Ferdinand's letter was of a less agreeable complexion. An air of restraint pervaded its communications; which induced Louis to believe that his friend did not wish to let him see the whole hostility of the Spanish court against his father's fame, and his own claims on the country. He wrote of armaments by sea and land. This could no longer excite its former interest in the mind of his correspondent. He added there were great schisms in the _Sanctum Sanctorum_ of the Queen; but there was one head acknowledged infallible by all parties, and that was Duke Wharton. He rode the government, as Jupiter did his cloud; and in the same invisible manner shot his thunderbolts; every body knowing whence the shaft came, but nobody daring to mention the name that launched it. However, he was lately gone to Paris, to meet the Electress of Bavaria.
"I would, I might never read of him, or hear of him again!" exclaimed Louis, as he turned to the pages, which spoke of the Marquis Santa Cruz's journey into Italy, for the benefit of Marcella's health.
"She has never recovered her close attendance on the two wounded cavaliers at Ceuta," continued Ferdinand, "The life of so worthless a being as I am, may have been dearly purchased; but I will not say the same of my friend! However, Marcella will not own to this cause of her illness. She rather believes it to be a punishment laid on her, for her long resistance to the wishes of my father, for her entire seclusion from the world. This idea has fastened on her; and now all her petitions are to be fixed with our aunt, the abbess of the Ursalines."
Louis closed the letter at this passage. The form of Marcella was then before him. She whose bloom of health, he was too sensible had in part been sacrificed for him! He recalled her as she used to sit, evening after evening, by his apparently unobserving side, in that sad chamber of suffering at Ceuta. In those hours, the bright moon of that clear atmosphere, shining through the solitary window, fell direct on her face. It was pale from watching; but her eyes were often fixed on the orb; and the expression of her countenance, ever reminded him of Milton's lines:
"So dear to Heaven is saintly charity! That when a soul is found sincerely pure A thousand liveried angels lacquey her; Tell her of things, that no gross ear can hear; Till oft converse with heavenly habitants, Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape, The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence, Till all be made immortal!"