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The Pastor's Fire-side Vol. 4 (of 4)

by Jane Porter · English · Gutenberg #46697 · 451,085 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Pastor's Fire-side Vol. 4 (of 4)

Author: Jane Porter


        
Release date: August 26, 2014 [eBook #46697]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PASTOR'S FIRE-SIDE VOL. 4 (OF 4) ***

  Transcriber's Note

  The book contained two chapter 15s and two chapter 25s.
  The chapters were renumbered in sequence for ease of reading.
  Additional transcriber's notes at the end of the text.




                                  THE

                          PASTOR'S FIRE-SIDE,

                               VOL. IV.


      Printed by A. Strahan,
   New-Street-Square, London.




                                  THE

                          PASTOR'S FIRE-SIDE,

                                   A

                               _NOVEL_,

                           IN FOUR VOLUMES.


                                  BY

                           MISS JANE PORTER,

           AUTHOR OF THADDEUS OF WARSAW, SIDNEY'S APHORISMS,
                       AND THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS.


 I will confess the ambitious projects which I once had,
 are dead within me. After having seen the parts which fools
 play upon the great stage; a few books, and a few friends,
 are what I shall seek to finish my days with.
                                                              TWEDDELL.


                               VOL. IV.


                                LONDON:

          PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN,
                           PATERNOSTER-ROW.

                                 1817





                                  THE
                          PASTOR'S FIRE-SIDE.




CHAP. I.


Some time elapsed before Louis saw the Marquis again; but when he
re-appeared, it was to appoint him an interview with a lady of the
court; and this ostensible confidant was no other than Her Majesty's
self.

Santa Cruz's representation of Louis's romantic honour with regard
to Countess Altheim, had excited Isabella's not less romantic taste
for adventure; and she resolved to try her personal effect upon him,
unaided by her rank. While she was considering this project, a person
arrived from Vienna, speaking every where of the confusion which had
taken place at that court, from an open declaration, on the part
of the Arch-Duchess Maria Theresa in favour of Francis Prince of
Lorraine. This news, by verifying one argument in the alleged innocence
of Louis de Montemar, gave a respectable colour, in her now mind,
to the really vain motive which prompted a clandestine reception of
the Duke de Ripperda's son. In mentioning her design to his zealous
friend, she hinted that such privacy was necessary; since the King
had followed the flight of Ripperda, with a sentence of perpetual
banishment. While unknown, she said, she could discourse more freely
to the young Marquis, on the circumstances of his father's conduct;
and, by remaining incognita, should she chuse the affair to end at that
conference, her implied interference would escape expectation, or blame.

Santa Cruz bowed to a command that promised so fair, notwithstanding
its professed doubts as to the issue; and, as it was to be kept a
profound secret, he pledged himself, and performed his word, not to
disclose her real quality to the object of her condescension.

While Louis exchanged his prison garments, for a court dress, the
Marquis told him, he must not ground his father's defence to the lady
he should see, on any argument of the Queen's precipitancy in politics.
Her Majesty's consciousness was sufficient. Louis thanked him for his
caution. And, no objection being made to the royal signet which Santa
Cruz carried, they passed through the prison; and, without opposition,
entered the carriage at its gates.

As they drove silently through the streets, the Marquis regarded the
countenance of his companion. It was no longer pallid and dejected.
His eyes were bent downwards in thought, but a bright colour was on
his cheek; and the refulgence of an inward, happy animation, illumed
every feature. Santa Cruz refrained from remarking on this change, so
favourable to his cause; though he did not the less wonder how it could
have taken place during the short interval since his first visit.

The fact was simple.--From that hour, hope had been his abundant
aliment. Yet, not an implicit hope in frail humanity. He had lately
learnt, to put no absolute trust in mortal power, nor any dependance on
man.--He had been made to know, that blinded judgements are often with
the one, and misguiding interests in the other; but he knew _in whom he
trusted_! and the expression of hope in his countenance, partook of the
sublime source whence it sprung.

When they arrived at Saint Ildefonso, vespers were concluded, and the
King retired with his confessor. This circumstance was what Isabella
anticipated, and determined her to name that hour for the appointed
interview. A few minutes after Santa Cruz had conducted Louis into her
pavilion, she ascended the steps. On hearing her foot on the pavement,
the Marquis hastened to meet her; and, as she stood in the portico, and
Louis remained in the room, he had an opportunity of taking cognizance
of the lady who was to report his suit to her royal mistress.

She seemed about forty; of a low stature, and slight figure; with
a countenance, whose acute lineaments, dark complexion, and quick,
penetrating eye, announced alacrity of intellect, with an equal
proportion of irritability and vindictiveness of mind. She conversed
a second with the Marquis, and preceded him into the pavilion. He
presented Louis to her, as the Marquis de Montemar; and named her to
him by the title of Duchess Tarrazona.

Louis bowed respectfully; while she, so far forgot her assumed
character, as to take no notice of his obeisance, though her rivetted
observation lost not a line of his face or deportment. He raised his
eyes from the share they usually took in his bow; but, encountering
the sharp and investigating gaze of her's, he looked down again, and
retreated a step back, with a second bow.--

"Marquis," said she, to Santa Cruz, "you may attend in the portico."

As she spoke, she turned into a secluded veranda; and waved her hand to
Louis, to follow her.--He obeyed.

For more than an hour, Santa Cruz walked to and fro under the long
double colonnade of the pavilion, before the Queen re-appeared on
the threshold. Louis remained in the saloon. She stood apart several
minutes, talking earnestly with the Marquis; and then withdrew,
unattended, across the garden.

Not a word passed between him and his charge, until they were out of
the confines of St. Ildefonso, and once more on the road to Madrid.
Louis's countenance, all this time was meditative and troubled:--Santa
Cruz at last said:--"The Duchess informs me, it shall not be her
fault, if your suit be not favourably conveyed to the Queen."

"She is very kind," replied Louis, "but very extraordinary.--And,
did you not assure me of her influence, I would rather avoid her
interference. She appears too peremptory, to be a favourite with
arbitrary power: and, though some of her discourse shewed a penetrating
judgement, and great vivacity in the interests of Spain; yet, the rest
was trifling; and absurdly foreign from our subject."

Santa Cruz warned his young friend to take things as he found them; and
to be as respectful to the Duchess, as to the royal presence itself. He
then enquired the particulars of what had passed.

Louis informed him, that so far from her Grace seeking information
relative to the Duke de Ripperda's political conduct at Vienna, she
continually interrupted the narration of those proceedings, with the
strangest questions respecting the nature of his intimacy with the
Empress.--And when she had received assurances and proofs, that it was
purely confidential; contracted in early life; and, though continued,
was ever in check to the interests of Spain; she repeated the same
interrogatories again and again, with all the art and abruptness of
consummate subtlety. At last, she demanded a minute description of the
Empress's person, saying with a smile.--

"Marquis, your next attendance at Saint Ildefonso may give you an
opportunity of judging between your Queen, and this boasted Elizabeth
of Germany!"

"Should you be admitted to such an audience," observed Santa Cruz, with
a smile, "you must not disappoint the expectations of the Duchess, in
giving the palm of beauty to her mistress."

"She will be fairest to me," returned Louis, "who turns the most
gracious eye on the truth of my father." "Hold that principle,"
rejoined his friend, "and I will not curb your sincerity."

From this day, the aspect of many countenances changed at Saint
Ildefonso. The Queen was engaged in frequent conferences with the
King; and the ministers, who severally used to make one in all the
royal consultations, were totally excluded from these. Philip kept a
strict silence on their subject; though his saddened physiognomy often
declared how they perplexed him. The Queen alone wore an unaltered
mien; yet the lynx eye of de Paz could often discern suspicion in
her prompt accordance at the Council; and some unknown triumph, in
the smile with which she bowed in devoted deference to the judgement
of her husband. What was the object of all this, and what would be
its end, were equally subjects of mystery and of apprehension to the
newly-seated ministers; but not one of them suspected for a moment,
that Ripperda, whom they had exiled, or his son, whom they had immured,
held any connexion with the changing scene.

In the course of a week after the interview in the pavilion, Santa
Cruz re-entered the state prison of Madrid, with the sign manual of
the King, for the release of the Marquis de Montemar, and his servant
Lorenzo d'Urbino. The young man was confined in a cell remote from his
master; in equal ignorance with him, that the same roof covered them.
Their re-union was joyous on the part of Louis, but full of overflowing
transport on the side of Lorenzo; for his gaolers had tortured him
with reports of his master's death; and assured him, that his own
imprisonment would shortly be ended by the same violent means.

The governor of the prison was enjoined to conceal the release of
the Marquis de Montemar from the ministers of the King, until Philip
himself should send permission to officially announce it.

Louis was to be admitted the following morning to a private audience
of the Queen. He was to go as a suppliant; and to pass from a dungeon,
to his first presentation at a court, where his father had taught him
to believe, he would one day be received as only second to royalty
itself!--But he thought not of these circumstances. He had gained one
great object, in obtaining the royal ear; and he looked with confidence
to the event of the interview.

Santa Cruz was not less sanguine; and, with almost parental pride in
the son of Ripperda, he conducted him to the palace, and led him into
the chamber of audience. Her Majesty was alone, and seated in a chair
of state. A magnificent dress shone through the large veil she had
thrown over her face and person. On Louis approaching her, and on his
being named, bending his knee to the ground, she rose, and threw up her
veil.

"Marquis de Montemar," said she, with a smile, and extending her hand;
"the Duchess Tarrazona has prevailed, and thus I promise my patronage
to her client!"

Louis had entered in some agitation, and knelt with more at the feet
of the Sovereign, who, he believed, held the honour and fate of his
father in her hand. He now recognised the Duchess in the Queen; and
every anxious doubt flying before the glad surprize, the sentiment of
his heart shone out in his complexion and eyes. She translated this
flush of hope, into a tribute to her charms; and graciously repeated
her smile when he put her hand to his lips.

"Who will you serve, de Montemar," said she, "Elizabeth and Countess
Altheim? or Isabella, and the Duchess Tarrazona? Chuse freely, for I
love not bondage."

Conscious complacency beamed in her looks, as she spoke.

"My duty, and my heart," replied he, "are alike at Your Majesty's feet."

His heart was in his words and his countenance. The devotion of
Ripperda had been reserved and stately; but in the animated answer of
his son, there was a youthful fervour, a chivalric gallantry; which,
being her soul's passion, subdued her at once to his interest. All her
pre-determined caution vanished before it. She looked towards Santa
Cruz.

"Give de Montemar your cross of the Amaranth," said she; "I will
replace it to-morrow. When he returns from Gibraltar, he may wear it
openly; now, it must be nearer the seat of truth."

Santa Cruz drew from his neck the purple ribbon, at which the brilliant
cross was suspended, and buckled it under the vest of his young friend.
Again Louis kissed the hand of the condescending Isabella; who
continued to regard his graceful person with increasing favour, while
she communicated the result of her mediation between him and the King.

So many baffled negociations for the restoration of Gibraltar had
worn out the patience of Philip; and, as the fortress was evidently
strengthening itself on the Spanish side, he had ordered similar lines
of intimidation to be constructed at San Roque. But this did not awe
the English, whose sovereign seemed on the eve of a quarrel with the
new ministers of Spain; and therefore, Isabella seized the occasion to
represent to her husband, the danger of allowing the British cabinet
the incalculable benefit of Ripperda's discoveries and counsels. In
pursuance of these arguments, she gradually gained her object with the
King; and now informed Louis that she had obtained the royal command
for him to go direct to Gibraltar, to lay before Ripperda all that was
alledged against him, to offer him a fair and open trial, or a general
amnesty; and which-ever he would prefer, should follow his election.

The trial was what Louis demanded.

"Grant my father that," said he, "and we ask no more."

"Bring him from Gibraltar," returned the Queen, "and nothing shall be
withheld, that can gratify the honourable ambition of his son."

She then told him, that as it was necessary to keep these preliminaries
from the knowledge of the ministry, he must neither visit the British
Ambassador, nor the Val del Uzeda, nor even allow his name, nor his
errand to be known, until he should have obtained the object of his
mission.

"When you return, it will be with a companion," added she, "to
whom, meanwhile, I pledge my restored confidence." She smiled, and
disappeared. Louis looked gratefully after her. The Marquis would not
trouble the hopes of his heart, by warning him that all this revered
goodness arose from the dreams of vanity; and that both father and son
must preserve its illusions, if they would continue in the favour she
so largely promised.

Louis gave his arm to his friend; and with heads too full of busy
thoughts, to give them immediate utterance, they repaired in silence to
Santa Cruz's residence in Madrid.

A few hours completed every preparation for Louis's journey to
Gibraltar; and the next morning, by day-break, accompanied by the
faithful Lorenzo, he set forth on his momentous pilgrimage.




CHAP. II.


Hope having drawn him from sad meditations, as he rapidly pursued his
way towards the south of Spain, he could not but obey the voice of
nature, which called on him from valley and from mountain, to behold
her vast and wonderous creations.

The royal province of Castile, traversed by rivers, and populous with
cities, conducted him to the extensive plains of La Mancha. Here the
palladian palaces north of the Guadiana, and avenued with glowing
vistas, were exchanged for heavy and sombre hamlets spread under the
shade of thick groves, and dark with the clusters of the black grape.
But in architecture alone, these villages were gloomy and uninviting.
It was the season of the vintage, and the whole scene teemed with
life and gaiety. Louis passed through it, enjoying with the sympathy
of benevolence, the happiness he saw. In front lay a mountainous
desart. Here he exchanged his vehicle for two stout mules used to the
precipitous road; and with Lorenzo, entered the new region.

They were now in the Sierra Morena, which separates La Mancha from the
Hesperian vales of Andalusia. The passes of the mountain were long,
winding, and melancholy; but the moment he crossed its high misty
ridge, Louis felt a difference in the atmosphere, amazing and grateful
in its contrast, as the luxuriant landscape before him, when opposed to
the frowning sterility behind.

"That is Andalusia!" exclaimed Lorenzo, pointing down to the fairest
_piedmont_ of Spain. Louis knew there was not a rill or a hillock in
that ample province, which did not once owe tribute to his family; he
also knew how they had been lost; and with mingled feelings, he turned
to the careless voice of Lorenzo, remarking on the beauties of the view.

On one side, towards the east, extended the pastoral hills of Jaen,
backed by the snowy summits of the distant Sierra Nevada of Grenada;
the last retreat of the Moors, before their final expulsion from
Spain. Louis thought on the latter circumstance, as those storied
mountains stood bright in the glowing sky. He recollected, that
amongst these persecuted people, was Don Ferdinand de Valor, one of
his own progenitors; and that his attachment to the Moorish cause had
occasioned the first sequestration of the Ripperda territories to the
Spanish Kings. He did not utter his reflections; but deeply ruminating,
gave the reins to his mule, and slowly descended the heights.

With this humble equipage, and by the side of a single attendant, he
entered the principality of his fathers. Over those very hills and
vallies, where the heroes of his name had conducted armies to assist
or to repel the sovereigns of Spain, he was journeying to seek the
representative of all their honours, an exiled fugitive in a foreign
land!--But William de Ripperda was not less worthy of their blood! And
the last of their race, did not blush at the banishment of a parent,
whose crimes were his virtues.

"My noble, glorious father!" exclaimed he, inwardly, as he looked
upwards; that look conveyed his vow to heaven. To think only of that
father; to exult only in his virtue; to mourn only his affliction; and
to regard his weal or woe, as the only future objects of his own.

When he crossed the Guadalquivir, Lorenzo checked his mule.

"From this spot, to the banks of the Xenil;" said he, "a track of many
leagues, is the Marquisate of Montemar. The castle stands on a high
promontory, far to the west, on the latter river. I never shall forget
the joy of the country, when the Duke de Ripperda paid it a visit, on
his return from Vienna."

Louis looked on the silver flood, on each side of the noble bridge they
were crossing. He, then, was lord of that branch of the magnificent
Guadalquivir! The lands he saw bore his name; the people who tilled
them, owed him homage; and he was passing through all, a stranger, and
unknown!

He descended from the bridge into a sinuous track, between long
plantations of olives; under whose refreshing foliage, the low vines,
and the waving corn, were alternately spreading their clusters, or
their yellow tops to the sun. Here again, were the reaper, and the
joyous treaders of the wine-press. He listened to their jocund voices;
their guitars, castanets, and bounding steps; and he could not forbear
thinking, with some emotion of displeasure; how little did the memory
of him live in their hearts, whose paternal policies had secured to
them the fruits of their labour! As long as they were happy, it seemed
the same to them, whether their benefactor were on a throne or in a
prison!

But it was human nature, consistent with itself, which forgets the
Providence that blesses, in the enjoyment of his gifts. The friend of
man must, therefore, imitate his Creator; and pouring his good on those
who need it, the just and the unjust, look for gratitude in the world
to come.

The travellers again occupied a wheeled carriage, and pursued their
journey with rapidity. In some parts they traversed extensive forests,
sublime in sylvan grandeur; then they wound through the shady defiles
of intersecting hills, or passed through towns and villages, whose
light and airy architecture bore evidence of Moresco origin; all
around was a fair garden. But there was a bound; a wall of mountains
rose before them, shooting up into the azure heavens, in sharp and
menacing peaks.

Here they resumed their mules. The first part of the ascent was
gradual; and as Louis mounted the rugged acclivities, (sometimes on
foot, to scale the highest points, while his beast rested;) he saw,
winding along the less abrupt tracks, the shepherds of the plains,
driving their flocks to the recesses of the upland pastures. The
practice is the same in Scotland; and the similitude pleased one, who
had passed some of his happiest hours amongst the Highland hills.

But the image of him, who was then his dear and trusted companion, rose
with the remembrance. He saw him bounding down the breezy height; his
plaid streaming in the air; and his feathered bonnet in his hand, as
he whistled gaily, and waved him from afar. Louis closed his eyes,
to shut out the association with the scene; but it would not do. The
glad smile of perfect confidence still shone on the visionary lip; the
eyes of the persecuting phantom continued to sparkle with greeting
intelligence; and even his voice seemed to sound in his ear!--Louis
shuddered to the soul, and spurring his mule, dashed forward amongst
beetling rocks and caverned ruins. They had once been a magnificent
work of man. An aqueduct, built by the Romans; and its remains clasped
the mouth of the pass which leads to the interior of the mountains.
Hence it was called the _Puerta de Ronda_; as these were the peaks of
that name, which stretch their stony ramparts between the plains of
Andalusia and the borders of the sea. The Sierra de Ronda surpasses in
desolate grandeur, even the sublime wastes of the Morena mountains.
No vegitation crowned these vast colossal rocks; bare to the sun and
tempest, they looked like the huge altar of nature, to which avenging
Jove bound the consuming, but still immortal Prometheus. All around
was either acclivity or precipice; and from between two high pyramidal
craggs, Louis caught his first view of the Mediterranean.

A small fishing town was scattered about a little bay at the foot of
the mountain. Lorenzo proposed hiring a vessel there, to take them
immediately round to Gibraltar; and his master readily acquiesced in
a plan which would exempt him from the obstacles that might accrue,
should he enter the fortress by the Spanish lines. Louis was to remain
in the mountain, to watch the mules, and Lorenzo descend by a near
foot-path he had discovered cut in the precipice, to the sea shore.
Before they parted, a spot was fixed on amongst the rocks, as a place
of rendezvous.

When Lorenzo was gone, Louis bound the animals to the remains of an
old wooden cross, which had been erected to mark a place of murder;
and putting down their corn before them, on a spot where grass would
never grow; he ascended a higher promontory, to see whether he could
discern any part of the embattled heights of Gibraltar. But the
lofty crest he sought was not within the mountainous horizon. Broken
pinnacles of granite, shattered by the deluge; and fathomless abysms,
that made the eye giddy even to glance at, hemmed him around. As he
contemplated the hideous solitude, voices suddenly sounded near him.
It was not his intention to listen, but before he could move, he heard
the name of his father, pronounced in a rough, guttural tone. He paused
breathlessly. The speakers were invisible; and the last who spoke,
continued affirming to the other, that "the Duke de Ripperda was still
as able as he was willing, to reward all who did him service." "Prove
it to me," replied his comrade, "and you shall find me ready."

"Look at this purse of ducats!" replied the other, "he will load your
felucca with bags of the same, if you carry the merchandize he bargains
for!"

A low shelving cliff, and some broken rock, divided Louis from the
speakers. He saw the dark points of their Montero caps, under the
cragg; and vaulting from his more elevated situation, stood before
them. They were two strong-bodied men, with fierce, independent
countenances; and starting on their feet, they also stood resolutely,
and eyed the no less commanding, though youthful figure, which so
boldly advanced to them.

Louis saw by their wild garb they were smugglers, and of the Gustanos
tribe, the gypsies of Spain. Lorenzo had pointed out some of these
people to him in the Sierra Morena; and explained their daring lives,
with their outlawed condition. Some carried on their desperate
traffic on the high seas, and others, in wandering bands, vended their
forbidden merchandize over the face of the country. But they all called
themselves _Seranos_; being the generic name for the inhabitants of
these fastnesses of nature; and as such Louis addressed them.

"Brave Seranos!" cried he, as he approached them; "you speak of the
Duke de Ripperda, as if you had seen him lately. I am seeking him, and
any facility you may give me, shall not be unrewarded."

The men looked on each other; but the elder of the two, striking the
head of a huge hatchet into his belt, to shew he was in a condition not
to be trifled with; answered Louis, by demanding in his turn, how he
knew that they had any concern with the Duke de Ripperda.

"By accident. I stood by my mule, on the other side of the cliff; and
heard you discourse of the Duke, as if you had recently parted from
him. Was it at Gibraltar?"

"No."

"Where, then?"

"If you are an emissary of his enemies," replied the smuggler, "you had
best return to your mule. I am not the man to betray a friend."

The blunt honour of the outlaw bore its own evidence to Louis; and
without a second thought, he answered:--

"I am his son."

"It may be so;" replied the man, "but you are also a courtier; and
flesh and blood of that cast are rarely to be trusted. If you dare face
the truth, follow me. You will find a man behind that rock, who may
tell you what I will not."

"Who might I see there?"

"One that knows whether the Duke de Ripperda has a son."

"His name?" demanded Louis, who observed a strange, treacherous leer
in the wild countenance of the other man.

"Martini d'Urbino," returned his comrade.

Louis did not hesitate: "I follow you."

The smuggler led the way, down a circuitous ravine, to the mouth of a
cavern. Several mules were feeding near its entrance. Louis heard the
sound of boisterous jollity; and as he advanced, he discerned, in the
depth of the cave, many persons seated on the ground, under the light
of a huge iron lamp that hung from the roof.

Had he wished to recede, retreat would have been impossible. But
all thoughts of personal hazard were lost in the one eager desire
of learning some certain tidings of his father. The smugglers'
communications to each other, being uttered when they were ignorant
of being overheard, and, therefore, when they could have no intention
to deceive, had awakened doubts in him of Ripperda having reached
Gibraltar. Perhaps he had been overtaken by his enemies; and was now
secretly managing with these adventurous men, to effect his escape
from some second Alcazar in the bosom of the mountains! The minister's
silence to Santa Cruz, or even to the Queen, on such a re-capture,
was no argument against its probability; and impressed with these
apprehensions, Louis hurried onward, impatient to see Martini, and to
learn how he might yet reach his father.

At the mouth of the cavern he stopped. His guides drew close to him.
They saw no sign of intimidation in his face; and the former spokesman
stepping forward, announced to his comrades the arrival of a stranger,
who called himself the son of the Duke de Ripperda. Every man rose
at a moment, and with a murmur, and a clangor of heavy arms against
the rocky floor, that might have appalled more veteran nerves. Louis
comprehended his danger. His eye had ranged at a glance through the
crowd, and he saw no Martini. He recoiled a step, and placing his hand
on his sword, said in a firm voice:--

"Gentlemen! I am here, on the faith of that man. He brought me to meet
Martini d'Urbino, my father's servant; and I demand to see him."

The smuggler put his hand upon the arm of Louis.

"Signor, you have a stout heart. From that alone, I believe you to be
what you say. Enter the cavern, and you will find the man."

The smuggler turned, and said something in an unknown language to his
comrades. Louis regarded him with a dauntless, but stern brow; for
while he spoke, the men drew gradually around, though at some little
distance, muttering to each other, and fixing their eyes on their
prisoner. Such Louis believed himself to be. The only point that was
open for his advance was into the cave. All seemed vacancy there,
excepting the pendent lamp, which shewed the fragments of the yet
unfinished revel.

"Can my father be reduced to league with men like these?"

It was frenzy to suppose it; and if it were not so, Louis himself were
lost. He had gone too far to retreat; and with a step, which announced
the resolution with which he would defend his life, should it be
assailed, he went forward into the den.

The captain of the band followed him. He passed him, and was
immediately obscured in the deeper gloom of the interior rock. Louis
saw no human being in the wide range, though many might be hidden in
the shadowy depths of its farther excavations. He fixed himself with
his back against the side of the cavern; and with his hand on his
sword, stedfastly regarded the spot where the smuggler disappeared.

His comrades remained without, and evidently watched any egress
unsanctioned by their chief.

Louis heard the advance of hasty steps from the interior vaults. He
planted himself more firmly in his position, and half drew his weapon.
The smuggler emerged from the recesses with another person, and in
the instant of his appearance, pointed to Louis, and said to his
companion:--

"Do you know that cavalier?"

The twain were in the deepest shadow of the rock; hence Louis could not
distinguish, otherwise than by the voice, which of the two were his
conductor. But himself being on a spot where the light fell direct on
his face, the immediate response to the demand of the smuggler, was an
amazed cry:--

"It is the Marquis de Montemar!" "'Tis well!" rejoined the outlaw,
"else he must have slept without his ancestors."

The voice of him who had recognised Louis, was indeed Martini's; and
that faithful servant was the next moment at the feet of his master's
son.

The smuggler joined his comrades on the rock; and Louis immediately
enquired the fate of his father. To his astonishment, Martini informed
him that more than two months ago, that very man had conveyed the Duke
to the coast of Barbary.

"Had he been refused admission into Gibraltar?"

"No; he had never sought it."

"What was his object in going to Barbary?"

To this, Martini gave a confused and unsatisfactory reply. All that
Louis could gather from his agitated and sometimes contradictory
accounts, was, that after their escape from the Alcazar, and during
their progress towards the sea, his master never emerged from an
intense reverie, except to give orders; and then he only delivered
his commands and strait was profoundly silent again. It was not until
they reached the borders of the Mediterranean, that the object of his
meditation seemed explained. While Martini was foddering down his
weary mules, Ripperda entered the shed, accompanied by Roderigo the
smuggler. In few words, he declared his intention to embark that night
for Tangier; and asked Martini whether he chose to share his fortunes
in that land, or to return whence he came. Martini swore to live and
die with him; and the next sun rose upon Ripperda in the kingdom of the
Moors.

This intelligence confounded Louis; it was so contrary to his father's
written intention, and so totally inexplicable on any principle of
his former conduct. While Martini gave his hurried narration, he did
it with evident fear of saying too much; and yet he appeared hovering
on the point of saying more. Louis told him, there was something in
his manner that excited his suspicions. He feared he withheld some
communication, which, as the son of the Duke de Ripperda, he ought to
know. Martini's confusion encreased with the earnest remonstrance of
his young master; and, at last he confessed, that the Duke was engaged
in some projects, the consequences of which he dreaded, but he was
bound by oath not to betray.

"His Excellency," continued he, "has laid the same bonds on Rodrigo;
who, with other men of his trade, are sworn to serve him. My present
errand to Spain, was to bring away certain treasures he left at the
Castle de Montemar. They are now on the backs of the mules you saw
feeding without; and, by to-morrow night, they will be in Barbary."

Louis was lost in conjecture. "Are you sure, Martini, my father
received no insulting repulse from Gibraltar?"

"I am sure, he never made any application there."

"It is very extraordinary!--But you dare not satisfy me. I will know it
all from himself; and, whatever may be his reasons, his destiny shall
be mine."

Martini now acknowledged to Louis, that Ripperda's indignation was so
high against him, there could not be a hope of his admitting him to his
presence.

"Every day, my Lord," continued the faithful creature, "he names you
in his general maledictions on the ungrateful world; he names you in
terms, that I have often deprecated from you on my knees; and, as often
he has commanded me from his sight, till I knew how to distinguish
between loyalty and parricide."

"But I do not deserve his curse, Martini," replied Louis, "and I will
appear before him. He shall not want a comforter, and an honourable
confidant, while he has a son. You must engage this Rodrigo, to give me
a passage in his vessel."

Martini went out of the cavern to prevail on the smuggler to this
purpose, and Louis was left to his bewildering thoughts. That he saw
the usually festive spirits of the Italian so completely subdued,
redoubled the uneasiness with which he considered the vow that had been
exacted from him and the smugglers. Louis's open and honourable mind
shrunk from such ill-assorted mystery; till finding some condemnation
of his father in this repugnance, he reproached himself for having
conceived the nameless dread he felt creeping over him. He recalled his
injured parent's undeviating career of public virtue; he dwelt on the
magnanimous features of his character; and could find no argument in
either, to sanction his present inexpressible forebodings.

"Yet why," cried he, "does he take refuge with infidels; why associate
his honourable name with these desperate men?"

After he had settled with Rodrigo the terms of his voyage to the
opposite coast; he and Martini repaired to the rock he had appointed to
Lorenzo for their mutual rendezvous. Lorenzo was sitting by the mules,
anxiously awaiting the appearance of his master, when he descried
him on the heights with his companion. It was now deep twilight; but
the light was sufficient when the latter drew near, for Lorenzo to
recognise his brother; and the lively pleasure of their meeting, was
only checked by recollection of the calamitous situation of their
respective lords.

Lorenzo informed his master, he could not procure a boat to go round to
Gibraltar; the strait being too much infested with Barbary pirates,
for small vessels to put to sea. Martini sighed heavily, at this
information. Louis attributed it, to apprehension for the treasure he
had to convey, and made a remark to that purpose.

"No," replied the Italian, "Rodrigo carries a safe conduct;
nevertheless, I am Catholic enough, to wish every corsair at the bottom
of the sea!"

A few minutes communicated to Lorenzo, that his master's voyage was now
to be to Barbary, where the Duke de Ripperda was already arrived. The
faithful servant regarded all places alike, to which he was to follow
his Lord; and, having received his orders, he went apart with Martini,
to discuss, with freedom, the subjects most interesting to them both.

The night was balmy and serene; and Louis kept his station in the
open air. After their conference, the brothers drew near, and slept
by his side; but he watched and mused, and silently prayed to Him who
was above the stars. The moon arose. As he contemplated that lovely
planet; considering it as walking in beauty and loneliness, like the
youthful saint who had urged him to persist in the virtue that was his
principle, he could, almost, have bowed to the bright similitude. But,
when he recollected that, by the vague light of this very moon, the
secret depredator crept from his covert; and each deed that shuns the
ken of man, steals upon his slumbers, he shuddered; and turning from
its beams,--beheld the long shadow of a figure approaching him. It was
Rodrigo from the beach beneath. He came to say, that his men were on
board, the packages stowed, and all were ready to sail.

In the course of half an hour Louis found himself on board an out-law's
vessel, with the crescent of Mahommed flying from the mast. This, was
the "safe conduct" Martini spoke of; and was sufficient to protect him
from the corsairs. Their light galliots scudded by in every direction,
and hailed the smuggler as he passed; Rodrigo stood on the deck with a
turban on his head, replying, through a trumpet, in the barbarous slang
of rapine.

The dark blue sea, innocent of the guilty keels which shot across
its bosom, heaved its reflecting waves under the brilliant orbs of a
midnight African sky. All was tranquil; all in harmony with the first
fiat of its creator; excepting the breast of rapacious man; excepting
the heart of an anxious son, ruminating on conjectures, hopes, and
fears. He leaned on the railing of the deck, in a more wretched
state of mind, than he could have believed possible to be his, when
approaching the goal of his many prayers: the presence of his father.
There was something within him, that would not be satisfied with
his present companions; with his father having made such men his
confidential agents; and, in the midst of his troubled thoughts, he
often murmured to himself--

"Oh, why did he fly!"

The night continued bright, and the wind fair; and, having smoothly
passed Europa point, the little vessel turned into the strait between
the far-famed pillars of Hercules,--Calpe and Abyla. Louis gazed on
both; on the fortified heights of the one, on the barren cliffs of the
other. He thought on Gerizim and Ebal.--On one, rests the blessing; on
the other, the curse! "Chuse ye, between them!"




CHAP. III.


The next day, being a religious feast of the Moors, it was midnight
before the christian crew thought it safe to draw towards the shore.
They then ran their bark into an obscure creek, about a league from
the town of Tangier. A dull flame, which gleamed on the summit of the
rock, as if feeding on its surface, was the mariner's guide through the
intricate navigation. The cliffs were high and close; therefore all
was black darkness, excepting where this phosphoric beacon opened its
wandering fires.

A dead silence was maintained, during the working of the little ship
into its place of refuge; and, not until its bulging sides grated
against the point of landing, did Louis receive any intimation of
their being near the place of disembarkation. Martini pressed his arm,
and whispered--

"We must now go on shore; but continue silent, till we reach the
Hambra."

Rodrigo and the Italian jumped from the head of the vessel, upon the
land. Louis followed his conductor; leaving Lorenzo in the ship. For
nearly an hour, the cautious tread of their footsteps was all that
disturbed the profound stillness. They passed many low, flat-roofed
dwellings, whose inhabitants were shut in from even the light of the
stars, performing the last rites of their solemn feast. Such gloom was
in memory of the shadows which enveloped their prophet in his flight
from persecution; and to invade it by noise or intrusion, would have
been deemed sacrilege; and the blood of the transgressor must have
expiated his offence.

After their almost unbreathing passage along this populous road, they
struck into an avenue of date trees, and stopped before a building of
more spacious dimensions. Martini turned a key in a small arched door,
and gently opening it, they all passed through a short paved arcade,
into a court open to the sky, and dimly lighted under its pillared
aisles at the sides, with four painted lamps. A fountain in the centre
was discovered by the transient sparkling of its waters as they dashed
into a marble bason below.

Here silence was broken; and Martini told Louis, that although his
father was under that roof, he durst not introduce him immediately to
his presence. In the Duke's present exasperated state of mind, such an
abrupt entrance might destroy at once, every object of the interview;
and therefore he conjured him, to wait until His Excellency were at
least apprised of his arrival.

Louis had no resource but to remain where he was. He had too much
dependance on the honesty and discretion of Martini, to doubt his
prudence in this precaution. If the gloom around him were great, that
in his mind was of a deeper shade. He was alone; for the smuggler had
followed Martini. An hour elapsed in this irksome solitude. He listened
for the sound of a voice, or an approaching step; but the silence
continued unbroken. His suspense became intolerable; composure was no
longer in his power to assume. He paced the mosaic floor, with every
agitating conjecture; envying even the feelings of anticipated murder,
with which he awaited the first mysterious interview in the lonely
chateau of Phaffenberg. At last, the Italian and Rodrigo appeared at
the extremity of the court. The smuggler turned away through a dark
colonnade; and Martini advanced to Louis, who had darted towards him.

"Follow me, Signor; my Lord consents to see you."

It was a cold welcome; but Louis thought not of the words, since the
permission was granted. He hastened through the arcades, to a large
curtained door.--Martini drew it back, and Louis beheld the honoured
object of his long and filial pilgrimage. The Duke was standing with
his back to him, reading a scroll of paper. Nothing that was not purely
the son, was then in his labouring heart; and he was advancing to throw
himself at his father's feet, when Martini spoke:--

"My Lord! The Marquis de Montemar."

Ripperda turned his head.

"Let him wait my leisure," and, looking on the paper again, sternly
resumed his reading.

Louis stood.--The face of deadly paleness, the eye's livid flash, and
the deep, emaciated lines, furrowed with every trace of the burning
volcano within, filled him with a dismay, even more terrible than the
fierce estrangement this reception announced. But it was only for a
moment that his astounded faculties were transfixed by the direful
apprehension. He was his father still; his noble, injured, suffering
father! and, rushing forward, he flung himself on his knees before him,
and covered his face in his robe; for the hand he would have grasped
was withheld.

Ripperda's breast was locked.--

"What is it you require of me?" said he, "The minion of two Queens
must have some reason for bending thus low, to the man the one has
dishonoured, and the other betrayed!"

Louis looked up in that implacable countenance: He attempted to speak,
but no sound obeyed. He struggled for his father's hand, and wrung it
to his heart. Ripperda stood cold and collected.

"What would you yet seek of me? I have no longer fame, nor riches,
nor power to bestow. These were your idols! Deny it not! They were my
own! I found their food ashes. But the draught that turned my blood to
poison, was the desertion of my Son."

"Hear me, my father!" at last burst from the lips of de Montemar, as
he clung around that august, but torpid frame. No warmth glowed there,
but the gloomy flame of vengeance; no responsive throe whispered
there, that sympathy and forgiveness were within. The very stillness
with which he suffered, without returning or reproving this agonized
embrace, smote his son the more severely to the soul. Yet he thought
he saw more resentment, than the object of his lately conceived
apprehension, in the stern calmness of his father; and hoping to
prevail by reason, where reason yet reigned, in a less agitated voice,
he repeated.

"Hear me, and then condemn me! or believe me, and acquit me, before
the tribunal of Heaven and your own justice!"

Ripperda, with the same unmoved air, replied:

"Speak what you have to say; I will attend."

He pointed to a sofa, for Louis to sit. He obeyed; and his father
sat opposite to him, folded in his mantle. His eyes were bent to the
floor, except when he occasionally turned them in deep suspicion
upon the earnest narrator. Not one oral remark escaped him, till the
communication was brought to an end. He then looked up, and slowly
pronounced:

"Tis well; and the tale is marvellously told: But I have no connection
with its truth, or falsehood."

"Yes, my father!" returned Louis, "It contains your justification; the
acquittal of your son; and the atonement of your repentant sovereigns!"

"My justification is here!" exclaimed the Duke, proudly striking his
breast, and starting from his seat. "And for atonement! Heaven and
Earth cannot atone for my injuries. Tell your Queen, that William de
Ripperda was not born to quail to any man; nor, to hold his honours, by
flattery to a woman. I served the country of my ancestors for its own
sake; neither in homage to her, nor to the King. I devoted myself to
the prosperity and peace of the world. But they rejected peace: And,
they shall find a sword! All have spurned me! I am thrust out from
Europe. And, when I have found a land of refuge, they would ensnare
me to return! And, I will return! Return with desolation and death!
For Christendom, ungrateful Christendom, has sinned beyond my wish to
pardon."

"How am I to comprehend you, my father?"

"You cannot comprehend me. I would not be comprehended by a Spaniard!
You were once my son. And, you have satisfied me, you meant to be
loyal to me: But you cannot serve two masters."

"What master would oppose my serving my father? If you mean the King of
Spain, your own inexpugnable honour would not raise an arm against him;
and he will not, cannot, prevent me dedicating my life to you!"

"My honour, Louis! _Christian_ Knights have honour! The King of Spain
has honour; his ministers, and those of Austria have a thousand
honours! But where were they all when my _inexpugnable honour_ was
calumniated and betrayed? Where, when the man they durst not bring to
an open trial, was committed to the dungeons of the Inquisition, to be
silently, and securely, murdered?"

Louis acknowledged the justice of his father's indignation against the
ministry of Spain; yet enforced the Queen's persuasions for his return;
and dwelt on the glorious result of the public trial she had absolutely
promised him; and his own consequent satisfaction in pronouncing a
general forgiveness on the misguided people, who were still the objects
of his paternal love.

Ripperda walked the room during this discourse; and when it ended, gave
no other reply to its arguments, than pronouncing a brief and solemn
curse upon the whole land. Louis shuddered, as he gazed on the working
brow of that still noble countenance; and with a self-control, that
surprised even himself, commenced a new train of persuasions, to induce
his father to resume his first intention of passing over to Gibraltar.
He laid before him the advantages of seeking an asylum in England;
where he might live with honour in the bosom of his family; and under
the protection of a Government constituted to revere his virtues.

"But here," said he, "what can your free spirit expect in a land of
slaves?"

Ripperda drew near him. That mouth, on which the graces once played,
was distorted by a smile of such triumphant malice, that his son
recoiled.

"In the name of God, my father! what is it you intend?"

"I will tell you Louis;" returned he, "when I hear you repeat your oath
to adhere to your father against Earth and Heaven. Grapple with me,
my son, in this overthrow of our oppressors; and the name of Ripperda
shall redeem itself!"

The eyes of Ripperda shot terrific fires as he spoke; and Louis,
direfully convinced of his fears, answered with assumed calmness:--

"All that the laws of Earth and Heaven, and my own devoted heart,
dictate as duty to my father, I am ready to perform. To follow you
whithersoever you go; to abide with you, even in this worse than
wilderness, if it be your decisive will!"

Ripperda walked several times up and down the apartment. Several times
he glanced suspiciously towards his son; and stopped opposite to
him, as if he were going to speak; then turned away, and resumed his
perturbed pace. A consuming impatience inflamed every feature; and,
once or twice, he took out his watch, and looking at it, muttered to
himself.--At last, abruptly drawing near his son, he snatched the cross
of the Amaranth from his breast, and scornfully exclaimed.--

"If you would belong to me, forswear all of which this is the emblem."

Louis was dumb.--The Duke resumed with wild solemnity.

"One night in the Alcazar,--when my gaolers had left me no other light
than my injuries,--I bethought me who raised those walls!--In the black
darkness of my prison, I saw a host,--they who fell in the passes of
Grenada! And from that hour, the soul of Aben Humeya passed into my
breast. Yon is my ensign!" He pointed to a crescent, on a standard in
a far corner of the room. Louis still gazed on him without speaking;
but the apprehension in his mind was in his looks.

"Do not mistake me," rejoined the Duke, "my injuries have not made me
mad; but they have driven me to a desperation that will prove you to
the heart. Are you now willing to go, where I shall go; to lodge, where
I shall lodge? Shall my God, be your God? And my enemies, your enemies?
Or, am I cast out, like Ismael, to find my revenge on them who mock
me--alone?"

Louis had now subdued the effect of his fears, and rallied himself to
argue again with his father, as man with man. He could not penetrate
the whole of the threats he had heard; yet his rapid arguments
embraced every possible project of revenge. The Duke listened to him
with stoical apathy. But when the energetic pleader dwelt on the
heinousness of coalescing with the enemies of the Christian faith, in
any scheme of vengeance against its professors, Ripperda interrupted
him with a withering laugh.

"What, if I make their faith my own?"

"Impossible!" cried Louis, "you whose life has been a transcript of
your faith; noble and true! It is not in you, my father, to desert
a religion whose founder was perfectly holy, just, and merciful; to
embrace the creed of an impostor! One whose life was polluted with
every vice; and whose blasphemous doctrines sanctioned oppression, and
privileged murder! Oh, my father, it is not in you to become the very
thing that excites your vengeance."

As Louis continued a still more earnest appeal to his understanding and
his conscience, Ripperda suddenly stopped before him.

"You may spare your arguments, De Montemar; I know all you would say;
but it is my choice to be a Mussulman."

His son's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth; but he forced himself
to say: "Your choice to abjure the religion you believe? To cast from
you your God, and your redemption?"

"It is my choice to be revenged!" cried the Duke, gloomily striking his
sword; "we will talk of redemption hereafter."

"Oh my father, it may then be too late!"

"My soul on the issue!" returned he, with a second horrible smile; "you
are brave and daring, and will not shrink from the adventure. You will
buckle your life to your father's in the desperate leap!"

He grasped his son's arm as he spoke, and looked in his face with a
fierce resolution, which menaced some terrible judgement on the reply
he seemed to anticipate. A low monotonous cadence of many voices,
chanting a few dismal notes in regular rise and fall, broke the awful
pause. Ripperda dropped the arm he held, and calmly said:

"They come! In another hour, I shall be sealed an enemy of Christendom."

Louis comprehended all that was intended.

"By the Saviour you outrage in the dreadful intent!" cried he, "I
demand of you not to incur the deep perdition! By the honour and renown
you so richly possess, I conjure you not to consign all at once to such
universal infamy! By the memory of my mother, now in the heaven from
which you would seal your everlasting banishment,--I implore you to
remember that you are a Christian! That you are the Duke de Ripperda!
That you are my father."

With the last words, Louis sunk on his knees, and forcibly added: "my
life and your salvation hangs on this dreadful hour!"

All the passions of his nature were now in arms in the breast of
Ripperda. The boiling flood rushed to his brain, and pressed upon the
nerve that shook the seat of reason. He looked askance upon his son
with a horrible expression in his eyes. It spoke of suspicion, of
scorn, even of hate.

"De Montemar!" cried he "what would ye yet with one who reads you as
you are? What dare you expect from a father, who sees the desertion you
meditate? I will not be trifled with; for I cannot be deceived. Be with
me or against me! a Mussulman, or an enemy! For in this hour I forswear
all connection with the Christian world; all honour to the name of----."

But ere he could pronounce the fatal abjuration, an awful cry from his
son arrested the concluding words. It was the cry of a pleading angel,
at the bar of Eternal Judgment. With its piercing, beseeching appeal,
he stretched forth his arms to Heaven, supplicating its mercy to defend
his father from himself. At this juncture, the door opened, and Martini
announced the arrival of the sacred deputation. The Duke snatched his
hand from the grasp of his son; Louis seized his robe.

"Never will I leave you," cried he, "till you consent to quit these
enemies of your honour and of your soul!"

"Release me, on the peril of your life!" returned his father, with
a desperation equal to his own; but with a something added to
it, that made Martini draw a few steps nearer to the defenceless
Marquis.--Ripperda's fingers wandered over the hilt of a poniard that
was in his girdle.--

"Could my blood expiate the offence of Spain, and not pollute my
father's hand," cried Louis, "I would say, take the life you
gave.--Oh, at any sacrifice, but that of soul and spirit, leave this
accursed land!--If your freedom be pledged to these barbarians, give
them my youth and vigour in exchange.--Let _them_ drink my blood.--Let
them, cover me with insults and oppression!--Only, do you fly;--fly,
my father, and save me from veiling my eyes in the dreadful day of
Judgement!"

Ripperda did not answer; for his possessed mind heard not what was
said.--He continued gazing on his son, with a terrible fixture of eye,
while he only appeared to listen; and in the moment the sounds ceased,
he burst into a tremendous laugh; and attempted, by a force, almost
preternatural to break from his clinging arms. But the filial heart
was stronger than the madness of revenge. Louis grasped his knees,
exclaiming, in the agony of his spirit--"Oh, God, be my advocate!"

At that moment a clenched hand fell on his forehead with the weight of
death. Louis felt no more, for the blow was in his soul. His nerveless
fingers relaxed their hold;--he fell prostrate;--and Ripperda rushed
from the apartment.




CHAP. IV.


When Louis awoke to recollection, he found himself lying on a mat, on
a stone floor, and in a dark apartment. A strange mingling of heavy
sounds murmured in his ear, as, with a confused sense of suffering and
of misery, he strove to recall past events. Such shades are of speedy
conjuration. Where he was, he could not guess; but he soon remembered
where he last knew consciousness: he too well remembered the last
scene which had met his eyes. Almost believing himself in some Moorish
dungeon, he turned his languid frame, in the resignation of utter
hopelessness. His hand touched a human face. He raised himself on his
arm, and found some one extended on the bare ground, near him, and, by
the hard breathing, in a profound sleep.

"Some unhappy wretch, like myself!" murmured he, and fell back upon his
bed. Whether he slumbered, or mused, he knew not; but he continued to
lie in a quiet, dreamy consciousness of irremedible misery.

A sound creaked in the darkness. He turned towards it and saw a door
opened at the extremity of the apartment by a shadowy figure, which
put its hand in for something that hung against the wall, and then
withdrew. A faint light glimmered from under the now open portal.
For some minutes, he could discern nothing distinctly; but the light
suddenly became vivid, and he had a clear, though transitory view of
the adjoining chamber. It seemed vaulted; and a number of men and women
were seated on the floor, round a heap of burning logs. Some smoked
segars; others spoke in whispers; some chanted low and dirge-like
tunes; while the rest silently applied to their flaggons, or fed the
fire with broken boughs. A high wind raged without; which, making its
way through the ill-contrived fastenings of this rugged abode, blew the
ashes and live embers over the wild group. Some had dropped asleep, and
lay in various attitudes, with their heads on their knees, or leaning
against the nearest substance for a pillow. The women, whose figures
were huge as their male companions, were apparently more robust, for
they did not seem to need the same restorer of nature. When all the
men were crouched down on their rocky bed, these beldames drew closely
around the fire; and bending over it, as if brooding incantation,
conversed with each other in low, grumbling tones. At last, they,
too, successively dozed over the dying embers, till the whole was
involved in total silence. The fire went perfectly out; and Louis'
over-strained nerves sunk into a kind of night-mare repose. About dawn
he was aroused by a stir in the next chamber. The noise had the same
effect upon his companion, who awoke with a deep sigh. The person rose,
and, leaving the vault, shut the door. All now was darkness; and the
lumbering bustle without, mingling with the voices of men and women,
gradually augmented to uproar; till, sinking by the same gradations,
every sound ceased, and the whole became profoundly still.

It was indifferent to Louis what passed; tumult, or silence; whether
he were still in the world, or committed to a living grave. He was
not himself; for the shock he had received had fevered his brain; and
he lay, as if the horrible past, and the inexplicable present, were
only parts of the same irksome dream. His eyes were closed, in this
carelessness of observation, when a ray gleamed through their lids. He
opened them instinctively, and saw the white light of day streaming
through the open door, and Lorenzo bending over him. His torpid
faculties aroused themselves at sight of the well-known countenance;
and the faithful servant as gladly made a response, which answered
the demand of where they were, though he could hardly speak for joy,
at seeing his master restored from the stupor, which had immediately
followed his recovery from the swoon in which Martini had committed him
to his arms in the felucca.

Lorenzo related, that, without a word of explanation, his brother had
ordered him to accompany the Marquis immediately back to the opposite
coast; and that, though Rodrigo's vessel could not so instantly return,
a comrade's boat was soon obtained, which landed them both at the place
of their former embarkation. The smugglers advised, and assisted him,
to carry his insensible charge up the mountain, to take a safe repose
in the cavern. There, they found their wives waiting to receive them.
But these women seemed to have nothing of the sex but the name. They
saw the pale, and scarcely breathing form of the Marquis de Montemar,
carried by them into the interior den, without a glance of pity. He
was a Grandee! one of those, whose family had held rule in Spain; and,
some day, he might be as ready as any of them, to drag to execution the
very men who now gave him shelter! This passed in the minds of these
women, as they joked on the great ladies who might then be weeping the
unexplained absence of the handsome Cavalier; and they exulted in the
idea, that not one female hand of the disdained gipsey tribe, would
condescend to smooth the pillow, or bestow a look, on the object of so
many courtly sighs.

As Lorenzo had marked these women, and their haughty rejection of their
husbands' orders, to administer to the comfort of their guest; he
feared their more active malice; and was not a little rejoiced when
their whole train parted in the morning on their various trafficks, and
he was left alone to convey his master from the cavern in the best way
he could. Finding him restored to sensibility and speech, he did not
venture to ask him the cause of his so terrible trance; for Martini had
warned him, neither to make such enquiries himself; nor to satisfy the
curiosity of persons in Spain, by recounting any part of the incidents
in the Sierra de Ronda, nor hinting at his transitory visit to the
opposite coast.

Louis listened, with a very few observations, to all that Lorenzo said.
As the fresh and balmy air of the morning breathed into the cavern,
his frame became braced; and, though still bewildered in his thoughts,
he rose; and walking out into the dell before the cave, dispatched his
companion to procure mules, for re-crossing the mountains. The animals
were soon on the rock: and, with an aimless mind, he commenced his
return to Madrid. A film was over every faculty, as he mechanically
pursued his journey. Lorenzo watched anxiously the rayless fixture of
his eye, which turned to no object, nor his ear to any sound, during
their rapid posting through the champaign country. But all his haste
was vain to check the fire that was preying on his master's veins; or
to arrive at Madrid, where alone he could expect relief or comfort.

In the Val de Penas Louis became too ill to proceed; and, happily, the
alarming symptoms seized him in sight of a monastery. Lorenzo, left
him in the carriage, and went forward alone to solicit the hospitality
of the Brotherhood. They were as eager to bestow, as he to ask, the
benevolence required; and Louis soon found assistance under their
charitable roof.

For three long weeks, he lingered between suffering and the grave. His
fever was on the nerves, and attended with delirium, and every other
prognostic of a speedy termination of his days. Lorenzo shared the
constant vigilance of the good Fathers, in watching by his side; and
at the commencement of the fourth week, the delirium left him. His
present recovery to recollection was not like that in the cave, dim and
distressing. He spoke with so much strength of voice, and clearness of
perception, that his affectionate attendant was transported with hope;
but the priest, who considered it as a last gleam from the departing
soul, (which often sheds its brightest beam on the earth it leaves for
ever,) bade the happy Lorenzo wait without for a few minutes, while he
discoursed, as became his faith, with the restored Marquis.

When he found himself obeyed, and that he was alone with his patient,
he cautiously apprised him of his approaching dissolution; and then as
piously exhorted him to dedicate the sane hour which had been granted
to him, in making his peace with God. "I have one act to perform,"
said he, "before I am called into the presence of my only father. Give
me writing materials."

The monk laid paper before him, but held the pen in his own hand.

"Dictate, and I will write, what, I trust will bring peace to your
soul."

"No," replied Louis, "my own hand alone must record what is on my soul.
And no eye, Lorenzo,"--he looked for that faithful servant, and finding
him absent, requested the monk to call him in. "He must be a witness,
with you Father, that the probably altered characters are mine."

Lorenzo was summoned, and the monk briefly told him the cause. He was
transfixed, till the gentle voice of his master addressed him.

"Lorenzo," said he, "your fidelity to me has been more that of a
brother than of a servant. I trust you with the charge of my last
testament, for I know you will execute it, as if my eye were then
looking upon you."

Lorenzo did not speak, but put to his lips the trembling hand that took
the pen from the friar.

Louis passed an hour in writing. Both witnesses sat at a distance;
Lorenzo, with his face bent down on his knees; and the priest,
marvelling within himself, at the firmness with which the dying
Marquis pursued his task. His eyes receded not once from the paper,
nor did his fingers relax, while, with determined truth, he related
all that had passed in the Hambra between him and his father; yet in
the dreadful confession, he pleaded his almost belief, that calamity
had disordered the senses of his unhappy parent. On these grounds, he
implored the Marquis Santa Cruz, (to whom the paper was addressed,)
not only to conceal this tale of shame from every hostile eye; but by
the friendship he once felt for both father and son, and by his vows
of Christian charity, to leave no means unexerted to re-call Ripperda
from his apostacy.

"If I deceive myself," continued this pious son, "in believing the
existence of that mental derangement, which would once have been my
most fearful deprecation, but since this direful crime is now my
fervent hope, many would tell me I must despair of his salvation. My
trust is in an higher judgement. In him who blessed me with such zeal
as your's, to be his minister to my erring parent; in him who promises
pardon to the penitent; and to whom all that seems impossible to man,
is as already done.

"In this faith I shall lay down my head in the grave, with perfect
confidence that a way is open by which the unhappy abjurer of his
Saviour's name, may yet be received to mercy. In the world to come, I
may hope to embrace my father, reconciled to his God and washed from
every worldly stain! Meanwhile, in this my last act, I recommend him
to your sacred exhortations:--To the prayers of my saint-like uncle of
Lindisfarne."

Here Louis paused, and a tear fell upon the paper. It was the first
that had moistened the burning surface of his eye, since the calamity
which had stretched him on that bed of death. It mingled with the ink
in writing the dear and honoured name.--He resumed.

"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, manoeuvred 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.

Isabella read it with indignation. Ripperda's treasures had then
spread the Spanish seas with depredators; his domination had
concentrated the states of Barbary into one interest; his resentment
had turned their whole force against the power of Spain! She had but
one policy; to wrest this mighty Son of Vengeance from his passion and
his influence. And, having determined it as most prudent to conceal
the discovery from the King and his ministers, she gave her present
counsellor _carte blanche_, to reconcile Ripperda on any terms; and,
should his more worthy son be found alive, she commanded that he should
be made the agent with his father.

"But, should he be no more?" inquired the Marquis, with a sigh which
could hardly have been deeper for his own son.

"Then," replied she, "you must chuse another embassador. I will reward
him, according to his success with this formidable renegado." With
this commission, though without a hope of seeing the son of Ripperda
yet an inhabitant of this world, Santa Cruz took the convent in his
way to the plains of Valentia. When he alighted at the gate, the Abbot
met him; and answered to his fearful question, "That the Marquis de
Montemar not merely breathed, but he trusted was far advanced in his
recovery."

From the night in which the dispatch left him, the virulence of the
fever disappeared. He felt and bewailed himself as a man; and the fiend
which despair had locked within his bosom, fled with the genial flood.
He remained in a state of calm that astonished himself; while it amazed
all around, to see one who was a heretic, so evidently comforted by an
influence from on high.

Santa Cruz sent to inform him of his arrival, and was immediately
admitted to his cell. Lorenzo withdrew as the Marquis entered. Louis
was dressed in his usual cloaths, but from present weakness yet lay
on a couch. The window of his cell was open to admit the mountain air,
which blew fresh and cheeringly over his face. That face was not to be
described:--It spoke of heaven, and his whole form harmonized with the
celestial witness.

Santa Cruz stopped and gazed on him; while Louis, raising himself on
his arm, stretched his hand towards him with a smile that made the
veteran's head bow before the youthful saint. He advanced and embraced
him. Louis bent his face upon the Marquis's hand.

"You will live my son!" cried Santa Cruz, in a burst of manly
sensibility; "you will recover your father to his God, and to his
country!"

"I could wish to live for that purpose!" replied Louis, "but be it as
heaven wills. My prayers may be effected without my own agency."

When recovered from his emotion, the Marquis communicated his present
commission; and in recapitulating the tidings from Morocco, the
mantling colour on the hectic cheek of Louis shewed, that he too,
recognised his father in the new Aben Humeya. In narrating the rapid
successes of the apostate Duke, Santa Cruz dwelt on one circumstance,
which contained some antidote to the poison of the rest.

Muley Hamet, with a large army of disaffected Moors, had appeared on
the plain of Marmora, about half a day's journey from the capital
of Morocco. Aben Humeya assembled the household troops; and on the
same day the tidings arrived, marched to oppose him. His forces were
inferior in number to the enemy; but their leader gave them an example
of confidence, telling them they must strictly obey his orders, and on
his head he would assure them victory. Muley Hamet practised the usual
Moorish stratagems, which the discipline of his adversary so completely
baffled, that enraged with disappointment he dared a general
engagement in the very worst position he could have chosen. Aben Humeya
had drawn him into the declivities of the mountains, where the cavalry,
his principal strength, could not act; and sending a detachment to
block up the regress, by occupying the pass of Cedi Cassem, the rebel
Prince suffered a total defeat. Every soul might have been cut off,
but the new Mussulman had not yet forgotten the warfare of Christian
nations. He called to his men to remember that the misguided followers
of Muley Hamet were their brethren; and that after the signal
chastisement they had received, it was the victor's duty to suffer
the escape of the remnant. Aben Humeya pursued the same conciliatory
conduct in taking Tetuan and Arzilla from the power of the rebel; and
an offer of general pardon being spread amongst the refractory Moors,
the troops of Muley Hamet deserted to his adversary, and he fled to
the mountains.

"This consummate policy is the Duke de Ripperda's," said the Marquis;
"and the Duke in his sanest mind."

"I would draw another inference from such policy," rejoined his son,
"that whether his mind be in full health or disordered, this mercy is a
sure pledge, the Christian principle remains in his heart."

"There is no disordered intellect in these plans and executions;"
returned Santa Cruz, "but a stretch of capacity, and an extravagant
exertion of its power, which compels common minds to pause and wonder.
Genius, however, may often be mistaken for madness; for it frequently
acts so entirely under the influence of imagination, as to do things so
utterly irrational, that if it be not the effect of an absolute want
of reason, it is certainly that of a dereliction from reason, and
produces the consequences of madness."

Louis knew to whom this latter remark might have too well applied, and
with stifled emotion, he answered:--

"That conduct then, is most likely to be according to good judgement,
which is actuated by sober experience alone."

"That conduct," replied the Marquis, "which avoids the enthusiasm of
fancy and the passions, as he would the shoals and quicksands of the
sea! But there is something more required than sober experience. A well
regulated mind must sit in judgement upon that experience; and, my dear
de Montemar," continued he, pausing, and impressively pressing his
hand, "wisdom and virtue will be the issue."

Louis returned to the last act of his father upon the plains of
Marmora. It obliterated the phrenzied moment of their parting; and
opening his heart to a dawn of hope, he took the letter of the Queen,
which her own hand had addressed to the banished Ripperda, and putting
it in his bosom, told his veteran friend he was ready once again to
visit the African shores.

This re-animation was not transitory. Santa Cruz was to set off the
following morning towards his army; and having calculated the slower
progress of troops to the coast, and the usual delays in getting on
board the transports, a day was fixed for Louis joining him, without
any dangerous haste, at the place of embarkation.

Youth and inward vigour, with the bracing, life-inspiring air that is
breathed from the lips of a friend, restored Louis to such a strength,
that at the time appointed, he appeared on the quarter-deck of the
_Trinidada_, the vessel that was to bear Santa Cruz to the Mahommedan
shore.

Unconscious of the wound they probed, the officers of the General's
staff discoursed largely on the crusade to which they were going;
and descanted with unrestrained freedom on the Moorish leader. Some
affirmed him to be an Arab; others a brother of the Emperor, who was so
distinguished in their father's life-time, as to awaken the jealousy of
Abdallah; and on his accession, the Prince suddenly disappeared. Rumour
spoke of the bow-string; but hints being also spread, of a perpetual
imprisonment in the seven towers of Mequinez, it was afterwards
supposed that he had purchased liberty and honour by assuming a new
name, and fighting the battles of his brother.

Louis could not bear these guesses; nor the invectives, (to the justice
of which his own heart assented,) in which these young men indulged
against the renegadoes at the court of Abdallah. Sidi Ali, a Sicilian
apostate, and a celebrated engineer, was most especially the object of
their anathemas; as, from his skill, they expected some protraction in
the glory of repelling Aben Humeya from the walls of Ceuta. When these
discussions began, Louis usually retired to a distant corner on the
quarter deck, to commune with his own thoughts; and while his upright
mind armed itself in its own integrity, his body derived its wonted
vigour from the genial breezes of the sea.

On the night of the sixth day after they had set sail from the port of
Carthagena, the little fleet entered the bay of Ceuta; and, on a wave
smooth as glass, the troops stepped into boats which rowed them to the
perpendicular walls of the town. Here all was deep shadow. Louis saw
nothing through the universal blackness. Nor did he note the dreary
splashing of the boats in the fathomless water; nor did he feel the
chilling vapour which arose from its cold surface, withheld from
evaporation by the height and closeness of the outworks. He was in the
first pinnace; and had no thought, nor observation, but for the object
of their landing.

An archway, and a long flight of steps in the rock between two walls,
were the only egress on this side into the fortress. The boats crowded
to the spot, where their crews severally leaped on the narrow platform,
and ascended the stony ladder. A light heart was in every brave
breast; and plumed with anticipated victory, they seemed to fly. Louis
alone, whose whole soul was once as much on the wing for military
atchievements, moved with a slow, but a firm step; for, against whom
was the sword of his first field to be drawn?

On entering the fortress he fully understood how necessary was all this
silence in gaining the shore. Count de Blas the governor, informed
the Marquis Santa Cruz, that the Moors were in great force before the
town. That several skirmishes had taken place between the corps of
observation from the garrison, and the advanced posts of the Moresco
camp. The Spaniards had been beaten in with loss; and in short, so
universal a panic prevailed in the garrison, no confidence could be put
in its steadiness in case of an attack. The consequence was already
seen, in the audacity with which Aben Humeya was opening his trenches;
and until Santa Cruz arrived, De Blas was in nightly dread of an
attempt being made to storm the town. To prevent this, he suggested the
advantage of the new troops surprising the Moors by an immediate sally.

Prior to Aben Humeya having taken up this position, the Count continued
to say, he had reduced the whole of the rebellious Bashas to the
obedience of their Emperor. Their leader Muley Hamet, had extended
his flight from the hilly country, to the deserts of Taffilet; and
Abdallah, that very morning, had sent a deputation of his royal
brothers to invest Aben Humeya, with the dignity of Basha of Tetuan;
and to present him with a new banner, on which was embroidered:--

"_Proceed! to exceed is no longer possible!_"

Santa Cruz replied to the urgency of de Blas for an immediate
attack, that he had orders from his sovereign to act with peculiar
circumspection. He must communicate with the Moorish general; and to
do this with the necessary knowledge, he must have time to make his
military observations, and to estimate their relative strength.

In the course of these investigations, in the prosecution of which
Santa Cruz was always attended by Louis, the group of observation
mounted on a redoubt far to the front in the Spanish lines. The Marquis
contemplated with his glass the order, and scientific precision with
which the enemy's works were advancing. The Count de Blas stood near
him, and expatiated with much heat, on the probable effects of the new
discipline introduced into the Moorish army by its present chief.

"But these European tactics" cried he, "are engrafted on a true
barbarian soil. One flag of truce, that I ventured to dispatch merely
to gain time, was fired on in its return; and in attempting to
make good its retreat, a party of the enemy rushed from behind yon
epaulement to the left, and took the whole troop to a man. One who made
his escape, informed me, the proud Aben Humeya chose to take offence
at some want of official reverence in the Spanish officer's manner of
quitting the camp; and that the moment he was told of it, he ordered
him to be pursued and taken; and at the same time denounced a similar
fate on all who should henceforward presume to bear any Spanish flag
within reach of his lines."

While the Governor was speaking, a squadron of Moors turned that very
side-work, and presented themselves on the plain, glittering in all
the splendid array of the Basha's peculiar suite. In the midst of the
groupe, which immediately parted to short distances, Louis beheld an
august figure. De Blas instantly proclaimed it to be Aben Humeya. In
that clear atmosphere, no glass was necessary to note an object just
without the reach of musquet shot; and to observe this, Louis's whole
soul was in his eye.

At sight of the Basha, the acclamations of the Moors in the trenches
were loud and incessant. He was mounted on a black horse, whose rich
caparisons seemed to vie with the habit of its rider. The dress of
the new Mussulman was loose of blue and gold tissue over a yellow
caftan embroidered with gold. His belt, and the arms which stuck in
it, were studded with jewels; and a splendid cymetar hung at his side.
His turban was crested with a large jewelled crescent and heron plume.
And the bridle in his hand sparkled with brilliant studs; while the
magnificent housings of his horse, almost touched the ground. Aben
Humeya rode forward, and again the air was rent with shouts. He bowed
his head, and at the motion of his hand, the whole was respectfully
silent. A flourish of wind instruments succeeded, and his suite began
to play their evolutions before him, in all the various exercises of
the lance and dart.

Louis could not mistake the demeanor of his father. But all this
supremacy over the rest of mankind in personal dignity and grace,
seemed to his virtuous son, only a garment of mockery to the fallen
spirit within. It was horrible in his eyes, and he turned silently
from the vociferous observations of de Blas.

That same evening Santa Cruz ordered a flag of truce to be in readiness
for the Moorish camp at day-break. At the mention of so dangerous an
expedition, every motion was arrested amongst the class of officers
who were usually selected for that duty. None spoke. But Santa Cruz
neither addressed any, nor looked on any; for the forlorn hope on this
enterprize was already chosen.

When Louis came in the morning for his last orders, he found the
Governor with his General, remonstrating on the madness of exposing so
distinguished a young man as the Marquis de Montemar, in so perilous a
hazard. Santa Cruz repeated to his young friend, all the intimidating
representations of De Blas, who added there was not a man in the
garrison, who did not shrink from being his escort.

Louis bowed gratefully to the implied solicitude of the Count; but
answered the Marquis, by requesting to have the white flag delivered
to him, when he would go alone. To hamper him with cowards, Santa Cruz
thought would only invite danger; and he put the flag into his hand.

Louis left the gates, with no other companion than his courage and
his faith. Santa Cruz's anxious eye watched the desperate adventure.
The works were crowded in every part, to witness his progress and
reception. At a given spot, he halted to unfurl his white banner.
Again he shot forward, waving its staff before him, to be seen by the
Moorish out-posts as he advanced within their fire. A hundred turbans
emerged from the nearest trenches:--while a yell of such horrid import
burst from every mouth, that his horse started back on his haunches,
with a strange noise from its nostrils fully descriptive of surprize
and terror. Nothing, however checked its rider. He struck his spurs
into the animal, and resumed his onward speed at the moment the savage
cries from below were echoed by a thousand voices from the works
above;--a volley of musquetry was discharged, and Louis was lost in
the smoke, from the eyes of them who watched on the walls of Ceuta.
It cleared away; and the resolute bearer of the flag was yet seen
galloping towards the camp. Another volley succeeded, and the plain
was again obscured: vengeance alone occupied the breasts of the men
upon the Spanish lines. Their courage revived with their indignation;
and rushing without command from a salley port, they charged fiercely
towards the point of their revenge. At sight of this sortie, a similar
detachment issued from the gates of the camp. The horse of Louis was
transfixed by two balls; and lay struggling on the ground. He had
extricated himself from the dying animal, and was risen from its side,
just as the salley-port of Ceuta opened to rescue or avenge him. When
on foot, the broken ground in the plain concealed his advance to his
friends until he rejoined them, and mounted a horse presented to him by
his faithful Lorenzo.

This circumstance being discerned by Santa Cruz, who stood on the
redoubt, the sortie was recalled, and Louis, with the troop, re-entered
the garrison.

The implacable fury of this second breach of the received laws of war,
inflamed the Spaniards with the most vehement indignation. There was no
name, opprobrious to a man and a soldier, which they did not lavish on
the fierce Aben Humeya.

Louis withdrew to the quarters of Santa Cruz. His resolution was
taken; and he only awaited his sanction, to put it in execution that
very night. To go by stealth into the Moorish camp, and depend on
providence for conducting him to the presence of his father.

The Marquis would not hear him to an end. He regarded this last act,
of firing upon a single man, as so base a proof of Ripperda's apostacy
from honour as well as from religion, that he no longer retained a hope
of his return to duty:--

"No, de Montemar," said he, "we must now let that alone for ever. You
would only lose yourself, without recovering him."

"I should lose myself indeed," replied he, "were I to abandon the only
purpose for which I came to this country; the only purpose for which,
I believe my life is lengthened. He will not imbrue his hands in the
blood of his own son; and, who in that camp, will dare to touch the
man, of whom he will say--Let his life be protected!"

"This is delusion, de Montemar. He has abandoned his God. He has
trampled on his honour. And, with these facts, there is no reasonable
hope."

"My hope may be beyond reason; but it is not against it," replied
he. "Grant me the means to fulfil my resolution; and, I dare promise
myself, that you will, see me again."

"Never," returned Santa Cruz, "the blood of rashness shall never be on
my head. Leave me now, and we will discourse of more rational projects
to-morrow."

Louis obeyed. But that morrow might never occur to him. When he
withdrew it was to pursue his determination. That night, alone, and
unassisted, to seek the presence of his father.




CHAP. VI.


From his observations in passing the enemy's lines, he thought it
possible to throw himself into one of the trenches nearest their
position; and in the disguise of a Moor, return with the workmen into
the camp.

By means of his devoted Lorenzo, (who would have suffered the rack,
rather than betray the confidence of his master,) he procured the
accoutrements of a Moresco soldier, from a Jewish merchant in Ceuta.
The aspect of the night favoured his project; and he left the Spanish
fortress in company with the latest outpost. The growing shadows gave
him opportunity to glide from its neighbourhood unobserved; and having
his disguise previously hidden amongst the ruins of an old fort
midway between the Moorish and Spanish works, he covered himself with
the Moresco trowsers, haigue and turban; and arming his belt with the
accustomed number of knives and pistols, took his pic-axe in his hand,
and cautiously proceeded along the flank of the Moorish trenches, whose
line he discerned, by a pale and zig-zag gleam along the surface of the
ground. It was too faint to be noticeable at any distance, and arose
from the low lantherns within, by whose glow-worm light, when the sky
was obscured, the yet inexpert engineers performed their work.

When arrived near the verge of the excavations nearest the camp, he
listened breathlessly to the clash of cymbals, which announced an
exchange of workmen. Now was his moment. He slid down the bank into
the vacant fosse, and stood close in its angle, shrouded by complete
darkness. The lamps did not extend beyond the place of immediate
labour. He had hardly taken his station, when an iron gate opened into
the trench, the cymbals ceased, and an advance of numerous feet from
the camp sounded towards him. It was answered by a similar approach
from the lines. He drew himself closer into the angle, as the latter
passed him in enfilade; and observing that each man as he marched by a
particular officer, cried aloud, "Lahilla Lah!" and was then counted
by him, he saw the danger of being the last in the file; and stepping
in between the rapid step of one soldier in turning the angle, and
the halting approach of another, he repeated the expected response,
and moved forward unmolested. He entered the camp without impediment;
and the Moors parting to their different quarters, he turned quickly
in a direction which he thought from the description of the escaped
Spaniard, would bring him to the pavilion of its commander.

Excepting the words he had repeated as the parole of the night, and
of the meaning of which he was entirely ignorant, he knew not a word
of the Moresco tongue. The camp was partially lighted; and near the
Basha's quarters the lamps became thicker, until the platform around
his tent was one blaze of illumination.

Several Moorish officers were walking to and fro, as if waiting for
orders; and the ample circle in which the pavilion stood, was hemmed
round by the body guards of the Basha. These men were Negroes of huge
proportions, and equipped in the most formidable array of Barbaric
arms. They sat on the ground in the Moorish style, with each his hand
on his drawn cymetar.

Louis drew into the comparative obscurity of one of the tented streets
diverging from the platform; and, with a scrutinizing eye, revolved
how he should pass this excluding circle. While he looked from man
to man, the curtained entrance of the pavilion was drawn back by two
slaves, and a blaze of flambeaux issued forth. In the midst of it was a
military figure in a splendid Moorish dress. But it was not his father.

By one act, all the Negroes bent forward, and struck their foreheads
to the ground; even the officers made the same abasement to this
personage; who, graciously bowing his head, passed on, followed by a
procession of flambeaux. But still the light was glaring as noon-day,
around the tent. It was only by stratagem he could enter it, and his
life must be set on the hazard.

After watching nearly an hour, to afford opportunity for some
favourable accident to open him a way, without the desperate expedient
he revolved, he retreated through a cross passage of dark tents, that
led into the great illuminated avenue before the pavilion; and, having
wrapped his mother's picture, which he always wore round his neck, in
a silk handkerchief he had about him, he put it in his bosom, and then
boldly plunging from the darkened street into the full light of the
platform, moved direct to the curtained entrance.

In an instant a host of cymetars were at his breast. But he stood erect
before them all, and exclaiming

"Aben Humeya!"

took the handkerchief from his breast, and held it forth with a
commanding air towards the tent. He had not even repelled the weapons
with his hand, so firm did he stand in apparent inward dignity. It
awed the negroes, who stood for a moment gazing on each other; Louis
profited by their suspended faculties, and was passing on, when one in
the dress of an officer intercepted him. He addressed the intruder in
a barbarous attempt at the Moresco language, but really in a jargon,
comprised of every tongue on the Mediterranean shores; and saluting
Louis by the opprobrious appellation of slave, demanded, with other
viler epithets, how he presumed to violate that sacred threshold.

Louis saw the miserable soul of some base renegado of the Balearic
Isles, in this insolent attack; and answering him at once in Spanish,
warned him in laconic, but haughty language, to beware how he insulted
a man who came in the face of three hundred cymetars, to lay the spoil
of a brave Spaniard at the feet of Aben Humeya.

"Conduct me to his presence;" continued he, "or know, that he who can
speak Spanish like his native tongue, is not less able to prove a
Moorish sword his native weapon!"

The renegado eyed the speaker with a trembling suspicion. His head
might pay the forfeit, should he introduce an improper person into the
pavilion; and should his perverseness exclude one on whom the Basha
conferred confidence, he would incur equal jeopardy. He now wished he
had left the responsibility of this egress to the negroes; but he had
interposed, and must proceed.

"Your name?" said he.

"That the Basha will know when he sees me."

The officer feared to hesitate, and he preceded him to the first range
of the pavilion. Like the outer-court, it was lined with guards. The
renegado in a tone of some respect, told Louis he must stop in this
vestibule until his credentials in the handkerchief were delivered to
Aben Humeya. The alcaide of the guard, who carried it in, returned in a
few minutes with consternation in his countenance; and beckoning Louis
to follow him, passed through several chambers before they arrived at
the sacred inclosure; within whose sacred vestment none durst penetrate
without an especial summons from the Basha. The officer drew aside the
curtain, and pointing in silence to the door, Louis entered alone. The
Basha stood by a Moorish couch, directly under a lamp in the centre of
the place. A table was near him, on which lay a naked cymetar, and an
open casket containing the koran. He had the picture in his hand.

Louis's face was overshadowed by the dark folds of his turban; and as
he did not assume the usual position of all who (less than of equal
rank,) approached the august presence, the Basha fell back a step and
exclaimed!

"Who art thou, that darest so to approach Aben Humeya?"

Louis with clasped hands, bowed his head upon his breast, but could not
immediately answer. It was his Father's voice, and he had not ventured
his life in vain!

"Whence came this Christian spoil?" demanded Ripperda, "was it taken
from the living or the dead?" The voice was firm. But the tension
with which he grasped the picture, was sufficient assurance that an
exerted nerve was necessary to enable him to put the question with the
steadiness of one indifferent to the owner's fate.

"I took it from the living!" replied Louis, "To pass me into the
presence of him who gave me life."

An inarticulate sound burst from the lips of his father; he moved a few
hasty steps towards him; but as suddenly starting back;

"Presumptuous boy!" cried he, "what do you promise yourself by this
temerity? Are you not aware that the act which made me a Mussulman,
separated me from all former relations; and that in Louis de Montemar,
I can see no other than a Spanish spy?"

"No act of man," replied Louis, "can cut asunder the bands of nature;
can separate the unity of Son and Father, in the great objects of time
and eternity: And in that faith, I appear again before you, on a
second mission from your religion and your country."

"This told me a braver story!" returned Ripperda, sternly putting the
picture into the hand of his Son; "But speak your errand, that I may
dismiss the messenger."

Louis bore the taunt without reply; and with brevity, but energetic
persuasion, he repeated to his gloomily listening Father, the new
proposals from the Queen. They assured the banished Duke that the
decree of his exile was not merely recalled, and the King ready to
publicly declare the charges his enemies had alleged against him, to
be false; but His Majesty would grant him a general amnesty for his
present proceedings in Africa; and on his return to Spain, invest him
with a new and extraordinary trust at court, to the confusion of his
rivals, and the assertion of his character in the minds of all men. The
church too, should open its arms to receive him; for Isabella would
obtain an absolution from the Pope for the brief apostacy; while that
dark deed obliterated by penitence, might remain as totally unknown to
the world at large, as his son trusted, it would then be blotted out
from the book of God.

"Louis," replied the Duke, "have you known me so long by the best
proofs of man--his actions! and are yet to be told, that my religion
consists wholly of the prosperity of the country I serve? and that my
country is that which best knows the value of my services?"

"Then," returned his son, not wishing to comprehend the whole of this
speech; "that country is now Spain. Read the letter of Isabella, and
you will find the prayer of the nation in every line. She is, as a
Mother petitioning a beloved Son to spare his Brothers. Oh, my Father;
listen to the native magnanimity of your soul, rather than to this new
and unnatural pride; and resume at once the patriot and the Christian.
None, excepting the King and Queen, and the Marquis Santa Cruz, know
that Aben Humeya and Ripperda are the same; and having been spared that
open stigma, your religion and your country may yet be that of Spain."

Ripperda grasped the still un-read letter of the Queen; "De Montemar!"
said he, "and is it you that can think I would live under shelter of
any shrouded act? No; I have dared to be a Mussulman! To resume the
name of my Moorish ancestors; to tread in the unreceding steps of
Julian and de Valor. What I am, I am; and my banners, here, and in
Spain, shall proclaim to all the world, that Ripperda's injuries are in
the breast of Aben Humeya."

Again Louis urged him to read the last appeal of his former Sovereigns,
contained in the packet he held in his hand; and then trample on his
country and them, if vengeance must yet have place, with such ample
restitution.

"Restitution!" repeated the Duke, and broke the seal. He read the
letter, and threw it from him; but not with the same equanimity with
which he began the contents. In the offered pardon, and the promised
honours, all his imputed transgressions were recapitulated, to enhance
the merit of the amnesty; all the accusations of a vain woman's
jealousy, poured forth in extenuation of her share in his fall; and the
whole was wound up in a passion of reproaches, and entreaties, in which
the chains which had formerly bound him to her feet, were so apparent,
that his incensed spirit rose with every line; and he cast the letter
from him.

Louis trembled at this unexpected issue, from what he had hoped would
have made some softening impression on his Father's implacable revenge;
but with a firm voice, he asked, what was his reply to that petition
from a Queen and a woman?

Ripperda turned on him a penetrating and contemptuous look.

"Have you read that petition?"

"No, my Father; but I know it is to ratify all that I have assured you."

"I know not what it would ratify!" cried the Duke, stung by a sudden
recollection, and snatching up the letter, he tore it in pieces. "It
shall never be witness, that any one dared tamper with my honour; that
he who once commanded nations--But no more. I will answer this letter
to-morrow, on that field; and they who survive, may bear the writing to
their Queen."

"My Father!" exclaimed Louis.

"I have said it, young man," interrupted Ripperda in a voice of
thunder; "go, and tell them so--and it shall be finished."

"No;" returned Louis, "for in that field, you would have to meet your
own people, and your own son! You would drench your hands in the blood
you have so often sworn to cherish; you would give the last blow to the
name and race of Ripperda; and what will be your reward? The fetters of
a barbarian!"

The string had been touched, which vibrated to madness in the brain of
Ripperda. His apprehension became confused, and with terrific solemnity
he approached his son.

"Hitherto," said he, "I have heard you with patience! I read your
Queen's letter with patience; I received her General's flag of truce
with patience. But her letter was an insidious blazonry of all my false
accusers; and he who brought the flag of truce, whispered at my gates,
that Aben Humeya was a Spanish traitor. This is their truth, their
amnesty; this, my sheltered honour! And you appear the minister of such
an embassy! De Montemar," cried he grasping his arm; "are you aware to
what you move me? But I will not reason farther. Tell your Sovereign,
it is my will to be his enemy! That is my final answer."

Ripperda walked haughtily away: but Louis followed him, with all the
energy of a man determined to prevail. His father turned fiercely on
his filial eloquence.

"Silence," cried he, "my whole nature rejects the treacherous
influence. I am not to be betrayed a second time, by the arms which
once deserted me. You would sell me; but I am not to be bought. These
limbs shall never wither in a dungeon, closed by my own son! This head
shall never welter on a scaffold his hands have reared!"

His eye was fixed on the sword on the table. The expression was
portentous; and he moved towards it, muttering to himself the names
of de Paz and Wharton. Louis saw the urging demon; and clasping his
hands, while he tore his gaze from that ever revered face, he threw
himself between his father and the table.

"Parricide," cried Ripperda, "I am not at your mercy;" and with the
word, he made a stroke at the breast of his son. Louis seized the
frantic arm.

"Duke de Ripperda," said he, "I may fall by your slaves; but your own
hand shall not kill your son. If you indeed believe, that he who has
twice hazarded his life to recall you to your honour and your God, can
be leagued with falsehood to betray you, summon your guards to dispatch
me!"

Ripperda glared on him, as he firmly grasped the hand that held the
dagger. Louis's eyes were not less rivetted on those of his father.

"De Montemar," cried he, relaxing his hold on the weapon; "on the
perdition of us both, leave my presence; and see that we never meet
again. Your father is not what he was."

He struck his hand upon his burning forehead; and, trembling from head
to foot, sunk into a seat.

Louis observed him for a few minutes in silence; but his soul was then
prostrate before the only Being who could restore that noble mind; his
heart was at the feet of his father; and, falling on his knees beside
him, he put that now unarmed hand to his lips.

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.

"But there let it cease," said he. "You now owe a duty elsewhere,
and must preserve the loyalty of that name in yourself, which he so
determinately abandons."

"I shall attempt it," replied Louis, as he moved to leave the
apartment. "Allow me to serve in your army as a volunteer, and I will
do my best not to disgrace your confidence."

"De Montemar, I can never doubt _you_."

Louis sighed at the emphasis his veteran friend laid upon the word
you; and, with feelings which only a son in his situation can know, he
replied:--

"When my father has fallen from his proud height of virtue, who dare
think he stands?"

Santa Cruz understood the response; and, with a voice of parental
tenderness, made answer:

"He fell, because his virtue was proud. It is not so with you.
Therefore, let not the lowliness of a wounded spirit, mourning the
transgressions of others, lessen your faith in the power God has given
you to be, what you believed your Father was. Stand erect in your own
virtue, for it is the panoply of heaven; and do not allow infidelity,
even in the shape of a parent, to suppose it can bow a head so armed."

Louis kissed the hand that grasped his, in the zeal of the exhortation;
and without further observation withdrew.

During their conversation, and while the Marquis expressed his
satisfaction at finding that the alleged violation of the first
flag of truce was produced by the outrageous conduct of the Spanish
officer, and not a dishonourable breach of military law on the side
of Ripperda,--he explained to Louis, why the supposition of so base
an act had appeared fuller of despair in his eyes, than even the bold
derelictions of apostacy and treason. To a daring crime of the latter
complexion, a man may be impelled by a sudden passion; and though he
deserve the punishment of his offence, yet remorse may follow the
transgression, and he will as bravely acknowledge the justice of his
sentence, and, to the utmost, make restitution, as he had before
desperately incurred the penalty of the great moral law. But a mean,
over-reaching, treacherous action, proves cowardice of soul; and he
who performs it has never courage to look it in the face; or if it
be pressed upon him, still he crouches under his load of infamy, or
impudently affects ignorance of its existence, while he feels in his
own heart that he has not spirit to retrace his path to reputation by
confession and amendment. Hence, as desertion of honour is the vice of
cowards, it is hopeless in its nature; and society can offer no terms
to him who has so entirely abandoned himself.

Louis had no idea of military glory, when he volunteered his services
to the Spanish arms. His aim was to guard his father's head in the
day of battle; while he hoped to prove to Spain, and to the world,
(should it ever hear of him more,) that he behaved with fidelity to the
country to which that father had constrained him to swear allegiance.
Life's aspect was changed to him. He had hardly entered the morn of
his days; and the clouds were gathered over the opening prospect; at
least, all his dearest objects were snatched from his sight;--the lofty
consciousness of public duties, the race of glory, and the fame of
future ages!--Even at the starting post, he had reached the goal; and
his hardly-risen sun went instant down in darkness.--

"How many before me, and how many that come after me, have destinies
directly the reverse of mine! Nay, their day of brightness is even
lengthened like that of Joshua in the field of Gibeon, till all in
their heart be."

The draught was a bitter one, which Louis found in his cup of trial;
but he was resolved to drink it to the dregs;--"And there," cried he,
"I shall find it has some sweetness."

The observations he could not help making in passing through the
Moorish camp, shewed him the strength of the enemy; and from the
discipline and number of the troops, he did not doubt that the
slender garrison of Ceuta would be lost, should his father determine
on attacking it by storm. The fortifications were in so bad a state,
that Santa Cruz set all hands to work to bring them into order; and,
meanwhile, sent to the lines before San Roque for a reinforcement of
engineers, and as many troops as they could spare.

During these preparations, the Basha was seen visiting his works every
day, surrounded by a guard of horsemen; who, however, in contempt of
the Spaniards, amused themselves in scampering about, throwing the
gerid, and firing at each other in sport, between their own parallels.
It was evident that Ripperda wished to provoke Santa Cruz to a battle,
or to induce him to believe that such was his motive; for he ventured
insulting detachments, even under the fire of the Spanish forts. But
he had another point in view;--to seize the fortified town of Larach.
By retaining possession of that place, the Spaniards might command
the whole of the Atlantic coast of the empire of Morocco. Larach
on the Atlantic, and Ceuta on the Mediterranean, were now all that
remained to Philip in Africa; and the new Aben Humeya was aware, that
while the Moors were making these hostile demonstrations before the
one, the other would consider itself secure; and, therefore, the more
easily fall into his hands. A large body of men were marching from
Mequinez, to complete the army with which he meant to crush the whole
Spanish power, both in Morocco and Algiers; and this reinforcement,
by his orders, was now halted in the vallies of Benzeroel. On such
information, he quitted his camp; and leaving directions with Sidi Ali
how to proceed in his absence, proceeded to the head of this second
army, and to the surprise of Larach.

He was well acquainted with the character of the military governor, Don
Juan d'Orendayn; a vain and ignorant brother of the no less insolent
and vain Count de Paz, his most inveterate enemy at the Spanish court.
But it was not to revenge himself on any individual, that Ripperda
would have moved a single step. It was against the whole Spanish
nation he had sworn vengeance; and high or low, declared enemies, or
professing friends, all were alike to him:--They were Spaniards, and
he drew an unsparing sword.

All the revenge that he took personally on the kinsman of de Paz,
was to make his vanity the cause of his destruction; and sending a
renegade Jew into the town, the pretended deserter informed d'Orendayn,
that Aben Humeya was encamped with a few troops on the banks of the
river on his way to the siege of Ceuta. He added, the fears of these
raw recruits were so great, of Don Juan discovering they were in his
neighbourhood, they had drawn the line of their camp to a fictitious
length, to deceive him with regard to their numbers; and that Aben
Humeya, not being able to place any dependance on these timid men, was
under apprehensions like their own, till he could excite their courage
by mingling them with the veterans before Ceuta. The Jew found himself
believed; and was vehemently seconded by the younger officers in the
garrison, when he advised a sudden sally from Larach, and promised to
Don Juan the glory of making Aben Humeya his prisoner.

Cowardice and ambition contended in the breast of d'Orendayn. The same
day he dispatched a corps of observation, to ascertain the truth of the
deserter; and on its bearing witness that the pavilion of the Basha
stood in the midst of a line of tents, which could not contain more
than four or five hundred men; hesitation was at an end, and the eager
governor gave orders for a sortie that very night; when he hoped to
steal an easy victory.

Ripperda had disposed the strength of his army amongst the numerous
dells and recesses at the foot of the mountains. On one side of his
visible front, was a thick wood; on the other, a small branch of the
river Lecus. His cavalry was posted behind the wood; and his own little
camp, which consisted of six hundred of his best disciplined men,
lay on their arms within their lines. These were nothing more than a
range of hurdles; but so disposed, as to be a sufficient screen for the
assailed to form behind them.

D'Orendayn, believing the whole of the Basha's present force was
contained in that small boundary, came boldly forward with two-thirds
of his own garrison; and with a furious discharge of musquetry, fell
upon the Moorish camp. The night was bright, and seemed to favour the
exploit. After making a shew of some resistance; the attacked gave
ground, and soon after fled towards the mountain. The Spanish commander
blew a summons for the rest of the garrison to join him in the chace;
for he saw that victory over so inconsiderable a body, would yield him
little honour, unless he could secure the person of its formidable
leader. When the pursuers appeared to gain ground upon the fugitives
which surrounded the banner of Aben Humeya; and Orendayn thought he
had already countless rewards in his possession, for this masterly
atchievement; he was advanced into the ambuscade. The Basha, facing
suddenly round, cried aloud:--

"Lahillah Lah, Mahometh ressoul Allah!"

A thousand voices echoed the sound; showers of arrows poured from
the incumbent heights; and, from every opening in the hills, Moorish
infantry rushed upon the astonished victors, while the cavalry from the
wood charged them in the rear.

No Spaniard returned to tell the story. Larach received a Moorish
garrison; and the crescent of Mohammed was flying on its walls, when
a little row-boat, manned by a few Christian merchants who escaped
during the confusion in the town, made the best of its way to reach the
Spanish coast.

The acclamations which followed the return of Aben Humeya to his camp
before Ceuta, were heard in the Spanish fortress; and, soon after,
there was a rumor amongst the Jews in the town, of what had befallen
Larach.

Santa Cruz was confounded when he found the report true. He had
received so insufficient an accession to his force, that it appeared
mere mockery. No artillery was sent, for which he had particularly
dispatched his messenger; and he perceived a spirit of contradiction
to him, in all the orders which the war-minister gave out for the
prosecution of the African campaign. Besides this, the Count de Patinos
came direct from Seville, with a peremptory command from the Queen, for
Santa Cruz to join her there.

An exchange of brides between the royal heirs of Spain and Portugal
was the ostensible reason for the journey of the Court towards the
Spanish frontiers; but the real motive, was a desire of the King's to
view, with his own eyes, the lines he was planning at San Roque, to
shut out the fortress of Gibraltar from all communication with his
people; and to facilitate his operations on that place, in any future
siege. Previous to his visiting this scene of anticipated glory, he
became indisposed, and the court halted at Seville. His illness wore so
dangerous an aspect, Isabella became alarmed; and thought it prudent to
know personally from Santa Cruz, what was likely to be the persistance
of Ripperda, before she should disarm herself, by dispatching those
troops to Africa, which the death of Philip might render necessary to
the maintenance of her son's claims elsewhere.

The small detachment which had been granted, arrived under the command
of Don Joseph de Pinel;--Don Ferdinand d'Osorio was on his staff;
and the young soldier eagerly joined his father, where he longed to
obliterate the memory of his youthful follies, by a conduct worthy
of his hopes. In Lindisfarne, he had regarded the peculiar endowments
of Louis de Montemar with jealousy and dislike, till the ingenuous
character of their possessor compelled him to esteem the object of
his antipathy. But he only envied him, as far as he believed those
admirable qualities had made an impression on the heart his own wished
to attach. When Alice acknowledged her love, this jealousy was no more;
and with it vanished his dislike of her cousin.

During Ferdinand's stay at Val del Uzeda, his mother talked down the
night, in praise of the filial perseverance of the Marquis de Montemar;
in describing his ingenuous and elevated deportment; in imagining
all the various treasures of his yet more elevated mind. Her son
listened with no other feeling than that of emulation, to merit similar
encomiums; and Marcella, answered his enquiries respecting her opinion
of Louis, by a melancholy smile.

"Were I called hence;" said she, "and in my altered state, might chuse
my ministry, I would say, let me be guardian angel to that virtuous
young man!"

"Indeed!" replied Ferdinand, drawing his own inferences from the
innocent reply of his sister. She spoke it from the dictates of a
pure and pious heart; and did not blush when she answered his smiling
remark;--"That she had chosen a work of supererogation; for a virtuous
character needed no ministration: It was sufficient to itself."

"No Ferdinand," returned she, "virtue is not apathy. It feels under
the rack; it bleeds under the axe. But where the weakness of corrupted
nature would shrink and fly, it is steadfast, and combats, or sustains
to the end. Virtue is not an Heathen idol; a block, or a stone. It is a
Christian spirit in a human body; and comfort may wipe the drops from
its suffering brow."

Ferdinand was reproved, and did not venture again to sport with a
sentiment, which suited so well with the vestal state he still hoped
to induce her to make the price of his happiness with Alice. But there
his arguments failed. Marcella recapitulated the simple principles of
religious belief she had imbibed from her Protestant governess; and
shed tears, as she asserted the impossibility of her taking monastic
vows in a church, against the peculiar tenets of which her soul
revolted.

"I could resign my life for you, my dear brother," added she, "but for
nothing this world can produce, dare I sacrifice my conscience."

To providence, then, Ferdinand left his future destiny; and now only
striving to deserve its bounty, he resolved to make Louis de Montemar
the confidant and counsellor of his thoughts. He embraced him on the
African shore, with a grateful acknowledgement of his former generous
interference; and soon convinced Louis, that he held to his heart, the
still faithful lover of his dear Alice.

Before Santa Cruz quitted Ceuta, he held a council, in which he left
positive orders with the Count de Blas, that no sally should be
attempted, until he came back with the men and ammunition which were
necessary to make the first attack the decisive one. An hour passed
in private conference between him and the anxious son of Ripperda.
The Marquis alone, knew that Aben Humeya was other than a Moor; and,
therefore, the Marquis alone knew why the once gay De Montemar was
seldom seen to smile; and why, while he did his military duty with a
precision that neither admitted error, nor relaxation, the glow of
martial enthusiasm was extinguished in his countenance. But the hectic
of fevered diligence still kept its crimson on his cheek and at times
gave a lustre to his eyes of intolerable brightness.

Santa Cruz had hardly set sail, when a spirit, very different from that
of obedience to his commands, manifested itself amongst the heads of
the garrison. The Moors seemed more carelessly disposed in their camp,
revelling and exulting in the easy fall of Larach; and in consequence
of some observations on the unguarded state of their lines, Don Joseph
de Penil proposed attacking the Basha by surprise. The Counts de Blas
and de Patinos warmly assented to the enterprize; and the former
turned to Louis, saying he should lead the volunteers in the sortie.
He thanked the governor for the proposed distinction, but respectfully
reminded him of the Marquis's parting commands. Every lip was now
opened upon the absurdity of Santa Cruz attempting to curb events by
such ill-judged caution; and as de Penil persisted in pressing the
advantage of the present moment, he triumphantly called on Louis to
give the Marquis's reasons for such jealous prevention.

Louis calmly explained the incapability of Ceuta to defend itself,
should the sally be repulsed by the enemy. He gave his reasons for this
opinion, by enumerating all the wants and defects of the garrison; and
ended by repeating the positive charge of the Marquis Santa Cruz, that
no egress should be made from the Spanish lines, until his return with
sufficient means to render defeat almost impossible.

"De Montemar!" exclaimed de Blas, "these considerations are for grey
hairs. If you are ambitious to be a soldier, begin at the right end;
act before you think: and where can an enterprizing spirit have so fair
a field as against these insolent barbarians?"

"Courage," rejoined de Penil, glancing superciliously on Louis, "is an
essential quality in a soldier!"

"So essential," replied Louis, "that he cannot maintain obedience to
his commander without it."

"Some orders are safely obeyed!" said de Patinos with affected
carelessness. "A parade at Vienna, and a sortie from Ceuta are
different things!"

"When disobedience is a proof of courage and good discipline," returned
Louis, "I may have the honour to meet your approbation, Count de
Patinos. Meanwhile, I trust the Count de Blas, who is the governor of
this garrison, and on whose responsibility hangs its fate; I trust,
wherever he may chuse to place me, he will not doubt finding me at my
post."

De Patinos started angrily from his seat.--Louis rose also.

"Gentlemen," cried de Blas, "what is it you mean?"

"To shew I can revenge insult!" cried the haughty Count, touching his
sword, "if it be within the calculation of that philosopher to bid me
draw it." Louis boiled with rising passion; and with a countenance
whose lightning glances could hardly be restrained from giving the
defiance his better principles refused, he sternly answered:--

"Count de Patinos, I do not wear the King's sword, to draw it at the
prompting of every wordy spirit. If I have insulted you unprovoked, I
submit myself to the judgement of all present, and am ready to stand
your fire. But on the reverse, I mean not to assert that courage by a
private duel, which the public service will so soon put to the proof."

De Penil prevented an insolent retort from de Patinos; and de Blas
interfering with a real interest in the reconciliation of the two young
men, the haughty Spaniard grumbled out an enforced apology, and left
the room.

Don Joseph was conscious that he, too, had been guilty of impropriety
towards the Marquis de Montemar; but he was too proud to acknowledge
error to one so much his junior; and saw him retire to his quarters
with an admiration of his superior self command, which he would have
been glad to emulate, but had not generosity enough to praise.

Piqued into obstinacy, he urged de Blas to put the garrison into
immediate preparation for an attack upon the enemy's trenches; and with
the rising sun, the ground before the fortress was filled with Spanish
troops.

Nothing could have been more grateful to the views of Ripperda. He
knew the weakness of his opponent in numbers and artillery; and from a
forward eminence in his lines, with the aid of his glass, he counted
the Spanish columns as they defiled through their gates; and believing
them devoted to his sword, he turned to the Moors, whose thickening
ranks blackened the ground around them; and addressed them in a style
to arouse their fiercest passions. He described their former empire in
Spain; he recapitulated the various acts of injustice which banished
them that kingdom; he exposed the tyrannous animosity of the Spaniards
to the past and present generations of the Moors; and set forth the
shame of permitting so oppressive a race to maintain a foot of land in
Barbary.

The Moors answered his inflaming eloquence as he expected; and with
furious gesticulations and curses which rent the air, they demanded
to be led against their hereditary enemies. He mounted his horse;
and giving his orders of battle into the hands of his two leading
coadjutors, Sidi Ali, and the Hadge Adelmelek, marched out at the head
of his troops into the open field.

The Spaniards were led on, in two wretchedly appointed battalions, by
de Blas, and Don Joseph de Penil. Count de Patinos, in the arrogance
of his assumed contempt of Louis, volunteered his services at the head
of a small detachment of troops, which the governor considered the
_elite_ of his cavalry. De Montemar, and Don Ferdinand commanded the
men who were to carry the trenches.

This first atchievement was speedily done. The workmen fled without
resistance; and even the soldiers in the parallels, when they had
discharged their fire, threw down their arms before the overwhelming
enemy, and begged quarter. But no time was granted to yield, or
to receive mercy. Every avenue from the Moorish camp poured forth
its troops; and at this moment they came rushing on like a storm.
They charged over their vanquished comrades; and over-leaping every
obstacle, fell upon the Spanish advance with a shock that broke its
line. The havock was as great as the surprise; and the way was soon
open to the attack of the second division. It made a halt, and stood
firm. Louis collected the fugitives from the first line, and formed
them behind their comrades, while the battle in front became close and
complex. The Infidels, contrary to their wonted custom, fought hand to
hand; and rallied two or three times, when any extraordinary press of
Spanish force compelled them to recede.

Aben Humeya shewed an eminent example of faith in his new creed. He
appeared to take no care of his person, but rode about under the
heaviest vollies, exhorting, and charging with his men; till at length,
after prodigious efforts, the Spaniards were obliged to give ground.
They retreated; but it was with a backward step; while the Moors,
crowding on them, horse and foot, broke the line in every direction. In
some places, the victors so mingled with the vanquished, that it rather
resembled an affray of single combatants, than a contest of regular
troops. The depth of de Montemar's little phalanx, was insufficient to
sustain the weight of the Basha's charge; it was penetrated and turned;
and in the moment of its defeat, the horse of Don Ferdinand was shot
and fell. A Moor raised his lance to dispatch its rider, when Louis
dashed between his friend and the infidel, and received the weapon on
his face. A random shot killed the lancer, while another gave the just
rescued Ferdinand a less mortal wound.

The Basha, after being twice unhorsed himself, cut off the squadron
under De Patinos; and the confusion among the Spaniards being redoubled
by Count de Blas falling at the same time, the panic-struck infantry
retreated pell mell into their outworks, hardly closing the gates on
the triumphant infidels at their heels. As Don Joseph de Penil galloped
towards the principal entrance, he passed Louis de Montemar, who, black
as a Moor with smoke and toil, stood by a held piece, which he had
brought to that spot, to cover the flight of the Spaniards; and was
firing it on the pursuers, with a quickness and effect, that cleared
the way to a considerable distance.

The enemy halted before this formidable barrier; for Louis's commands
and example soon made it a battery; and as the grape showered from it
on all sides, the fugitive Spaniards entered the fortress in safety.

Aben Humeya drew off his victorious troops; but it was only the recoil
of the tiger, to make his second spring decisive.




CHAP. VIII.


All was dismay within the Spanish lines. The Count de Blas died in the
arms of the men who were bearing him into the castle; and Don Joseph de
Penil was so severely wounded, that he dropped off his horse as soon
as it had cleared the draw-bridge into the fortress. Half the garrison
was slain or missing; and no officers of rank returned alive from the
field, but what were borne in on their cloaks,--sad, mangled victims of
the preceding rashness.

When De Penil's wounds were dressed, and he heard the state of his men,
he was driven to despair. He called for the Marquis de Montemar, as the
only person in whose steadiness to the last, he felt he could place any
confidence. All who approached him came trembling; and, from confusion
of mind, contradicted each other in every account of the garrison,
excepting the one, that its destruction was now inevitable!

When Louis obeyed the General's summons, he corroborated the
observations of De Penil's own senses; and told him that a contagious
fear unmanned every heart; and that the eyes of the soldiers
continually turned towards the sea, with a more evident wish for escape
than resistance. While Don Joseph listened to the consequences of his
own headstrong folly, and saw the bloody evidence of the courage he had
pretended to doubt, on the cheek of the brave narrator, he obeyed the
noble shame which coloured his own; and, having uttered a frank apology
for his former conduct, as frankly asked for his opinion on the present
crisis.

Louis did not hesitate to say, that he believed the Moors could not see
their advantage without attempting to storm the place.

"And they will take it to a certainty," replied De Penil. "In the
present disposition of the men there can be no resistance."

"Without resistance they are lost!" returned Louis. "There are no ships
for flight, and the Moors grant no terms in a surrender."

"Then every man must fight for his life!" cried De Penil. "I will
yet do my duty from this bed; and you, De Montemar, must act from my
authority."

Louis did not now demur. He was ready to do all in his power to stop
the torrent, whose sluice he would have prevented being broken down.
Without losing time in sending for those paralized officers, who
wandered from place to place at their wit's end, De Penil consulted
his young co-adjutor on every resource; and while he marvelled at so
comprehensive a judgment in so inexperienced a soldier, he adopted
so many of his suggestions, that dispositions were soon made for the
defence of Ceuta, of better promise than those which had placed it in
such extremity.

Louis wrote down the necessary arrangement; and when it was finished,
the wounded General was laid on a litter, and carried out along the
ramparts; where, after he had said a few words of encouragement to the
soldiers, Louis read aloud the different orders for the defence of the
garrison.

De Penil was too conscious of the evil his impatience had wrought, not
to do his utmost to prevent yet more disastrous consequences; and,
while he exhorted the men to stand to their guns, and never to leave
their ground but with their lives, he himself took an oath before them
never to surrender. He told them to obey the Marquis de Montemar as his
representative.

"But for his promptitude in mounting the battery which covered our
retreat, and his steadiness in maintaining it," added the General, "we
should not now have Ceuta to defend."

The soldiers knew this as well as their commander, and with a sincere
hurrah of obedience, followed their officers to their respective duties.

Exhausted, and almost fainting, De Penil ordered the litter to his
quarters; but he held himself up with assumed strength, till the walls
of his apartment permitted over-tasked nature to sink under the pain of
his wounds.

Louis's spirit rose with the summons for exertion. His calm
collectiveness in dispensing his commands, and instant apprehension
of what was most proper to be done, from objects of the greatest
importance to the minutest inquiry from the meanest workmen in the
lines, revived courage in the faintest heart, and inspired the brave
with an animation equal to his own. After he had seen every thing
prepared for the anticipated assault, he returned to De Penil, to
inform him of the favourable aspect his commands had produced.
Having found the General in a state of anxiety that looked for such
intelligence to enable him to seek the repose his condition needed, he
closed his communications with assurances of hope; and, leaving him to
rest, proceeded to the quarters of Don Ferdinand.

His wound was deep, but not dangerous; yet the alarm for his life had
been so great, before the extraction of the ball, that one of the
surgeons dispatched a messenger immediately across the strait, with
intelligence to Santa Cruz of the perilous state of his son, and the
jeopardy of the garrison.

When Louis found what had been done, he reprimanded the man for
presuming to send off any account, before the official reports of the
affair could be duly ascertained. The other surgeons assured the young
commander that his friend was not to be despaired of; and, with the
feelings of a brother for the son of the revered Santa Cruz, he entered
his apartment.

"De Montemar," cried Ferdinand, stretching out his hand to him, "dearer
lips than mine must thank you that I live."

Louis smiled as he used to do in his unclouded days of happiness:--"God
is good in yet giving life a value to me, by making me his instrument
to preserve my friend. While I may be such," added he, with a deeper
expression, and pressing Ferdinand's hand between his, "I feel the son
of Ripperda is not completely lost!"

Ferdinand did not understand all the reference of this almost
unconscious apostrophe; but supposing it arose from some free remarks
of the Count de Patinos which might have reached his ear, he replied
with earnestness:--"_Il rit bien, qui rit le dernier!_ The sneers
which De Patinos dared venture against the Duke de Ripperda's escape
from his enemies, and the unsullied honour of De Montemar, were visited
on his head this day. I saw him fly before the negro guards of Aben
Humeya; and I have since been told, that he and his whole squadron
threw down their arms before the barbarian."

"That they may be his prisoners," replied Louis, "is too likely; but
whatever may be the Count de Patinos' ungenerous enmity against men who
never voluntarily gave him offence, I must exonerate him of the charge
of cowardice. I believe him brave; and all I have now to wish is, that
he may be treated according to his merits as a soldier, by the hands
into which he has fallen."

At nine o'clock, Louis went the round of his posts, and found all in
good order. The men were in spirits, though it was easy to discern,
even by the naked eye, that a threatening commotion continued along
the enemy's lines.

By his glass, earlier in the evening, he had observed the approach of
artillery, and some other signs which convinced him of the necessity
of Don Joseph's precaution. For his own part, he never retired under
cover the whole night, but kept his station on the best point of
observation,--a tower at the extremity of the outworks.

About the watch of the night, which is called by the Moors, _Latumar_,
being their fifth hour of prayer, the sky was involved in total
darkness; but the attentive ear of Louis heard a distant murmuring. It
was demonstrative of the approach he expected; and having persons near
him for the purpose, he dispatched them to the lines to order every one
to be prepared.

In less than a quarter of an hour after he had taken his own most
efficient station, the flash of cannon and of musquetry lit the plain
for a moment, like the splendour of day; and, in the next, the roaring
of the guns, and the smoke of the explosion, rocked the fortress to its
foundation, and involved the whole atmosphere in sulphureous clouds.
The ordnance on the walls of Ceuta were not silent; and the mutual
bombardment in the intermitting darkness, was rendered more terrific
by the savage cries of the besiegers mingling their horrid war-whoop
with the hissing of the musquetry, and the tremendous thunders of the
cannonade.

Where his father was in the midst of this dreadful contest, more
than once shot in direful question across the mind of Louis; but he
dismissed the paralyzing thought. He was there to defend the cause of
his country and the faith of his fathers; and he must not allow the
yearnings of his heart to unman his fidelity.

He flew from the bastion on which he stood, at the moment he heard a
cry of triumph from the scene below. In defiance of shells and raking
fires, these desperate barbarians had rushed on, and pointed their
guns till a breach was made. Louis ordered a rampart to be immediately
raised on the ruins, but the gabions were hardly rolled forward, and
the cannon planted, when a tumbrel blew up, and rendered the egress
wider and more accessible than before. The stone battlements shook
under his feet like an earthquake, while the fragments from the torn
rampart, the smoke, and the scorching powder, covered him with viewless
horror. There was not the pause of a moment between the explosion, the
dispersion of the smoke, and the most dreadful conflict of the day.

Aben Humeya had prepared for an escalade; and the very band which
planted the crescent on the towers of Larach, was the first who scaled
the walls of Ceuta. The contest at the breach was as sanguinary as it
was decisive. The Moors were twice repulsed with terrible slaughter;
and the more terrible the second time, as it was quickly known, by
the intrepid desperation of the assailants, that they were led on by
the Basha himself. Louis's unreceding arm had tumbled the leader of
the first division from his footing on the wall; and at his fall his
followers had given ground. On the second assault, he was contending
with the invincible devotedness of a man who knew that spot was the key
of the fortress, when his father's voice assailed his ear. A flash of
musketry shewed the jewelled chelengk in his turban, as he mounted the
farther ridge of the platform, slippery with blood, and called on his
men to support him. In another moment, two Biscayan grenadiers held
the Basha between their weapons and the pinnacle of the battlement.
A choice of death seemed the only alternative,--their swords, or
precipitation over the precipice. The Moors who pressed forward, were
cut to pieces by the Spaniards on the breach; and Louis saw nothing but
destruction to his father, when rushing towards the spot, in the moment
Ripperda's weapon shivered against those of his enemies, he threw
himself, sword in hand, between the Biscayans and their prey, franticly
exclaiming:

"The Basha is the governor's prisoner." But the strokes which were
levelled at Ripperda's breast were sheathed in his son's. Before the
Spaniards could check their arms, he was cut through the shoulder and
stabbed in his side; but the men recoiled on finding they had wounded
their leader; and in the instant, Sidi Ali mounting the height with a
fresh horde of triumphant Moors, they surrounded Aben Humeya, believing
the day won. But as Ali's hand planted the Ottoman standard amidst the
still grappling of foe to foe, and the anathemas of the Christian
against the ferocious curses of the Moor, the clouds of smoke rolled
away from the eastern point of the rampart, and the golden head of the
sun peered from the horizon. Its first ray shot direct upon the radiant
crest of Aben Humeya, and a rifle took aim. The ball struck; and, in
spite of a momentary exertion in its victim to spring forward, he
staggered and fell into the arms of his followers.

A woeful yell announced to the legions below, that some direful
disaster had happened. The cry was echoed from rank to rank with
shrieks and howlings; and a single blast of a trumpet immediately
succeeded. The breach was abandoned, as if by enchantment. The firing
sunk at once into a dead calm; and the flight of the Moors through the
yet hovering smoke, sounded in the darkness like the wings of many
birds brushing the sands before the sweep of some coming storm.




CHAP. IX.


The Queen's cabinet at Seville was employed on many projects besides
that of sealing the union between Portugal and Spain. The venerable
Grimaldo was just dead; and the affairs of state falling entirely into
the management of the Marquis de Castellor and the Count de Paz, she
affected a warm interest in the former, though she detested him in her
heart, not only as the most successful rival of her regretted Ripperda,
but because his talents were equal to his ambition. And what was more
provoking to a despotic woman, he made her feel that he could maintain
his ground by the same surreptitious art he had obtained it.

The Count de Paz was a man of a different complexion. Covetousness, and
an abject dependent on individual favour, tethered his vain-glorious
spirit to a boundary he panted to overleap, but everlastingly found it
a limit he could not pass. This man, Isabella used as her instrument,
and by his connivance, admitted a third person to their private
councils, who commanded him with the invincible power of a superior
demon.

In obedience to the Queen, and this her secret counsellor, he was to
influence the Marquis de Castellor to extort an act of aggression from
the French arms against the German Emperor.

Since the public betrothment of Maria Theresa to the Prince of
Lorraine, Isabella had become reconciled to Louis the Fifteenth; and
she now wanted to attack the grasping power of the rival Empire, by a
concerted act of open hostility. France was to invade Austria on the
side of Germany; while Spain, in consequence of the death of the Duke
of Parma, should resist the pretensions of the Emperor to that dutchy;
and, in support of the rights of Prince Carlos, (the late Duke's
kinsman, and Isabella's son,) overrun that part of Italy with Spanish
troops.

Her secret counsellor had already moved the cardinal minister of the
French King to thwart the establishment of the pragmatic sanction; and
through the Queen of Spain and De Paz, he had drawn from the treasury
of Philip a large subsidy to support the pretensions of Bavaria.

On the open rupture between Isabella and the Empress, the former was
not long at a loss how to revenge herself on the wide ambition of her
rival. Her midnight familiar whispered the means. He told her that
Gibraltar was not more the fortress of England than of Austria. Whoever
possessed that rock, commanded the Mediterranean, and bound all on its
banks to his feet. The interest of Austria and the House of Brunswick
were now the same. He therefore exhorted her to categorically demand
Gibraltar of the King of England; and to make her husband and his
council, see the wisdom of considering him the King of England who
would restore that gem to the Spanish crown.

One of the last acts of George the First was to reject this demand with
a positive refusal; and the following evening saw a tall, dark man,
of a noble mien, pass into the private cabinet of the King of Spain.
They were alone together for some time; and then the Queen and the
two ministers of state being introduced, a paper was signed in their
presence by Philip and the stranger, and the royal seals of Spain and
of Great Britain solemnly affixed to the deed.

Santa Cruz met this personage as he withdrew through the vestibule of
the King's apartment. He knew him, and stood with his hat in his hand
till he passed.

"Do not repeat what you have seen," whispered Isabella, who found the
Marquis gazing after him; "but now you read my riddle. A few months
may see you governor of Gibraltar!"

"The trenches of San Roque must first be opened in England!" replied
he, answering her gay smile with unusual gravity.

"No," was her reply; "there we spring a mine; and the best engineer in
Christendom has his hand on the match."

Santa Cruz understood enough of her meaning, not to make a second
observation in so public a passage; and bowing to her beckoning finger,
he followed her into her apartment.

He held in his hand the first official dispatches from Ceuta. The last
had not arrived. But the fugitive merchants from Larach were then in
the palace, with their calamitous account of the fall of that fortress.

The Queen was enraged at these determined acts of hostility in the man
to whom she had condescended to humble herself as a suppliant; and
vehemently arraigning the insolence that durst disdain her returning
favour, she preceded Santa Cruz to the chamber of her royal husband.

On the King's being told the fate of Larach; and learning, by the
discomfiture of Don Joseph de Penil, how nearly Ceuta had shared the
same disaster, he issued his orders that the troops just called off
from the lines of San Roque, should be employed without delay in a
final vindication of the Christian name in the plains of Barbary.

These forces had been intended by Isabella and her secret counsellor,
to make a descent on the British shore; and there, as Santa Cruz had
guessed, assert the rights of him who had purchased the support of
Philip by a written pledge for the restitution of Gibraltar. But at
this moment resentment obliterated every promise; and, in the rage of
revenge against the man who had disdained her, more as a woman than
a queen, she at once announced to her husband, that it was his own
rebellious subject, the Duke de Ripperda, who, under the assumed name
of Aben Humeya, but as a real apostate and a traitor, waged war in
Africa against his King and his God.

Philip's amazement was creditable to his heart; and, when
unquestionably convinced, his indignation against the Duke's irreligion
superseded the expected resentment for his rebellion. He summoned his
council; and in full assembly of the ministers and grandees, degraded
the Duke de Ripperda from all his honours, hereditary and by creation;
confiscated his estates; and ordered the arms of his family to be
obliterated from the Spanish college of arms.

With the feelings of an ancient Spanish nobleman, Santa Cruz saw the
rapidity of this act of disgrace. Not in consideration of the degraded
Duke; for in becoming an infidel, he had sunk himself below the
power of man to cast him lower; but compassion for his blameless and
exemplary son, filled the heart of Santa Cruz with honourable sympathy.

The Queen turned on him at the moment, and observing the expression of
his countenance, said with a taunting surprise;--

"Marquis, you pity this renegade!"

"Madam," replied he, "I respect the Marquis de Montemar."

Isabella drew towards the King.

"Your Majesty will grant an exception in behalf of that young man? He
covered the retreat of de Penil into Ceuta, and merits some exemption
from the universal stigma on his father."

"We may consider that hereafter," replied the King, "meanwhile let the
edict be published."

The messenger from the surgeon at Ceuta, who dispatched him during the
panic immediately succeeding the return of the unfortunate sortie,
went direct to the Marquis Santa Cruz's house in Seville. The Marquis
was from home, but the man delivered his credentials to the servants;
and with the eagerness of a first bringer of news, gave an exaggerated
account of the defeat of Don Joseph, the death of de Blas, and the
wounded state of Don Ferdinand d'Osorio. He closed his report of the
latter, by saying, he was rescued by the intrepid interference of the
Marquis de Montemar, from sharing the fate of the governor; but as the
Moorish sabres were generally venomed, little hope could be cherished
of his ultimate recovery.

On Santa Cruz's return from the palace, he found his wife and daughter
in speechless agony, listening to this narrative of despair. He sent
the man from the room; and by reading the dispatch which the official
messenger had brought, he succeeded in convincing them that the Moors
did not poison their weapons, and that the life of his son was in no
present danger. The Marchioness however, insisted on accompanying her
husband to Ceuta; and Marcella, in a passion of tears, implored her
father to permit her to be her mother's attendant.

Dreading that despairing love had precipitated the vehement nature of
her brother, upon the swords of his enemies, Marcella now reproached
herself for having so decisively, and therefore she thought cruelly,
rejected his suit. In the paroxysm of her grief and her remorse, she
threw herself at her father's feet; and to his astonishment, informed
him of Ferdinand's love for the cousin of the Marquis de Montemar;
declaring at the same time, her own resolution no longer to oppose his
wishes of her passing her life a professed nun; provided her vows might
be simply confined to celibacy, and a secluded state; and Ferdinand be
allowed to marry the English lady. The Marquis was confounded, and
looked at his wife.

"It is too true;" was her reply to his enquiring eyes; "Ferdinand loves
Alice Coningsby; and my invaluable child would make herself the price
of her brothers happiness."

"Marcella," replied Santa Cruz, turning with solemnity to his daughter;
"this is not what I expected from you. You dishonour your father and
your brother, by your petition. You may accompany your mother to his
sick couch; and for the rest, should he recover, I hope he will find a
fitter oblation to his blind passions, than a sister's and a parent's
conscience."

Marcella rose humbled from her knees; and in speechless sorrow left the
apartment. The Marquis looked after her and sighed; and the Marchioness
taking his hand, pressed it to her lips, wet with her drowning tears,
and exclaimed;--"Better that we had never met, than that the purest
offspring of our heaven-sanctified union, should be consigned to a
living tomb! Oh, Santa Cruz, why is she to be our victim!"




CHAP. X.


Santa Cruz did not wait for the tedious embarkation of the troops,
now under orders for Africa; but set forward immediately, accompanied
by his wife and daughter; who both assumed the privileged habits of
_Sisters of Mercy_, in this their pilgrimage to a land of war and
suffering.

When he arrived at Ceuta, he was ignorant of the attempt at storming
the place. The courier with that intelligence, had been taken by an
Algerine row-boat, and carried into Oran.

By this capture, Ripperda became acquainted with all that had passed
in the rescued fortress; for the messenger was sent in irons to him:
and the dastardly communicativeness of the man was too clear an
interpreter of the brief account in the dispatches.

The Basha's wounds being aslant, and in the muscles of his breast, were
slight and easy of cure; but that on his mind was not to be healed,
when on awaking from his swoon, he found himself thrown across a camel,
and in full retreat from the fortress he believed in his hands. He was
no sooner within his own entrenchments, than both officers and men felt
the weight of his disappointment. He summoned their several commanders
into his pavilion, and accused them of cowardice, for having made so
unnecessary, and therefore shameful a flight.

Adelmelek pleaded two reasons for this conduct. Their Basha's supposed
mortal wound; and its befalling him in the moment of sun-rise, seemed
so signal a judgement on the Moors for their breach of the prophet's
ordinance, in pursuing the warfare into the sabbath morn, that with
one consent they made the only expiation in their power, by abandoning
the scene of their impiety.

Enraged at the subtlety of this apology, in which Ripperda saw that the
jealousy of the Hadge was at the bottom of this retreat, he turned on
him with derision, and bade him take that excuse to the Emperor, and
see whether he most respected the enlargement of his empire, or the
superstition of a coward.

"Aben Humeya," replied the Hadge, regarding him with equal scorn; "If
I am to be your messenger, one truth at least you shall learn of me
before I set out on my journey! It is impossible for a bad Christian to
become a good Mussulman. Devout men are no changelings. He has little
of the spirit of religion, who finds an insurmountable stumbling-block
in any dispute about the letter; and in my opinion, the man who more
than once alters his faith, may shew himself a consummate hypocrite,
but he persuades no one to doubt the nothingness of his religion."

"Your head, proud bigot, shall answer for this insult!" exclaimed
Ripperda, starting from the cushion on which he lay.

"The event of this siege," replied the Hadge, "will determine the fate
of yours!" and with a threatening countenance, he left the apartment.

Nothing awed, by what he called this insolence in a man whose talents
he despised, Ripperda was the more incited to shew his contempt of
superstition; and the moment he withdrew, his reproaches to the
officers were augmented in severity and reproof. He punished the
soldiers in a more exemplary way; and published a proclamation,
declaring that he would put to death any officer, let his rank be what
it would, who should henceforth presume at any time to disobey his
orders, or to desert his post on any pretence whatever. He finished by
pronouncing himself, as the leader of the Mohammedan armies in Barbary,
the best interpreter of the prophet's laws; and that while he bore the
standard of Mecca, the sabbaths of Jews, Mussulmen, or Christians,
should be alike free to the progress of his arms.

The rigor of these threats, and this last assertion, so contrary to the
customs of their faith, filled the Moors with terror and amazement: but
the full effects of the manifesto were to be seen hereafter.

While these punishments and intimidations were going on, the courier
taken at Oran, was brought to the camp before Ceuta. The Basha was
now convalescent; and while the reading of the dispatches inspired
his coadjutor Sidi Ali, with renewed confidence in the reduction of
the fortress, it doubly exasperated the passions of Ripperda, when he
gathered from the report the dangerous state of his son.

The courier was commanded into his presence; and on examining him it
was found that three parts of the garrison had fallen in the sortie and
the defence of the town; that the Count de Blas was dead of his wounds;
the commander, de Penil, incapable of service; and that the young
Marquis de Montemar, whose gallant exertions filled so great a part in
the dispatches, was in such extremity when the messenger came off, that
it was impossible he could now be alive.

Ripperda was no stranger to the voice that rushed between him and his
assailants in the breach; but it passed by him as the wind. Vengeance
was then all that possessed his soul! But now that voice was hushed for
ever. In his first field his son had perished,--and perished against
whom?

He sprang on his feet as the horrible images pressed upon his brain.
Regardless of who were present, he snatched up his sword:--

"I am alone!" cried he, "the last! the last! But I will yet uproot
thee, murderous Spain, that dost thus riot in my vitals!"

The prisoner and the attendants all fled from before the terrible
enunciation of his eyes. Sidi Ali alone had courage to remain and seize
the aimless weapon.

"Aben Humeya!" said he, "what unmans you thus, before the eyes of
slaves?"

"Were I less a man," cried Ripperda, turning his burning eye-balls upon
him; "I could bear it. But now the curse has found me!"




CHAP. XI.


When Santa Cruz landed at Ceuta, he proceeded direct to the quarters
of Don Joseph de Penil, and was told there of the attempt to storm the
fortress, and its miraculous defence by the inexperienced but intrepid
son of Ripperda. Don Joseph's wounds were in a mending state; and from
him he learnt, that his son was also on the recovery; but less hopes
durst be encouraged for the Marquis de Montemar.

"The worst wound is in his heart!" remarked Santa Cruz. For it could
no longer be disguised from de Penil and the whole garrison, that Aben
Humeya, the direful cause of all this bloodshed, was, though now an
apostate and a rebel, once the great Duke de Ripperda, the universally
honoured father of this noble young man!

His public attainder, and disgraced name at Seville, had made the
circumstance known to all there; and the new army spread it at once
through the lines of Ceuta.

But there was a kind hand which warded off a blow which might have been
fatal to his blameless son. Don Ferdinand and Louis de Montemar lay in
their wounds under the same roof; and by the same gentle ministry they
were attended.

The Marchioness and her daughter found no difference in their hearts
between the sufferers; for if the one had the claims of a brother and
a son upon their tenderness, the other had purchased the life of that
dear relative by the exposure of his own; and the bonds of gratitude
were not less sacred than those of kindred.

Marcella sought to cheer her brother, by assuring him that her
prejudices against a monastic life should no longer stand between him
and his happiness, if that compliance with her father's wishes could
obtain his consent to Ferdinand's union with the cousin of his friend.
But she did not withhold from her brother, the Marquis's remark on the
sacrifice she offered to make in his behalf.

"However," continued she, "our aunt, the abbess of the Ursalines,
is too charitable to force my conscience to more than the vow and
the seclusion; and I trust that Heaven will not see any crime in a
Protestant nun, worshipping in spirit and in truth, by the side of
sisters from whom the cloud of error has not yet been raised!"

Ferdinand gazed upon his sister while she spoke. Was the fabled
Iphigenia of Tauris half so fair, or the virgin daughter of Jephthah
so full of youthful loveliness, as she who now talked, with such sweet
smiles, of immolating herself for him? She was indeed the victim, clad
in the lilly and the rose; and the fragrance of the flowers, and the
morning dew of their leaves, breathed and sparkled from her lips, as
she pursued her disinterested theme. Bodily suffering, and hours of
solitary reflection, had opened to Ferdinand a clear view of his former
injustice in seeking happiness at the expence of his sister's liberty;
and, abhorring such utter selfishness, he was ashamed to acknowledge
its late power over him, even by disavowing its continuance; and with a
deep blush, and deeper sigh, he pressed her hand without a word.

But in Marcella's separated heart, the vow of abjuration from the
world was already registered. She had now but one duty;--to wait with
her lamp trimmed, while she ministered to all who needed her deeds of
charity; and, as a _Sister of Mercy_, whose garb she wore, she daily
attended her mother to the couch of the preserver of her brother.

The Marchioness's eager disposition was always too hasty in imparting
the evil as well as the good; and, therefore, her more considerate
daughter implored her, and every body who entered the room of the
Marquis de Montemar, not to breathe a word of the sentence which Philip
had passed upon the name of his father. From an instinct in her own
bosom, she knew that injuries are easier to be borne than disgrace;
and she guarded every approach to his ear with the watchfulness of an
attendant spirit.

As her own hand frequently administered the cordials to the
silently-suffering patient, his eyes thanked her, though his lips
seldom moved. His wounds were numerous and excruciating; and, from the
opium his surgeons mixed with every potion, he was almost always in a
seeming stupor. But neither his mental perceptions, nor the annotations
of his heart shared the lulling faculty. His shrouded vision discerned
the solicitude that hovered over him. He heard the tender voice that
gave directions for his comfort; he felt the soft touch of the hand
that smoothed his pillow; and his own spirit mingled in the prayer
which the holy accents of Marcella murmured over his apparently
unobserving form, when she gave place to the persons whose medical
balsams were less healing than the balm of her presence alone.

"It is the presence of virtue!" said he to himself, "and that is the
ministering angel of heaven."

Lorenzo had shared his master's dangers and his wounds, as he had
shared his sorrows and his prison. He had followed him from rampart to
rampart, stood by him on the breach; and sunk under the same sweep of
balls which had levelled both to the earth. As soon as he was able to
leave his chamber, he prevailed on his attendants to take him to that
of his master; for he had been told of the news which had astonished
the garrison;--that the exiled Ripperda was the man, who, under a
Moorish name, now made Spain tremble; and that the impotent revenge
of the Spanish court was to deprive him of a title he had already
abandoned.

It was during the absence of the Marchioness and Marcella at matin
prayers, that Lorenzo was borne to Louis's apartment. Ignorant that any
thing which the whole garrison knew, could have been withheld from him
who had most concern in it, Lorenzo, after his first felicitations on
finding his master declared out of danger, began to accuse the Spanish
government for not sparing the honours of Ripperda to the meritorious
son, though it had found it necessary to withdraw them from the
rebellion of the father. Louis started.--

"Explain yourself, Lorenzo."

Lorenzo was seized with a trembling that almost amounted to fainting,
when he found that he had intimated what his master's friends had
deemed it prudent to conceal. Louis regarded him with grateful pity,
while he armed himself to hear whatever was then to be told.

"Do not hesitate to speak all you know," continued he; "I have suffered
too much to shrink now. My heart has armour, Lorenzo, that the world
guesses not."

Lorenzo burst into tears; but he instantly told him all. Louis pressed
his hand; and, bidding him return to his room and take care of himself;
the faithful creature, with a full heart, permitted the servants to
carry him from the apartment; and when the door was closed on every
body, Louis laid himself back upon his couch. That was his hour of
agony; all that was yet within him of the world, mingled with the pang
of filial anguish, and agitated his spirit even unto death.

Ferdinand came into the room, leaning on his sister; and taking his
seat by the side of his friend's bed, gently touched him:--"Do you
sleep, De Montemar?" said he. "Here is a fresh northern breeze in this
sultry climate! Open your eyes and receive the genial visitant!"

Louis did not open his eyes, but he sighed heavily, and half muttered
in a smothered voice: "When shall I meet a genial visitant again! Oh,
Ferdinand," added he, turning his face upon the hand of his friend,
"better had it been for me, had I never been born!"

Marcella was retiring at the first exclamation; but, at the second, she
paused and drew near.

"De Montemar," said Ferdinand, "what can prompt you who are so
universally honoured, to such a sentiment?"

"My father's universal infamy," replied Louis. "He is now judged before
men and angels; and where shall I hide my head!"

"In the bosom of him who pierces the heart to purify it!" replied
Marcella, as she sunk on her knees beside him. "He only who wilfully
offends that gracious Being, may cry: _Better for me had I never been
born!_ If God have already judged your erring father before men and
angels, and given that once illustrious name to universal infamy,
receive that as a mercy; as a punishment here, that it may be remitted
hereafter."

Louis looked up from his thorny pillow. He took her hand, and pressed
it with grateful fervour to his lips.--

"You, you, holy Marcella!" cried he, "are the genial visitant I saw
not,--are the messenger from heaven that speaks peace to my soul! Pray
for me I beseech you; but, above all, pray for my misguided father. May
he be redeemed; and for disgrace,--trampling, overwhelming disgrace,
let it come!"

The speech was begun to her, but ended in an address to heaven, without
farther consciousness of who were present.

Ferdinand and his sister comprehended that some person had betrayed to
him the secret they had so carefully concealed; and both apprehended
the effects of so sudden a blow upon a mind whose keen sense of honour
seemed one with his being.

When the Marquis Santa Cruz learnt what had passed, he went to the
couch of his young friend; and dismissing every person, discoursed with
him alone, for more than an hour. The Marchioness met him in the room
of her son, and with maternal anxiety, enquired the result of his visit.

"I found him," replied Santa Cruz, "in a silence, which he had never
broken since my son and daughter left him; but when I spoke to him, he
answered me firmly. And then I discovered that it was not so much the
publication of his father's dishonour, which had so affected him, as
the conviction that such public degradation, by still farther incensing
the Duke, was the seal of his estrangement from his religion and his
country." "He is now an outcast!" cried he, "and driven to despair, he
will believe he is banished from the face of heaven and the Christian
world for ever!"

"Oh, my father," cried Marcella, "is there not one who teaches us where
all comfort _is written_? And in those sacred pages we are told, that
he who was cast out into the desert for mocking the promise of his God,
yet found an angel in the wilderness to save him from perishing."

"Louis de Montemar is no stranger to the volume which is your study,
my child;" gently answered her father; "and I soon learnt, that though
human nature shrunk under the stroke, there was a spirit within him
that sustained and cheered him with a better hope."

"My father," said Marcella, laying her trembling hand on the arm of
the Marquis, "can his faith be wrong, who is so supported?" Santa
Cruz shook off that appealing touch. A deep thoughtfulness passed over
his brow. It was troubled, but it was not severe; and he left the room
without answering her.




CHAP. XII.


It was some time after this conference, before the army from the
Peninsula were all arrived and disembarked at Ceuta. Santa Cruz had
made himself master of every information respecting the condition of
the enemy; and found that a large reinforcement of troops was daily
expected from the interior provinces. He wished to bring Ripperda to
a general battle, before this accession of cavalry should give the
Moors so great an advantage; for his own columns were very slenderly
supported by horse.

The whole strength of the Ceuta army did not amount to more than
twenty-five thousand men; but they were fresh and in spirits; while the
forces under the Basha, were not merely reduced to almost as scanty a
number, but they were in despair at the contempt their leader shewed to
the laws of their prophet. Ten thousand Arabs had lately arrived, to
strengthen the division under Sidi Ali; and were disposed on the side
of the mountain, to cover the camp. Some other general was to bring
up the hordes from the interior; who were coming forward with savage
eagerness, to assist their brethren in driving the Spaniards into the
sea.

Santa Cruz did not disturb the progress of Louis de Montemar's
recovery, with any communication of these designs; but proceeded
without any apparent extraordinary motion in the garrison, to draw out
his troops and prepare for the general attack. His position was fully
taken one morning before it was light; and falling in the darkness upon
the advanced posts of the Moors, the infidels in the trenches were cut
off to a man before a gun was fired.

Martini was the first who brought his master intelligence of this
assault; for the Moors had conceived so sullen a horror of their
leader, that uncertain what to do, many of them would rather have
suffered a total surprise of their camp; than saved themselves by
yielding to the impious Aben Humeya an opportunity of establishing
his power with the Emperor. But a few minutes shewed the irresistible
ascendancy of boldness and decision, over pusillanimity and wavering.
When Ripperda knew the peril of his camp; and issued from his tent
in full military array, the awfulness of his heroic countenance, and
the splendor of his arms, eclipsed all remembrance of his tyranny in
some; and others dreading the resentment of so formidable a man, threw
themselves forward to receive his commands.

He ordered the gates of the camp to be thrown open before his horse;
and he and his battalions, soon occupied the space between the
entrenchments, and the rapid advance of the Spaniards; who were now
nearly within the range of his first line of batteries.

The cannon began their summons of death. The rays of the morning,
and the flashing of guns traversed each other in the passing shadows
and rolling smoke of the contest. During deep night, Santa Cruz had
detached a body of infantry with a few field-pieces, to file off to the
left; and by forming in a pass at the bottom of the hill, between Ali's
camp and the Basha's, cut off the former from coming to the support of
his colleague.

Before Aben Humeya marched out into the field, he dispatched two
messengers; the one to Sidi Ali with his commands, that he should come
forward and attack the Spaniards in flank; and the other to Adelmelek,
who was bringing up the columns from the interior, to hasten onward,
and confirm the anticipated victory.

His orders being issued, the Basha bore down upon the charging enemy
with a shock as terrific as his own; and with so decisive a weight of
cavalry, that the Spaniards gave ground. While the Moors pursued this
advantage, a report reached their leader that Ali was intercepted in
the hills. With the quickness of lightning, he detached a resolute body
of troops to cut off, in their turn, the division of Spaniards which
had been sent on this dangerous enterprize.

The eyes of Santa Cruz were not less alert in viewing the manoeuvres
of his enemy; and at the very moment he was looking around to see whom
he could entrust with the important commission of opposing this force,
to his astonishment he beheld Louis de Montemar at his side. He had
heard the roll of cannon, and required no other summons. He was now
mounted, and in arms, as if in perfect vigour, from his hardly closed
wounds. Without asking a question, the Marquis ordered him to take the
command of a certain body of cavalry; and lead them towards the hill,
to the attack of the detachment dispatched from the Moorish camp.

Louis obeyed; and performed his commission so completely, that the
Moors were obliged to fall back, and shelter their flying squadrons
behind the nearest batteries. But part of the troops which had
previously been sent to watch the motions of Sidi Ali, seeing the way
clear, joined the chase; and so left a passage for the enemy. Profiting
by the oversight, Ali rushed from his lines; and taking the pursuing
Christians in the rear, the shouts of the Moors, reanimated their
fugitive brethren in front, who turned like a host of tigers at bay;
and all at once Louis found himself between two fires.

But it was not the object of Sidi Ali to waste his time in the
extirpation of a part, when the whole was near, to yield a mightier
revenge to the conqueror. He advanced with rapidity and good order,
to the support of the Basha; whose left flank, where he had thrown
himself in person, was already turned by the furious onset of the
Spaniards. Seeing the approaching squadrons of Ali, Aben Humeya rallied
his receding men; and precipitating himself and a chosen cohort upon
the most effective engine of the enemy, (which was one of the Moorish
batteries turned upon themselves,) he retook it, and discharged it on
its late masters. The fresh troops of Ali came on with shouts like
thunder; and the Christians, who expected nothing less than this new
attack, supported the charge only for a while. Aben Humeya brought up
a kind of flying battery of his own construction; and his adversaries
being thrown into confusion by its incessant fire, turned to fly. The
Basha left the fugitives to Ali, and moved to the centre, which was now
hardly pressed by Santa Cruz himself.

Until now, the Spanish leader had not exposed his own person; but when
he found that part of his army assuming the same retrograde motion
with the left wing, he saw the necessity of shewing his own personal
courage, and fighting man to man.

Here was the shock and the tug of the day. Aben Humeya and Santa Cruz,
were alike seen in every part of the field, as if their bodies, as well
as their minds, had the property of omnipresence. Blood streamed on
every side; and the terrific screams of the wounded horses, mingling
with the groans of the dying; and the yells or shouts of the victors;
the braying of the trumpets, the rolling of the drums; and the roaring
of the guns, shook the earth, and seemed to tear the heavens. The
echoes were tremendous from the caves and summits of the overhanging
mountains; and to the crazed imagination of fear, the Genius of Spain
and of Barbary appeared to hang in the clouds of battle, and to clash
their dreadful arms, in horror of the equal fight.

But in the moment of loudest acclaim in the centre, while the helmeted
turban of the Basha shone resplendent in anticipated victory, and
his watchmen looked from his towers in the camp, for the approach of
Adelmelek, a howl of dismay issued from the left; and the thronging
squadrons of half Ali's division spiked themselves upon the points of
the Spanish line.

Louis had no sooner seen that the Sidi had passed, and driven this
wing of the Spaniards from their ground, than recalling his own
squadrons, and marching behind the rolling smoke to the right, he came
in van of their flying comrades; and making a hasty _chevaux de frize_
of his pikes, he permitted the fugitives to pass through and form
behind, while the enemy's horse found their fate on his iron rampart.
Field-pieces were rapidly brought forward to confirm this stand; and
the leader of the Arabs falling by the first explosion, the Moors
turned and fled towards their lines.

The centre and the right flank deserved the confidence of their leader;
but the star of Ripperda was now on its last horizon. The Moors fought
with desperation for empire,--for paradise! He performed prodigies of
valour! The fabled exploits of romance were no longer marvellous to
them who beheld Aben Humeya; but the Spanish numbers and discipline
overpowered it all.

Louis saw that, on that field, his father's power in Africa, and
perhaps himself, would on that day perish. Through the flashes of
musquetry and of cannon shot, he saw that father moving in every
direction, with the consummate generalship of a practised soldier,
with a determined resolution that merited a better cause. Louis was
desperate and devoted as himself; and though actuated by different
principles, and exposing their lives on adverse sides, they seemed
actuated by the same spirit, to conquer or to die.

The Moorish entrenchments were forced in every point, the ditch filled
with the slain, the camp set on fire that no delay might be made for
plunder; and the infidels who survived, flying in every direction,
without a leader, and without a refuge.

The slaughter was as tremendous as the discomfiture was signal and
conclusive.

At the entrance of the mountainous track between the base of Abyla and
the hills of Tetuan, the pursuing army was encountered by an ambuscade
from Adelmelek's division. The envious Moor had disobeyed Aben Humeya's
orders to join him in the field. He waited apart for the defeat of the
Basha; but to ensure his own favour with the Emperor, he planted a
powerful detachment to cover the retreat of any who might escape the
horrors of the day. While the Spaniards were briskly engaged with this
ambuscade, the fugitives retreated safely into the mountains; and the
army of Adelmelek drawing behind some batteries he had prepared, Santa
Cruz's orders to abandon the dangerous pursuit were at last obeyed; and
the infuriate conquerors, drunk with blood and vengeance, returned in
broken ranks to the rescued town of Ceuta.

Louis, who had accompanied the general chase, with no other sense but a
breathless eagerness to know the fate of his father, galloped over the
death-strewn earth with his eyes wandering all around, while his sword
waved without aim over his unhelmeted head. The plumed crescent of Aben
Humeya was no more to be seen. Even his standards had long disappeared
from the field; and with the returning squadrons, the horse of De
Montemar also quitted the pursuit.

The officers of cavalry alighted at the pavilion of Santa Cruz, where
all of distinction in the army were assembled to congratulate the
general on his victory. Louis entered mechanically with the rest. He
was pale as a spectre; and the blood on his garments bore witness that
he had not left his chamber that morning on a vain errand. His presence
of mind had saved the day at its first commencement; and his undaunted
arm had twice turned the Moorish scymetars from the head of his
general. On his entrance, therefore, his brave compeers parted before
him; and the oldest veterans present did not think themselves degraded
in bowing their heads before the youthful hero.

When the eyes of Santa Cruz met his advancing figure, the bleeding
image of Ripperda rose upon his recollection. He had seen him borne
lifeless from the burning camp.

"He was his father!" cried the Marquis to himself, as he looked on the
brave and devoted son; and stepping forward, he pressed him silently
in his arms. Louis felt the pulse of the pitying heart that beat
against his; but he was not then susceptible of comfort from any human
commiseration; and, with an unaltered aspect, he raised himself from
the Marquis's breast, and passed unmoved through the less delicate
crowd, who pressed on him with compliments on his exertions of the
day. He heard nothing but the buzzing of many voices; and bowing
without observation as they approached or retreated from him, left the
pavilion; and as unnotingly proceeded to the city.

The nature of Ferdinand's wounds not allowing him to share in the
service of the day, hourly messengers from the field duly communicated
the progress of the victory. The contest was at last over; and
the Marchioness and her daughter threw themselves in speechless
thanksgiving upon the ground, before the Almighty Preserver of Santa
Cruz. They had known all the agonies of being within hearing of a field
of battle. The distant uproar of death; the thundering of the guns;
the red and billowy clouds which, at every explosion, a strong east
wind drove in darkening volumes over the fortress, were portentous
accompaniments to the terrifying successions of the wounded, which
every hour brought within its walls. The horrid suspense of that day
often came over Marcella in future years, with a recollection so
present of mental torture, that catching the hand dearest to her in the
world, and trembling with dismay at what might have been the issue, she
has wept over it tears of ceaseless gratitude. But in the dreadful hour
of conflict, those tender expressions of anxiety were driven back upon
their source; and, while thinking on no other object than the life of
her father and his friend, her hands, with her mother's, assisted in
binding up fractured limbs, and staunching blood, welling from many a
brave heart.

The trumpet of recall from the victorious chase, sounded near the
walls. The Marchioness rose from her knees; and though unable to move
herself, from strong emotion, she dispatched Ferdinand and Marcella to
meet their father. He supported his sister's agitated steps, while he
sustained his own by the aid of his crutches. They were hastening along
the main gallery of the castle, when Louis de Montemar entered from the
field.

Aware of what must be his feelings on the defeat and fall of his
father, Ferdinand instantly quitted his sister's side, and retreated
from the melancholy greeting. Marcella was not less informed by her
own heart, of what must then be tearing their friend's; but she did
not fly, neither did she move towards him. She stood still, with her
eyes rivetted on him in speechless occupation of soul. He had not seen
Ferdinand: he did not see her though he passed her close. Marcella saw
something dreadful in the fixture of his mien. Could such piety as his
be stricken with despair? She sunk on her knees at the terrible image;
and a sound, between a groan and a cry of supplication to heaven, burst
from her lips, as, with clasped hands, she looked upon his disappearing
steps.

That was a sound which had its chord in Louis's breast. He turned
round. Marcella did not cover her face; for a brighter principle than
terrestrial love actuated her soul for the noble sufferer before
her. She knelt and looked on him. Louis approached her. He stood for
a moment gazing on her. In the next, the whole agony of his mind
agitated his before marbled features. As she started on her feet he
took her hand, and firmly grasping it, said, "Oh, pray for me!" and
then dropping it, again turned away, and passed out of sight along the
gallery.




CHAP. XIII.


The siege of Ceuta was now not merely raised, but the accumulating
army which had so long held it in blockade, and then beleaguered it
with such enterprizing determination, was disappeared as if it had
never been. Victors and vanquished were mingled in one common grave.
The steed with its rider, and he who slew, by the side of him that was
slain. The Spaniards performed these frightful obsequies; and he who
held the mattock and the spade had often to contend with birds of prey,
and ravenous dogs, howling amongst the mangled remains.

A flag of truce arrived from Adelmelek. It offered preliminaries of
peace in the name of the Emperor; while the vindictive Hadge accused
the defeated Aben Humeya of all the reciprocal outrages committed
during the present campaign.

Santa Cruz inquired the fate of the late Basha.

"He fled from the field of battle," replied the Moor, "and has not yet
been heard of."

"Your information is false," returned the Marquis; "I myself saw him
streaming with wounds and insensible, borne out of his consuming camp
by a party of your own countrymen."

"I speak on the word of my commander," replied the Moor.

"You must bring me better evidence of his truth," rejoined the
Marquis, "before I trust him. Return this day week to Ceuta; and, as
he dissembles or fairly represents the last act of his fallen rival,
I shall shape the terms my Sovereign may empower me to make to your
Emperor."

Santa Cruz was not long in receiving ample credentials from the court
at Seville for all he might wish to do in re-establishing the Spanish
interest in Barbary. At Seville, as in Ceuta, it was believed that the
Duke de Ripperda had expiated his crimes with his life; and, in answer
to the evidence which Santa Cruz transmitted, of the inextinguishable
loyalty of the Marquis de Montemar, the King issued a new edict,
granting him the restitution of all his late father's hereditary
honours and possessions. But there was a clause in this munificent
investiture. The future Duke de Ripperda must avow himself of the Roman
Catholic communion.

The re-opened wounds of Louis were just cicatrized; and he was leaning
over the table on which he was writing to his friends in England, when
the Marquis entered with the official letter from the King. He read
it aloud. At the end of the catalogue of the Ripperda territories and
titles, before he opened on the clause, Santa Cruz paused.

"De Montemar," said he, with solemnity, "hard trial has separated the
gold from the dross in your heart; and you will not esteem the last
title with which your King would invest you, the least honourable,--a
true Christian!"

He then read the condition: "That all these restitutions should be
ratified by the royal seal, on the day that the Cardinal-resident at
Madrid should witness the baptism of Louis, Duke of Ripperda, into the
bosom of the Church of Rome."

"I am sensible to the gracious intent of my Sovereign," replied Louis;
"but that name I once idolized, I would now hear no more. It shall
never be borne by me! And for the rest,--I am a Protestant, and I will
die one."

Santa Cruz urged him by religious arguments and persuasions, drawn from
the reasonableness of maintaining the rights of his ancestors. He spoke
of the justice he owed to himself in restoring the illustrious name of
his family to its pristine lustre; and, at any rate, it was his duty,
when so offered, to transmit it, and the inheritance that was its
appendage, unimpaired to his posterity.

"I shall have no posterity," replied Louis. "My father died an Infidel,
and his name and his race are no more."

"What do you mean, De Montemar?" demanded the Marquis, regarding with
alarm the countenance of his young friend.

"Nothing rash; nothing that this venerable man would not approve," said
he, laying his hand on the letter he was writing to Mr. Athelstone.
"But Marquis!" cried he, "Is there not matter enough to break a son's
heart?"

Santa Cruz replied, by turning the subject to Louis's own great
endowments of mind and figure; and tried to awaken his ambition, by
dwelling on the impression his high principled conduct at Vienna had
made upon his Sovereigns. It could only be equalled, he said, by their
admiration of his late intrepid defence of Ceuta. On these grounds, the
Marquis added, he had only to chuse, and the first stations in the
state, or in the army, must in process of time be at his command.

Louis shook his head.

"I was not born for a statesman," replied he. "I acknowledge no
morality but one; and I have known enough of the ethics of cabinets to
loathe their chicanery. I have seen that in the adjustment of their
respective interests, the principles of common honesty may not only be
dispensed with, but that no subterfuge is too mean for adoption, when
expedient to disguise truth or over-reach a rival party. Where every
man is supposed a deceiver by profession, no man can really trust in
each other; and I will never be one of a set of men, where all are
suspected of dishonour. As to the army!--I have had enough of that
also." He shuddered as he spoke, and covered his face with his hand.

Santa Cruz did not require that shudder to be explained; but he
affected to consider this wide rejection, as derogatory to his
loyalty, and to the general manliness of his character.

"Not in my mind," added he; "but in the opinion of the world. You
must recover what your father's dereliction has lost; and the public
suffrage is only to be retained by a succession of distinguished
services. You are especially called upon to make manifest in all ways
what you are,--a true subject of Spain, and one whose piety is worthy
the adoption of our Church."

"I _am_ called upon," replied Louis, "to appear what I am! I served
the King of Spain at the expence of many a sacrifice. I need not turn
your eyes to the last. My faith is not in my power to exchange at will;
but ill would he serve his Prince who could so desert himself: the
example before us ought to set that at rest for ever. If, by remaining
a Protestant, I must be no more a Spaniard, the forfeiture must proceed
against me. I have still the country of my mother. It will judge me
with candour; and there, I trust, I shall do my duty in whatever state
of life it may please Heaven to number out my days."

As Louis uttered this, his countenance was calm though sorrowful;
and Santa Cruz, struck with such awful resignation in one so young
and powerfully endowed, grasped his hand with as much reverence as
affection, and soon after left the room.




CHAP. XIV.


Meanwhile, all was consternation and mutiny amongst the shattered
remnant of the Moorish army. Ali had collected the fugitives from the
bloody day of Ceuta; and attempted to re-organise them into some line
of defence. But, fearful of being led a second time against their
conquerors, they resisted every law of discipline, and spread the same
refractory spirit to the camp of Adelmelek. The Hadge had undesignedly
prepared his legions for this excess of disobedience, by impressing
them with a belief that the conversion of the Duke de Ripperda to the
Ottoman faith, was only a master-stroke of Christian policy, to acquire
the Emperor Abdallah's confidence; and then, as he had done, betray the
whole of the Moorish host to the sword of Spain. The people of the
country at large were made to believe the same. Their credulity was
easy, as their masters seldom consulted any counsellor but caprice;
and, secure in their poverty, but bold in the use of their tongues,
they clamoured against the court, for putting such implicit trust in
a renegado; who, it was manifest, repaid the Emperor by betraying his
army to the Christians; and had withdrawn himself from punishment, by
shutting himself up, with the embezzled treasures of Abdallah, within
the bulwarks of Tetuan.

At this juncture, Muley Hamet having been secretly apprised of the
disaster which had befallen his former vanquisher, re-appeared upon the
plains of Marmora; and, at the head of an armed multitude of Moors and
Arabs, marched towards Mequinez.

Sidi Solyman, his near kinsman and secret partisan, was then in the
capital. He was ready on any promising occasion to blow the flame of
sedition; and, with great industry and dispatch, prepared the way for
Muley Hamet, by publishing the reverses of the campaign. He accused the
great officers of state of mal-administration; their chief agent, the
renegade Duke, as an infamous trafficker of his faith; and urged, that
Abdallah, having introduced the Christian impostor into the councils of
the empire, had rendered himself obnoxious to the prophet's vengeance;
the people, at present, lay under the same curse; and their first
act must be to appease the heavenly power, by the deposition of the
Emperor, and the delivery of Aben Humeya to the expiation of the laws!

The ever discontented and tumultuous rabble of Mequinez listened to
these suggestions in the very spirit that was desired. They set fire
to the imperial palace, and marched out of the town, headed by the
incendiary, Solyman, to meet his kinsman on the plain.

Abdallah, at that time, was with a few chosen troops, winding his way
through the Habad mountains, to support the joint authority of Ali and
Adelmelek with his presence; and also to ameliorate the fury of those
two commanders against the Spanish Basha, whom he still believed to be
as true as he was brave.

Adelmelek was so well aware of the consequence to him of the Emperor's
arrival, should he hear from Ali that the battle of Ceuta was lost by
the disobedience of the army of the interior to the summons of Aben
Humeya; that on the very day he was told of Abdallah's approach, he
caused Ali to be assassinated, and detached a body of troops to escort
the Emperor with honour to his camp. But an honest Moor, who knew the
designs of the Hadge, made his escape into the mountains, and informed
the Emperor, not merely of the murder of the Sidi, but that Adelmelek
intended his sovereign the same fate; after which he would march upon
Tetuan, where the Basha was shut up, utterly helpless from his numerous
wounds; and storming the place, deliver the whole with the empire, into
the hands of Muley Hamet. Other information more than corroborated this
statement; and Abdallah soon saw that temporary flight was his only
resource. He called his few faithful followers together, and taking
a circuit through the mountains, made a safe retreat into the desert
regions of his empire.

Muley Hamet was declared Emperor by Sidi Solyman and Adelmelek; and
the troops of the latter rejoicing in any change, readily obeyed his
orders for a mere shew of discipline, while he dispatched his second
ambassador to Ceuta, to make peace at any rate with the Spanish King.

By the information of this Moor, Santa Cruz learnt, that when Ripperda
fell in the battle of the camp, it was the last stroke of many wounds,
and had been supposed mortal. But his immediate followers, snatching
him from the crowd of slain, laid him on a camel, and disappeared with
him from the field. It was some days before Adelmelek knew what was
become of the fugitive party; and then a messenger from Ismail Cheriff,
chief of his Arabian guards, brought information to Ali, that he had
borne the wounded Aben Humeya to the safe hold of his own fortress of
Tetuan. Ali lost no time in sending the courier back to the faithful
Arab, with a full account of Adelmelek's intentions to give the Basha
up to the resentment of the turbulent soldiery, or to influence the
Emperor to order his immediate death.

The consequence was, Aben Humeya closed the gates of Tetuan as firmly
against all the insidious advances of Adelmelek, as he would have done,
to repel an open attack of the outrageous Moors, "Ali is dead; and
Muley Hamet Emperor of Morocco,"--continued the ambassador, "Adelmelek
is alone powerful with the new sovereign; and the first judicial act
of the divan has been to declare Aben Humeya a traitor to the empire
and our prophet. Should the desperate state of his wounds fail of
proving his executioner, before the next moon Tetuan will be stormed by
Adelmelek, the inhabitants put to the sword, and the treacherous Basha,
die the death of a slave."

To these denunciations, Louis de Montemar, who was present at the
audience, paid no attention; all that he heard, and seized as the
renewal of life, was that his father yet survived; that he was accused
of irreverence towards the founder of the Ottoman faith; and that he
had taken refuge in a place not more than a day's journey from the
Spanish fortress.

When the Mussulman closed his communications, and withdrew to leave
their import to consultation, Louis imparted what were now his
designs. Indeed, it was hardly necessary to declare them; for the
existence of the Duke de Ripperda was no sooner affirmed, and his
occupation of Tetuan mentioned, than Santa Cruz read in the instant
blaze of his friend's countenance, the regeneration of hope; and the
enterprize to which the welcome visitant would give birth.

"But the hazard is so infinite!" rejoined the Marquis, "where are we
to find a person who would have the boldness to guide you through the
brigand parties of the rival Moors? And even should we be successful in
that object, and you arrive at Tetuan, consider the result. You may be
admitted to your father; but should he perish in his apostacy, where
would be your protection, and what would be your fate?"

"That I leave to providence!" replied Louis, "my course is clear:--to
seek my father; and make a last effort to share with him that
happiness in the world to come, he has for ever destroyed in this."

"But his wounds are mortal," returned Santa Cruz, "he may be dead
before you have reached this scene of peril. You will then have exposed
your life, and more than your life, in vain. Think of the horrors that
would befall you, should the infuriate Moor

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