"By your countenance, no ill news?" said Louis, though not unapprehensive that some mischievous consequence had transpired from his unfortunate surprisal by the Electress of Bavaria.
"Not that I know of," cried Martini; "but a little motion more than ordinary always makes me merry. I love stirring, gloriously! And my master and a booted-and-spurred have been at high words these two hours." With nothing so much in his mind, as some anticipated exposure from the malice of the Electress, Louis proceeded to the chamber with a more eager step than inclination. He found the Sieur on his couch, with the table before him spread with opened packets, and a person standing beside him in the dress of a courier. At some distance stood two other travellers. The courier was talking in Italian with great earnestness. Ignatius listened with his usual lofty attention: but when his vigilant eye caught the figure of Louis advancing from behind a dark curtain which divided the apartment, he put up his hand with an air of authority to the speaker, who instantly became silent.
"Louis," said the Sieur, addressing his pupil in German, "here is news from Madrid, to raise me from the tomb; had the poniards of my enemies been keen enough to have laid me there!—France, whose bonds were so ruinously dear to the heart of the King of Spain, has cut the cord herself; and, by a stroke of insult, for which even his partiality cannot find an excuse."
Louis's heart was lightened of the apprehensions with which he had entered; and, with glad congratulations, reflected the unusual animation which shone in the eyes of Ignatius. The Sieur then ordered the courier to retire with Martini, who would take care of him, until he could see him again. The other two travellers also obeyed the beckon of his hand; and in Spanish, he directed them likewise, to put themselves under the protection of the Italian valet.
The room being left to the statesman and his secretary, the Sieur, with a less reserved air, motioned Louis to approach him; and when they were seated, the former opened a circumstantial detail of what had occasioned this abrupt rupture between the courts of Versailles and Saint Ildefonso. During the late regency of the Duke of Orleans, a treaty of marriage had been entered into between the young King of France, Louis XV. and Philip's daughter the Infanta Maria-Anna, then a mere child. According to the custom of the times, she was sent to Paris, to receive an education befitting the future bride of a French Monarch; and, at a certain age she was to be solemnly affianced. On the death of the Duke of Orleans, and the promotion of the Duke of Bourbon to the functions of prime-minister, the cabinet of France seemed to change its measures with regard to Spain; at least encroachments were made, which aroused the suspicions of Philip's Queen; and she tried to awaken the jealousy of her husband against the new minister. Attached to the house from whence he sprung, and inclined to put the best construction on all its actions, it was no easy task to make the royal grandson of Louis the Fourteenth comprehend that the Duke of Bourbon never considered the interest of Spain in his policy. Some transactions, more than dubious in their principle and tendency, at last made King Philip allow a possibility that he might confide too implicitly in his French relations; and, after much argument from the Baron Ripperda, and more entreaty from his Queen, he was at length persuaded to counterpoise the self-aggrandising spirit they had detected, by commencing a secret negociation with Austria. Still, however, habitual partiality to his native country hung about the heart of Philip, and caused great uneasiness in the minds of the Queen and the Baron, under whose auspices the mysterious embassy set forth. As the negociation rapidly proceeded, the King often dropped hints on the consequences of precipitancy; and frequently filled them with alarm, lest he should at last refuse his royal sanction to the completion of their labours, and so involve themselves and their cause in utter infamy.
The Duke of Bourbon was indeed actuated by different principles, both political and personal, from those which had impelled the Duke of Orleans to propose new bonds of alliance between the royal families of France and Spain. He disliked the Spanish marriage altogether; and, besides so many years must elapse before the Infanta could be of age for the espousals; and the health of the anticipated bridegroom was so precarious, it seemed no improbability that his death, in the mean-while, might transfer the royal succession to the house of Orleans. This was an aggrandisement of that ambitious family, which, the no less ambitious Duke of Bourbon could not contemplate with patience; and at this juncture Duke Wharton appeared at his elbow, as if conjured there on purpose to set the two great heads of the House of Bourbon at lasting enmity. He suspected that something clandestine was going on between the courts of Spain and Austria; and he left Vienna for Paris, a few days after his rencontre with Louis de Montemar on the Danube. He revealed to the Duke of Bourbon all that he had discovered; and urged him to save his branch of the royal stock, from being over-topped by that of Orleans or of Spain; by immediately adopting an entire new policy from that of his predecessor. As a first movement, he proposed a marriage for the young King with some Princess of maturer years than the Spanish Infanta. Bourbon readily embraced this suggestion, which had been some time floating in his own mind. And, on the two Dukes consulting who this Princess should be, (each having his own particular reasons), their choice fell on Maria, the daughter of Stanislaus Letzinsky, the ex-king of Poland. Wharton undertook to prepare the mind of His Majesty to accept the alternative; and in the interview, he found that the docile Louis was easily prevailed on to exchange a bride still in the school-room, for a blooming young woman, full of accomplishments and graces.
The views of Wharton in this man uvre, were still directed to his favourite project of reinstating the Stuarts. At present, France, and Spain, and Austria, were all equally estranged from their cause. By creating a rupture between the two former powers, he divided their interests; implicated their allies; and necessarily threw France again into the scale of the Stuart and Bavarian claims. Philip had declared himself openly for George of Brunswick; and was on the point of signing the pragmatic sanction; this Wharton knew: and by mixing the adversaries of the latter scheme of succession, with the political rivals of England, he returned to Vienna with a promised accession to his party, that made him omnipotent in the Bavarian councils.
To prevent any opposition to the proposed alliance, from the remonstrances of Spain, as soon as the Duke of Wharton had left Paris, (which he did with the negligent air of a mere visitor to the widowed Queen at St. Germain's;) the Duke of Bourbon pursued the advantage that nobleman had gained for him, and persuaded the King to send the Infanta back to Madrid without any previous notice to her royal parents. She was accompanied by a lady of honour, and an ecclesiastic of high dignity, to be her protectors on the way; and to deliver a suitable apology on the urgency of the case, to the King and Queen of Spain. When the abbot and his young charge were so unexpectedly announced to the presence of the royal pair, the good priest was too much agitated, to fulfil his instructions with the diplomatic dignity he was enjoined. He fell at once on his knees, and declared his errand in confusion and anguish of spirit. The astonishment and grief of Philip shewed itself in silence and tears; but the mortification of his Queen burst into rage and invective. When the abbot offered the letters of explanation, she dashed them out of his hand; and tearing the picture of Louis the Fifteenth from her bracelet, trampled it under her feet. All now was uproar. The French ambassador, and every French consul were ordered to depart the Spanish territories without delay; and when Philip did find words to express his sense of the injury he had received from the hand he most trusted, he declared he never would be reconciled to France, till the Duke of Bourbon should repair to Madrid and ask his pardon on his knees. "Hah!" cried the Queen, "It shall not be long, before that French cyclops finds the arrows of more than one King in his eye!" And, to make good her threat, she immediately dispatched a trusty messenger to Ignatius; giving him full powers to relinquish all the contested points which had retarded the negociation; and at any sacrifice to conclude a marriage between her son Don Carlos, and the Arch-duchess Maria-Theresa, the presumptive heiress to the Imperial Crown. Some other instructions, dear to the policy of Ripperda, were added; which, if brought to bear, would give the preponderance of power, still more to Spain and Austria; and place the French, where she had dashed the portrait of their Monarch, at her feet.
Louis de Montemar passed several hours in close conference with the Sieur Ignatius on these events; on the circumstances which led to them, (though the share Wharton had in the leading movement was not then known;) on the consequent instructions from the Spanish sovereigns; and in settling how much of the whole, Louis was to declare to the Empress and her minister, in making the commanded concessions, so as to appear rather to give than to concede.
"You must manage the preliminaries to-night with Sinzendorf," said the Sieur, "But to-morrow, whether it be to return on my litter or in my hearse, I will see the Empress myself.—When the triumphal arch is ready," added he, with one of those smiles, which visited his dark countenance like the shooting of a star; "the wounded hero is unworthy its honours, that will not venture his life to pass through!"