"This paper must pass from your hands, my revered friend, to his. Let those kindred eyes alone share the confidence of this sad narrative. Let him know that his nephew, the child of his nurture, dies happy! Happy in the hope that is, and that which is to come."
As he added an awful farewell to his beloved aunt and cousins, a crowd of tender recollections thronged upon his soul. He hastily addressed the packet to the Marquis Santa Cruz. Besides this comprehensive letter, he wrote the few brief lines which comprised his will; and the monk and Lorenzo having signed it, a seal was affixed to its cover. The abbot was summoned to dispatch the one to Madrid; and Lorenzo received the other, to convey to Lindisfarne, when his beloved master should be no more.
This duty done, Louis sunk exhausted on his pillow. But the cord on his heart was taken off. The benign image of his earliest friend, like the vision of a ministering angel, had unloosed it; and a holy dew seemed poured upon the desart of his soul. As he laid himself back on the bed whence he expected never to rise again, he thought of the only hand which he wished could have given him the last bread of life; the only hand he could have wished might have closed his eyes, when temporal life was fled. He wept at the distance which separated him from that father of his moral being; he wept, that he must breathe his last sigh on a stranger's bosom. But his spirit was resigned; and, as his tears ceased to flow, he gently fell asleep.
CHAP. V.
During the confinement of Louis in the monastery of Val de Penas; and while the Marquis Santa Cruz, and the Queen of Spain, were alike wondering at no intelligence having arrived from him since his departure from Madrid; news of various kinds created as various perplexities in the cabinet of the King.
Two Spanish galleons had been taken by a fleet of Barbary corsairs. The coasts of the Mediterranean were filled with pirates of every-sized vessel, manœuvred with a courage and a skill that baffled every art to avoid them; and while this extraordinary accession to the Barbary marine arose on the sea like an exhalation, a Moor, under the name of Aben Humeya, as suddenly made his appearance in Morocco, carrying all before him in the field and in the state. He possessed the confidence of Abdallah, without a rival; and, after having discomfited that monarch's rebellious kinsman Muley Hamet, was advancing at the head of his victorious army to redeem to the Emperor the possession of Ceuta:—the Gibraltar of the Spaniards on the African shore.
Hostilities were at this time hanging in the balance between Great Britain and Spain, on account of Gibraltar; and to awe the replies of the Britannic minister to its demanded restitution, an army of twenty-five thousand men, (which were on their march to Italy to effect a similar object on the duchies of Parma and Placentia,) were ordered to fall back, and make demonstrations towards the British fortress. Part of this army were in Valentia; and on a second courier arriving from Ceuta with intelligence that Aben Humeya had concluded a treaty defensive and offensive between the Moorish Emperor, and the other Barbary Powers, King Philip saw the necessity of detaching one division at least to the protection of his African dominions. He appointed Santa Cruz to the command; but on some strange inconsistent and perverse arguments of his ministers, when the Marquis appeared for his last directions, His Majesty informed him, that a thousand men were sufficient to raise the siege. If more were necessary, they should be sent; but too formidable a body at first, would only increase difficulties, by raising the consequence of a Barbarian chief in the eyes of Christian Europe. Santa Cruz saw that the jealousy of the ministers against himself was the origin of this damp on the first vigorous proposal of the King; but determined to do his own duty at least, he acquiesced, and withdrew from the royal presence. He made a rapid journey to Val del Uzeda where he found his son just arrived from Italy; and giving him orders to hold himself in readiness to accompany any second detachment to Ceuta, he took a parental farewell of his family, and returned to Madrid. In the same evening that he alighted at his own hotel he received the packet from Louis de Montemar, and had a long and distressing conversation with the friar, who brought it.
The contents of the letter filled him with astonishment and trouble. He had no need of further investigation, to conclude who was the Aben Humeya, who was putting so new and menacing a face on every thing in Barbary; and considering that circumstances demanded the disclosure to the Queen, he hastened to the palace. A private audience was immediately granted, and the letter of the dying son of the lost Ripperda confided to Her Majesty.