"Louis de Montemar," cried he, "you have imprudence enough in your composition to ruin a state; and sufficient stubbornness of what you call Honour, to ensure your own destruction. If you do not mean to relax the one, you must learn to confirm your mind against the wild influence of the other. Act less from passion, and more from principle. Be wary of friend, as well as foe; and never speak from your heart, till your words have paused in your head, to take the judgment of your circumspection. Had you shewn this letter to one less interested in your welfare, than your father's friend, the suspicion its style would have awakened, might have wrought consequences ruinous to the Duke, and not much less full of evil to yourself. I shall now drop the subject for ever, because I see that you will not neglect its lesson."
With the gratitude of one escaped from a snare, into which he thought he had desperately, and therefore blameably rushed, Louis took the letter, which the Sieur presented to him. His ingenuous cheek flushed with displeasure at himself for having been beguiled, rather than at the subtle trier of his wariness; and respectfully, though silently, he bowed his head to his unanswerable monitor. Ignatius fell immediately into his usual abstracted mood, and soon after left the room.
CHAP. III.
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.