The sun rose, and the sun set; the weather, foul or fair; gloomy in storm, or gay with the scintillation of exhilarating frost, all found Louis de Montemar close at his desk. The iron-bound windows had never opened to the air; and the charcoal fumes which warmed the apartment, having no egress, hung in narcotic vapours on the vaulted roof. A heavy languor fell on its lonely inhabitant, and grew on him from day to day, till it left him hardly any other consciousness of being, than the faculty of moving, his now habituated hand, perpetually over the infinite reams of paper which lay before him.
On the night of the 1st of February, according to his promise, Ignatius entered the prison-room of his unrelaxing secretary. The piles which were completed, at last extorted from his unbending loftiness, an exclamation of admiration at such faultless execution and indefatigable perseverance. Louis's face no longer lighted up, as it was wont, at the voice of praise; but he bowed, though in silence. Had Ignatius spared a glance from the laborious heap to its unrepining artificer, that face would have told the tale his tongue had not uttered. The bloomy crimson of his cheek had perished under the withering breath of stoved confinement; and his eyes, before so luminous in health, so bright in youthful enjoyment, were sunk in languor under his darkening brows. So thoroughly was the Sieur absorbed in the business of his visit, he might not have observed these changes, had he not accidentally come in contact with the hand of his pupil in taking one of the packets. He started, as the touch seemed to scorch him.
"How is this?" cried he, eyeing Louis from head to foot, "you are ill."
"Perhaps the confinement, Sir," returned he, "may discompose me a little. But custom will enure me to it, and meanwhile it is of no consequence."
"No," said Ignatius, "your diligence has been too severe; you must have air and exercise. To-morrow you shall try their efficacy. I will send a respectable servant of my own, to attend you over the city."
Louis thankfully embraced the proposal.
The morrow's sun rose brilliant, as on the first morning he had hailed its beams from his chamber at Vienna. Louis dismissed a breakfast, for which he had no appetite; and with a spring of joy, he could not have conceived it possible to have experienced by merely stepping forth into the open air, he followed Martini, (the promised attendant from the Sieur,) out of the great gates of the Chateau.
The man was an Italian, and possessed none of the taciturnity of his mysterious master. With the respect due to a superior, but the garrulous gaiety of his country, he freely remarked to his companion on every object of sight, as he conducted him along the hoar-frosted avenue to the extensive glacis before the fortified walls of Vienna. Martini led the way through the Leopoldstadt-gate. Louis followed, but paid no attention to street nor square, palace nor cathedral; he was all occupied by the reviving aspirations he drew at every breath from an atmosphere whose ethereal quality seemed to penetrate every pore, and by an enchanting inebriation to restore him at once to his wonted elasticity of spirits.
Martini conducted him through the finest squares of the city, and along the most magnificent part of the suburbs towards the frozen Danube. It was now the hour of high gala. The noise and bustle of a countless multitude, passing and re-passing in a thousand different directions, soon summoned the concentrated senses of Louis to regard outward objects. The beams of the sun played over the landscape; hues of light blue, intermingled with bloomy purple deepening into shade, checquered the hills on the horizon. A waving line of shining snow marked the heights of Calemberg, and a sky of the purest azure canopied the scene. At the distance of his windows from the river, he could only view a various and interminable mass of human beings moving on its surface; but now he could distinguish the peculiar dress and aspect of each individual of all the nations assembled on that universal theatre. Turks, Tartars, Greeks, Muscovites, Swedes, and Italians, English and French, all appeared as if travelling to some vast senate of mankind; or rather, so gay were their habits, so gorgeous their equipages, it might be taken for a pageantry in fairy-land.
Delighted to see the attention of his charge at last arouzed, Martini allowed him, for some time, to gaze around in pleased amazement; then, resuming his office of Cicerone with augmented eloquence, he particularized the objects most worthy observation, and explained them with the accuracy of an itinerary. The Asiatic structure, raising its gilded domes over the cedars of the island, and which Louis had noticed from his window, Martini informed him was the Favorita; the favorite palace of the imperial family. It was now their temporary residence; and in that direction he saw numerous carriages, of strange shapes and capricious magnificence, shoot along the ice. Fancy seemed to have exhausted all her varieties of form in the construction of these whimsical vehicles. Some were fashioned like triumphal cars, others like the fabled shells of marine deities, and many of shapes so fantastical and grotesque, that the incumbent seemed lying in the grasp of some sea or land monster. All were garnished with gilding, emblazoned arms, or gallant devices; while the master, wrapped in ermines, guided with silken reins the flying horses, who, caparisoned in glittering housings, flashed by the spectator like the steeds of the sun. In some of the gayest traineaux, formed like scallop-shells and bedded with fur, beautiful women were seen reclining, while gentlemen sat on the sledge behind, managing the horses, and conversing with the ladies.