Louis silently bowed his head, and Her Majesty passed on. So crowded were his thoughts with the events of the last six hours, he hardly noted the time, though he did the situation of the ground, as the promised attendant brought him to the guard-chamber.--Martini sprang to meet him; and, a moment after, he had left the mansion of royal splendors and luxury, to seek the cloisters of world-forswearing men! All without, was darkness and assumed humiliation; but within, dwelt the rulers of kings, the universal dictators, the all-compelling Jesuits! Louis now entered, to visit one of the most extraordinary personages that ever came within their walls; one, to whom the vast machinery was all unfolded, by which these mighty workmen moved and controuled the world. CHAP. IV. The information which Louis brought to the suffering Ignatius, did not fail to heal the worst wound his enemies had inflicted; suspicion, that their machinations had reached the mind of the Emperor. When the surgeons visited their patient in the evening, they gave a more favourable report on his symptoms with regard to fever, which was the threatening danger of the morning. The manner of his passing the night, they thought would be decisive for hope or fear, and Louis entreated permission to attend his couch until day. The Sieur peremptorily put his negative on this proposal. But Louis was steady in not being denied watching by the side of Castanos in the anti-room. Martini, with a surgeon and a priest, remained all night in the cell of Ignatius; and that he slept most part of the time, Louis was satisfied; as, with his strictest attention, he could hardly hear a movement within. Castanos, and his anxious companion, kept true vigils. The act was the same, though the motives were as different as the two men. In one of the dreary pauses of the night, when the intensity of Louis's meditations, on the various objects which bore upon the event of the present hour, had wearied his unrested spirit; he observed Castanos shake the exhausted embers from his pipe; and desirous of asking some questions respecting the fate of his packet to Don Ferdinand, he thought he could not have a better opportunity, and while the old Spaniard was twisting out his tobacco, he addressed him in a low voice. "Senor Castanos," said he, "you were so kind as to deliver a packet from me to Don Ferdinand d'Osorio, into the hands of my father?" "No," returned he, "your father was not at Madrid." "Then, what became of my packet?" "It was sent with the dispatches, to where he ordered them." "Then I may assure myself of its safety?--and that my father was well?" Castanos had resumed his pipe, and made no answer. After the second volume of renewed smoke had wreathed away from his sullen features, Louis addressed him again. "But of course you saw my father, before you left Spain? Under the present anxious circumstances, it would particularly cheer me to know that he is well."