CHAP. XII.
Wharton left Vienna, the morning after his separation from Louis in the garden of the chateau. From that day, Louis moved through his duties like a man in a dream. He had dispatched a special courier to his father, with as much of the conspiracy, as he had collected from his now estranged friend; and he confessed how the whole might have been in his possession, could he have brought his conscience to accord with the condition.
Hoping that even this obscure intimation might be some beacon to his father; himself went perturbedly on; racked with suspence, and feeling alone and unarmed amidst a host of ambushed foes. Except when obliged to go abroad on business, he shut himself within the walls of his house; for he now doubted every man who approached him; and the specious courtesies of women were yet more intolerable.
The Empress did not condescend to intimate how she had considered his proposition respecting the ceremony of her daughter; but she sent her chamberlain to inform him, that the Emperor had fixed the day of her favourite's nuptials, when they should be solemnized in a private manner. Louis loathed the very characters of Otteline's name; and shuddered at any new bonds to a society, associated to him with every disastrous remembrance. His soul was stricken; and the evils which appeared in visionary approach before his father's path, and his own, seemed too big for conflict. He felt he could have sustained the fiercest fields of war; could have died with an upward eye, and an exulting spirit on its honourable bed. But to be a hero under the attacks of the coward breath of man; to stand before an obloquy that threatened the annihilation of his father's glory, and his own respected name; was more than he dared to contemplate: and in appalled expectation, he mechanically prepared to obey the unwelcome behests of Elizabeth.
He was giving his slow orders to a maitre d'hotel respecting some arrangements for his future bride, when a letter was put into his hands, which had come by a circuitous route from Sardinia; and which he ought to have received a month or two ago. It was from Don Ferdinand d'Osorio. Until the public reception of Ripperda at Vienna, Don Ferdinand was ignorant where to address the cousin of his beloved Alice; and to express, what he felt, his sense of the justice of her appeal against his extorted bonds; and to acknowledge the delicacy with which Louis had seconded her remonstrances. When he heard that the Marquis de Montemar was in Germany with his father, he lost no time in writing; and entrusted his letter to a Sardinian gentleman going to Vienna. But the traveller took a wide tour; and did not bring the letter to its destination until two months after its date.
Louis dismissed his servant, and breaking the seal, read as follows:—
"My dear de Montemar,
"I should be ashamed to confess the justice of all your remarks on my conduct with regard to your sweet cousin, my ever-beloved Alice, could I not at the same time assure you that I have obeyed her wishes to the fullest extent, and followed your advice implicitly. I have written to her, and to Mrs. Coningsby; and she is perfectly free: every bond is relinquished, but that of the heart. If her's be as firm as mine, we may confidently await the holy vows, which, I trust, will yet unite us.
"You must have seen enough of my excellent father, to know that he has one error amongst his many perfections; and that it is an irreconcileable abhorrence of the Protestant religion. However, though I should despair of ever bringing him to tolerate its tenets, I have a hope of compassing his consent to my marriage with its gentle professor. Marcella, my only, and very dear sister, (and who was intended from her cradle for a nunnery,) must assist me in this project. She loves me ardently; and her power with my father, except on one point, is almost omnipotent. It is this point, on which I ground my proceedings: she must obey him; and may gratify her enthusiastic nature, by serving me against herself. Her doom, poor girl! is rather a hard one, as it was absolutely fixed before she was born. My father's youthful passions, (which are now hushed to such monastic stillness!) were the cause of her dedication. I will tell you the story; and then you may judge of my chance of success through her means.
"When my father was a young man, his character was too much like my own, self-willed and impetuous; and in affairs of love, as you will see by the sequel, he was even more determined than his son. At an early age, he acquired a great reputation in the army; and at the conclusion of the war in Italy, went on a party of pleasure to Vienna; then the gayest city in the world.
"During the reign of the Austrian monarchs in Spain, many of our grandees intermarried with the German nobility. It so happened between our family and that of the Austrian Sinzendorff's. My father, then full of life and enterprize, went to the old Count Sinzendorff's. The present Chancellor of that name was then young and thoughtless; and boasted to his cousin, of the great beauty of his youngest sister; who his family had chosen to sacrifice to the fortunes of the elder branches, by consigning her to a nunnery at the age of nineteen.—My father accompanied Sinzendorff to the convent, where they passed some hours with the beautiful novice; for she had yet four months of probation, before she was to pronounce the irrevocable vows. Suffice it to say, a mutual passion was conceived between the two cousins, and my father persuaded her to elope with him.—They fled into Switzerland, where they were married. In the course of time, absolution for the sacrilege was obtained from the Pope; but my father could never obtain it from himself.—His wife's first and second children died in the birth. They were both daughters. He believed it a judgment on his crime, and tried to reconcile offended heaven, by making a vow, that should his next infant be spared, and of the same sex; and he live to the appointed period, he would dedicate it to a monastic life, at the same age in which he seduced her mother from the altar. The next child was myself. Two or three more infant deaths intervened before the birth of Marcella. But from the hour in which she saw the light, and continued to live, a golden crucifix was hung to her neck, and she was always addressed by the name of the little nun.
"As she grew in beauty and sweetness, my mother regretted the determined immolation of her child; but my father would listen to no pleadings, to spare such variety of excellence to the world. He demanded the sacrifice for the appeasing of his conscience; and poor Marcella, though educated with all the accomplishments of her sex, and full of as many graces as ever charmed in woman, silently awaited her gloomy destiny. I remember having often seen my father stand impenetrable to my mother's reproaches for consigning all this youth and loveliness to the cloister, and then he has calmly answered:—
"Antoinetta, I have covered the blameless offering with all these garlands, to render her a more costly sacrifice at my hands; to make my heart drop blood when she is led to the altar; and then, your sin and mine, my erring wife, may find a veil!
"My mother doated on my sister, and she could not see the justice of expiating her own offence, by the misery of her child.—In this spirit, she too, made a vow; and that was, never to be separated from her daughter, till her father's cruel dedication shut her from the world. By a most unhappy fatality, the governess my mother engaged for Marcella when a child, was the widow of one of the illustrious cavaliers who came to the continent, with your James II. She was a learned and a pious woman, and brought up my sister in all her own principles.—My father led too busy a life, to investigate deeper than the fruits; and those, he said were good. But a year ago, the English lady died; and on her death-bed, she declared herself a Protestant! In short, Marcella had been too long under her tuition, to become a willing devotee to the monastic rites of the Romish Church. A superstitious horror of this discovery prevented my father questioning her on the subject; but he proposed her immediate removal to a convent. My mother opposed her vow to his; not to suffer her child to leave her, till the time of her being professed.—Marcella cast herself on her knees, and implored, by every thing sacred in earth and heaven, that her father would not compel her to take vows against which her soul revolted. She engaged to live a life of celibacy; and never to see any persons but her own family; if he would spare her those dreadful oaths, and allow her to remain for ever with her mother. But in the essential point, my mother and sister pleaded in vain. He granted her continuance at home, till the year of her noviciate; but that year must come, and it will commence next January.
"Being aware, from my father's pertinacity on these subjects, that if my sister does not then resign herself to her fate, she will be dragged to meet it, (though he would rather purchase her free consent at any price;) I determined on trying to turn her sad destiny to my happiness. When I pledged my faith to your dear cousin, I did it under a belief that I could persuade Marcella to do that willingly, which she knows she must do, even under violence. I want her to make my father's sanction to my marriage with Alice, the condition of her performing all his vows, without further hesitation!
"On my return from Lindisfarne, (without then venturing to open my whole mind to her on the subject,) I prepared the way, by describing the dear family at the pastorage, in such colours as to excite her particular interest for the fair and tender Alice. My mother's gratitude was eloquent towards Mr. Athelstone and Mrs. Coningsby; and again and again she wished to see the latter and her daughters in Spain, that she might repay them in some sort, for their cares of her son.
"My father and I soon came to Sardinia on public affairs; but we return to Spain in the autumn. I shall then unbosom myself to Marcella; and, I doubt not, she will concede that to my happiness, which, should she withhold it, would only leave me to misery, without prolonging the time of her own liberty.
"At present she is leading an almost monastic life; and the difference cannot be great, whether it be past in a real cell amongst the Ursulines, and daily cheered by visits from her mother; or in a cloistered apartment at home, which is fitted up with every similar austerity, and has no advantage but the nominal distinction of being in her father's house.
"I hope every thing from Marcella's free consent, and consequent influence with my father; and, when it is given, dear de Montemar, (if you are not too absorbed in politics and Imperial favour, to continue your interest in the happiness of faithful love!) you shall hear again, from your sincerely obliged friend,
"Sardinia. Ferdinand d'Osorio."
Louis closed the letter, with every warm wish for the happiness of his endeared Alice; but while he joined the man she loved, in the heartfelt orison, he could not but regret the strain of selfishness he saw throughout his character. He hardly pitied the amiable Marcella, in the destiny she appeared to deprecate, and to which her brother so coolly rivetted her reluctant hands, while he pretended to deplore her fate. In the state Louis was in, between man's perfidy and woman's wiles, any refuge from the world, seemed a heaven to him. The passions and opinions of youth are in extremes; all delight, or all misery; all virtues, or all crimes; no happiness but in rapture; no grief but in despair. But Louis's griefs were now heavy enough, not to need the overcharging of fancy; and when he thought of all that he had suffered since his last fearful meeting with Wharton in the garden, he could not but exclaim,