He turned into the thickets to follow Martini, and was soon lost in the darkness.
CHAP. XVI.
The second night after Louis had left the port of Genoa, the vessel which contained him was blown to sea by the severity of the weather; and drove about, contending with the tempest, far from the coasts of Spain, for one and twenty days. Each succeeding day seemed an age, to the heart of a son, impatient to console and cheer a suffering parent under his undeserved misfortunes; and sleep seldom closed those vigilant eyes that were ever watchful for a change in the wind; or for some repose in the turbulent element, which bore him along with unstemmable fury from the shores he sought.
Again and again he questioned Lorenzo on every particular of what had occurred, propitious or adverse, during his father's administration; and on what befel him after his most atrocious overthrow. Sometimes his anxiety to join him became so uncontroulable, he was ready to throw himself into the waves, to breast their torrent towards the Spanish shores; at other times, he called upon himself to endure the hard trial Providence had laid upon his filial patience; and to await its good time of bringing him to the side of his father.
At last the storms changed their direction; and though equally boisterous, blew the little vessel with velocity towards the Balearic Isles. To persist in stretching for Barcelona would have been madness in such desperate weather; the commander, therefore, determined to make the nearest Spanish port. As the ship approached the coast, and Louis for the first time beheld that land, which had so long been the bourn of all his wishes; first, as the theatre of his father's fame, and the stage where himself was to contend for the same deathless prize! then as the spot that contained that father, stripped of every outward honour, and excluded from all hope, but in the dutiful devotedness of his son! He gazed on it in a strange tumult of mind. It was the land of his forefathers; and with what views, with what feelings, was he first to set his foot upon its shores!
Its high and abrupt outline cut the horizon between sea and sky, like a superb citadel of mountains, guarding its rich Hesperian vales. When he saw the golden clouds rolling from the sides of those stupendous natural bulwarks, as the descending car of day plunged into the refulgent main, he thought of his father's setting sun; of his last beams gilding the country he loved; of that fair country, opening before himself; as he had anticipated, luminous in glory, like the unfolding gates of paradise! But even while he gazed, and mused, and felt a pleased augury in the splendid show, the golden hues faded from the ethereal amphitheatre; the clouds, darkening in their shapes, collected around the headlands; and in grey and sombrous masses rested on their tops, till a fierce and eddying wind from the south-east, dispersed them in one wide and obscuring mist over the whole scene. Louis drew a deep sigh, and turned from the side of the vessel.
Next morning it anchored in the bay of Valencia. The business of disembarking and of resuming his journey by land, direct to Madrid, prevented all particular reflection, till he got into the carriage. Lorenzo deemed it prudent not to say, at any of the post-houses, or towns he passed through, who was his companion; and, though Louis felt he was stealing into the country of his ancestors like a stranger and a spy; yet, by this discretion, they travelled rapidly towards the capital of Castile, without any unusual impediment, or even the knowledge that Ripperda had been removed from the protection of the British ambassador.
Whether he were passing over plain or mountain, cultivated fields, or barren tracts, all were the same to Louis, while his eye was fixed alone on the one object of his journey. He entered the barriers of Madrid at midnight; but nothing could prevent him driving immediately through the city and the northern gate, to the British residence.