"A simple one; to smile upon a woman. A pleasant one; to be beloved by one who can fix no bonds on you but those of love, while she bestows herself upon you, and gives you the life and honour of your father!"
"With the loss of my own, and the perdition of my soul! Is this the alternative I expected to hear from the lips of my only friend, in this fearful extremity of my fate!"
Louis had covered his raging temples with his hand, and he hastened forward with distracted swiftness.
"De Montemar! This is folly or deception," cried Wharton. "There are virtues for every season of life; and I thought you had been made sensible that it is the privilege of manhood to make all nature subservient to his interest and his pleasure. What took you, night after night, to the scenes in which I have met you? Anchorites are not accustomed to pay those courts a second visit; and you are not the better in my honest eyes, for preserving the cowl, when I know its vows have been broken?"
Louis knew that he had deserved this inference; and he inwardly reproached his father's policy, in thinking it wisdom to incur such suspicion on his blameless life. How would the involuntary accusation have been embittered, had he known that the Empress drew the same conclusion! He would then have doubly felt, that his sacrifice to such vile appearance, instead of propitiating his rivals, had dishonoured him with his friends, and become an instrument in the hands of his enemies. Humbled to the soul, he merely replied.
"Wharton, you injure me."
"It may be so; and I am sorry for it," answered the Duke, "though I cannot guess how. I offer you the sublime duty of rescuing your father from treason; and the enjoyment of a banquet, rifled from the sanctuary of your deadliest foe! Can you be a man, and proof against such sweet revenge?"
Louis strode on in perturbed silence. Wharton continued his arguments with vehemence and subtle consistency, on the supposition that he must admit his friend's repugnance to be sincere. Still, Louis did not reply; but proofs of his contending soul convulsed the features his agitated hand tried to conceal. The Duke, as well as his friend, had much at stake in bringing this part of his negociation to bear. He tried the effect of ridicule on the wretched and despairing Louis; and to one of his arguments, he at last extorted a reply.
"I will not purchase even the life of my father, by my own conscious guilt. If I am proof against my own heart, in so dear a cause, shall I not be proof against the poor allurements of vanity and sense? And are such arguments yours? Oh, Wharton! I cannot call that peculiarly manly, which are the peculiar pursuits of the lowest of our species. Any man may succumb to his appetites and his passions! You say most men do; and that you, even you, sometimes find it policy and pastime to follow in the track!" He paused, and then added with a piercing look, and a smile of despair, "what, if the boy de Montemar has ambition to go beyond ye!"
"Yes; I know you do not want ambition," replied the Duke, with an answering smile, "I remember, some dozen months ago, with that same eagle glance, you likened yourself to Ammon's godlike son! He did not reject the flaming brand that fired the palace of his enemies, nor the lovely Thais that presented it!"