Ripperda had still enough of human tenderness to understand this appeal; but his distempered imagination would not apprehend its truth; and, starting from his position, he exclaimed:—
"Impossible! The world and your ingratitude have undone me. You are no more a son to a rebel and a renegade. I, no more a father to him whose treasons reduced me to this extremity!—Away, and by that path," added he, pointing to a passage in the back of the pavilion.—"If we ever meet again, you must finish your commission; or I blot from the earth the dishonoured name of Ripperda!"
Louis was still on his knee, when his father hastily advanced to the curtain and called aloud: A mute appeared; and the Basha, with an instant recovery of composed dignity, commanded him to see that Moor, (pointing to Louis,) to the outside of the camp towards the hill, and leave him there.
Ripperda quitted the apartment as he spoke; and, with desolation in his heart, Louis rose and followed his conductor.
CHAP. VII.
The Moorish slave passed without obstacle to the rear of the camp; and, making his mute salam to his equally silent charge, quitted him in a recess between the hills. Louis found his way back to the Spanish lines, by keeping close to the sea-coast; and, throwing off his disguise, proceeded close under the wall of Ceuta, till he arrived at the draw-bridge, which he crossed at day-break.
He employed some hours in self collection before it was necessary to inform the Marquis Santa Cruz of the interview he had sought in the Moorish camp; and that the result destroyed his every hope of inducing the unhappy renegade to forego his scheme of vengeance.
Santa Cruz too much respected the filial devotion of Louis, in what he had done, to reprimand the rashness of the experiment.