"_Tuesday Evening._" Louis thought of the attempted assassination of Ignatius. The letter he held in his hand was a second confirmation that, notwithstanding the Sieur's severe precautions, the mysterious business of himself and his secretary was so little a secret to its enemies, that they knew exactly where to point even the most iniquitous means, when they thought such expedient to obtain information, or to create preventions. Who the anonymous friend was, who ran the risque implied at the close of the letter, Louis had no hesitation to believe must be the Duke of Wharton; for the Sieur had hinted to him, only the night before, that he knew the Duke was one of a secret committee who sat nightly at the Bavarian apartments. Wharton must then have discovered that his friend's visits to the palace had a higher aim than gallantry; and Louis felt something like a proud satisfaction in the conviction. The letter, he trusted, would be a sufficient pledge to Ignatius of Wharton's fidelity to his friend; and that whatever might be his bonds to a party, they could not tie his faith to connivance with a dishonourable act. This head of the subject being settled in his own mind; and being enabled, by the warning, to avoid the threatened violence; he would have given up his thoughts to the delicious enjoyment of gratefulness to so dear a friend, had he not trembled to think how far the Duke of Wharton's repulsed recognition of him, might have led to so full a discovery respecting the secret movements of the Sieur and himself.
He saw that he must apprise Ignatius of the knowledge his enemies had acquired of his proceedings; and, in doing so, shew the letter he had just received; and, while he declared his belief that Duke Wharton was the friendly writer, be obliged to narrate what he had hitherto concealed:--his meeting, and at last enforced discourse with the Duke. As Louis reflected on the real harmlessness of that discourse; and on the necessity, at the present momentous juncture, to make his guardian master of every circumstance that might bear at all towards it; he felt the folly of his reserve: and though at the time he had persuaded himself that his silence arose from reluctance to agitate needlessly a wounded man, his conscience now accused him of mental cowardice, in shrinking from the pain he anticipated to himself in the torturing discussion.