The man stood still, and the consternation in his countenance, more than his asseverations of total ignorance on the subject, convinced Louis that whatever was become of his father, this person was innocent of his fate. He therefore demanded to see the warden, declaring, while he insisted on his demand, that the order he had presented, was from the minister to admit him to the Duke where-ever he might be; and on the authority of that order, he would force his way to his presence against every opposition.
The officer affirmed, that the warden could know nothing of the Duke's strange absence; for that he, the deputy, had himself secured the doors on the prisoner and his servant the preceding night; and no one else, not even the warden, possessed a duplicate key to that dungeon. While he continued to speak with vehemence, and in manifest terror of punishment for what had happened, the determined son of Ripperda repeated his demands to have the warden summoned; for he would not leave the spot till he was convinced that both officers were ignorant of the cause of his father's disappearance.
The deputy being now suffered to go to the dungeon door, called a sentinel from the end of the stone gallery, and briefly told the man to remain with the Marquis till he should return. But as he withdrew, he had the precaution to turn the key of the dungeon on those it contained.
The sentinel stood with fixed arms where his employer had left him, and Lorenzo glided silently round the dismal apartment, prying into every thing. Having found the letter, (which he yet kept carefully concealed, till he could safely shew it to his master,) he thought he might possibly discover some other memorandum from Martini to himself; and, not doubting that the Duke and his brother had made their escape, he left no nook or crevice unexplored.
Louis remained seated against the table, with his arms folded, and gazing intently on the open window. But it was the gaze of concentrated thought, not of observation. Indeed it could hardly have seemed possible to him, that the Duke could have withdrawn himself through that aperture. It was not only eighteen feet above the bottom of the dungeon, but from the shadows in the depth of the wall, appeared a mere crenille, too narrow for any man to pass through. These objections would have occurred to Louis, against the supposition of this having been the way of his father's escape; had the idea of an escape once presented itself to his mind. But he repelled the first intimation from the deputy of such a suspicion. "From what," said he, "should my father fly? Justice must speak at last, and acquit him with honour!"
In his own person, he felt that he would sooner be condemned in the face of day by an iniquitous sentence, than incur the stigma of conscious guilt by flying from the trial it was his right to demand.
"No," cried he, "the Duke de Ripperda would not so desert himself!"
While he believed this, his heart died within him at the thought of his father's endless captivity in some remote prison, where he might never hear the voice of consolation, or see the face of a comforter; and then the spectre of midnight murder suddenly presented itself. His eye hastily scanned the flinty pavement, but there were no traces of blood; all was clear, and all was orderly in the wretched apartment, without any traces of struggle.
In the midst of these reflections, the throng of hurry and alarm was heard in the gallery, the great key once more turned in its guards; and the hinges grating roughly as the door was pushed open, a crowd of soldiers, preceded by the warden and the deputy, poured into the dungeon.
Louis stood to receive them. The warden, holding the order of the Marquis de Montemar's admittance in his hand, in the disorder of his consternation hastily advanced to him and exclaimed,