of Grenada! And from that hour, the soul of Aben Humeya passed into my breast. Yon is my ensign!" He pointed to a crescent, on a standard in a far corner of the room. Louis still gazed on him without speaking; but the apprehension in his mind was in his looks.

"Do not mistake me," rejoined the Duke, "my injuries have not made me mad; but they have driven me to a desperation that will prove you to the heart. Are you now willing to go, where I shall go; to lodge, where I shall lodge? Shall my God, be your God? And my enemies, your enemies? Or, am I cast out, like Ismael, to find my revenge on them who mock me—alone?"

Louis had now subdued the effect of his fears, and rallied himself to argue again with his father, as man with man. He could not penetrate the whole of the threats he had heard; yet his rapid arguments embraced every possible project of revenge. The Duke listened to him with stoical apathy. But when the energetic pleader dwelt on the heinousness of coalescing with the enemies of the Christian faith, in any scheme of vengeance against its professors, Ripperda interrupted him with a withering laugh.

"What, if I make their faith my own?"

"Impossible!" cried Louis, "you whose life has been a transcript of your faith; noble and true! It is not in you, my father, to desert a religion whose founder was perfectly holy, just, and merciful; to embrace the creed of an impostor! One whose life was polluted with every vice; and whose blasphemous doctrines sanctioned oppression, and privileged murder! Oh, my father, it is not in you to become the very thing that excites your vengeance."

As Louis continued a still more earnest appeal to his understanding and his conscience, Ripperda suddenly stopped before him.

"You may spare your arguments, De Montemar; I know all you would say; but it is my choice to be a Mussulman."

His son's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth; but he forced himself to say: "Your choice to abjure the religion you believe? To cast from you your God, and your redemption?"

"It is my choice to be revenged!" cried the Duke, gloomily striking his sword; "we will talk of redemption hereafter."

"Oh my father, it may then be too late!"

"My soul on the issue!" returned he, with a second horrible smile; "you are brave and daring, and will not shrink from the adventure. You will buckle your life to your father's in the desperate leap!"

He grasped his son's arm as he spoke, and looked in his face with a fierce resolution, which menaced some terrible judgement on the reply he seemed to anticipate. A low monotonous cadence of many voices, chanting a few dismal notes in regular rise and fall, broke the awful pause. Ripperda dropped the arm he held, and calmly said:

"They come! In another hour, I shall be sealed an enemy of Christendom."

Louis comprehended all that was intended.

"By the Saviour you outrage in the dreadful intent!" cried he, "I demand of you not to incur the deep perdition! By the honour and renown you so richly possess, I conjure you not to consign all at once to such universal infamy! By the memory of my mother, now in the heaven from which you would seal your everlasting banishment,—I implore you to remember that you are a Christian! That you are the Duke de Ripperda! That you are my father."

With the last words, Louis sunk on his knees, and forcibly added: "my life and your salvation hangs on this dreadful hour!"

All the passions of his nature were now in arms in the breast of Ripperda. The boiling flood rushed to his brain, and pressed upon the nerve that shook the seat of reason. He looked askance upon his son with a horrible expression in his eyes. It spoke of suspicion, of scorn, even of hate.

"De Montemar!" cried he "what would ye yet with one who reads you as you are? What dare you expect from a father, who sees the desertion you meditate? I will not be trifled with; for I cannot be deceived. Be with me or against me! a Mussulman, or an enemy! For in this hour I forswear all connection with the Christian world; all honour to the name of——."

But ere he could pronounce the fatal abjuration, an awful cry from his son arrested the concluding words. It was the cry of a pleading angel, at the bar of Eternal Judgment. With its piercing, beseeching appeal, he stretched forth his arms to Heaven, supplicating its mercy to defend his father from himself. At this juncture, the door opened, and Martini announced the arrival of the sacred deputation. The Duke snatched his hand from the grasp of his son; Louis seized his robe.

"Never will I leave you," cried he, "till you consent to quit these enemies of your honour and of your soul!"

"Release me, on the peril of your life!" returned his father, with a desperation equal to his own; but with a something added to it, that made Martini draw a few steps nearer to the defenceless Marquis.—Ripperda's fingers wandered over the hilt of a poniard that was in his girdle.—

"Could my blood expiate the offence of Spain, and not pollute my father's hand," cried Louis, "I would say, take the life you gave.—Oh, at any sacrifice, but that of soul and spirit, leave this accursed land!—If your freedom be pledged to these barbarians, give them my youth and vigour in exchange.—Let them drink my blood.—Let them, cover me with insults and oppression!—Only, do you fly;—fly, my father, and save me from veiling my eyes in the dreadful day of Judgement!"

Ripperda did not answer; for his possessed mind heard not what was said.—He continued gazing on his son, with a terrible fixture of eye, while he only appeared to listen; and in the moment the sounds ceased, he burst into a tremendous laugh; and attempted, by a force, almost preternatural to break from his clinging arms. But the filial heart was stronger than the madness of revenge. Louis grasped his knees, exclaiming, in the agony of his spirit— "Oh, God, be my advocate!"

At that moment a clenched hand fell on his forehead with the weight of death. Louis felt no more, for the blow was in his soul. His nerveless fingers relaxed their hold;—he fell prostrate;—and Ripperda rushed from the apartment.