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