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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Zanoni
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2006 [EBook #2664]
+Last Updated: August 29, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZANONI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dave Ceponis, Sue Asscher and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ZANONI
+
+BY
+
+EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+
+
+(PLATE: “Thou art good and fair,” said Viola. Drawn by P. Kauffmann,
+etched by Deblois.)
+
+
+DEDICATORY EPISTLE First prefixed to the Edition of 1845
+
+
+TO
+
+JOHN GIBSON, R.A., SCULPTOR.
+
+In looking round the wide and luminous circle of our great living
+Englishmen, to select one to whom I might fitly dedicate this work,--one
+who, in his life as in his genius, might illustrate the principle I have
+sought to convey; elevated by the ideal which he exalts, and
+serenely dwelling in a glorious existence with the images born of his
+imagination,--in looking round for some such man, my thoughts rested
+upon you. Afar from our turbulent cabals; from the ignoble jealousy and
+the sordid strife which degrade and acerbate the ambition of Genius,--in
+your Roman Home, you have lived amidst all that is loveliest and least
+perishable in the past, and contributed with the noblest aims, and in
+the purest spirit, to the mighty heirlooms of the future. Your youth has
+been devoted to toil, that your manhood may be consecrated to fame: a
+fame unsullied by one desire of gold. You have escaped the two worst
+perils that beset the artist in our time and land,--the debasing
+tendencies of commerce, and the angry rivalries of competition. You have
+not wrought your marble for the market,--you have not been tempted, by
+the praises which our vicious criticism has showered upon exaggeration
+and distortion, to lower your taste to the level of the hour; you
+have lived, and you have laboured, as if you had no rivals but in the
+dead,--no purchasers, save in judges of what is best. In the divine
+priesthood of the beautiful, you have sought only to increase her
+worshippers and enrich her temples. The pupil of Canova, you have
+inherited his excellences, while you have shunned his errors,--yours his
+delicacy, not his affectation. Your heart resembles him even more
+than your genius: you have the same noble enthusiasm for your sublime
+profession; the same lofty freedom from envy, and the spirit that
+depreciates; the same generous desire not to war with but to serve
+artists in your art; aiding, strengthening, advising, elevating the
+timidity of inexperience, and the vague aspirations of youth. By
+the intuition of a kindred mind, you have equalled the learning
+of Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimate
+comprehension of the antique. Each work of yours, rightly studied, is in
+itself a CRITICISM, illustrating the sublime secrets of the Grecian
+Art, which, without the servility of plagiarism, you have contributed to
+revive amongst us; in you we behold its three great and long-undetected
+principles,--simplicity, calm, and concentration.
+
+But your admiration of the Greeks has not led you to the bigotry of
+the mere antiquarian, nor made you less sensible of the unappreciated
+excellence of the mighty modern, worthy to be your countryman,--though
+till his statue is in the streets of our capital, we show ourselves not
+worthy of the glory he has shed upon our land. You have not suffered
+even your gratitude to Canova to blind you to the superiority of
+Flaxman. When we become sensible of our title-deeds to renown in that
+single name, we may look for an English public capable of real patronage
+to English Art,--and not till then.
+
+I, artist in words, dedicate, then, to you, artist whose ideas speak in
+marble, this well-loved work of my matured manhood. I love it not the
+less because it has been little understood and superficially judged
+by the common herd: it was not meant for them. I love it not the more
+because it has found enthusiastic favorers amongst the Few. My affection
+for my work is rooted in the solemn and pure delight which it gave me
+to conceive and to perform. If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert,
+this apparition of my own innermost mind, in its least-clouded moments,
+would have been to me as dear; and this ought, I believe, to be the
+sentiment with which he whose Art is born of faith in the truth and
+beauty of the principles he seeks to illustrate, should regard his work.
+Your serener existence, uniform and holy, my lot denies,--if my heart
+covets. But our true nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds: and
+therefore, in books--which ARE his thoughts--the author’s character lies
+bare to the discerning eye. It is not in the life of cities,--in the
+turmoil and the crowd; it is in the still, the lonely, and more sacred
+life, which for some hours, under every sun, the student lives (his
+stolen retreat from the Agora to the Cave), that I feel there is between
+us the bond of that secret sympathy, that magnetic chain, which unites
+the everlasting brotherhood of whose being Zanoni is the type.
+
+E.B.L. London, May, 1845.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+One of the peculiarities of Bulwer was his passion for occult studies.
+They had a charm for him early in life, and he pursued them with the
+earnestness which characterised his pursuit of other studies. He
+became absorbed in wizard lore; he equipped himself with magical
+implements,--with rods for transmitting influence, and crystal balls
+in which to discern coming scenes and persons; and communed with
+spiritualists and mediums. The fruit of these mystic studies is seen in
+“Zanoni” and “A strange Story,” romances which were a labour of love to
+the author, and into which he threw all the power he possessed,--power
+re-enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation
+of Oriental thought. These weird stories, in which the author has
+formulated his theory of magic, are of a wholly different type from his
+previous fictions, and, in place of the heroes and villains of every
+day life, we have beings that belong in part to another sphere, and that
+deal with mysterious and occult agencies. Once more the old forgotten
+lore of the Cabala is unfolded; the furnace of the alchemist, whose
+fires have been extinct for centuries, is lighted anew, and the lamp
+of the Rosicrucian re-illumined. No other works of the author,
+contradictory as have been the opinions of them, have provoked such
+a diversity of criticism as these. To some persons they represent
+a temporary aberration of genius rather than any serious thought or
+definite purpose; while others regard them as surpassing in bold and
+original speculation, profound analysis of character, and thrilling
+interest, all of the author’s other works. The truth, we believe,
+lies midway between these extremes. It is questionable whether the
+introduction into a novel of such subjects as are discussed in these
+romances be not an offence against good sense and good taste; but it
+is as unreasonable to deny the vigour and originality of their author’s
+conceptions, as to deny that the execution is imperfect, and, at times,
+bungling and absurd.
+
+It has been justly said that the present half century has witnessed
+the rise and triumphs of science, the extent and marvels of which even
+Bacon’s fancy never conceived, simultaneously with superstitions grosser
+than any which Bacon’s age believed. “The one is, in fact, the
+natural reaction from the other. The more science seeks to exclude
+the miraculous, and reduce all nature, animate and inanimate, to an
+invariable law of sequences, the more does the natural instinct of man
+rebel, and seek an outlet for those obstinate questionings, those ‘blank
+misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised,’ taking
+refuge in delusions as degrading as any of the so-called Dark Ages.” It
+was the revolt from the chilling materialism of the age which inspired
+the mystic creations of “Zanoni” and “A Strange Story.” Of these works,
+which support and supplement each other, one is the contemplation of our
+actual life through a spiritual medium, the other is designed to show
+that, without some gleams of the supernatural, man is not man, nor
+nature nature.
+
+In “Zanoni” the author introduces us to two human beings who have
+achieved immortality: one, Mejnour, void of all passion or feeling,
+calm, benignant, bloodless, an intellect rather than a man; the other,
+Zanoni, the pupil of Mejnour, the representative of an ideal life in
+its utmost perfection, possessing eternal youth, absolute power, and
+absolute knowledge, and withal the fullest capacity to enjoy and to
+love, and, as a necessity of that love, to sorrow and despair. By his
+love for Viola Zanoni is compelled to descend from his exalted state,
+to lose his eternal calm, and to share in the cares and anxieties of
+humanity; and this degradation is completed by the birth of a child.
+Finally, he gives up the life which hangs on that of another, in order
+to save that other, the loving and beloved wife, who has delivered
+him from his solitude and isolation. Wife and child are mortal, and to
+outlive them and his love for them is impossible. But Mejnour, who is
+the impersonation of thought,--pure intellect without affection,--lives
+on.
+
+Bulwer has himself justly characterised this work, in the Introduction,
+as a romance and not a romance, as a truth for those who can comprehend
+it, and an extravagance for those who cannot. The most careless or
+matter-of-fact reader must see that the work, like the enigmatical
+“Faust,” deals in types and symbols; that the writer intends to suggest
+to the mind something more subtle and impalpable than that which is
+embodied to the senses. What that something is, hardly two persons will
+agree. The most obvious interpretation of the types is, that in Zanoni
+the author depicts to us humanity, perfected, sublimed, which lives
+not for self, but for others; in Mejnour, as we have before said, cold,
+passionless, self-sufficing intellect; in Glyndon, the young Englishman,
+the mingled strength and weakness of human nature; in the heartless,
+selfish artist, Nicot, icy, soulless atheism, believing nothing, hoping
+nothing, trusting and loving nothing; and in the beautiful, artless
+Viola, an exquisite creation, pure womanhood, loving, trusting and
+truthful. As a work of art the romance is one of great power. It is
+original in its conception, and pervaded by one central idea; but
+it would have been improved, we think, by a more sparing use of the
+supernatural. The inevitable effect of so much hackneyed diablerie--of
+such an accumulation of wonder upon wonder--is to deaden the impression
+they would naturally make upon us. In Hawthorne’s tales we see with what
+ease a great imaginative artist can produce a deeper thrill by a far
+slighter use of the weird and the mysterious.
+
+The chief interest of the story for the ordinary reader centres, not in
+its ghostly characters and improbable machinery, the scenes in Mejnour’s
+chamber in the ruined castle among the Apennines, the colossal and
+appalling apparitions on Vesuvius, the hideous phantom with its burning
+eye that haunted Glyndon, but in the loves of Viola and the mysterious
+Zanoni, the blissful and the fearful scenes through which they pass,
+and their final destiny, when the hero of the story sacrifices his
+own “charmed life” to save hers, and the Immortal finds the only true
+immortality in death. Among the striking passages in the work are the
+pathetic sketch of the old violinist and composer, Pisani, with his
+sympathetic “barbiton” which moaned, groaned, growled, and laughed
+responsive to the feelings of its master; the description of Viola’s and
+her father’s triumph, when “The Siren,” his masterpiece, is performed at
+the San Carlo in Naples; Glyndon’s adventure at the Carnival in Naples;
+the death of his sister; the vivid pictures of the Reign of Terror in
+Paris, closing with the downfall of Robespierre and his satellites; and
+perhaps, above all, the thrilling scene where Zanoni leaves Viola asleep
+in prison when his guards call him to execution, and she, unconscious of
+the terrible sacrifice, but awaking and missing him, has a vision of the
+procession to the guillotine, with Zanoni there, radiant in youth
+and beauty, followed by the sudden vanishing of the headsman,--the
+horror,--and the “Welcome” of her loved one to Heaven in a myriad of
+melodies from the choral hosts above.
+
+“Zanoni” was originally published by Saunders and Otley, London, in
+three volumes 12mo., in 1842. A translation into French, made by M.
+Sheldon under the direction of P. Lorain, was published in Paris in the
+“Bibliotheque des Meilleurs Romans Etrangers.”
+
+W.M.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.
+
+As a work of imagination, “Zanoni” ranks, perhaps, amongst the highest
+of my prose fictions. In the Poem of “King Arthur,” published many years
+afterwards, I have taken up an analogous design, in the contemplation
+of our positive life through a spiritual medium; and I have enforced,
+through a far wider development, and, I believe, with more complete and
+enduring success, that harmony between the external events which are
+all that the superficial behold on the surface of human affairs, and the
+subtle and intellectual agencies which in reality influence the conduct
+of individuals, and shape out the destinies of the world. As man has two
+lives,--that of action and that of thought,--so I conceive that work
+to be the truest representation of humanity which faithfully delineates
+both, and opens some elevating glimpse into the sublimest mysteries of
+our being, by establishing the inevitable union that exists between
+the plain things of the day, in which our earthly bodies perform their
+allotted part, and the latent, often uncultivated, often invisible,
+affinities of the soul with all the powers that eternally breathe and
+move throughout the Universe of Spirit.
+
+I refer those who do me the honour to read “Zanoni” with more attention
+than is given to ordinary romance, to the Poem of “King Arthur,” for
+suggestive conjecture into most of the regions of speculative research,
+affecting the higher and more important condition of our ultimate being,
+which have engaged the students of immaterial philosophy in my own age.
+
+Affixed to the “Note” with which this work concludes, and which treats
+of the distinctions between type and allegory, the reader will find,
+from the pen of one of our most eminent living writers, an ingenious
+attempt to explain the interior or typical meanings of the work now
+before him.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+It is possible that among my readers there may be a few not unacquainted
+with an old-book shop, existing some years since in the neighbourhood
+of Covent Garden; I say a few, for certainly there was little enough to
+attract the many in those precious volumes which the labour of a life
+had accumulated on the dusty shelves of my old friend D--. There were to
+be found no popular treatises, no entertaining romances, no histories,
+no travels, no “Library for the People,” no “Amusement for the Million.”
+ But there, perhaps, throughout all Europe, the curious might discover
+the most notable collection, ever amassed by an enthusiast, of the works
+of alchemist, cabalist, and astrologer. The owner had lavished a fortune
+in the purchase of unsalable treasures. But old D-- did not desire to
+sell. It absolutely went to his heart when a customer entered his shop:
+he watched the movements of the presumptuous intruder with a vindictive
+glare; he fluttered around him with uneasy vigilance,--he frowned, he
+groaned, when profane hands dislodged his idols from their niches. If
+it were one of the favourite sultanas of his wizard harem that attracted
+you, and the price named were not sufficiently enormous, he would not
+unfrequently double the sum. Demur, and in brisk delight he snatched the
+venerable charmer from your hands; accede, and he became the picture of
+despair,--nor unfrequently, at the dead of night, would he knock at your
+door, and entreat you to sell him back, at your own terms, what you had
+so egregiously bought at his. A believer himself in his Averroes and
+Paracelsus, he was as loth as the philosophers he studied to communicate
+to the profane the learning he had collected.
+
+It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether of
+authorship or life, I felt a desire to make myself acquainted with
+the true origin and tenets of the singular sect known by the name of
+Rosicrucians. Dissatisfied with the scanty and superficial accounts to
+be found in the works usually referred to on the subject, it struck
+me as possible that Mr. D--‘s collection, which was rich, not only in
+black-letter, but in manuscripts, might contain some more accurate and
+authentic records of that famous brotherhood,--written, who knows?
+by one of their own order, and confirming by authority and detail the
+pretensions to wisdom and to virtue which Bringaret had arrogated to the
+successors of the Chaldean and Gymnosophist. Accordingly I repaired to
+what, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess, was once one of
+my favourite haunts. But are there no errors and no fallacies, in the
+chronicles of our own day, as absurd as those of the alchemists of old?
+Our very newspapers may seem to our posterity as full of delusions as
+the books of the alchemists do to us; not but what the press is the air
+we breathe,--and uncommonly foggy the air is too!
+
+On entering the shop, I was struck by the venerable appearance of a
+customer whom I had never seen there before. I was struck yet more
+by the respect with which he was treated by the disdainful collector.
+“Sir,” cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning over the leaves of
+the catalogue,--“sir, you are the only man I have met, in five-and-forty
+years that I have spent in these researches, who is worthy to be my
+customer. How--where, in this frivolous age, could you have acquired
+a knowledge so profound? And this august fraternity, whose doctrines,
+hinted at by the earliest philosophers, are still a mystery to the
+latest; tell me if there really exists upon the earth any book,
+any manuscript, in which their discoveries, their tenets, are to be
+learned?”
+
+At the words, “august fraternity,” I need scarcely say that my attention
+had been at once aroused, and I listened eagerly for the stranger’s
+reply.
+
+“I do not think,” said the old gentleman, “that the masters of the
+school have ever consigned, except by obscure hint and mystical parable,
+their real doctrines to the world. And I do not blame them for their
+discretion.”
+
+Here he paused, and seemed about to retire, when I said, somewhat
+abruptly, to the collector, “I see nothing, Mr. D--, in this catalogue
+which relates to the Rosicrucians!”
+
+“The Rosicrucians!” repeated the old gentleman, and in his turn he
+surveyed me with deliberate surprise. “Who but a Rosicrucian could
+explain the Rosicrucian mysteries! And can you imagine that any members
+of that sect, the most jealous of all secret societies, would themselves
+lift the veil that hides the Isis of their wisdom from the world?”
+
+“Aha!” thought I, “this, then, is ‘the august fraternity’ of which
+you spoke. Heaven be praised! I certainly have stumbled on one of the
+brotherhood.”
+
+“But,” I said aloud, “if not in books, sir, where else am I to obtain
+information? Nowadays one can hazard nothing in print without authority,
+and one may scarcely quote Shakespeare without citing chapter and verse.
+This is the age of facts,--the age of facts, sir.”
+
+“Well,” said the old gentleman, with a pleasant smile, “if we meet
+again, perhaps, at least, I may direct your researches to the proper
+source of intelligence.” And with that he buttoned his greatcoat,
+whistled to his dog, and departed.
+
+It so happened that I did meet again with the old gentleman, exactly
+four days after our brief conversation in Mr. D--‘s bookshop. I was
+riding leisurely towards Highgate, when, at the foot of its classic
+hill, I recognised the stranger; he was mounted on a black pony, and
+before him trotted his dog, which was black also.
+
+If you meet the man whom you wish to know, on horseback, at the
+commencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a friend’s
+favourite hack, he cannot, in decent humanity to the brute creation,
+ride away from you, I apprehend that it is your own fault if you have
+not gone far in your object before you have gained the top. In short, so
+well did I succeed, that on reaching Highgate the old gentleman invited
+me to rest at his house, which was a little apart from the village; and
+an excellent house it was,--small, but commodious, with a large garden,
+and commanding from the windows such a prospect as Lucretius would
+recommend to philosophers: the spires and domes of London, on a clear
+day, distinctly visible; here the Retreat of the Hermit, and there the
+Mare Magnum of the world.
+
+The walls of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures of
+extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is so little
+understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were all
+from the hand of the owner. My evident admiration pleased my new friend,
+and led to talk upon his part, which showed him no less elevated in his
+theories of art than an adept in the practice. Without fatiguing
+the reader with irrelevant criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as
+elucidating much of the design and character of the work which these
+prefatory pages introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he
+insisted as much upon the connection of the arts, as a distinguished
+author has upon that of the sciences; that he held that in all works of
+imagination, whether expressed by words or by colours, the artist of the
+higher schools must make the broadest distinction between the real and
+the true,--in other words, between the imitation of actual life, and the
+exaltation of Nature into the Ideal.
+
+“The one,” said he, “is the Dutch School, the other is the Greek.”
+
+“Sir,” said I, “the Dutch is the most in fashion.”
+
+“Yes, in painting, perhaps,” answered my host, “but in literature--”
+
+“It was of literature I spoke. Our growing poets are all for simplicity
+and Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest praise of a work of
+imagination, to say that its characters are exact to common life, even
+in sculpture--”
+
+“In sculpture! No, no! THERE the high ideal must at least be essential!”
+
+“Pardon me; I fear you have not seen Souter Johnny and Tam O’Shanter.”
+
+“Ah!” said the old gentleman, shaking his head, “I live very much out of
+the world, I see. I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be admired?”
+
+“On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the excuse
+for attacking everybody else. But then our critics have discovered that
+Shakespeare is so REAL!”
+
+“Real! The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met with in
+actual life,--who has never once descended to a passion that is false,
+or a personage who is real!”
+
+I was about to reply very severely to this paradox, when I perceived
+that my companion was growing a little out of temper. And he who wishes
+to catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to disturb the waters. I
+thought it better, therefore, to turn the conversation.
+
+“Revenons a nos moutons,” said I; “you promised to enlighten my
+ignorance as to the Rosicrucians.”
+
+“Well!” quoth he, rather sternly; “but for what purpose? Perhaps you
+desire only to enter the temple in order to ridicule the rites?”
+
+“What do you take me for! Surely, were I so inclined, the fate of the
+Abbe de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to treat idly
+of the realms of the Salamander and the Sylph. Everybody knows how
+mysteriously that ingenious personage was deprived of his life, in
+revenge for the witty mockeries of his ‘Comte de Gabalis.’”
+
+“Salamander and Sylph! I see that you fall into the vulgar error, and
+translate literally the allegorical language of the mystics.”
+
+With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very
+interesting, and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of the
+tenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still existed,
+and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound researches into
+natural science and occult philosophy.
+
+“But this fraternity,” said he, “however respectable and
+virtuous,--virtuous I say, for no monastic order is more severe in the
+practice of moral precepts, or more ardent in Christian faith,--this
+fraternity is but a branch of others yet more transcendent in the powers
+they have obtained, and yet more illustrious in their origin. Are you
+acquainted with the Platonists?”
+
+“I have occasionally lost my way in their labyrinth,” said I. “Faith,
+they are rather difficult gentlemen to understand.”
+
+“Yet their knottiest problems have never yet been published. Their
+sublimest works are in manuscript, and constitute the initiatory
+learning, not only of the Rosicrucians, but of the nobler brotherhoods
+I have referred to. More solemn and sublime still is the knowledge to
+be gleaned from the elder Pythagoreans, and the immortal masterpieces of
+Apollonius.”
+
+“Apollonius, the imposter of Tyanea! are his writings extant?”
+
+“Imposter!” cried my host; “Apollonius an imposter!”
+
+“I beg your pardon; I did not know he was a friend of yours; and if
+you vouch for his character, I will believe him to have been a very
+respectable man, who only spoke the truth when he boasted of his power
+to be in two places at the same time.”
+
+“Is that so difficult?” said the old gentleman; “if so, you have never
+dreamed!”
+
+Here ended our conversation; but from that time an acquaintance was
+formed between us which lasted till my venerable friend departed
+this life. Peace to his ashes! He was a person of singular habits and
+eccentric opinions; but the chief part of his time was occupied in acts
+of quiet and unostentatious goodness. He was an enthusiast in the duties
+of the Samaritan; and as his virtues were softened by the gentlest
+charity, so his hopes were based upon the devoutest belief. He never
+conversed upon his own origin and history, nor have I ever been able to
+penetrate the darkness in which they were concealed. He seemed to have
+seen much of the world, and to have been an eye-witness of the first
+French Revolution, a subject upon which he was equally eloquent and
+instructive. At the same time he did not regard the crimes of that
+stormy period with the philosophical leniency with which enlightened
+writers (their heads safe upon their shoulders) are, in the present day,
+inclined to treat the massacres of the past: he spoke not as a student
+who had read and reasoned, but as a man who had seen and suffered. The
+old gentleman seemed alone in the world; nor did I know that he had one
+relation, till his executor, a distant cousin, residing abroad, informed
+me of the very handsome legacy which my poor friend had bequeathed
+me. This consisted, first, of a sum about which I think it best to be
+guarded, foreseeing the possibility of a new tax upon real and funded
+property; and, secondly, of certain precious manuscripts, to which the
+following volumes owe their existence.
+
+I imagine I trace this latter bequest to a visit I paid the Sage, if so
+I may be permitted to call him, a few weeks before his death.
+
+Although he read little of our modern literature, my friend, with the
+affable good-nature which belonged to him, graciously permitted me
+to consult him upon various literary undertakings meditated by the
+desultory ambition of a young and inexperienced student. And at that
+time I sought his advice upon a work of imagination, intended to depict
+the effects of enthusiasm upon different modifications of character.
+He listened to my conception, which was sufficiently trite and
+prosaic, with his usual patience; and then, thoughtfully turning to his
+bookshelves, took down an old volume, and read to me, first, in Greek,
+and secondly, in English, some extracts to the following effect:--
+
+“Plato here expresses four kinds of mania, by which I desire to
+understand enthusiasm and the inspiration of the gods: Firstly, the
+musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and
+fourthly, that which belongs to love.”
+
+The author he quoted, after contending that there is something in the
+soul above intellect, and stating that there are in our nature distinct
+energies,--by the one of which we discover and seize, as it were,
+on sciences and theorems with almost intuitive rapidity, by
+another, through which high art is accomplished, like the statues of
+Phidias,--proceeded to state that “enthusiasm, in the true acceptation
+of the word, is, when that part of the soul which is above intellect is
+excited to the gods, and thence derives its inspiration.”
+
+The author, then pursuing his comment upon Plato, observes, that “one of
+these manias may suffice (especially that which belongs to love) to lead
+back the soul to its first divinity and happiness; but that there is
+an intimate union with them all; and that the ordinary progress through
+which the soul ascends is, primarily, through the musical; next, through
+the telestic or mystic; thirdly, through the prophetic; and lastly,
+through the enthusiasm of love.”
+
+While with a bewildered understanding and a reluctant attention I
+listened to these intricate sublimities, my adviser closed the volume,
+and said with complacency, “There is the motto for your book,--the
+thesis for your theme.”
+
+“Davus sum, non Oedipus,” said I, shaking my head, discontentedly.
+“All this may be exceedingly fine, but, Heaven forgive me,--I don’t
+understand a word of it. The mysteries of your Rosicrucians, and your
+fraternities, are mere child’s play to the jargon of the Platonists.”
+
+“Yet, not till you rightly understand this passage, can you understand
+the higher theories of the Rosicrucians, or of the still nobler
+fraternities you speak of with so much levity.”
+
+“Oh, if that be the case, I give up in despair. Why not, since you are
+so well versed in the matter, take the motto for a book of your own?”
+
+“But if I have already composed a book with that thesis for its theme,
+will you prepare it for the public?”
+
+“With the greatest pleasure,” said I,--alas, too rashly!
+
+“I shall hold you to your promise,” returned the old gentleman, “and
+when I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts. From what you say
+of the prevailing taste in literature, I cannot flatter you with
+the hope that you will gain much by the undertaking. And I tell you
+beforehand that you will find it not a little laborious.”
+
+“Is your work a romance?”
+
+“It is a romance, and it is not a romance. It is a truth for those who
+can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who cannot.”
+
+At last there arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from my
+deceased friend, reminding me of my imprudent promise.
+
+With mournful interest, and yet with eager impatience, I opened the
+packet and trimmed my lamp. Conceive my dismay when I found the whole
+written in an unintelligible cipher. I present the reader with a
+specimen:
+
+(Several strange characters.)
+
+and so on for nine hundred and forty mortal pages in foolscap. I could
+scarcely believe my eyes: in fact, I began to think the lamp burned
+singularly blue; and sundry misgivings as to the unhallowed nature
+of the characters I had so unwittingly opened upon, coupled with the
+strange hints and mystical language of the old gentleman, crept through
+my disordered imagination. Certainly, to say no worse of it, the whole
+thing looked UNCANNY! I was about, precipitately, to hurry the papers
+into my desk, with a pious determination to have nothing more to do with
+them, when my eye fell upon a book, neatly bound in blue morocco, and
+which, in my eagerness, I had hitherto overlooked. I opened this volume
+with great precaution, not knowing what might jump out, and--guess
+my delight--found that it contained a key or dictionary to the
+hieroglyphics. Not to weary the reader with an account of my labours,
+I am contented with saying that at last I imagined myself capable of
+construing the characters, and set to work in good earnest. Still it was
+no easy task, and two years elapsed before I had made much progress. I
+then, by way of experiment on the public, obtained the insertion of a
+few desultory chapters, in a periodical with which, for a few months, I
+had the honour to be connected. They appeared to excite more curiosity
+than I had presumed to anticipate; and I renewed, with better heart, my
+laborious undertaking. But now a new misfortune befell me: I found, as
+I proceeded, that the author had made two copies of his work, one much
+more elaborate and detailed than the other; I had stumbled upon the
+earlier copy, and had my whole task to remodel, and the chapters I had
+written to retranslate. I may say then, that, exclusive of intervals
+devoted to more pressing occupations, my unlucky promise cost me the
+toil of several years before I could bring it to adequate fulfilment.
+The task was the more difficult, since the style in the original is
+written in a kind of rhythmical prose, as if the author desired that in
+some degree his work should be regarded as one of poetical conception
+and design. To this it was not possible to do justice, and in the
+attempt I have doubtless very often need of the reader’s indulgent
+consideration. My natural respect for the old gentleman’s vagaries,
+with a muse of equivocal character, must be my only excuse whenever
+the language, without luxuriating into verse, borrows flowers scarcely
+natural to prose. Truth compels me also to confess, that, with all
+my pains, I am by no means sure that I have invariably given the true
+meaning of the cipher; nay, that here and there either a gap in the
+narrative, or the sudden assumption of a new cipher, to which no key was
+afforded, has obliged me to resort to interpolations of my own, no doubt
+easily discernible, but which, I flatter myself, are not inharmonious to
+the general design. This confession leads me to the sentence with
+which I shall conclude: If, reader, in this book there be anything that
+pleases you, it is certainly mine; but whenever you come to something
+you dislike,--lay the blame upon the old gentleman!
+
+London, January, 1842.
+
+N.B.--The notes appended to the text are sometimes by the author,
+sometimes by the editor. I have occasionally (but not always) marked
+the distinction; where, however, this is omitted, the ingenuity of the
+reader will be rarely at fault.
+
+
+
+
+ZANONI.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I. -- THE MUSICIAN.
+
+     Due Fontane
+     Chi di diverso effeto hanno liquore!
+
+     “Ariosto, Orland. Fur.” Canto 1.7.
+
+     (Two Founts
+     That hold a draught of different effects.)
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.I.
+
+     Vergina era
+     D’ alta belta, ma sua belta non cura:
+     ....
+     Di natura, d’ amor, de’ cieli amici
+     Le negligenze sue sono artifici.
+
+     “Gerusal. Lib.,” canto ii. xiv.-xviii.
+
+     (She was a virgin of a glorious beauty, but regarded not her
+     beauty...Negligence itself is art in those favoured by Nature, by
+     love, and by the heavens.)
+
+At Naples, in the latter half of the last century, a worthy artist named
+Gaetano Pisani lived and flourished. He was a musician of great genius,
+but not of popular reputation; there was in all his compositions
+something capricious and fantastic which did not please the taste of the
+Dilettanti of Naples. He was fond of unfamiliar subjects into which he
+introduced airs and symphonies that excited a kind of terror in those
+who listened. The names of his pieces will probably suggest their
+nature. I find, for instance, among his MSS., these titles: “The Feast
+of the Harpies,” “The Witches at Benevento,” “The Descent of Orpheus
+into Hades,” “The Evil Eye,” “The Eumenides,” and many others
+that evince a powerful imagination delighting in the fearful and
+supernatural, but often relieved by an airy and delicate fancy with
+passages of exquisite grace and beauty. It is true that in the selection
+of his subjects from ancient fable, Gaetano Pisani was much more
+faithful than his contemporaries to the remote origin and the early
+genius of Italian Opera.
+
+That descendant, however effeminate, of the ancient union between Song
+and Drama, when, after long obscurity and dethronement, it regained a
+punier sceptre, though a gaudier purple, by the banks of the Etrurian
+Arno, or amidst the lagunes of Venice, had chosen all its primary
+inspirations from the unfamiliar and classic sources of heathen legend;
+and Pisani’s “Descent of Orpheus” was but a bolder, darker, and more
+scientific repetition of the “Euridice” which Jacopi Peri set to music
+at the august nuptials of Henry of Navarre and Mary of Medicis.* Still,
+as I have said, the style of the Neapolitan musician was not on the
+whole pleasing to ears grown nice and euphuistic in the more dulcet
+melodies of the day; and faults and extravagances easily discernible,
+and often to appearance wilful, served the critics for an excuse for
+their distaste. Fortunately, or the poor musician might have starved,
+he was not only a composer, but also an excellent practical performer,
+especially on the violin, and by that instrument he earned a decent
+subsistence as one of the orchestra at the Great Theatre of San Carlo.
+Here formal and appointed tasks necessarily kept his eccentric fancies
+in tolerable check, though it is recorded that no less than five times
+he had been deposed from his desk for having shocked the conoscenti,
+and thrown the whole band into confusion, by impromptu variations of so
+frantic and startling a nature that one might well have imagined that
+the harpies or witches who inspired his compositions had clawed hold of
+his instrument.
+
+The impossibility, however, to find any one of equal excellence as a
+performer (that is to say, in his more lucid and orderly moments) had
+forced his reinstalment, and he had now, for the most part, reconciled
+himself to the narrow sphere of his appointed adagios or allegros. The
+audience, too, aware of his propensity, were quick to perceive the least
+deviation from the text; and if he wandered for a moment, which
+might also be detected by the eye as well as the ear, in some strange
+contortion of visage, and some ominous flourish of his bow, a gentle and
+admonitory murmur recalled the musician from his Elysium or his Tartarus
+to the sober regions of his desk. Then he would start as if from a
+dream, cast a hurried, frightened, apologetic glance around, and, with
+a crestfallen, humbled air, draw his rebellious instrument back to the
+beaten track of the glib monotony. But at home he would make himself
+amends for this reluctant drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy
+violin with ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the
+morning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early
+fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make him
+cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly music in his
+ear.
+
+     (*Orpheus was the favourite hero of early Italian Opera, or
+     Lyrical Drama. The Orfeo of Angelo Politiano was produced in
+     1475. The Orfeo of Monteverde was performed at Venice in
+     1667.)
+
+This man’s appearance was in keeping with the characteristics of his
+art. The features were noble and striking, but worn and haggard,
+with black, careless locks tangled into a maze of curls, and a fixed,
+speculative, dreamy stare in his large and hollow eyes. All his
+movements were peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as the impulse seized him;
+and in gliding through the streets, or along the beach, he was heard
+laughing and talking to himself. Withal, he was a harmless, guileless,
+gentle creature, and would share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom
+he often paused to contemplate as they lay lazily basking in the sun.
+Yet was he thoroughly unsocial. He formed no friends, flattered no
+patrons, resorted to none of the merry-makings so dear to the children
+of music and the South. He and his art seemed alone suited to each
+other,--both quaint, primitive, unworldly, irregular. You could not
+separate the man from his music; it was himself. Without it he was
+nothing, a mere machine! WITH it, he was king over worlds of his own.
+Poor man, he had little enough in this! At a manufacturing town in
+England there is a gravestone on which the epitaph records “one Claudius
+Phillips, whose absolute contempt for riches, and inimitable performance
+on the violin, made him the admiration of all that knew him!” Logical
+conjunction of opposite eulogies! In proportion, O Genius, to thy
+contempt for riches will be thy performance on thy violin!
+
+Gaetano Pisani’s talents as a composer had been chiefly exhibited
+in music appropriate to this his favourite instrument, of all
+unquestionably the most various and royal in its resources and power
+over the passions. As Shakespeare among poets is the Cremona among
+instruments. Nevertheless, he had composed other pieces of larger
+ambition and wider accomplishment, and chief of these, his precious, his
+unpurchased, his unpublished, his unpublishable and imperishable opera
+of the “Siren.” This great work had been the dream of his boyhood, the
+mistress of his manhood; in advancing age “it stood beside him like
+his youth.” Vainly had he struggled to place it before the world. Even
+bland, unjealous Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, shook his gentle head
+when the musician favoured him with a specimen of one of his most
+thrilling scenas. And yet, Paisiello, though that music differs from all
+Durante taught thee to emulate, there may--but patience, Gaetano Pisani!
+bide thy time, and keep thy violin in tune!
+
+Strange as it may appear to the fairer reader, this grotesque personage
+had yet formed those ties which ordinary mortals are apt to consider
+their especial monopoly,--he was married, and had one child. What is
+more strange yet, his wife was a daughter of quiet, sober, unfantastic
+England: she was much younger than himself; she was fair and gentle,
+with a sweet English face; she had married him from choice, and (will
+you believe it?) she yet loved him. How she came to marry him, or how
+this shy, unsocial, wayward creature ever ventured to propose, I can
+only explain by asking you to look round and explain first to ME how
+half the husbands and half the wives you meet ever found a mate! Yet, on
+reflection, this union was not so extraordinary after all. The girl was
+a natural child of parents too noble ever to own and claim her. She was
+brought into Italy to learn the art by which she was to live, for she
+had taste and voice; she was a dependant and harshly treated, and poor
+Pisani was her master, and his voice the only one she had heard from
+her cradle that seemed without one tone that could scorn or chide. And
+so--well, is the rest natural? Natural or not, they married. This young
+wife loved her husband; and young and gentle as she was, she might
+almost be said to be the protector of the two. From how many disgraces
+with the despots of San Carlo and the Conservatorio had her unknown
+officious mediation saved him! In how many ailments--for his frame was
+weak--had she nursed and tended him! Often, in the dark nights, she
+would wait at the theatre with her lantern to light him and her steady
+arm to lean on; otherwise, in his abstract reveries, who knows but the
+musician would have walked after his “Siren” into the sea! And then she
+would so patiently, perhaps (for in true love there is not always the
+finest taste) so DELIGHTEDLY, listen to those storms of eccentric and
+fitful melody, and steal him--whispering praises all the way--from the
+unwholesome night-watch to rest and sleep!
+
+I said his music was a part of the man, and this gentle creature seemed
+a part of the music; it was, in fact, when she sat beside him that
+whatever was tender or fairy-like in his motley fantasia crept into the
+harmony as by stealth. Doubtless her presence acted on the music, and
+shaped and softened it; but, he, who never examined how or what his
+inspiration, knew it not. All that he knew was, that he loved and
+blessed her. He fancied he told her so twenty times a day; but he never
+did, for he was not of many words, even to his wife. His language
+was his music,--as hers, her cares! He was more communicative to his
+barbiton, as the learned Mersennus teaches us to call all the varieties
+of the great viol family. Certainly barbiton sounds better than
+fiddle; and barbiton let it be. He would talk to THAT by the hour
+together,--praise it, scold it, coax it, nay (for such is man, even the
+most guileless), he had been known to swear at it; but for that excess
+he was always penitentially remorseful. And the barbiton had a tongue of
+his own, could take his own part, and when HE also scolded, had much
+the best of it. He was a noble fellow, this Violin!--a Tyrolese, the
+handiwork of the illustrious Steiner. There was something mysterious in
+his great age. How many hands, now dust, had awakened his strings ere
+he became the Robin Goodfellow and Familiar of Gaetano Pisani! His very
+case was venerable,--beautifully painted, it was said, by Caracci. An
+English collector had offered more for the case than Pisani had ever
+made by the violin. But Pisani, who cared not if he had inhabited a
+cabin himself, was proud of a palace for the barbiton. His barbiton, it
+was his elder child! He had another child, and now we must turn to her.
+
+How shall I describe thee, Viola? Certainly the music had something to
+answer for in the advent of that young stranger. For both in her form
+and her character you might have traced a family likeness to that
+singular and spirit-like life of sound which night after night threw
+itself in airy and goblin sport over the starry seas...Beautiful
+she was, but of a very uncommon beauty,--a combination, a harmony of
+opposite attributes. Her hair of a gold richer and purer than that
+which is seen even in the North; but the eyes, of all the dark, tender,
+subduing light of more than Italian--almost of Oriental--splendour. The
+complexion exquisitely fair, but never the same,--vivid in one moment,
+pale the next. And with the complexion, the expression also varied;
+nothing now so sad, and nothing now so joyous.
+
+I grieve to say that what we rightly entitle education was much
+neglected for their daughter by this singular pair. To be sure, neither
+of them had much knowledge to bestow; and knowledge was not then the
+fashion, as it is now. But accident or nature favoured young Viola. She
+learned, as of course, her mother’s language with her father’s. And she
+contrived soon to read and to write; and her mother, who, by the
+way, was a Roman Catholic, taught her betimes to pray. But then, to
+counteract all these acquisitions, the strange habits of Pisani, and the
+incessant watch and care which he required from his wife, often left the
+child alone with an old nurse, who, to be sure, loved her dearly, but
+who was in no way calculated to instruct her.
+
+Dame Gionetta was every inch Italian and Neapolitan. Her youth had been
+all love, and her age was all superstition. She was garrulous, fond,--a
+gossip. Now she would prattle to the girl of cavaliers and princes at
+her feet, and now she would freeze her blood with tales and legends,
+perhaps as old as Greek or Etrurian fable, of demon and vampire,--of the
+dances round the great walnut-tree at Benevento, and the haunting spell
+of the Evil Eye. All this helped silently to weave charmed webs over
+Viola’s imagination that afterthought and later years might labour
+vainly to dispel. And all this especially fitted her to hang, with a
+fearful joy, upon her father’s music. Those visionary strains, ever
+struggling to translate into wild and broken sounds the language of
+unearthly beings, breathed around her from her birth. Thus you might
+have said that her whole mind was full of music; associations, memories,
+sensations of pleasure or pain,--all were mixed up inexplicably with
+those sounds that now delighted and now terrified; that greeted her when
+her eyes opened to the sun, and woke her trembling on her lonely couch
+in the darkness of the night. The legends and tales of Gionetta only
+served to make the child better understand the signification of those
+mysterious tones; they furnished her with words to the music. It was
+natural that the daughter of such a parent should soon evince some taste
+in his art. But this developed itself chiefly in the ear and the voice.
+She was yet a child when she sang divinely. A great Cardinal--great
+alike in the State and the Conservatorio--heard of her gifts, and sent
+for her. From that moment her fate was decided: she was to be the future
+glory of Naples, the prima donna of San Carlo.
+
+The Cardinal insisted upon the accomplishment of his own predictions,
+and provided her with the most renowned masters. To inspire her with
+emulation, his Eminence took her one evening to his own box: it would
+be something to see the performance, something more to hear the applause
+lavished upon the glittering signoras she was hereafter to excel! Oh,
+how gloriously that life of the stage, that fairy world of music and
+song, dawned upon her! It was the only world that seemed to correspond
+with her strange childish thoughts. It appeared to her as if, cast
+hitherto on a foreign shore, she was brought at last to see the forms
+and hear the language of her native land. Beautiful and true enthusiasm,
+rich with the promise of genius! Boy or man, thou wilt never be a poet,
+if thou hast not felt the ideal, the romance, the Calypso’s isle that
+opened to thee when for the first time the magic curtain was drawn
+aside, and let in the world of poetry on the world of prose!
+
+And now the initiation was begun. She was to read, to study, to depict
+by a gesture, a look, the passions she was to delineate on the boards;
+lessons dangerous, in truth, to some, but not to the pure enthusiasm
+that comes from art; for the mind that rightly conceives art is but
+a mirror which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfully
+only--while unsullied. She seized on nature and truth intuitively. Her
+recitations became full of unconscious power; her voice moved the heart
+to tears, or warmed it into generous rage. But this arose from that
+sympathy which genius ever has, even in its earliest innocence, with
+whatever feels, or aspires, or suffers.
+
+It was no premature woman comprehending the love or the jealousy that
+the words expressed; her art was one of those strange secrets which
+the psychologists may unriddle to us if they please, and tell us why
+children of the simplest minds and the purest hearts are often so acute
+to distinguish, in the tales you tell them, or the songs you sing, the
+difference between the true art and the false, passion and jargon, Homer
+and Racine,--echoing back, from hearts that have not yet felt what they
+repeat, the melodious accents of the natural pathos. Apart from
+her studies, Viola was a simple, affectionate, but somewhat wayward
+child,--wayward, not in temper, for that was sweet and docile; but in
+her moods, which, as I before hinted, changed from sad to gay and gay to
+sad without an apparent cause. If cause there were, it must be traced to
+the early and mysterious influences I have referred to, when seeking to
+explain the effect produced on her imagination by those restless streams
+of sound that constantly played around it; for it is noticeable that to
+those who are much alive to the effects of music, airs and tunes often
+come back, in the commonest pursuits of life, to vex, as it were, and
+haunt them. The music, once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sort
+of spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and
+galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living
+as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air. Now at times, then,
+these phantoms of sound floated back upon her fancy; if gay, to call
+a smile from every dimple; if mournful, to throw a shade upon her
+brow,--to make her cease from her childishmirth, and sit apart and muse.
+
+Rightly, then, in a typical sense, might this fair creature, so airy in
+her shape, so harmonious in her beauty, so unfamiliar in her ways and
+thoughts,--rightly might she be called a daughter, less of the musician
+than the music, a being for whom you could imagine that some fate was
+reserved, less of actual life than the romance which, to eyes that can
+see, and hearts that can feel, glides ever along WITH the actual life,
+stream by stream, to the Dark Ocean.
+
+And therefore it seemed not strange that Viola herself, even in
+childhood, and yet more as she bloomed into the sweet seriousness of
+virgin youth, should fancy her life ordained for a lot, whether of bliss
+or woe, that should accord with the romance and reverie which made the
+atmosphere she breathed. Frequently she would climb through the thickets
+that clothed the neighbouring grotto of Posilipo,--the mighty work of
+the old Cimmerians,--and, seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulge
+those visions, the subtle vagueness of which no poetry can render
+palpable and defined; for the Poet that surpasses all who ever sang, is
+the heart of dreaming youth! Frequently there, too, beside the threshold
+over which the vine-leaves clung, and facing that dark-blue, waveless
+sea, she would sit in the autumn noon or summer twilight, and build her
+castles in the air. Who doth not do the same,--not in youth alone, but
+with the dimmed hopes of age! It is man’s prerogative to dream, the
+common royalty of peasant and of king. But those day-dreams of hers were
+more habitual, distinct, and solemn than the greater part of us indulge.
+They seemed like the Orama of the Greeks,--prophets while phantasma.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.II.
+
+     Fu stupor, fu vaghezza, fu diletto!
+     “Gerusal. Lib.,” cant. ii. xxi.
+
+     (“Desire it was, ‘t was wonder, ‘t was delight.”
+      Wiffen’s Translation.)
+
+Now at last the education is accomplished! Viola is nearly sixteen.
+The Cardinal declares that the time is come when the new name must be
+inscribed in the Libro d’Oro,--the Golden Book set apart to the children
+of Art and Song. Yes, but in what character?--to whose genius is she
+to give embodiment and form? Ah, there is the secret! Rumours go abroad
+that the inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance of his
+“Nel cor piu non me sento,” and his “Io son Lindoro,” will produce some
+new masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others insist upon it that
+her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at work at another
+“Matrimonia Segreto.” But in the meanwhile there is a check in the
+diplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed to be out of humour. He
+has said publicly,--and the words are portentous,--“The silly girl is
+as mad as her father; what she asks is preposterous!” Conference follows
+conference; the Cardinal talks to the poor child very solemnly in
+his closet,--all in vain. Naples is distracted with curiosity and
+conjecture. The lecture ends in a quarrel, and Viola comes home sullen
+and pouting: she will not act,--she has renounced the engagement.
+
+Pisani, too inexperienced to be aware of all the dangers of the stage,
+had been pleased at the notion that one, at least, of his name would add
+celebrity to his art. The girl’s perverseness displeased him. However,
+he said nothing,--he never scolded in words, but he took up the faithful
+barbiton. Oh, faithful barbiton, how horribly thou didst scold! It
+screeched, it gabbled, it moaned, it growled. And Viola’s eyes filled
+with tears, for she understood that language. She stole to her mother,
+and whispered in her ear; and when Pisani turned from his employment,
+lo! both mother and daughter were weeping. He looked at them with a
+wondering stare; and then, as if he felt he had been harsh, he flew
+again to his Familiar. And now you thought you heard the lullaby which a
+fairy might sing to some fretful changeling it had adopted and sought to
+soothe. Liquid, low, silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchanted
+bow. The most stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal,
+at times, out came a wild, merry, ringing note, like a laugh, but not
+mortal laughter. It was one of his most successful airs from his beloved
+opera,--the Siren in the act of charming the waves and the winds to
+sleep. Heaven knows what next would have come, but his arm was arrested.
+Viola had thrown herself on his breast, and kissed him, with happy
+eyes that smiled through her sunny hair. At that very moment the door
+opened,--a message from the Cardinal. Viola must go to his Eminence at
+once. Her mother went with her. All was reconciled and settled; Viola
+had her way, and selected her own opera. O ye dull nations of the North,
+with your broils and debates,--your bustling lives of the Pnyx and
+the Agora!--you cannot guess what a stir throughout musical Naples was
+occasioned by the rumour of a new opera and a new singer. But whose
+the opera? No cabinet intrigue ever was so secret. Pisani came back one
+night from the theatre, evidently disturbed and irate. Woe to thine ears
+hadst thou heard the barbiton that night! They had suspended him from
+his office,--they feared that the new opera, and the first debut of
+his daughter as prima donna, would be too much for his nerves. And his
+variations, his diablerie of sirens and harpies, on such a night, made
+a hazard not to be contemplated without awe. To be set aside, and on the
+very night that his child, whose melody was but an emanation of his own,
+was to perform,--set aside for some new rival: it was too much for a
+musician’s flesh and blood. For the first time he spoke in words upon
+the subject, and gravely asked--for that question the barbiton, eloquent
+as it was, could not express distinctly--what was to be the opera, and
+what the part? And Viola as gravely answered that she was pledged to the
+Cardinal not to reveal. Pisani said nothing, but disappeared with
+the violin; and presently they heard the Familiar from the house-top
+(whither, when thoroughly out of humour, the musician sometimes fled),
+whining and sighing as if its heart were broken.
+
+The affections of Pisani were little visible on the surface. He was not
+one of those fond, caressing fathers whose children are ever playing
+round their knees; his mind and soul were so thoroughly in his art that
+domestic life glided by him, seemingly as if THAT were a dream, and
+the heart the substantial form and body of existence. Persons
+much cultivating an abstract study are often thus; mathematicians
+proverbially so. When his servant ran to the celebrated French
+philosopher, shrieking, “The house is on fire, sir!” “Go and tell my
+wife then, fool!” said the wise man, settling back to his problems;
+“do _I_ ever meddle with domestic affairs?” But what are mathematics to
+music--music, that not only composes operas, but plays on the barbiton?
+Do you know what the illustrious Giardini said when the tyro asked how
+long it would take to learn to play on the violin? Hear, and despair, ye
+who would bend the bow to which that of Ulysses was a plaything, “Twelve
+hours a day for twenty years together!” Can a man, then, who plays the
+barbiton be always playing also with his little ones? No, Pisani; often,
+with the keen susceptibility of childhood, poor Viola had stolen from
+the room to weep at the thought that thou didst not love her. And yet,
+underneath this outward abstraction of the artist, the natural fondness
+flowed all the same; and as she grew up, the dreamer had understood the
+dreamer. And now, shut out from all fame himself; to be forbidden to
+hail even his daughter’s fame!--and that daughter herself to be in
+the conspiracy against him! Sharper than the serpent’s tooth was the
+ingratitude, and sharper than the serpent’s tooth was the wail of the
+pitying barbiton!
+
+The eventful hour is come. Viola is gone to the theatre,--her mother
+with her. The indignant musician remains at home. Gionetta bursts into
+the room: my Lord Cardinal’s carriage is at the door,--the Padrone is
+sent for. He must lay aside his violin; he must put on his brocade coat
+and his lace ruffles. Here they are,--quick, quick! And quick rolls the
+gilded coach, and majestic sits the driver, and statelily prance the
+steeds. Poor Pisani is lost in a mist of uncomfortable amaze. He arrives
+at the theatre; he descends at the great door; he turns round and
+round, and looks about him and about: he misses something,--where is the
+violin? Alas! his soul, his voice, his self of self, is left behind! It
+is but an automaton that the lackeys conduct up the stairs, through the
+tier, into the Cardinal’s box. But then, what bursts upon him! Does he
+dream? The first act is over (they did not send for him till success
+seemed no longer doubtful); the first act has decided all. He feels THAT
+by the electric sympathy which ever the one heart has at once with
+a vast audience. He feels it by the breathless stillness of that
+multitude; he feels it even by the lifted finger of the Cardinal. He
+sees his Viola on the stage, radiant in her robes and gems,--he hears
+her voice thrilling through the single heart of the thousands! But the
+scene, the part, the music! It is his other child,--his immortal child;
+the spirit-infant of his soul; his darling of many years of patient
+obscurity and pining genius; his masterpiece; his opera of the Siren!
+
+This, then, was the mystery that had so galled him,--this the cause of
+the quarrel with the Cardinal; this the secret not to be proclaimed till
+the success was won, and the daughter had united her father’s triumph
+with her own! And there she stands, as all souls bow before her,--fairer
+than the very Siren he had called from the deeps of melody. Oh, long and
+sweet recompense of toil! Where is on earth the rapture like that which
+is known to genius when at last it bursts from its hidden cavern into
+light and fame!
+
+He did not speak, he did not move; he stood transfixed, breathless, the
+tears rolling down his cheeks; only from time to time his hands still
+wandered about,--mechanically they sought for the faithful instrument,
+why was it not there to share his triumph?
+
+At last the curtain fell; but on such a storm and diapason of applause!
+Up rose the audience as one man, as with one voice that dear name was
+shouted. She came on, trembling, pale, and in the whole crowd saw but
+her father’s face. The audience followed those moistened eyes; they
+recognised with a thrill the daughter’s impulse and her meaning. The
+good old Cardinal drew him gently forward. Wild musician, thy daughter
+has given thee back more than the life thou gavest!
+
+“My poor violin!” said he, wiping his eyes, “they will never hiss thee
+again now!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.III.
+
+     Fra si contrarie tempre in ghiaccio e in foco,
+     In riso e in pianto, e fra paura e speme
+     L’ingannatrice Donna--
+     “Gerusal. Lib.,” cant. iv. xciv.
+
+     (Between such contrarious mixtures of ice and fire, laughter and
+     tears,--fear and hope, the deceiving dame.)
+
+Now notwithstanding the triumph both of the singer and the opera, there
+had been one moment in the first act, and, consequently, BEFORE the
+arrival of Pisani, when the scale seemed more than doubtful. It was in a
+chorus replete with all the peculiarities of the composer. And when the
+Maelstrom of Capricci whirled and foamed, and tore ear and sense through
+every variety of sound, the audience simultaneously recognised the
+hand of Pisani. A title had been given to the opera which had hitherto
+prevented all suspicion of its parentage; and the overture and opening,
+in which the music had been regular and sweet, had led the audience
+to fancy they detected the genius of their favourite Paisiello. Long
+accustomed to ridicule and almost to despise the pretensions of Pisani
+as a composer, they now felt as if they had been unduly cheated into
+the applause with which they had hailed the overture and the commencing
+scenas. An ominous buzz circulated round the house: the singers,
+the orchestra,--electrically sensitive to the impression of the
+audience,--grew, themselves, agitated and dismayed, and failed in the
+energy and precision which could alone carry off the grotesqueness of
+the music.
+
+There are always in every theatre many rivals to a new author and a new
+performer,--a party impotent while all goes well, but a dangerous ambush
+the instant some accident throws into confusion the march of success. A
+hiss arose; it was partial, it is true, but the significant silence of
+all applause seemed to forebode the coming moment when the displeasure
+would grow contagious. It was the breath that stirred the impending
+avalanche. At that critical moment Viola, the Siren queen, emerged for
+the first time from her ocean cave. As she came forward to the
+lamps, the novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the
+audience,--which even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at the
+first arouse,--the whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, the
+glare of the lights, and more--far more than the rest--that recent hiss,
+which had reached her in her concealment, all froze up her faculties and
+suspended her voice. And, instead of the grand invocation into which
+she ought rapidly to have burst, the regal Siren, retransformed into
+the trembling girl, stood pale and mute before the stern, cold array of
+those countless eyes.
+
+At that instant, and when consciousness itself seemed about to fail her,
+as she turned a timid beseeching glance around the still multitude, she
+perceived, in a box near the stage, a countenance which at once, and
+like magic, produced on her mind an effect never to be analysed
+nor forgotten. It was one that awakened an indistinct, haunting
+reminiscence, as if she had seen it in those day-dreams she had been so
+wont from infancy to indulge. She could not withdraw her gaze from that
+face, and as she gazed, the awe and coldness that had before seized her,
+vanished like a mist from before the sun.
+
+In the dark splendour of the eyes that met her own there was indeed
+so much of gentle encouragement, of benign and compassionate
+admiration,--so much that warmed, and animated, and nerved,--that any
+one, actor or orator, who has ever observed the effect that a single
+earnest and kindly look in the crowd that is to be addressed and won,
+will produce upon his mind, may readily account for the sudden and
+inspiriting influence which the eye and smile of the stranger exercised
+on the debutante.
+
+And while yet she gazed, and the glow returned to her heart, the
+stranger half rose, as if to recall the audience to a sense of the
+courtesy due to one so fair and young; and the instant his voice gave
+the signal, the audience followed it by a burst of generous applause.
+For this stranger himself was a marked personage, and his recent arrival
+at Naples had divided with the new opera the gossip of the city. And
+then as the applause ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter,
+like a spirit from the clay, the Siren’s voice poured forth its
+entrancing music. From that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard,
+the whole world,--except the fairy one over with she presided. It seemed
+that the stranger’s presence only served still more to heighten that
+delusion, in which the artist sees no creation without the circle of his
+art, she felt as if that serene brow, and those brilliant eyes, inspired
+her with powers never known before: and, as if searching for a language
+to express the strange sensations occasioned by his presence, that
+presence itself whispered to her the melody and the song.
+
+Only when all was over, and she saw her father and felt his joy, did
+this wild spell vanish before the sweeter one of the household and
+filial love. Yet again, as she turned from the stage, she looked back
+involuntarily, and the stranger’s calm and half-melancholy smile sank
+into her heart,--to live there, to be recalled with confused memories,
+half of pleasure, and half of pain.
+
+Pass over the congratulations of the good Cardinal-Virtuoso, astonished
+at finding himself and all Naples had been hitherto in the wrong on
+a subject of taste,--still more astonished at finding himself and all
+Naples combining to confess it; pass over the whispered ecstasies of
+admiration which buzzed in the singer’s ear, as once more, in her modest
+veil and quiet dress, she escaped from the crowd of gallants that choked
+up every avenue behind the scenes; pass over the sweet embrace of father
+and child, returning through the starlit streets and along the deserted
+Chiaja in the Cardinal’s carriage; never pause now to note the tears and
+ejaculations of the good, simple-hearted mother,--see them returned;
+see the well-known room, venimus ad larem nostrum (We come to our own
+house.); see old Gionetta bustling at the supper; and hear Pisani, as he
+rouses the barbiton from its case, communicating all that has happened
+to the intelligent Familiar; hark to the mother’s merry, low, English
+laugh. Why, Viola, strange child, sittest thou apart, thy face leaning
+on thy fair hands, thine eyes fixed on space? Up, rouse thee! Every
+dimple on the cheek of home must smile to-night. (“Ridete quidquid est
+domi cachinnorum.” Catull. “ad Sirm. Penin.”)
+
+And a happy reunion it was round that humble table: a feast Lucullus
+might have envied in his Hall of Apollo, in the dried grapes, and
+the dainty sardines, and the luxurious polenta, and the old lacrima a
+present from the good Cardinal. The barbiton, placed on a chair--a tall,
+high-backed chair--beside the musician, seemed to take a part in the
+festive meal. Its honest varnished face glowed in the light of the lamp;
+and there was an impish, sly demureness in its very silence, as its
+master, between every mouthful, turned to talk to it of something he had
+forgotten to relate before. The good wife looked on affectionately, and
+could not eat for joy; but suddenly she rose, and placed on the
+artist’s temples a laurel wreath, which she had woven beforehand in fond
+anticipation; and Viola, on the other side her brother, the barbiton,
+rearranged the chaplet, and, smoothing back her father’s hair,
+whispered, “Caro Padre, you will not let HIM scold me again!”
+
+Then poor Pisani, rather distracted between the two, and excited both by
+the lacrima and his triumph, turned to the younger child with so naive
+and grotesque a pride, “I don’t know which to thank the most. You give
+me so much joy, child,--I am so proud of thee and myself. But he and I,
+poor fellow, have been so often unhappy together!”
+
+Viola’s sleep was broken,--that was natural. The intoxication of vanity
+and triumph, the happiness in the happiness she had caused, all this was
+better than sleep. But still from all this, again and again her thoughts
+flew to those haunting eyes, to that smile with which forever the memory
+of the triumph, of the happiness, was to be united. Her feelings, like
+her own character, were strange and peculiar. They were not those of a
+girl whose heart, for the first time reached through the eye, sighs
+its natural and native language of first love. It was not so much
+admiration, though the face that reflected itself on every wave of her
+restless fancies was of the rarest order of majesty and beauty; nor a
+pleased and enamoured recollection that the sight of this stranger had
+bequeathed: it was a human sentiment of gratitude and delight, mixed
+with something more mysterious, of fear and awe. Certainly she had seen
+before those features; but when and how? Only when her thoughts had
+sought to shape out her future, and when, in spite of all the attempts
+to vision forth a fate of flowers and sunshine, a dark and chill
+foreboding made her recoil back into her deepest self. It was a
+something found that had long been sought for by a thousand restless
+yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as when
+youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student,
+long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmer
+dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to allure, and to wane again.
+She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting,
+shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy
+cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her
+father settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from
+his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead.
+
+“And why,” she asked, when she descended to the room below,--“why, my
+father, was your inspiration so sad, after the joy of last night?”
+
+“I know not, child. I meant to be merry, and compose an air in honour of
+thee; but he is an obstinate fellow, this,--and he would have it so.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.IV.
+
+     E cosi i pigri e timidi desiri
+     Sprona.
+     “Gerusal. Lib.,” cant. iv. lxxxviii.
+
+     (And thus the slow and timid passions urged.)
+
+It was the custom of Pisani, except when the duties of his profession
+made special demand on his time, to devote a certain portion of the
+mid-day to sleep,--a habit not so much a luxury as a necessity to a man
+who slept very little during the night. In fact, whether to compose
+or to practice, the hours of noon were precisely those in which Pisani
+could not have been active if he would. His genius resembled those
+fountains full at dawn and evening, overflowing at night, and perfectly
+dry at the meridian. During this time, consecrated by her husband to
+repose, the signora generally stole out to make the purchases necessary
+for the little household, or to enjoy (as what woman does not?) a little
+relaxation in gossip with some of her own sex. And the day following
+this brilliant triumph, how many congratulations would she have to
+receive!
+
+At these times it was Viola’s habit to seat herself without the door
+of the house, under an awning which sheltered from the sun without
+obstructing the view; and there now, with the prompt-book on her knee,
+on which her eye roves listlessly from time to time, you may behold
+her, the vine-leaves clustering from their arching trellis over the
+door behind, and the lazy white-sailed boats skimming along the sea that
+stretched before.
+
+As she thus sat, rather in reverie than thought, a man coming from the
+direction of Posilipo, with a slow step and downcast eyes, passed close
+by the house, and Viola, looking up abruptly, started in a kind of
+terror as she recognised the stranger. She uttered an involuntary
+exclamation, and the cavalier turning, saw, and paused.
+
+He stood a moment or two between her and the sunlit ocean, contemplating
+in a silence too serious and gentle for the boldness of gallantry, the
+blushing face and the young slight form before him; at length he spoke.
+
+“Are you happy, my child,” he said, in almost a paternal tone, “at the
+career that lies before you? From sixteen to thirty, the music in the
+breath of applause is sweeter than all the music your voice can utter!”
+
+“I know not,” replied Viola, falteringly, but encouraged by the liquid
+softness of the accents that addressed her,--“I know not whether I am
+happy now, but I was last night. And I feel, too, Excellency, that I
+have you to thank, though, perhaps, you scarce know why!”
+
+“You deceive yourself,” said the cavalier, with a smile. “I am aware
+that I assisted to your merited success, and it is you who scarce know
+how. The WHY I will tell you: because I saw in your heart a nobler
+ambition than that of the woman’s vanity; it was the daughter that
+interested me. Perhaps you would rather I should have admired the
+singer?”
+
+“No; oh, no!”
+
+“Well, I believe you. And now, since we have thus met, I will pause to
+counsel you. When next you go to the theatre, you will have at your feet
+all the young gallants of Naples. Poor infant! the flame that dazzles
+the eye can scorch the wing. Remember that the only homage that does not
+sully must be that which these gallants will not give thee. And whatever
+thy dreams of the future,--and I see, while I speak to thee, how
+wandering they are, and wild,--may only those be fulfilled which centre
+round the hearth of home.”
+
+He paused, as Viola’s breast heaved beneath its robe. And with a burst
+of natural and innocent emotions, scarcely comprehending, though an
+Italian, the grave nature of his advice, she exclaimed,--
+
+“Ah, Excellency, you cannot know how dear to me that home is already.
+And my father,--there would be no home, signor, without him!”
+
+A deep and melancholy shade settled over the face of the cavalier. He
+looked up at the quiet house buried amidst the vine-leaves, and turned
+again to the vivid, animated face of the young actress.
+
+“It is well,” said he. “A simple heart may be its own best guide, and
+so, go on, and prosper. Adieu, fair singer.”
+
+“Adieu, Excellency; but,” and something she could not resist--an
+anxious, sickening feeling of fear and hope,--impelled her to the
+question, “I shall see you again, shall I not, at San Carlo?”
+
+“Not, at least, for some time. I leave Naples to-day.”
+
+“Indeed!” and Viola’s heart sank within her; the poetry of the stage was
+gone.
+
+“And,” said the cavalier, turning back, and gently laying his hand on
+hers,--“and, perhaps, before we meet, you may have suffered: known the
+first sharp griefs of human life,--known how little what fame can gain,
+repays what the heart can lose; but be brave and yield not,--not even to
+what may seem the piety of sorrow. Observe yon tree in your neighbour’s
+garden. Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind scattered
+the germ from which it sprang, in the clefts of the rock; choked up and
+walled round by crags and buildings, by Nature and man, its life has
+been one struggle for the light,--light which makes to that life the
+necessity and the principle: you see how it has writhed and twisted;
+how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has laboured and worked, stem
+and branches, towards the clear skies at last. What has preserved it
+through each disfavour of birth and circumstances,--why are its leaves
+as green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all
+its arms, can embrace the open sunshine? My child, because of the very
+instinct that impelled the struggle,--because the labour for the light
+won to the light at length. So with a gallant heart, through every
+adverse accident of sorrow and of fate to turn to the sun, to strive for
+the heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the strong and happiness
+to the weak. Ere we meet again, you will turn sad and heavy eyes to
+those quiet boughs, and when you hear the birds sing from them, and see
+the sunshine come aslant from crag and housetop to be the playfellow
+of their leaves, learn the lesson that Nature teaches you, and strive
+through darkness to the light!”
+
+As he spoke he moved on slowly, and left Viola wondering, silent,
+saddened with his dim prophecy of coming evil, and yet, through sadness,
+charmed. Involuntarily her eyes followed him,--involuntarily she
+stretched forth her arms, as if by a gesture to call him back; she would
+have given worlds to have seen him turn,--to have heard once more his
+low, calm, silvery voice; to have felt again the light touch of his hand
+on hers. As moonlight that softens into beauty every angle on which it
+falls, seemed his presence,--as moonlight vanishes, and things assume
+their common aspect of the rugged and the mean, he receded from her
+eyes, and the outward scene was commonplace once more.
+
+The stranger passed on, through that long and lovely road which reaches
+at last the palaces that face the public gardens, and conducts to the
+more populous quarters of the city.
+
+A group of young, dissipated courtiers, loitering by the gateway of a
+house which was open for the favourite pastime of the day,--the resort
+of the wealthier and more high-born gamesters,--made way for him, as
+with a courteous inclination he passed them by.
+
+“Per fede,” said one, “is not that the rich Zanoni, of whom the town
+talks?”
+
+“Ay; they say his wealth is incalculable!”
+
+“THEY say,--who are THEY?--what is the authority? He has not been many
+days at Naples, and I cannot yet find any one who knows aught of his
+birthplace, his parentage, or, what is more important, his estates!”
+
+“That is true; but he arrived in a goodly vessel, which THEY SAY is his
+own. See,--no, you cannot see it here; but it rides yonder in the bay.
+The bankers he deals with speak with awe of the sums placed in their
+hands.”
+
+“Whence came he?”
+
+“From some seaport in the East. My valet learned from some of the
+sailors on the Mole that he had resided many years in the interior of
+India.”
+
+“Ah, I am told that in India men pick up gold like pebbles, and that
+there are valleys where the birds build their nests with emeralds to
+attract the moths. Here comes our prince of gamesters, Cetoxa; be sure
+that he already must have made acquaintance with so wealthy a cavalier;
+he has that attraction to gold which the magnet has to steel. Well,
+Cetoxa, what fresh news of the ducats of Signor Zanoni?”
+
+“Oh,” said Cetoxa, carelessly, “my friend--”
+
+“Ha! ha! hear him; his friend--”
+
+“Yes; my friend Zanoni is going to Rome for a short time; when he
+returns, he has promised me to fix a day to sup with me, and I will then
+introduce him to you, and to the best society of Naples! Diavolo! but he
+is a most agreeable and witty gentleman!”
+
+“Pray tell us how you came so suddenly to be his friend.”
+
+“My dear Belgioso, nothing more natural. He desired a box at San Carlo;
+but I need not tell you that the expectation of a new opera (ah, how
+superb it is,--that poor devil, Pisani; who would have thought it?) and
+a new singer (what a face,--what a voice!--ah!) had engaged every corner
+of the house. I heard of Zanoni’s desire to honour the talent of Naples,
+and, with my usual courtesy to distinguished strangers, I sent to place
+my box at his disposal. He accepts it,--I wait on him between the acts;
+he is most charming; he invites me to supper. Cospetto, what a retinue!
+We sit late,--I tell him all the news of Naples; we grow bosom friends;
+he presses on me this diamond before we part,--is a trifle, he tells me:
+the jewellers value it at 5000 pistoles!--the merriest evening I have
+passed these ten years.”
+
+The cavaliers crowded round to admire the diamond.
+
+“Signor Count Cetoxa,” said one grave-looking sombre man, who had
+crossed himself two or three times during the Neapolitan’s narrative,
+“are you not aware of the strange reports about this person; and are you
+not afraid to receive from him a gift which may carry with it the most
+fatal consequences? Do you not know that he is said to be a sorcerer; to
+possess the mal-occhio; to--”
+
+“Prithee, spare us your antiquated superstitions,” interrupted Cetoxa,
+contemptuously. “They are out of fashion; nothing now goes down but
+scepticism and philosophy. And what, after all, do these rumours, when
+sifted, amount to? They have no origin but this,--a silly old man of
+eighty-six, quite in his dotage, solemnly avers that he saw this same
+Zanoni seventy years ago (he himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) at
+Milan; when this very Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young as
+you or I, Belgioso.”
+
+“But that,” said the grave gentleman,--“THAT is the mystery. Old Avelli
+declares that Zanoni does not seem a day older than when they met at
+Milan. He says that even then at Milan--mark this--where, though
+under another name, this Zanoni appeared in the same splendour, he was
+attended also by the same mystery. And that an old man THERE remembered
+to have seen him sixty years before, in Sweden.”
+
+“Tush,” returned Cetoxa, “the same thing has been said of the quack
+Cagliostro,--mere fables. I will believe them when I see this diamond
+turn to a wisp of hay. For the rest,” he added gravely, “I consider this
+illustrious gentleman my friend; and a whisper against his honour and
+repute will in future be equivalent to an affront to myself.”
+
+Cetoxa was a redoubted swordsman, and excelled in a peculiarly awkward
+manoeuvre, which he himself had added to the variations of the stoccata.
+The grave gentleman, however anxious for the spiritual weal of the
+count, had an equal regard for his own corporeal safety. He contented
+himself with a look of compassion, and, turning through the gateway,
+ascended the stairs to the gaming-tables.
+
+“Ha, ha!” said Cetoxa, laughing, “our good Loredano is envious of my
+diamond. Gentlemen, you sup with me to-night. I assure you I never met a
+more delightful, sociable, entertaining person, than my dear friend the
+Signor Zanoni.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.V.
+
+     Quello Ippogifo, grande e strano augello
+     Lo porta via.
+     “Orlando Furioso,” c. vi. xviii.
+
+     (That hippogriff, great and marvellous bird, bears him away.)
+
+And now, accompanying this mysterious Zanoni, am I compelled to bid
+a short farewell to Naples. Mount behind me,--mount on my hippogriff,
+reader; settle yourself at your ease. I bought the pillion the other
+day of a poet who loves his comfort; it has been newly stuffed for
+your special accommodation. So, so, we ascend! Look as we ride
+aloft,--look!--never fear, hippogriffs never stumble; and every
+hippogriff in Italy is warranted to carry elderly gentlemen,--look down
+on the gliding landscapes! There, near the ruins of the Oscan’s old
+Atella, rises Aversa, once the stronghold of the Norman; there gleam the
+columns of Capua, above the Vulturnian Stream. Hail to ye, cornfields
+and vineyards famous for the old Falernian! Hail to ye, golden
+orange-groves of Mola di Gaeta! Hail to ye, sweet shrubs and wild
+flowers, omnis copia narium, that clothe the mountain-skirts of the
+silent Lautulae! Shall we rest at the Volscian Anxur,--the modern
+Terracina,--where the lofty rock stands like the giant that guards the
+last borders of the southern land of love? Away, away! and hold your
+breath as we flit above the Pontine Marshes. Dreary and desolate, their
+miasma is to the gardens we have passed what the rank commonplace of
+life is to the heart when it has left love behind.
+
+Mournful Campagna, thou openest on us in majestic sadness. Rome,
+seven-hilled Rome! receive us as Memory receives the way-worn; receive
+us in silence, amidst ruins! Where is the traveller we pursue? Turn the
+hippogriff loose to graze: he loves the acanthus that wreathes round
+yon broken columns. Yes, that is the arch of Titus, the conqueror of
+Jerusalem,--that the Colosseum! Through one passed the triumph of the
+deified invader; in one fell the butchered gladiators. Monuments of
+murder, how poor the thoughts, how mean the memories ye awaken, compared
+with those that speak to the heart of man on the heights of Phyle, or
+by thy lone mound, grey Marathon! We stand amidst weeds and brambles
+and long waving herbage. Where we stand reigned Nero,--here were his
+tessellated floors; here,
+
+“Mighty in the heaven, a second heaven,”
+
+hung the vault of his ivory roofs; here, arch upon arch, pillar on
+pillar, glittered to the world the golden palace of its master,--the
+Golden House of Nero. How the lizard watches us with his bright,
+timorous eye! We disturb his reign. Gather that wild flower: the Golden
+House is vanished, but the wild flower may have kin to those which the
+stranger’s hand scattered over the tyrant’s grave; see, over this soil,
+the grave of Rome, Nature strews the wild flowers still!
+
+In the midst of this desolation is an old building of the middle ages.
+Here dwells a singular recluse. In the season of the malaria the native
+peasant flies the rank vegetation round; but he, a stranger and a
+foreigner, no associates, no companions, except books and instruments
+of science. He is often seen wandering over the grass-grown hills, or
+sauntering through the streets of the new city, not with the absent brow
+and incurious air of students, but with observant piercing eyes that
+seem to dive into the hearts of the passers-by. An old man, but not
+infirm,--erect and stately, as if in his prime. None know whether he be
+rich or poor. He asks no charity, and he gives none,--he does no evil,
+and seems to confer no good. He is a man who appears to have no world
+beyond himself; but appearances are deceitful, and Science, as well as
+Benevolence, lives in the Universe. This abode, for the first time since
+thus occupied, a visitor enters. It is Zanoni.
+
+You observe those two men seated together, conversing earnestly. Years
+long and many have flown away since they met last,--at least, bodily,
+and face to face. But if they are sages, thought can meet thought, and
+spirit spirit, though oceans divide the forms. Death itself divides not
+the wise. Thou meetest Plato when thine eyes moisten over the Phaedo.
+May Homer live with all men forever!
+
+They converse; they confess to each other; they conjure up the past, and
+repeople it; but note how differently do such remembrances affect the
+two. On Zanoni’s face, despite its habitual calm, the emotions change
+and go. HE has acted in the past he surveys; but not a trace of the
+humanity that participates in joy and sorrow can be detected on the
+passionless visage of his companion; the past, to him, as is now
+the present, has been but as Nature to the sage, the volume to the
+student,--a calm and spiritual life, a study, a contemplation.
+
+From the past they turn to the future. Ah! at the close of the last
+century, the future seemed a thing tangible,--it was woven up in all
+men’s fears and hopes of the present.
+
+At the verge of that hundred years, Man, the ripest born of Time,
+
+(“An des Jahrhunderts Neige, Der reifste Sohn der Zeit.” “Die
+Kunstler.”)
+
+stood as at the deathbed of the Old World, and beheld the New Orb,
+blood-red amidst cloud and vapour,--uncertain if a comet or a sun.
+Behold the icy and profound disdain on the brow of the old man,--the
+lofty yet touching sadness that darkens the glorious countenance of
+Zanoni. Is it that one views with contempt the struggle and its issue,
+and the other with awe or pity? Wisdom contemplating mankind leads but
+to the two results,--compassion or disdain. He who believes in other
+worlds can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist on
+the revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth to
+Infinity,--what its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much greater is
+the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child of
+heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some star hereafter wilt
+thou look back on the ant-hill and its commotions, from Clovis
+to Robespierre, from Noah to the Final Fire. The spirit that can
+contemplate, that lives only in the intellect, can ascend to its star,
+even from the midst of the burial-ground called Earth, and while the
+sarcophagus called Life immures in its clay the everlasting!
+
+But thou, Zanoni,--thou hast refused to live ONLY in the intellect; thou
+hast not mortified the heart; thy pulse still beats with the sweet music
+of mortal passion; thy kind is to thee still something warmer than an
+abstraction,--thou wouldst look upon this Revolution in its cradle,
+which the storms rock; thou wouldst see the world while its elements yet
+struggle through the chaos!
+
+Go!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VI.
+
+     Precepteurs ignorans de ce faible univers.--Voltaire.
+     (Ignorant teachers of this weak world.)
+
+     Nous etions a table chez un de nos confreres a l’Academie,
+     Grand Seigneur et homme d’esprit.--La Harpe.
+     (We supped with one of our confreres of the Academy,--a great
+     nobleman and wit.)
+
+One evening, at Paris, several months after the date of our last
+chapter, there was a reunion of some of the most eminent wits of the
+time, at the house of a personage distinguished alike by noble birth and
+liberal accomplishments. Nearly all present were of the views that
+were then the mode. For, as came afterwards a time when nothing was so
+unpopular as the people, so that was the time when nothing was so vulgar
+as aristocracy. The airiest fine gentleman and the haughtiest noble
+prated of equality, and lisped enlightenment.
+
+Among the more remarkable guests were Condorcet, then in the prime of
+his reputation, the correspondent of the king of Prussia, the intimate
+of Voltaire, the member of half the academies of Europe,--noble by
+birth, polished in manners, republican in opinions. There, too, was the
+venerable Malesherbes, “l’amour et les delices de la Nation.” (The idol
+and delight of the nation (so-called by his historian, Gaillard).) There
+Jean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished scholar,--the aspiring politician.
+It was one of those petits soupers for which the capital of all social
+pleasures was so renowned. The conversation, as might be expected, was
+literary and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry. Many of the
+ladies of that ancient and proud noblesse--for the noblesse yet existed,
+though its hours were already numbered--added to the charm of the
+society; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and often the most
+liberal sentiments.
+
+Vain labour for me--vain labour almost for the grave English
+language--to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from lip
+to lip. The favourite theme was the superiority of the moderns to the
+ancients. Condorcet on this head was eloquent, and to some, at least, of
+his audience, most convincing. That Voltaire was greater than Homer few
+there were disposed to deny. Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull
+pedantry which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime.
+
+“Yet,” said the graceful Marquis de --, as the champagne danced to his
+glass, “more ridiculous still is the superstition that finds everything
+incomprehensible holy! But intelligence circulates, Condorcet; like
+water, it finds its level. My hairdresser said to me this morning,
+‘Though I am but a poor fellow, I believe as little as the finest
+gentleman!’” “Unquestionably, the great Revolution draws near to its
+final completion,--a pas de geant, as Montesquieu said of his own
+immortal work.”
+
+Then there rushed from all--wit and noble, courtier and republican--a
+confused chorus, harmonious only in its anticipation of the brilliant
+things to which “the great Revolution” was to give birth. Here Condrocet
+is more eloquent than before.
+
+“Il faut absolument que la Superstition et le Fanatisme fassent place
+a la Philosophie. (It must necessarily happen that superstition and
+fanaticism give place to philosophy.) Kings persecute persons, priests
+opinion. Without kings, men must be safe; and without priests, minds
+must be free.”
+
+“Ah,” murmured the marquis, “and as ce cher Diderot has so well sung,--
+
+‘Et des boyaux du dernier pretre Serrez le cou du dernier roi.’”
+
+     (And throttle the neck of the last king with the string from
+     the bowels of the last priest.)
+
+“And then,” resumed Condorcet,--“then commences the Age of
+Reason!--equality in instruction, equality in institutions, equality
+in wealth! The great impediments to knowledge are, first, the want of
+a common language; and next, the short duration of existence. But as to
+the first, when all men are brothers, why not a universal language?
+As to the second, the organic perfectibility of the vegetable world is
+undisputed, is Nature less powerful in the nobler existence of thinking
+man? The very destruction of the two most active causes of physical
+deterioration--here, luxurious wealth; there, abject penury,--must
+necessarily prolong the general term of life. (See Condorcet’s
+posthumous work on the Progress of the Human Mind.--Ed.) The art of
+medicine will then be honoured in the place of war, which is the art of
+murder: the noblest study of the acutest minds will be devoted to the
+discovery and arrest of the causes of disease. Life, I grant, cannot be
+made eternal; but it may be prolonged almost indefinitely. And as
+the meaner animal bequeaths its vigour to its offspring, so man shall
+transmit his improved organisation, mental and physical, to his sons.
+Oh, yes, to such a consummation does our age approach!”
+
+The venerable Malesherbes sighed. Perhaps he feared the consummation
+might not come in time for him. The handsome Marquis de -- and the
+ladies, yet handsomer than he, looked conviction and delight.
+
+But two men there were, seated next to each other, who joined not in
+the general talk: the one a stranger newly arrived in Paris, where
+his wealth, his person, and his accomplishments, had already made
+him remarked and courted; the other, an old man, somewhere about
+seventy,--the witty and virtuous, brave, and still light-hearted
+Cazotte, the author of “Le Diable Amoureux.”
+
+These two conversed familiarly, and apart from the rest, and only by an
+occasional smile testified their attention to the general conversation.
+
+“Yes,” said the stranger,--“yes, we have met before.”
+
+“I thought I could not forget your countenance; yet I task in vain my
+recollections of the past.”
+
+“I will assist you. Recall the time when, led by curiosity, or
+perhaps the nobler desire of knowledge, you sought initiation into the
+mysterious order of Martines de Pasqualis.”
+
+(It is so recorded of Cazotte. Of Martines de Pasqualis little is known;
+even the country to which he belonged is matter of conjecture. Equally
+so the rites, ceremonies, and nature of the cabalistic order he
+established. St. Martin was a disciple of the school, and that, at
+least, is in its favour; for in spite of his mysticism, no man more
+beneficent, generous, pure, and virtuous than St. Martin adorned the
+last century. Above all, no man more distinguished himself from the herd
+of sceptical philosophers by the gallantry and fervour with which he
+combated materialism, and vindicated the necessity of faith amidst a
+chaos of unbelief. It may also be observed, that Cazotte, whatever
+else he learned of the brotherhood of Martines, learned nothing that
+diminished the excellence of his life and the sincerity of his religion.
+At once gentle and brave, he never ceased to oppose the excesses of
+the Revolution. To the last, unlike the Liberals of his time, he was a
+devout and sincere Christian. Before his execution, he demanded a pen
+and paper to write these words: “Ma femme, mes enfans, ne me pleurez
+pas; ne m’oubliez pas, mais souvenez-vous surtout de ne jamais offenser
+Dieu.” (“My wife, my children, weep not for me; forget me not, but
+remember above everything never to offend God.)--Ed.)
+
+“Ah, is it possible! You are one of that theurgic brotherhood?”
+
+“Nay, I attended their ceremonies but to see how vainly they sought to
+revive the ancient marvels of the cabala.”
+
+“Such studies please you? I have shaken off the influence they once had
+on my own imagination.”
+
+“You have not shaken it off,” returned the stranger, bravely; “it is on
+you still,--on you at this hour; it beats in your heart; it kindles in
+your reason; it will speak in your tongue!”
+
+And then, with a yet lower voice, the stranger continued to address
+him, to remind him of certain ceremonies and doctrines,--to explain and
+enforce them by references to the actual experience and history of his
+listener, which Cazotte thrilled to find so familiar to a stranger.
+
+Gradually the old man’s pleasing and benevolent countenance grew
+overcast, and he turned, from time to time, searching, curious, uneasy
+glances towards his companion.
+
+The charming Duchesse de G-- archly pointed out to the lively guests the
+abstracted air and clouded brow of the poet; and Condorcet, who liked no
+one else to be remarked, when he himself was present, said to Cazotte,
+“Well, and what do YOU predict of the Revolution,--how, at least, will
+it affect us?”
+
+At that question Cazotte started; his cheeks grew pale, large drops
+stood on his forehead; his lips writhed; his gay companions gazed on him
+in surprise.
+
+“Speak!” whispered the stranger, laying his hand gently upon the arm of
+the old wit.
+
+At that word Cazotte’s face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dwelt
+vacantly on space, and in a low, hollow voice, he thus answered
+
+(The following prophecy (not unfamiliar, perhaps, to some of my
+readers), with some slight variations, and at greater length, in the
+text of the authority I am about to cite, is to be found in La
+Harpe’s posthumous works. The MS. is said to exist still in La Harpe’s
+handwriting, and the story is given on M. Petitot’s authority, volume
+i. page 62. It is not for me to enquire if there be doubts of its
+foundation on fact.--Ed.),--
+
+“You ask how it will affect yourselves,--you, its most learned, and its
+least selfish agents. I will answer: you, Marquis de Condorcet, will
+die in prison, but not by the hand of the executioner. In the peaceful
+happiness of that day, the philosopher will carry about with him not the
+elixir but the poison.”
+
+“My poor Cazotte,” said Condorcet, with his gentle smile, “what have
+prisons, executioners, and poison to do with an age of liberty and
+brotherhood?”
+
+“It is in the names of Liberty and Brotherhood that the prisons will
+reek, and the headsman be glutted.”
+
+“You are thinking of priestcraft, not philosophy, Cazotte,” said
+Champfort.
+
+(Champfort, one of those men of letters who, though misled by the first
+fair show of the Revolution, refused to follow the baser men of action
+into its horrible excesses, lived to express the murderous philanthropy
+of its agents by the best bon mot of the time. Seeing written on the
+walls, “Fraternite ou la Mort,” he observed that the sentiment should be
+translated thus, “Sois mon frere, ou je te tue.” (“Be my brother, or I
+kill thee.”)) “And what of me?”
+
+“You will open your own veins to escape the fraternity of Cain. Be
+comforted; the last drops will not follow the razor. For you, venerable
+Malesherbes; for you, Aimar Nicolai; for you, learned Bailly,--I see
+them dress the scaffold! And all the while, O great philosophers, your
+murderers will have no word but philosophy on their lips!”
+
+The hush was complete and universal when the pupil of Voltaire--the
+prince of the academic sceptics, hot La Harpe--cried with a sarcastic
+laugh, “Do not flatter me, O prophet, by exemption from the fate of
+my companions. Shall _I_ have no part to play in this drama of your
+fantasies.”
+
+At this question, Cazotte’s countenance lost its unnatural expression of
+awe and sternness; the sardonic humour most common to it came back and
+played in his brightening eyes.
+
+“Yes, La Harpe, the most wonderful part of all! YOU will become--a
+Christian!”
+
+This was too much for the audience that a moment before seemed grave
+and thoughtful, and they burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, while
+Cazotte, as if exhausted by his predictions, sank back in his chair, and
+breathed hard and heavily.
+
+“Nay,” said Madame de G--, “you who have predicted such grave things
+concerning us, must prophesy something also about yourself.”
+
+A convulsive tremor shook the involuntary prophet,--it passed, and
+left his countenance elevated by an expression of resignation and calm.
+“Madame,” said he, after a long pause, “during the siege of Jerusalem,
+we are told by its historian that a man, for seven successive days,
+went round the ramparts, exclaiming, ‘Woe to thee, Jerusalem,--woe to
+myself!’”
+
+“Well, Cazotte, well?”
+
+“And on the seventh day, while he thus spoke, a stone from the machines
+of the Romans dashed him into atoms!”
+
+With these words, Cazotte rose; and the guests, awed in spite of
+themselves, shortly afterwards broke up and retired.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VII.
+
+     Qui donc t’a donne la mission s’annoncer au peuple que la
+     divinite n’existe pas?  Quel avantage trouves-tu a persuader a
+     l’homme qu’une force aveugle preside a ses destinees et frappe au
+     hasard le crime et la vertu?--Robespierre, “Discours,” Mai 7,
+     1794.
+
+     (Who then invested you with the mission to announce to the people
+     that there is no God?  What advantage find you in persuading man
+     that nothing but blind force presides over his destinies, and
+     strikes haphazard both crime and virtue?)
+
+It was some time before midnight when the stranger returned home. His
+apartments were situated in one of those vast abodes which may be called
+an epitome of Paris itself,--the cellars rented by mechanics, scarcely
+removed a step from paupers, often by outcasts and fugitives from the
+law, often by some daring writer, who, after scattering amongst the
+people doctrines the most subversive of order, or the most libellous on
+the characters of priest, minister, and king, retired amongst the rats,
+to escape the persecution that attends the virtuous; the ground-floor
+occupied by shops; the entresol by artists; the principal stories by
+nobles; and the garrets by journeymen or grisettes.
+
+As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form and
+countenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in the
+entresol, and brushed beside him. His glance was furtive, sinister,
+savage, and yet timorous; the man’s face was of an ashen paleness, and
+the features worked convulsively. The stranger paused, and observed
+him with thoughtful looks, as he hurried down the stairs. While he
+thus stood, he heard a groan from the room which the young man had just
+quitted; the latter had pulled to the door with hasty vehemence, but
+some fragment, probably of fuel, had prevented its closing, and it now
+stood slightly ajar; the stranger pushed it open and entered. He passed
+a small anteroom, meanly furnished, and stood in a bedchamber of meagre
+and sordid discomfort. Stretched on the bed, and writhing in pain, lay
+an old man; a single candle lit the room, and threw its feeble ray over
+the furrowed and death-like face of the sick person. No attendant
+was by; he seemed left alone, to breathe his last. “Water,” he moaned
+feebly,--“water:--I parch,--I burn!” The intruder approached the bed,
+bent over him, and took his hand. “Oh, bless thee, Jean, bless thee!”
+ said the sufferer; “hast thou brought back the physician already? Sir,
+I am poor, but I can pay you well. I would not die yet, for that young
+man’s sake.” And he sat upright in his bed, and fixed his dim eyes
+anxiously on his visitor.
+
+“What are your symptoms, your disease?”
+
+“Fire, fire, fire in the heart, the entrails: I burn!”
+
+“How long is it since you have taken food?”
+
+“Food! only this broth. There is the basin, all I have taken these six
+hours. I had scarce drunk it ere these pains began.”
+
+The stranger looked at the basin; some portion of the contents was yet
+left there.
+
+“Who administered this to you?”
+
+“Who? Jean! Who else should? I have no servant,--none! I am poor, very
+poor, sir. But no! you physicians do not care for the poor. I AM RICH!
+can you cure me?”
+
+“Yes, if Heaven permit. Wait but a few moments.”
+
+The old man was fast sinking under the rapid effects of poison. The
+stranger repaired to his own apartments, and returned in a few moments
+with some preparation that had the instant result of an antidote. The
+pain ceased, the blue and livid colour receded from the lips; the old
+man fell into a profound sleep. The stranger drew the curtains round the
+bed, took up the light, and inspected the apartment. The walls of both
+rooms were hung with drawings of masterly excellence. A portfolio
+was filled with sketches of equal skill,--but these last were mostly
+subjects that appalled the eye and revolted the taste: they displayed
+the human figure in every variety of suffering,--the rack, the wheel,
+the gibbet; all that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of death
+seemed yet more dreadful from the passionate gusto and earnest force of
+the designer. And some of the countenances of those thus delineated were
+sufficiently removed from the ideal to show that they were portraits; in
+a large, bold, irregular hand was written beneath these drawings, “The
+Future of the Aristocrats.” In a corner of the room, and close by an old
+bureau, was a small bundle, over which, as if to hide it, a cloak was
+thrown carelessly. Several shelves were filled with books; these
+were almost entirely the works of the philosophers of the time,--the
+philosophers of the material school, especially the Encyclopedistes,
+whom Robespierre afterwards so singularly attacked when the coward
+deemed it unsafe to leave his reign without a God.
+
+(“Cette secte (les Encyclopedistes) propagea avec beaucoup de zele
+l’opinion du materialisme, qui prevalut parmi les grands et parmi
+les beaux esprits; on lui doit en partie cette espece de philosophie
+pratique qui, reduisant l’Egoisme en systeme regarde la societe humaine
+comme une guerre de ruse, le succes comme la regle du juste et de
+l’injuste, la probite comme une affaire de gout, ou de bienseance,
+le monde comme le patrimoine des fripons adroits.”--“Discours de
+Robespierre,” Mai 7, 1794. (This sect (the Encyclopaedists) propagate
+with much zeal the doctrine of materialism, which prevails among
+the great and the wits; we owe to it partly that kind of practical
+philosophy which, reducing Egotism to a system, looks upon society as
+a war of cunning; success the rule of right and wrong, honesty as an
+affair of taste or decency: and the world as the patrimony of clever
+scoundrels.))
+
+A volume lay on a table,--it was one of Voltaire, and the page was
+opened at his argumentative assertion of the existence of the Supreme
+Being. (“Histoire de Jenni.”) The margin was covered with pencilled
+notes, in the stiff but tremulous hand of old age; all in attempt to
+refute or to ridicule the logic of the sage of Ferney: Voltaire did not
+go far enough for the annotator! The clock struck two, when the sound
+of steps was heard without. The stranger silently seated himself on the
+farther side of the bed, and its drapery screened him, as he sat, from
+the eyes of a man who now entered on tiptoe; it was the same person
+who had passed him on the stairs. The new-comer took up the candle and
+approached the bed. The old man’s face was turned to the pillow; but he
+lay so still, and his breathing was so inaudible, that his sleep might
+well, by that hasty, shrinking, guilty glance, be mistaken for the
+repose of death. The new-comer drew back, and a grim smile passed over
+his face: he replaced the candle on the table, opened the bureau with
+a key which he took from his pocket, and loaded himself with several
+rouleaus of gold that he found in the drawers. At this time the old man
+began to wake. He stirred, he looked up; he turned his eyes towards the
+light now waning in its socket; he saw the robber at his work; he sat
+erect for an instant, as if transfixed, more even by astonishment than
+terror. At last he sprang from his bed.
+
+“Just Heaven! do I dream! Thou--thou--thou, for whom I toiled and
+starved!--THOU!”
+
+The robber started; the gold fell from his hand, and rolled on the
+floor.
+
+“What!” he said, “art thou not dead yet? Has the poison failed?”
+
+“Poison, boy! Ah!” shrieked the old man, and covered his face with his
+hands; then, with sudden energy, he exclaimed, “Jean! Jean! recall that
+word. Rob, plunder me if thou wilt, but do not say thou couldst murder
+one who only lived for thee! There, there, take the gold; I hoarded it
+but for thee. Go! go!” and the old man, who in his passion had quitted
+his bed, fell at the feet of the foiled assassin, and writhed on the
+ground,--the mental agony more intolerable than that of the body,
+which he had so lately undergone. The robber looked at him with a
+hard disdain. “What have I ever done to thee, wretch?” cried the old
+man,--“what but loved and cherished thee? Thou wert an orphan,--an
+outcast. I nurtured, nursed, adopted thee as my son. If men call me a
+miser, it was but that none might despise thee, my heir, because Nature
+has stunted and deformed thee, when I was no more. Thou wouldst have
+had all when I was dead. Couldst thou not spare me a few months or
+days,--nothing to thy youth, all that is left to my age? What have I
+done to thee?”
+
+“Thou hast continued to live, and thou wouldst make no will.”
+
+“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!”
+
+“TON DIEU! Thy God! Fool! Hast thou not told me, from my childhood, that
+there is NO God? Hast thou not fed me on philosophy? Hast thou not said,
+‘Be virtuous, be good, be just, for the sake of mankind: but there is no
+life after this life’? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and
+misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done
+to me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, the
+hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well, then, I want thy gold,
+that at least I may hasten to make the best of this!”
+
+“Monster! Curses light on thy ingratitude, thy--”
+
+“And who hears thy curses? Thou knowest there is no God! Mark me; I have
+prepared all to fly. See,--I have my passport; my horses wait without;
+relays are ordered. I have thy gold.” (And the wretch, as he spoke,
+continued coldly to load his person with the rouleaus). “And now, if I
+spare thy life, how shall I be sure that thou wilt not inform against
+mine?” He advanced with a gloomy scowl and a menacing gesture as he
+spoke.
+
+The old man’s anger changed to fear. He cowered before the savage. “Let
+me live! let me live!--that--that--”
+
+“That--what?”
+
+“I may pardon thee! Yes, thou hast nothing to fear from me. I swear it!”
+
+“Swear! But by whom and what, old man? I cannot believe thee, if thou
+believest not in any God! Ha, ha! behold the result of thy lessons.”
+
+Another moment and those murderous fingers would have strangled their
+prey. But between the assassin and his victim rose a form that seemed
+almost to both a visitor from the world that both denied,--stately with
+majestic strength, glorious with awful beauty.
+
+The ruffian recoiled, looked, trembled, and then turned and fled from
+the chamber. The old man fell again to the ground insensible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VIII.
+
+     To know how a bad man will act when in power, reverse all the
+     doctrines he preaches when obscure.--S. Montague.
+
+     Antipathies also form a part of magic (falsely) so-called.  Man
+     naturally has the same instinct as the animals, which warns them
+     involuntarily against the creatures that are hostile or fatal to
+     their existence.  But HE so often neglects it, that it becomes
+     dormant.  Not so the true cultivator of the Great Science, etc.
+
+     --Trismegistus the Fourth (a Rosicrucian).
+
+When he again saw the old man the next day, the stranger found him calm,
+and surprisingly recovered from the scene and sufferings of the night.
+He expressed his gratitude to his preserver with tearful fervour,
+and stated that he had already sent for a relation who would make
+arrangements for his future safety and mode of life. “For I have money
+yet left,” said the old man; “and henceforth have no motive to be a
+miser.” He proceeded then briefly to relate the origin and circumstances
+of his connection with his intended murderer.
+
+It seems that in earlier life he had quarrelled with his
+relations,--from a difference in opinions of belief. Rejecting all
+religion as a fable, he yet cultivated feelings that inclined him--for
+though his intellect was weak, his dispositions were good--to that
+false and exaggerated sensibility which its dupes so often mistake
+for benevolence. He had no children; he resolved to adopt an enfant
+du peuple. He resolved to educate this boy according to “reason.” He
+selected an orphan of the lowest extraction, whose defects of person and
+constitution only yet the more moved his pity, and finally engrossed his
+affection. In this outcast he not only loved a son, he loved a theory!
+He brought him up most philosophically. Helvetius had proved to him
+that education can do all; and before he was eight years old, the little
+Jean’s favourite expressions were, “La lumiere et la vertu.” (Light and
+virtue.) The boy showed talents, especially in art.
+
+The protector sought for a master who was as free from “superstition” as
+himself, and selected the painter David. That person, as hideous as
+his pupil, and whose dispositions were as vicious as his professional
+abilities were undeniable, was certainly as free from “superstition” as
+the protector could desire. It was reserved for Robespierre hereafter
+to make the sanguinary painter believe in the Etre Supreme. The boy
+was early sensible of his ugliness, which was almost preternatural. His
+benefactor found it in vain to reconcile him to the malice of Nature by
+his philosophical aphorisms; but when he pointed out to him that in
+this world money, like charity, covers a multitude of defects, the boy
+listened eagerly and was consoled. To save money for his protege,--for
+the only thing in the world he loved,--this became the patron’s passion.
+Verily, he had met with his reward.
+
+“But I am thankful he has escaped,” said the old man, wiping his eyes.
+“Had he left me a beggar, I could never have accused him.”
+
+“No, for you are the author of his crimes.”
+
+“How! I, who never ceased to inculcate the beauty of virtue? Explain
+yourself.”
+
+“Alas! if thy pupil did not make this clear to thee last night from his
+own lips, an angel might come from heaven to preach to thee in vain.”
+
+The old man moved uneasily, and was about to reply, when the relative he
+had sent for--and who, a native of Nancy, happened to be at Paris at the
+time--entered the room. He was a man somewhat past thirty, and of a dry,
+saturnine, meagre countenance, restless eyes, and compressed lips. He
+listened, with many ejaculations of horror, to his relation’s recital,
+and sought earnestly, but in vain, to induce him to give information
+against his protege.
+
+“Tush, tush, Rene Dumas!” said the old man, “you are a lawyer. You are
+bred to regard human life with contempt. Let any man break a law, and
+you shout, ‘Execute him!’”
+
+“I!” cried Dumas, lifting up his hands and eyes: “venerable sage, how
+you misjudge me! I lament more than any one the severity of our code. I
+think the state never should take away life,--no, not even the life of
+a murderer. I agree with that young statesman,--Maximilien
+Robespierre,--that the executioner is the invention of the tyrant. My
+very attachment to our advancing revolution is, that it must sweep away
+this legal butchery.”
+
+The lawyer paused, out of breath. The stranger regarded him fixedly and
+turned pale.
+
+“You change countenance, sir,” said Dumas; “you do not agree with me.”
+
+“Pardon me, I was at that moment repressing a vague fear which seemed
+prophetic.”
+
+“And that--”
+
+“Was that we should meet again, when your opinions on Death and the
+philosophy of Revolutions might be different.”
+
+“Never!”
+
+“You enchant me, Cousin Rene,” said the old man, who had listened to his
+relation with delight. “Ah, I see you have proper sentiments of justice
+and philanthropy. Why did I not seek to know you before? You admire the
+Revolution;--you, equally with me, detest the barbarity of kings and the
+fraud of priests?”
+
+“Detest! How could I love mankind if I did not?”
+
+“And,” said the old man, hesitatingly, “you do not think, with this
+noble gentleman, that I erred in the precepts I instilled into that
+wretched man?”
+
+“Erred! Was Socrates to blame if Alcibiades was an adulterer and a
+traitor?”
+
+“You hear him, you hear him! But Socrates had also a Plato; henceforth
+you shall be a Plato to me. You hear him?” exclaimed the old man,
+turning to the stranger.
+
+But the latter was at the threshold. Who shall argue with the most
+stubborn of all bigotries,--the fanaticism of unbelief?
+
+“Are you going?” exclaimed Dumas, “and before I have thanked you,
+blessed you, for the life of this dear and venerable man? Oh, if ever I
+can repay you,--if ever you want the heart’s blood of Rene Dumas!” Thus
+volubly delivering himself, he followed the stranger to the threshold of
+the second chamber, and there, gently detaining him, and after looking
+over his shoulder, to be sure that he was not heard by the owner,
+he whispered, “I ought to return to Nancy. One would not lose one’s
+time,--you don’t think, sir, that that scoundrel took away ALL the old
+fool’s money?”
+
+“Was it thus Plato spoke of Socrates, Monsieur Dumas?”
+
+“Ha, ha!--you are caustic. Well, you have a right. Sir, we shall meet
+again.”
+
+“AGAIN!” muttered the stranger, and his brow darkened. He hastened to
+his chamber; he passed the day and the night alone, and in studies, no
+matter of what nature,--they served to increase his gloom.
+
+What could ever connect his fate with Rene Dumas, or the fugitive
+assassin? Why did the buoyant air of Paris seem to him heavy with
+the steams of blood; why did an instinct urge him to fly from those
+sparkling circles, from that focus of the world’s awakened hopes,
+warning him from return?--he, whose lofty existence defied--but away
+these dreams and omens! He leaves France behind. Back, O Italy, to thy
+majestic wrecks! On the Alps his soul breathes the free air once more.
+Free air! Alas! let the world-healers exhaust their chemistry; man never
+shall be as free in the marketplace as on the mountain. But we, reader,
+we too escape from these scenes of false wisdom clothing godless crime.
+Away, once more
+
+“In den heitern Regionen Wo die reinen Formen wohnen.”
+
+Away, to the loftier realm where the pure dwellers are. Unpolluted by
+the Actual, the Ideal lives only with Art and Beauty. Sweet Viola, by
+the shores of the blue Parthenope, by Virgil’s tomb, and the Cimmerian
+cavern, we return to thee once more.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.IX.
+
+     Che non vuol che ‘l destrier piu vada in alto,
+     Poi lo lega nel margine marino
+     A un verde mirto in mezzo un lauro E UN PINO.
+     “Orlando Furioso,” c. vi. xxiii.
+
+     (As he did not wish that his charger (the hippogriff) should take
+     any further excursions into the higher regions for the present,
+     he bound him at the sea-shore to a green myrtle between a laurel
+     and a pine.)
+
+O Musician! art thou happy now? Thou art reinstalled at thy stately
+desk,--thy faithful barbiton has its share in the triumph. It is thy
+masterpiece which fills thy ear; it is thy daughter who fills the
+scene,--the music, the actress, so united, that applause to one is
+applause to both. They make way for thee, at the orchestra,--they no
+longer jeer and wink, when, with a fierce fondness, thou dost caress
+thy Familiar, that plains, and wails, and chides, and growls, under thy
+remorseless hand. They understand now how irregular is ever the symmetry
+of real genius. The inequalities in its surface make the moon luminous
+to man. Giovanni Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, if thy gentle soul could
+know envy, thou must sicken to see thy Elfrida and thy Pirro laid aside,
+and all Naples turned fanatic to the Siren, at whose measures shook
+querulously thy gentle head! But thou, Paisiello, calm in the long
+prosperity of fame, knowest that the New will have its day, and
+comfortest thyself that the Elfrida and the Pirro will live forever.
+Perhaps a mistake, but it is by such mistakes that true genius conquers
+envy. “To be immortal,” says Schiller, “live in the whole.” To be
+superior to the hour, live in thy self-esteem. The audience now would
+give their ears for those variations and flights they were once wont to
+hiss. No!--Pisani has been two-thirds of a life at silent work on his
+masterpiece: there is nothing he can add to THAT, however he might have
+sought to improve on the masterpieces of others. Is not this common?
+The least little critic, in reviewing some work of art, will say, “pity
+this, and pity that;” “this should have been altered,--that omitted.”
+ Yea, with his wiry fiddlestring will he creak out his accursed
+variations. But let him sit down and compose himself. He sees no
+improvement in variations THEN! Every man can control his fiddle when it
+is his own work with which its vagaries would play the devil.
+
+And Viola is the idol, the theme of Naples. She is the spoiled sultana
+of the boards. To spoil her acting may be easy enough,--shall they
+spoil her nature? No, I think not. There, at home, she is still good
+and simple; and there, under the awning by the doorway,--there she still
+sits, divinely musing. How often, crook-trunked tree, she looks to thy
+green boughs; how often, like thee, in her dreams, and fancies, does she
+struggle for the light,--not the light of the stage-lamps. Pooh, child!
+be contented with the lamps, even with the rush-lights. A farthing
+candle is more convenient for household purposes than the stars.
+
+Weeks passed, and the stranger did not reappear; months had passed, and
+his prophecy of sorrow was not yet fulfilled. One evening Pisani was
+taken ill. His success had brought on the long-neglected composer
+pressing applications for concerti and sonata, adapted to his more
+peculiar science on the violin. He had been employed for some weeks, day
+and night, on a piece in which he hoped to excel himself. He took, as
+usual, one of those seemingly impracticable subjects which it was his
+pride to subject to the expressive powers of his art,--the terrible
+legend connected with the transformation of Philomel. The pantomime of
+sound opened with the gay merriment of a feast. The monarch of Thrace
+is at his banquet; a sudden discord brays through the joyous notes,--the
+string seems to screech with horror. The king learns the murder of his
+son by the hands of the avenging sisters. Swift rage the chords, through
+the passions of fear, of horror, of fury, and dismay. The father pursues
+the sisters. Hark! what changes the dread--the discord--into that long,
+silvery, mournful music? The transformation is completed; and Philomel,
+now the nightingale, pours from the myrtle-bough the full, liquid,
+subduing notes that are to tell evermore to the world the history of
+her woes and wrongs. Now, it was in the midst of this complicated and
+difficult attempt that the health of the over-tasked musician, excited
+alike by past triumph and new ambition, suddenly gave way. He was taken
+ill at night. The next morning the doctor pronounced that his disease
+was a malignant and infectious fever. His wife and Viola shared in their
+tender watch; but soon that task was left to the last alone. The Signora
+Pisani caught the infection, and in a few hours was even in a state more
+alarming than that of her husband. The Neapolitans, in common with the
+inhabitants of all warm climates, are apt to become selfish and brutal
+in their dread of infectious disorders. Gionetta herself pretended to be
+ill, to avoid the sick-chamber. The whole labour of love and sorrow
+fell on Viola. It was a terrible trial,--I am willing to hurry over the
+details. The wife died first!
+
+One day, a little before sunset, Pisani woke partially recovered from
+the delirium which had preyed upon him, with few intervals, since the
+second day of the disease; and casting about him his dizzy and feeble
+eyes, he recognised Viola, and smiled. He faltered her name as he rose
+and stretched his arms. She fell upon his breast, and strove to suppress
+her tears.
+
+“Thy mother?” he said. “Does she sleep?”
+
+“She sleeps,--ah, yes!” and the tears gushed forth.
+
+“I thought--eh! I know not WHAT I have thought. But do not weep: I shall
+be well now,--quite well. She will come to me when she wakes,--will
+she?”
+
+Viola could not speak; but she busied herself in pouring forth an
+anodyne, which she had been directed to give the sufferer as soon as the
+delirium should cease. The doctor had told her, too, to send for him the
+instant so important a change should occur.
+
+She went to the door and called to the woman who, during Gionetta’s
+pretended illness, had been induced to supply her place; but the
+hireling answered not. She flew through the chambers to search for her
+in vain,--the hireling had caught Gionetta’s fears, and vanished. What
+was to be done? The case was urgent,--the doctor had declared not a
+moment should be lost in obtaining his attendance; she must leave her
+father,--she must go herself! She crept back into the room,--the anodyne
+seemed already to have taken benign effect; the patient’s eyes were
+closed, and he breathed regularly, as in sleep. She stole away, threw
+her veil over her face, and hurried from the house.
+
+Now the anodyne had not produced the effect which it appeared to
+have done; instead of healthful sleep, it had brought on a kind of
+light-headed somnolence, in which the mind, preternaturally restless,
+wandered about its accustomed haunts, waking up its old familiar
+instincts and inclinations. It was not sleep,--it was not delirium;
+it was the dream-wakefulness which opium sometimes induces, when every
+nerve grows tremulously alive, and creates a corresponding activity in
+the frame, to which it gives a false and hectic vigour. Pisani missed
+something,--what, he scarcely knew; it was a combination of the two
+wants most essential to his mental life,--the voice of his wife, the
+touch of his Familiar. He rose,--he left his bed, he leisurely put on
+his old dressing-robe, in which he had been wont to compose. He smiled
+complacently as the associations connected with the garment came over
+his memory; he walked tremulously across the room, and entered the small
+cabinet next to his chamber, in which his wife had been accustomed more
+often to watch than sleep, when illness separated her from his side. The
+room was desolate and void. He looked round wistfully, and muttered
+to himself, and then proceeded regularly, and with a noiseless step,
+through the chambers of the silent house, one by one.
+
+He came at last to that in which old Gionetta--faithful to her own
+safety, if nothing else--nursed herself, in the remotest corner of the
+house, from the danger of infection. As he glided in,--wan, emaciated,
+with an uneasy, anxious, searching look in his haggard eyes,--the old
+woman shrieked aloud, and fell at his feet. He bent over her, passed his
+thin hands along her averted face, shook his head, and said in a hollow
+voice,--
+
+“I cannot find them; where are they?”
+
+“Who, dear master? Oh, have compassion on yourself; they are not here.
+Blessed saints! this is terrible; he has touched me; I am dead!”
+
+“Dead! who is dead? Is any one dead?”
+
+“Ah! don’t talk so; you must know it well: my poor mistress,--she caught
+the fever from you; it is infectious enough to kill a whole city. San
+Gennaro protect me! My poor mistress, she is dead,--buried, too; and
+I, your faithful Gionetta, woe is me! Go, go--to--to bed again, dearest
+master,--go!”
+
+The poor musician stood for one moment mute and unmoving, then a slight
+shiver ran through his frame; he turned and glided back, silent and
+spectre-like, as he had entered. He came into the room where he had been
+accustomed to compose,--where his wife, in her sweet patience, had so
+often sat by his side, and praised and flattered when the world had but
+jeered and scorned. In one corner he found the laurel-wreath she had
+placed on his brows that happy night of fame and triumph; and near it,
+half hid by her mantilla, lay in its case the neglected instrument.
+
+Viola was not long gone: she had found the physician; she returned with
+him; and as they gained the threshold, they heard a strain of music from
+within,--a strain of piercing, heart-rending anguish. It was not like
+some senseless instrument, mechanical in its obedience to a human
+hand,--it was as some spirit calling, in wail and agony from the forlorn
+shades, to the angels it beheld afar beyond the Eternal Gulf. They
+exchanged glances of dismay. They hurried into the house; they hastened
+into the room. Pisani turned, and his look, full of ghastly intelligence
+and stern command, awed them back. The black mantilla, the faded
+laurel-leaf, lay there before him. Viola’s heart guessed all at a single
+glance; she sprung to his knees; she clasped them,--“Father, father, _I_
+am left thee still!”
+
+The wail ceased,--the note changed; with a confused association--half of
+the man, half of the artist--the anguish, still a melody, was connected
+with sweeter sounds and thoughts. The nightingale had escaped the
+pursuit,--soft, airy, bird-like, thrilled the delicious notes a moment,
+and then died away. The instrument fell to the floor, and its chords
+snapped. You heard that sound through the silence. The artist looked
+on his kneeling child, and then on the broken chords... “Bury me by her
+side,” he said, in a very calm, low voice; “and THAT by mine.” And with
+these words his whole frame became rigid, as if turned to stone. The
+last change passed over his face. He fell to the ground, sudden and
+heavy. The chords THERE, too,--the chords of the human instrument were
+snapped asunder. As he fell, his robe brushed the laurel-wreath, and
+that fell also, near but not in reach of the dead man’s nerveless hand.
+
+Broken instrument, broken heart, withered laurel-wreath!--the setting
+sun through the vine-clad lattice streamed on all! So smiles the eternal
+Nature on the wrecks of all that make life glorious! And not a sun that
+sets not somewhere on the silenced music,--on the faded laurel!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.X.
+
+     Che difesa miglior ch’ usbergo e scudo,
+     E la santa innocenza al petto ignudo!
+     “Ger. Lib.,” c. viii. xli.
+
+     (Better defence than shield or breastplate is holy innocence
+     to the naked breast.)
+
+And they buried the musician and his barbiton together, in the same
+coffin. That famous Steiner--primeval Titan of the great Tyrolese
+race--often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and therefore must
+thou, like the meaner children of men, descend to the dismal Hades!
+Harder fate for thee than thy mortal master. For THY soul sleeps with
+thee in the coffin. And the music that belongs to HIS, separate from
+the instrument, ascends on high, to be heard often by a daughter’s pious
+ears when the heaven is serene and the earth sad. For there is a sense
+of hearing that the vulgar know not. And the voices of the dead breathe
+soft and frequent to those who can unite the memory with the faith.
+
+And now Viola is alone in the world,--alone in the home where loneliness
+had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of nature. And at
+first the solitude and the stillness were insupportable. Have you, ye
+mourners, to whom these sibyl leaves, weird with many a dark enigma,
+shall be borne, have you not felt that when the death of some best-loved
+one has made the hearth desolate,--have you not felt as if the gloom of
+the altered home was too heavy for thought to bear?--you would leave it,
+though a palace, even for a cabin. And yet,--sad to say,--when you obey
+the impulse, when you fly from the walls, when in the strange place in
+which you seek your refuge nothing speaks to you of the lost, have ye
+not felt again a yearning for that very food to memory which was just
+before but bitterness and gall? Is it not almost impious and profane
+to abandon that dear hearth to strangers? And the desertion of the home
+where your parents dwelt, and blessed you, upbraids your conscience as
+if you had sold their tombs.
+
+Beautiful was the Etruscan superstition that the ancestors become the
+household gods. Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call from the
+desolate floors in vain. At first Viola had, in her intolerable anguish,
+gratefully welcomed the refuge which the house and family of a kindly
+neighbour, much attached to her father, and who was one of the orchestra
+that Pisani shall perplex no more, had proffered to the orphan. But the
+company of the unfamiliar in our grief, the consolation of the stranger,
+how it irritates the wound! And then, to hear elsewhere the name of
+father, mother, child,--as if death came alone to you,--to see elsewhere
+the calm regularity of those lives united in love and order, keeping
+account of happy hours, the unbroken timepiece of home, as if
+nowhere else the wheels were arrested, the chain shattered, the hands
+motionless, the chime still! No, the grave itself does not remind us of
+our loss like the company of those who have no loss to mourn. Go back to
+thy solitude, young orphan,--go back to thy home: the sorrow that meets
+thee on the threshold can greet thee, even in its sadness, like the
+smile upon the face of the dead. And there, from thy casement, and
+there, from without thy door, thou seest still the tree, solitary as
+thyself, and springing from the clefts of the rock, but forcing its way
+to light,--as, through all sorrow, while the seasons yet can renew the
+verdure and bloom of youth, strives the instinct of the human heart!
+Only when the sap is dried up, only when age comes on, does the sun
+shine in vain for man and for the tree.
+
+Weeks and months--months sad and many--again passed, and Naples will
+not longer suffer its idol to seclude itself from homage. The world ever
+plucks us back from ourselves with a thousand arms. And again Viola’s
+voice is heard upon the stage, which, mystically faithful to life, is in
+nought more faithful than this, that it is the appearances that fill the
+scene; and we pause not to ask of what realities they are the proxies.
+When the actor of Athens moved all hearts as he clasped the burial urn,
+and burst into broken sobs; how few, there, knew that it held the ashes
+of his son! Gold, as well as fame, was showered upon the young actress;
+but she still kept to her simple mode of life, to her lowly home, to
+the one servant whose faults, selfish as they were, Viola was too
+inexperienced to perceive. And it was Gionetta who had placed her when
+first born in her father’s arms! She was surrounded by every snare,
+wooed by every solicitation that could beset her unguarded beauty and
+her dangerous calling. But her modest virtue passed unsullied through
+them all. It is true that she had been taught by lips now mute the
+maiden duties enjoined by honour and religion. And all love that spoke
+not of the altar only shocked and repelled her. But besides that, as
+grief and solitude ripened her heart, and made her tremble at times
+to think how deeply it could feel, her vague and early visions shaped
+themselves into an ideal of love. And till the ideal is found, how
+the shadow that it throws before it chills us to the actual! With
+that ideal, ever and ever, unconsciously, and with a certain awe and
+shrinking, came the shape and voice of the warning stranger. Nearly two
+years had passed since he had appeared at Naples. Nothing had been heard
+of him, save that his vessel had been directed, some months after his
+departure, to sail for Leghorn. By the gossips of Naples, his existence,
+supposed so extraordinary, was wellnigh forgotten; but the heart of
+Viola was more faithful. Often he glided through her dreams, and
+when the wind sighed through that fantastic tree, associated with his
+remembrance, she started with a tremor and a blush, as if she had heard
+him speak.
+
+But amongst the train of her suitors was one to whom she listened
+more gently than to the rest; partly because, perhaps, he spoke in
+her mother’s native tongue; partly because in his diffidence there was
+little to alarm and displease; partly because his rank, nearer to
+her own than that of lordlier wooers, prevented his admiration from
+appearing insult; partly because he himself, eloquent and a dreamer,
+often uttered thoughts that were kindred to those buried deepest in her
+mind. She began to like, perhaps to love him, but as a sister loves;
+a sort of privileged familiarity sprung up between them. If in the
+Englishman’s breast arose wild and unworthy hopes, he had not yet
+expressed them. Is there danger to thee here, lone Viola, or is the
+danger greater in thy unfound ideal?
+
+And now, as the overture to some strange and wizard spectacle, closes
+this opening prelude. Wilt thou hear more? Come with thy faith prepared.
+I ask not the blinded eyes, but the awakened sense. As the enchanted
+Isle, remote from the homes of men,--
+
+“Ove alcun legno Rado, o non mai va dalle nostre sponde,”--“Ger.Lib.,”
+ cant. xiv. 69.
+
+(Where ship seldom or never comes from our coasts.)
+
+is the space in the weary ocean of actual life to which the Muse or
+Sibyl (ancient in years, but ever young in aspect), offers thee no
+unhallowed sail,--
+
+     “Quinci ella in cima a una montagna ascende
+     Disabitata, e d’ ombre oscura e bruna;
+     E par incanto a lei nevose rende
+     Le spalle e i fianchi; e sensa neve alcuna
+     Gli lascia il capo verdeggiante e vago;
+     E vi fonda un palagio appresso un lago.”
+
+     (There, she a mountain’s lofty peak ascends, Unpeopled,
+     shady, shagg’d with forests brown, Whose sides, by power of
+     magic, half-way down She heaps with slippery ice and frost
+     and snow, But sunshiny and verdant leaves the crown With
+     orange-woods and myrtles,--speaks, and lo! Rich from the
+     bordering lake a palace rises slow. Wiffin’s “Translation.”)
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II. -- ART, LOVE, AND WONDER.
+
+     Diversi aspetti in un confusi e misti.
+     “Ger. Lib,” cant. iv. 7.
+
+     Different appearances, confused and mixt in one.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.I.
+
+     Centauri, e Sfingi, e pallide Gorgoni.
+     “Ger. Lib.,” c. iv. v.
+
+     (Centaurs and Sphinxes and pallid Gorgons.)
+
+One moonlit night, in the Gardens at Naples, some four or five gentleman
+were seated under a tree, drinking their sherbet, and listening, in the
+intervals of conversation, to the music which enlivened that gay and
+favourite resort of an indolent population. One of this little party was
+a young Englishman, who had been the life of the whole group, but who,
+for the last few moments, had sunk into a gloomy and abstracted reverie.
+One of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom, and, tapping him on
+the back, said, “What ails you, Glyndon? Are you ill? You have grown
+quite pale,--you tremble. Is it a sudden chill? You had better go home:
+these Italian nights are often dangerous to our English constitutions.”
+
+“No, I am well now; it was a passing shudder. I cannot account for it
+myself.”
+
+A man, apparently of about thirty years of age, and of a mien and
+countenance strikingly superior to those around him, turned abruptly,
+and looked steadfastly at Glyndon.
+
+“I think I understand what you mean,” said he; “and perhaps,” he added,
+with a grave smile, “I could explain it better than yourself.” Here,
+turning to the others, he added, “You must often have felt, gentlemen,
+each and all of you, especially when sitting alone at night, a strange
+and unaccountable sensation of coldness and awe creep over you; your
+blood curdles, and the heart stands still; the limbs shiver; the hair
+bristles; you are afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darker
+corners of the room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly
+is at hand; presently the whole spell, if I may so call it, passes away,
+and you are ready to laugh at your own weakness. Have you not often felt
+what I have thus imperfectly described?--if so, you can understand what
+our young friend has just experienced, even amidst the delights of this
+magical scene, and amidst the balmy whispers of a July night.”
+
+“Sir,” replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, “you have defined
+exactly the nature of that shudder which came over me. But how could my
+manner be so faithful an index to my impressions?”
+
+“I know the signs of the visitation,” returned the stranger, gravely;
+“they are not to be mistaken by one of my experience.”
+
+All the gentleman present then declared that they could comprehend, and
+had felt, what the stranger had described.
+
+“According to one of our national superstitions,” said Mervale, the
+Englishman who had first addressed Glyndon, “the moment you so feel your
+blood creep, and your hair stand on end, some one is walking over the
+spot which shall be your grave.”
+
+“There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so common
+an occurrence,” replied the stranger: “one sect among the Arabians holds
+that at that instant God is deciding the hour either of your death,
+or of some one dear to you. The African savage, whose imagination is
+darkened by the hideous rites of his gloomy idolatry, believes that the
+Evil Spirit is pulling you towards him by the hair: so do the Grotesque
+and the Terrible mingle with each other.”
+
+“It is evidently a mere physical accident,--a derangement of the
+stomach, a chill of the blood,” said a young Neapolitan, with whom
+Glyndon had formed a slight acquaintance.
+
+“Then why is it always coupled in all nations with some superstitious
+presentiment or terror,--some connection between the material frame and
+the supposed world without us? For my part, I think--”
+
+“Ay, what do you think, sir?” asked Glyndon, curiously.
+
+“I think,” continued the stranger, “that it is the repugnance and
+horror with which our more human elements recoil from something, indeed,
+invisible, but antipathetic to our own nature; and from a knowledge of
+which we are happily secured by the imperfection of our senses.”
+
+“You are a believer in spirits, then?” said Mervale, with an incredulous
+smile.
+
+“Nay, it was not precisely of spirits that I spoke; but there may be
+forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae
+in the air we breathe,--in the water that plays in yonder basin. Such
+beings may have passions and powers like our own--as the animalculae to
+which I have compared them. The monster that lives and dies in a drop of
+water--carnivorous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than
+himself--is not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature,
+than the tiger of the desert. There may be things around us that would
+be dangerous and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall
+between them and us, merely by different modifications of matter.”
+
+“And think you that wall never can be removed?” asked young Glyndon,
+abruptly. “Are the traditions of sorcerer and wizard, universal and
+immemorial as they are, merely fables?”
+
+“Perhaps yes,--perhaps no,” answered the stranger, indifferently. “But
+who, in an age in which the reason has chosen its proper bounds, would
+be mad enough to break the partition that divides him from the boa and
+the lion,--to repine at and rebel against the law which confines the
+shark to the great deep? Enough of these idle speculations.”
+
+Here the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for his sherbet,
+and, bowing slightly to the company, soon disappeared among the trees.
+
+“Who is that gentleman?” asked Glyndon, eagerly.
+
+The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some moments.
+
+“I never saw him before,” said Mervale, at last.
+
+“Nor I.”
+
+“Nor I.”
+
+“I know him well,” said the Neapolitan, who was, indeed, the Count
+Cetoxa. “If you remember, it was as my companion that he joined you.
+He visited Naples about two years ago, and has recently returned; he is
+very rich,--indeed, enormously so. A most agreeable person. I am sorry
+to hear him talk so strangely to-night; it serves to encourage the
+various foolish reports that are circulated concerning him.”
+
+“And surely,” said another Neapolitan, “the circumstance that occurred
+but the other day, so well known to yourself, Cetoxa, justifies the
+reports you pretend to deprecate.”
+
+“Myself and my countryman,” said Glyndon, “mix so little in Neapolitan
+society, that we lose much that appears well worthy of lively interest.
+May I enquire what are the reports, and what is the circumstance you
+refer to?”
+
+“As to the reports, gentlemen,” said Cetoxa, courteously, addressing
+himself to the two Englishmen, “it may suffice to observe, that they
+attribute to the Signor Zanoni certain qualities which everybody desires
+for himself, but damns any one else for possessing. The incident Signor
+Belgioso alludes to, illustrates these qualities, and is, I must own,
+somewhat startling. You probably play, gentlemen?” (Here Cetoxa paused;
+and as both Englishmen had occasionally staked a few scudi at the public
+gaming-tables, they bowed assent to the conjecture.) Cetoxa continued.
+“Well, then, not many days since, and on the very day that Zanoni
+returned to Naples, it so happened that I had been playing pretty high,
+and had lost considerably. I rose from the table, resolved no longer to
+tempt fortune, when I suddenly perceived Zanoni, whose acquaintance I
+had before made (and who, I may say, was under some slight obligation to
+me), standing by, a spectator. Ere I could express my gratification at
+this unexpected recognition, he laid his hand on my arm. ‘You have lost
+much,’ said he; ‘more than you can afford. For my part, I dislike play;
+yet I wish to have some interest in what is going on. Will you play this
+sum for me? the risk is mine,--the half profits yours.’ I was startled,
+as you may suppose, at such an address; but Zanoni had an air and tone
+with him it was impossible to resist; besides, I was burning to recover
+my losses, and should not have risen had I had any money left about me.
+I told him I would accept his offer, provided we shared the risk as well
+as profits. ‘As you will,’ said he, smiling; ‘we need have no scruple,
+for you will be sure to win.’ I sat down; Zanoni stood behind me; my
+luck rose,--I invariably won. In fact, I rose from the table a rich
+man.”
+
+“There can be no foul play at the public tables, especially when foul
+play would make against the bank?” This question was put by Glyndon.
+
+“Certainly not,” replied the count. “But our good fortune was, indeed,
+marvellous,--so extraordinary that a Sicilian (the Sicilians are all
+ill-bred, bad-tempered fellows) grew angry and insolent. ‘Sir,’ said he,
+turning to my new friend, ‘you have no business to stand so near to
+the table. I do not understand this; you have not acted fairly.’ Zanoni
+replied, with great composure, that he had done nothing against the
+rules,--that he was very sorry that one man could not win without
+another man losing; and that he could not act unfairly, even if disposed
+to do so. The Sicilian took the stranger’s mildness for apprehension,
+and blustered more loudly. In fact, he rose from the table, and
+confronted Zanoni in a manner that, to say the least of it, was
+provoking to any gentleman who has some quickness of temper, or some
+skill with the small-sword.”
+
+“And,” interrupted Belgioso, “the most singular part of the whole to me
+was, that this Zanoni, who stood opposite to where I sat, and whose face
+I distinctly saw, made no remark, showed no resentment. He fixed his
+eyes steadfastly on the Sicilian; never shall I forget that look! it is
+impossible to describe it,--it froze the blood in my veins. The Sicilian
+staggered back as if struck. I saw him tremble; he sank on the bench.
+And then--”
+
+“Yes, then,” said Cetoxa, “to my infinite surprise, our gentleman, thus
+disarmed by a look from Zanoni, turned his whole anger upon me, THE--but
+perhaps you do not know, gentlemen, that I have some repute with my
+weapon?”
+
+“The best swordsman in Italy,” said Belgioso.
+
+“Before I could guess why or wherefore,” resumed Cetoxa, “I found myself
+in the garden behind the house, with Ughelli (that was the Sicilian’s
+name) facing me, and five or six gentlemen, the witnesses of the duel
+about to take place, around. Zanoni beckoned me aside. ‘This man will
+fall,’ said he. ‘When he is on the ground, go to him, and ask whether he
+will be buried by the side of his father in the church of San Gennaro?’
+‘Do you then know his family?’ I asked with great surprise. Zanoni made
+me no answer, and the next moment I was engaged with the Sicilian. To
+do him justice, his imbrogliato was magnificent, and a swifter lounger
+never crossed a sword; nevertheless,” added Cetoxa, with a pleasing
+modesty, “he was run through the body. I went up to him; he could
+scarcely speak. ‘Have you any request to make,--any affairs to settle?’
+He shook his head. ‘Where would you wish to be interred?’ He pointed
+towards the Sicilian coast. ‘What!’ said I, in surprise, ‘NOT by the
+side of your father, in the church of San Gennaro?’ As I spoke, his face
+altered terribly; he uttered a piercing shriek,--the blood gushed from
+his mouth, and he fell dead. The most strange part of the story is to
+come. We buried him in the church of San Gennaro. In doing so, we took
+up his father’s coffin; the lid came off in moving it, and the skeleton
+was visible. In the hollow of the skull we found a very slender wire of
+sharp steel; this caused surprise and inquiry. The father, who was rich
+and a miser, had died suddenly, and been buried in haste, owing, it
+was said, to the heat of the weather. Suspicion once awakened, the
+examination became minute. The old man’s servant was questioned, and at
+last confessed that the son had murdered the sire. The contrivance was
+ingenious: the wire was so slender that it pierced to the brain,
+and drew but one drop of blood, which the grey hairs concealed. The
+accomplice will be executed.”
+
+“And Zanoni,--did he give evidence, did he account for--”
+
+“No,” interrupted the count: “he declared that he had by accident
+visited the church that morning; that he had observed the tombstone of
+the Count Ughelli; that his guide had told him the count’s son was in
+Naples,--a spendthrift and a gambler. While we were at play, he had
+heard the count mentioned by name at the table; and when the challenge
+was given and accepted, it had occurred to him to name the place of
+burial, by an instinct which he either could not or would not account
+for.”
+
+“A very lame story,” said Mervale.
+
+“Yes! but we Italians are superstitious,--the alleged instinct was
+regarded by many as the whisper of Providence. The next day the stranger
+became an object of universal interest and curiosity. His wealth, his
+manner of living, his extraordinary personal beauty, have assisted also
+to make him the rage; besides, I have had the pleasure in introducing so
+eminent a person to our gayest cavaliers and our fairest ladies.”
+
+“A most interesting narrative,” said Mervale, rising. “Come, Glyndon;
+shall we seek our hotel? It is almost daylight. Adieu, signor!”
+
+“What think you of this story?” said Glyndon, as the young men walked
+homeward.
+
+“Why, it is very clear that this Zanoni is some imposter,--some clever
+rogue; and the Neapolitan shares the booty, and puffs him off with all
+the hackneyed charlatanism of the marvellous. An unknown adventurer gets
+into society by being made an object of awe and curiosity; he is more
+than ordinarily handsome, and the women are quite content to receive him
+without any other recommendation than his own face and Cetoxa’s fables.”
+
+“I cannot agree with you. Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake, is a
+nobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honour. Besides,
+this stranger, with his noble presence and lofty air,--so calm, so
+unobtrusive,--has nothing in common with the forward garrulity of an
+imposter.”
+
+“My dear Glyndon, pardon me; but you have not yet acquired any knowledge
+of the world! The stranger makes the best of a fine person, and his
+grand air is but a trick of the trade. But to change the subject,--how
+advances the love affair?”
+
+“Oh, Viola could not see me to-day.”
+
+“You must not marry her. What would they all say at home?”
+
+“Let us enjoy the present,” said Glyndon, with vivacity; “we are young,
+rich, good-looking; let us not think of to-morrow.”
+
+“Bravo, Glyndon! Here we are at the hotel. Sleep sound, and don’t dream
+of Signor Zanoni.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.II.
+
+     Prende, giovine audace e impaziente,
+     L’occasione offerta avidamente.
+     “Ger. Lib.,” c. vi. xxix.
+
+     (Take, youth, bold and impatient, the offered occasion eagerly.)
+
+Clarence Glyndon was a young man of fortune, not large, but easy and
+independent. His parents were dead, and his nearest relation was an
+only sister, left in England under the care of her aunt, and many years
+younger than himself. Early in life he had evinced considerable promise
+in the art of painting, and rather from enthusiasm than any pecuniary
+necessity for a profession, he determined to devote himself to a
+career in which the English artist generally commences with rapture
+and historical composition, to conclude with avaricious calculation and
+portraits of Alderman Simpkins. Glyndon was supposed by his friends to
+possess no inconsiderable genius; but it was of a rash and presumptuous
+order. He was averse from continuous and steady labour, and his ambition
+rather sought to gather the fruit than to plant the tree. In common with
+many artists in their youth, he was fond of pleasure and excitement,
+yielding with little forethought to whatever impressed his fancy or
+appealed to his passions. He had travelled through the more celebrated
+cities of Europe, with the avowed purpose and sincere resolution of
+studying the divine masterpieces of his art. But in each, pleasure had
+too often allured him from ambition, and living beauty distracted his
+worship from the senseless canvas. Brave, adventurous, vain, restless,
+inquisitive, he was ever involved in wild projects and pleasant
+dangers,--the creature of impulse and the slave of imagination.
+
+It was then the period when a feverish spirit of change was working
+its way to that hideous mockery of human aspirations, the Revolution
+of France; and from the chaos into which were already jarring the
+sanctities of the World’s Venerable Belief, arose many shapeless and
+unformed chimeras. Need I remind the reader that, while that was the day
+for polished scepticism and affected wisdom, it was the day also for the
+most egregious credulity and the most mystical superstitions,--the day
+in which magnetism and magic found converts amongst the disciples of
+Diderot; when prophecies were current in every mouth; when the salon
+of a philosophical deist was converted into an Heraclea, in which
+necromancy professed to conjure up the shadows of the dead; when the
+Crosier and the Book were ridiculed, and Mesmer and Cagliostro were
+believed. In that Heliacal Rising, heralding the new sun before which
+all vapours were to vanish, stalked from their graves in the feudal
+ages all the phantoms that had flitted before the eyes of Paracelsus
+and Agrippa. Dazzled by the dawn of the Revolution, Glyndon was yet more
+attracted by its strange accompaniments; and natural it was with him, as
+with others, that the fancy which ran riot amidst the hopes of a social
+Utopia, should grasp with avidity all that promised, out of the dusty
+tracks of the beaten science, the bold discoveries of some marvellous
+Elysium.
+
+In his travels he had listened with vivid interest, at least, if
+not with implicit belief, to the wonders told of each more renowned
+Ghost-seer, and his mind was therefore prepared for the impression which
+the mysterious Zanoni at first sight had produced upon it.
+
+There might be another cause for this disposition to credulity. A
+remote ancestor of Glyndon’s on the mother’s side, had achieved no
+inconsiderable reputation as a philosopher and alchemist. Strange
+stories were afloat concerning this wise progenitor. He was said to
+have lived to an age far exceeding the allotted boundaries of mortal
+existence, and to have preserved to the last the appearance of middle
+life. He had died at length, it was supposed, of grief for the sudden
+death of a great-grandchild, the only creature he had ever appeared to
+love. The works of this philosopher, though rare, were extant, and found
+in the library of Glyndon’s home. Their Platonic mysticism, their bold
+assertions, the high promises that might be detected through their
+figurative and typical phraseology, had early made a deep impression on
+the young imagination of Clarence Glyndon. His parents, not alive to the
+consequences of encouraging fancies which the very enlightenment of the
+age appeared to them sufficient to prevent or dispel, were fond, in the
+long winter nights, of conversing on the traditional history of this
+distinguished progenitor. And Clarence thrilled with a fearful pleasure
+when his mother playfully detected a striking likeness between the
+features of the young heir and the faded portrait of the alchemist that
+overhung their mantelpiece, and was the boast of their household and the
+admiration of their friends,--the child is, indeed, more often than we
+think for, “the father of the man.”
+
+I have said that Glyndon was fond of pleasure. Facile, as genius
+ever must be, to cheerful impression, his careless artist-life, ere
+artist-life settles down to labour, had wandered from flower to flower.
+He had enjoyed, almost to the reaction of satiety, the gay revelries of
+Naples, when he fell in love with the face and voice of Viola Pisani.
+But his love, like his ambition, was vague and desultory. It did not
+satisfy his whole heart and fill up his whole nature; not from want of
+strong and noble passions, but because his mind was not yet matured and
+settled enough for their development. As there is one season for the
+blossom, another for the fruit; so it is not till the bloom of fancy
+begins to fade, that the heart ripens to the passions that the bloom
+precedes and foretells. Joyous alike at his lonely easel or amidst his
+boon companions, he had not yet known enough of sorrow to love deeply.
+For man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before
+he can comprehend the full value of the greatest. It is the shallow
+sensualists of France, who, in their salon-language, call love “a
+folly,”--love, better understood, is wisdom. Besides, the world was too
+much with Clarence Glyndon. His ambition of art was associated with the
+applause and estimation of that miserable minority of the surface that
+we call the Public.
+
+Like those who deceive, he was ever fearful of being himself the dupe.
+He distrusted the sweet innocence of Viola. He could not venture the
+hazard of seriously proposing marriage to an Italian actress; but the
+modest dignity of the girl, and something good and generous in his own
+nature, had hitherto made him shrink from any more worldly but less
+honourable designs. Thus the familiarity between them seemed rather that
+of kindness and regard than passion. He attended the theatre; he stole
+behind the scenes to converse with her; he filled his portfolio with
+countless sketches of a beauty that charmed him as an artist as well as
+lover; and day after day he floated on through a changing sea of
+doubt and irresolution, of affection and distrust. The last, indeed,
+constantly sustained against his better reason by the sober admonitions
+of Mervale, a matter-of-fact man!
+
+The day following that eve on which this section of my story opens,
+Glyndon was riding alone by the shores of the Neapolitan sea, on the
+other side of the Cavern of Posilipo. It was past noon; the sun had lost
+its early fervour, and a cool breeze sprung up voluptuously from the
+sparkling sea. Bending over a fragment of stone near the roadside,
+he perceived the form of a man; and when he approached, he recognised
+Zanoni.
+
+The Englishman saluted him courteously. “Have you discovered some
+antique?” said he, with a smile; “they are common as pebbles on this
+road.”
+
+“No,” replied Zanoni; “it was but one of those antiques that have
+their date, indeed, from the beginning of the world, but which Nature
+eternally withers and renews.” So saying, he showed Glyndon a small herb
+with a pale-blue flower, and then placed it carefully in his bosom.
+
+“You are an herbalist?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“It is, I am told, a study full of interest.”
+
+“To those who understand it, doubtless.”
+
+“Is the knowledge, then, so rare?”
+
+“Rare! The deeper knowledge is perhaps rather, among the arts, LOST to
+the modern philosophy of commonplace and surface! Do you imagine there
+was no foundation for those traditions which come dimly down from
+remoter ages,--as shells now found on the mountain-tops inform us where
+the seas have been? What was the old Colchian magic, but the minute
+study of Nature in her lowliest works? What the fable of Medea, but a
+proof of the powers that may be extracted from the germ and leaf? The
+most gifted of all the Priestcrafts, the mysterious sisterhoods of Cuth,
+concerning whose incantations Learning vainly bewilders itself amidst
+the maze of legends, sought in the meanest herbs what, perhaps, the
+Babylonian Sages explored in vain amidst the loftiest stars. Tradition
+yet tells you that there existed a race (“Plut. Symp.” l. 5. c. 7.) who
+could slay their enemies from afar, without weapon, without movement.
+The herb that ye tread on may have deadlier powers than your engineers
+can give to their mightiest instruments of war. Can you guess that to
+these Italian shores, to the old Circaean Promontory, came the Wise
+from the farthest East, to search for plants and simples which your
+Pharmacists of the Counter would fling from them as weeds? The first
+herbalists--the master chemists of the world--were the tribe that
+the ancient reverence called by the name of Titans. (Syncellus, page
+14.--“Chemistry the Invention of the Giants.”) I remember once, by the
+Hebrus, in the reign of -- But this talk,” said Zanoni, checking himself
+abruptly, and with a cold smile, “serves only to waste your time and my
+own.” He paused, looked steadily at Glyndon, and continued, “Young man,
+think you that vague curiosity will supply the place of earnest labour?
+I read your heart. You wish to know me, and not this humble herb: but
+pass on; your desire cannot be satisfied.”
+
+“You have not the politeness of your countrymen,” said Glyndon, somewhat
+discomposed. “Suppose I were desirous to cultivate your acquaintance,
+why should you reject my advances?”
+
+“I reject no man’s advances,” answered Zanoni; “I must know them if they
+so desire; but ME, in return, they can never comprehend. If you ask my
+acquaintance, it is yours; but I would warn you to shun me.”
+
+“And why are you, then, so dangerous?”
+
+“On this earth, men are often, without their own agency, fated to be
+dangerous to others. If I were to predict your fortune by the vain
+calculations of the astrologer, I should tell you, in their despicable
+jargon, that my planet sat darkly in your house of life. Cross me not,
+if you can avoid it. I warn you now for the first time and last.”
+
+“You despise the astrologers, yet you utter a jargon as mysterious as
+theirs. I neither gamble nor quarrel; why, then, should I fear you?”
+
+“As you will; I have done.”
+
+“Let me speak frankly,--your conversation last night interested and
+perplexed me.”
+
+“I know it: minds like yours are attracted by mystery.”
+
+Glyndon was piqued at these words, though in the tone in which they were
+spoken there was no contempt.
+
+“I see you do not consider me worthy of your friendship. Be it so.
+Good-day!”
+
+Zanoni coldly replied to the salutation; and as the Englishman rode on,
+returned to his botanical employment.
+
+The same night, Glyndon went, as usual, to the theatre. He was standing
+behind the scenes watching Viola, who was on the stage in one of her
+most brilliant parts. The house resounded with applause. Glyndon was
+transported with a young man’s passion and a young man’s pride: “This
+glorious creature,” thought he, “may yet be mine.”
+
+He felt, while thus wrapped in delicious reverie, a slight touch upon
+his shoulder; he turned, and beheld Zanoni. “You are in danger,” said
+the latter. “Do not walk home to-night; or if you do, go not alone.”
+
+Before Glyndon recovered from his surprise, Zanoni disappeared; and when
+the Englishman saw him again, he was in the box of one of the Neapolitan
+nobles, where Glyndon could not follow him.
+
+Viola now left the stage, and Glyndon accosted her with an unaccustomed
+warmth of gallantry. But Viola, contrary to her gentle habit, turned
+with an evident impatience from the address of her lover. Taking aside
+Gionetta, who was her constant attendant at the theatre, she said, in an
+earnest whisper,--
+
+“Oh, Gionetta! He is here again!--the stranger of whom I spoke to
+thee!--and again, he alone, of the whole theatre, withholds from me his
+applause.”
+
+“Which is he, my darling?” said the old woman, with fondness in her
+voice. “He must indeed be dull--not worth a thought.”
+
+The actress drew Gionetta nearer to the stage, and pointed out to her a
+man in one of the boxes, conspicuous amongst all else by the simplicity
+of his dress, and the extraordinary beauty of his features.
+
+“Not worth a thought, Gionetta!” repeated Viola,--“Not worth a thought!
+Alas, not to think of him, seems the absence of thought itself!”
+
+The prompter summoned the Signora Pisani. “Find out his name, Gionetta,”
+ said she, moving slowly to the stage, and passing by Glyndon, who gazed
+at her with a look of sorrowful reproach.
+
+The scene on which the actress now entered was that of the final
+catastrophe, wherein all her remarkable powers of voice and art were
+pre-eminently called forth. The house hung on every word with breathless
+worship; but the eyes of Viola sought only those of one calm and unmoved
+spectator; she exerted herself as if inspired. Zanoni listened, and
+observed her with an attentive gaze, but no approval escaped his lips;
+no emotion changed the expression of his cold and half-disdainful
+aspect. Viola, who was in the character of one who loved, but without
+return, never felt so acutely the part she played. Her tears were
+truthful; her passion that of nature: it was almost too terrible to
+behold. She was borne from the stage exhausted and insensible, amidst
+such a tempest of admiring rapture as Continental audiences alone can
+raise. The crowd stood up, handkerchiefs waved, garlands and flowers
+were thrown on the stage,--men wiped their eyes, and women sobbed aloud.
+
+“By heavens!” said a Neapolitan of great rank, “She has fired me beyond
+endurance. To-night--this very night--she shall be mine! You have
+arranged all, Mascari?”
+
+“All, signor. And the young Englishman?”
+
+“The presuming barbarian! As I before told thee, let him bleed for his
+folly. I will have no rival.”
+
+“But an Englishman! There is always a search after the bodies of the
+English.”
+
+“Fool! is not the sea deep enough, or the earth secret enough, to hide
+one dead man? Our ruffians are silent as the grave itself; and I!--who
+would dare to suspect, to arraign the Prince di --? See to it,--this
+night. I trust him to you. Robbers murder him, you understand,--the
+country swarms with them; plunder and strip him, the better to favour
+such report. Take three men; the rest shall be my escort.”
+
+Mascari shrugged his shoulders, and bowed submissively.
+
+The streets of Naples were not then so safe as now, and carriages were
+both less expensive and more necessary. The vehicle which was regularly
+engaged by the young actress was not to be found. Gionetta, too aware of
+the beauty of her mistress and the number of her admirers to contemplate
+without alarm the idea of their return on foot, communicated her
+distress to Glyndon, and he besought Viola, who recovered but slowly,
+to accept his own carriage. Perhaps before that night she would not
+have rejected so slight a service. Now, for some reason or other, she
+refused. Glyndon, offended, was retiring sullenly, when Gionetta stopped
+him. “Stay, signor,” said she, coaxingly: “the dear signora is not
+well,--do not be angry with her; I will make her accept your offer.”
+
+Glyndon stayed, and after a few moments spent in expostulation on
+the part of Gionetta, and resistance on that of Viola, the offer was
+accepted. Gionetta and her charge entered the carriage, and Glyndon was
+left at the door of the theatre to return home on foot. The mysterious
+warning of Zanoni then suddenly occurred to him; he had forgotten it
+in the interest of his lover’s quarrel with Viola. He thought it now
+advisable to guard against danger foretold by lips so mysterious.
+He looked round for some one he knew: the theatre was disgorging
+its crowds; they hustled, and jostled, and pressed upon him; but he
+recognised no familiar countenance. While pausing irresolute, he heard
+Mervale’s voice calling on him, and, to his great relief, discovered his
+friend making his way through the throng.
+
+“I have secured you,” said he, “a place in the Count Cetoxa’s carriage.
+Come along, he is waiting for us.”
+
+“How kind in you! how did you find me out?”
+
+“I met Zanoni in the passage,--‘Your friend is at the door of the
+theatre,’ said he; ‘do not let him go home on foot to-night; the streets
+of Naples are not always safe.’ I immediately remembered that some of
+the Calabrian bravos had been busy within the city the last few weeks,
+and suddenly meeting Cetoxa--but here he is.”
+
+Further explanation was forbidden, for they now joined the count. As
+Glyndon entered the carriage and drew up the glass, he saw four men
+standing apart by the pavement, who seemed to eye him with attention.
+
+“Cospetto!” cried one; “that is the Englishman!” Glyndon imperfectly
+heard the exclamation as the carriage drove on. He reached home in
+safety.
+
+The familiar and endearing intimacy which always exists in Italy between
+the nurse and the child she has reared, and which the “Romeo and Juliet”
+ of Shakespeare in no way exaggerates, could not but be drawn yet closer
+than usual, in a situation so friendless as that of the orphan-actress.
+In all that concerned the weaknesses of the heart, Gionetta had large
+experience; and when, three nights before, Viola, on returning from the
+theatre, had wept bitterly, the nurse had succeeded in extracting from
+her a confession that she had seen one,--not seen for two weary and
+eventful years,--but never forgotten, and who, alas! had not evinced the
+slightest recognition of herself. Gionetta could not comprehend all the
+vague and innocent emotions that swelled this sorrow; but she resolved
+them all, with her plain, blunt understanding, to the one sentiment
+of love. And here, she was well fitted to sympathise and console.
+Confidante to Viola’s entire and deep heart she never could be,--for
+that heart never could have words for all its secrets. But such
+confidence as she could obtain, she was ready to repay by the most
+unreproving pity and the most ready service.
+
+“Have you discovered who he is?” asked Viola, as she was now alone in
+the carriage with Gionetta.
+
+“Yes; he is the celebrated Signor Zanoni, about whom all the great
+ladies have gone mad. They say he is so rich!--oh! so much richer than
+any of the Inglesi!--not but what the Signor Glyndon--”
+
+“Cease!” interrupted the young actress. “Zanoni! Speak of the Englishman
+no more.”
+
+The carriage was now entering that more lonely and remote part of the
+city in which Viola’s house was situated, when it suddenly stopped.
+
+Gionetta, in alarm, thrust her head out of the window, and perceived,
+by the pale light of the moon, that the driver, torn from his seat, was
+already pinioned in the arms of two men; the next moment the door was
+opened violently, and a tall figure, masked and mantled, appeared.
+
+“Fear not, fairest Pisani,” said he, gently; “no ill shall befall you.”
+ As he spoke, he wound his arm round the form of the fair actress, and
+endeavoured to lift her from the carriage. But Gionetta was no ordinary
+ally,--she thrust back the assailant with a force that astonished him,
+and followed the shock by a volley of the most energetic reprobation.
+
+The mask drew back, and composed his disordered mantle.
+
+“By the body of Bacchus!” said he, half laughing, “she is well
+protected. Here, Luigi, Giovanni! seize the hag!--quick!--why loiter
+ye?”
+
+The mask retired from the door, and another and yet taller form
+presented itself. “Be calm, Viola Pisani,” said he, in a low voice;
+“with me you are indeed safe!” He lifted his mask as he spoke, and
+showed the noble features of Zanoni.
+
+“Be calm, be hushed,--I can save you.” He vanished, leaving Viola lost
+in surprise, agitation, and delight. There were, in all, nine masks:
+two were engaged with the driver; one stood at the head of the
+carriage-horses; a fourth guarded the well-trained steeds of the party;
+three others (besides Zanoni and the one who had first accosted Viola)
+stood apart by a carriage drawn to the side of the road. To these three
+Zanoni motioned; they advanced; he pointed towards the first mask, who
+was in fact the Prince di --, and to his unspeakable astonishment the
+prince was suddenly seized from behind.
+
+“Treason!” he cried. “Treason among my own men! What means this?”
+
+“Place him in his carriage! If he resist, his blood be on his own head!”
+ said Zanoni, calmly.
+
+He approached the men who had detained the coachman.
+
+“You are outnumbered and outwitted,” said he; “join your lord; you are
+three men,--we six, armed to the teeth. Thank our mercy that we spare
+your lives. Go!”
+
+The men gave way, dismayed. The driver remounted.
+
+“Cut the traces of their carriage and the bridles of their horses,” said
+Zanoni, as he entered the vehicle containing Viola, which now drove on
+rapidly, leaving the discomfited ravisher in a state of rage and stupor
+impossible to describe.
+
+“Allow me to explain this mystery to you,” said Zanoni. “I discovered
+the plot against you,--no matter how; I frustrated it thus: The head of
+this design is a nobleman, who has long persecuted you in vain. He
+and two of his creatures watched you from the entrance of the theatre,
+having directed six others to await him on the spot where you were
+attacked; myself and five of my servants supplied their place, and were
+mistaken for his own followers. I had previously ridden alone to the
+spot where the men were waiting, and informed them that their master
+would not require their services that night. They believed me, and
+accordingly dispersed. I then joined my own band, whom I had left in the
+rear; you know all. We are at your door.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.III.
+
+     When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
+     For all the day they view things unrespected;
+     But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
+     And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
+     Shakespeare.
+
+     Zanoni followed the young Neapolitan into her house; Gionetta
+     vanished,--they were left alone.
+
+Alone, in that room so often filled, in the old happy days, with the
+wild melodies of Pisani; and now, as she saw this mysterious, haunting,
+yet beautiful and stately stranger, standing on the very spot where
+she had sat at her father’s feet, thrilled and spellbound,--she almost
+thought, in her fantastic way of personifying her own airy notions,
+that that spiritual Music had taken shape and life, and stood before her
+glorious in the image it assumed. She was unconscious all the while of
+her own loveliness. She had thrown aside her hood and veil; her hair,
+somewhat disordered, fell over the ivory neck which the dress partially
+displayed; and as her dark eyes swam with grateful tears, and her cheek
+flushed with its late excitement, the god of light and music himself
+never, amidst his Arcadian valleys, wooed, in his mortal guise, maiden
+or nymph more fair.
+
+Zanoni gazed at her with a look in which admiration seemed not unmingled
+with compassion. He muttered a few words to himself, and then addressed
+her aloud.
+
+“Viola, I have saved you from a great peril; not from dishonour only,
+but perhaps from death. The Prince di --, under a weak despot and a
+venal administration, is a man above the law. He is capable of every
+crime; but amongst his passions he has such prudence as belongs to
+ambition; if you were not to reconcile yourself to your shame, you would
+never enter the world again to tell your tale. The ravisher has no heart
+for repentance, but he has a hand that can murder. I have saved you,
+Viola. Perhaps you would ask me wherefore?” Zanoni paused, and smiled
+mournfully, as he added, “You will not wrong me by the thought that he
+who has preserved is not less selfish than he who would have injured.
+Orphan, I do not speak to you in the language of your wooers; enough
+that I know pity, and am not ungrateful for affection. Why blush, why
+tremble at the word? I read your heart while I speak, and I see not
+one thought that should give you shame. I say not that you love me yet;
+happily, the fancy may be roused long before the heart is touched.
+But it has been my fate to fascinate your eye, to influence your
+imagination. It is to warn you against what could bring you but sorrow,
+as I warned you once to prepare for sorrow itself, that I am now your
+guest. The Englishman, Glyndon, loves thee well,--better, perhaps, than
+I can ever love; if not worthy of thee, yet, he has but to know thee
+more to deserve thee better. He may wed thee, he may bear thee to his
+own free and happy land,--the land of thy mother’s kin. Forget me; teach
+thyself to return and deserve his love; and I tell thee that thou wilt
+be honoured and be happy.”
+
+Viola listened with silent, inexpressible emotion, and burning blushes,
+to this strange address, and when he had concluded, she covered her face
+with her hands, and wept. And yet, much as his words were calculated to
+humble or irritate, to produce indignation or excite shame, those were
+not the feelings with which her eyes streamed and her heart swelled. The
+woman at that moment was lost in the child; and AS a child, with all its
+exacting, craving, yet innocent desire to be loved, weeps in unrebuking
+sadness when its affection is thrown austerely back upon itself,--so,
+without anger and without shame, wept Viola.
+
+Zanoni contemplated her thus, as her graceful head, shadowed by its
+redundant tresses, bent before him; and after a moment’s pause he drew
+near to her, and said, in a voice of the most soothing sweetness, and
+with a half smile upon his lip,--
+
+“Do you remember, when I told you to struggle for the light, that I
+pointed for example to the resolute and earnest tree? I did not tell
+you, fair child, to take example by the moth, that would soar to the
+star, but falls scorched beside the lamp. Come, I will talk to thee.
+This Englishman--”
+
+Viola drew herself away, and wept yet more passionately.
+
+“This Englishman is of thine own years, not far above thine own rank.
+Thou mayst share his thoughts in life,--thou mayst sleep beside him
+in the same grave in death! And I--but THAT view of the future should
+concern us not. Look into thy heart, and thou wilt see that till again
+my shadow crossed thy path, there had grown up for this thine equal a
+pure and calm affection that would have ripened into love. Hast thou
+never pictured to thyself a home in which thy partner was thy young
+wooer?”
+
+“Never!” said Viola, with sudden energy,--“never but to feel that such
+was not the fate ordained me. And, oh!” she continued, rising suddenly,
+and, putting aside the tresses that veiled her face, she fixed her eyes
+upon the questioner,--“and, oh! whoever thou art that thus wouldst read
+my soul and shape my future, do not mistake the sentiment that, that--”
+ she faltered an instant, and went on with downcast eyes,--“that has
+fascinated my thoughts to thee. Do not think that I could nourish a love
+unsought and unreturned. It is not love that I feel for thee, stranger.
+Why should I? Thou hast never spoken to me but to admonish,--and now, to
+wound!” Again she paused, again her voice faltered; the tears trembled
+on her eyelids; she brushed them away and resumed. “No, not love,--if
+that be love which I have heard and read of, and sought to simulate
+on the stage,--but a more solemn, fearful, and, it seems to me, almost
+preternatural attraction, which makes me associate thee, waking or
+dreaming, with images that at once charm and awe. Thinkest thou, if it
+were love, that I could speak to thee thus; that,” she raised her looks
+suddenly to his, “mine eyes could thus search and confront thine own?
+Stranger, I ask but at times to see, to hear thee! Stranger, talk not to
+me of others. Forewarn, rebuke, bruise my heart, reject the not unworthy
+gratitude it offers thee, if thou wilt, but come not always to me as
+an omen of grief and trouble. Sometimes have I seen thee in my dreams
+surrounded by shapes of glory and light; thy looks radiant with a
+celestial joy which they wear not now. Stranger, thou hast saved me, and
+I thank and bless thee! Is that also a homage thou wouldst reject?”
+ With these words, she crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and inclined
+lowlily before him. Nor did her humility seem unwomanly or abject, nor
+that of mistress to lover, of slave to master, but rather of a child to
+its guardian, of a neophyte of the old religion to her priest. Zanoni’s
+brow was melancholy and thoughtful. He looked at her with a strange
+expression of kindness, of sorrow, yet of tender affection, in his eyes;
+but his lips were stern, and his voice cold, as he replied,--
+
+“Do you know what you ask, Viola? Do you guess the danger to
+yourself--perhaps to both of us--which you court? Do you know that my
+life, separated from the turbulent herd of men, is one worship of the
+Beautiful, from which I seek to banish what the Beautiful inspires in
+most? As a calamity, I shun what to man seems the fairest fate,--the
+love of the daughters of earth. At present I can warn and save thee from
+many evils; if I saw more of thee, would the power still be mine?
+You understand me not. What I am about to add, it will be easier to
+comprehend. I bid thee banish from thy heart all thought of me, but
+as one whom the Future cries aloud to thee to avoid. Glyndon, if thou
+acceptest his homage, will love thee till the tomb closes upon both. I,
+too,” he added with emotion,--“I, too, might love thee!”
+
+“You!” cried Viola, with the vehemence of a sudden impulse of delight,
+of rapture, which she could not suppress; but the instant after, she
+would have given worlds to recall the exclamation.
+
+“Yes, Viola, I might love thee; but in that love what sorrow and what
+change! The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose heart it grows. A
+little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock still endures,--the
+snow at its breast, the sunshine on its summit. Pause,--think well.
+Danger besets thee yet. For some days thou shalt be safe from thy
+remorseless persecutor; but the hour soon comes when thy only security
+will be in flight. If the Englishman love thee worthily, thy honour will
+be dear to him as his own; if not, there are yet other lands where love
+will be truer, and virtue less in danger from fraud and force. Farewell;
+my own destiny I cannot foresee except through cloud and shadow. I know,
+at least, that we shall meet again; but learn ere then, sweet flower,
+that there are more genial resting-places than the rock.”
+
+He turned as he spoke, and gained the outer door where Gionetta
+discreetly stood. Zanoni lightly laid his hand on her arm. With the gay
+accent of a jesting cavalier, he said,--
+
+“The Signor Glyndon woos your mistress; he may wed her. I know your love
+for her. Disabuse her of any caprice for me. I am a bird ever on the
+wing.”
+
+He dropped a purse into Gionetta’s hand as he spoke, and was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.IV.
+
+     Les Intelligences Celestes se font voir, et see communiquent plus
+     volontiers, dans le silence et dans la tranquillite de la
+     solitude.  On aura donc une petite chambre ou un cabinet secret,
+     etc.
+
+     “Les Clavicules de Rabbi Salomon,” chapter 3; traduites
+     exactement du texte Hebreu par M. Pierre Morissoneau, Professeur
+     des Langues Orientales, et Sectateur de la Philosophie des Sages
+     Cabalistes.  (Manuscript Translation.)
+
+     (The Celestial Intelligences exhibit and explain themselves most
+     freely in silence and the tranquillity of solitude.  One will
+     have then a little chamber, or a secret cabinet, etc.)
+
+The palace retained by Zanoni was in one of the less frequented quarters
+of the city. It still stands, now ruined and dismantled, a monument of
+the splendour of a chivalry long since vanished from Naples, with the
+lordly races of the Norman and the Spaniard.
+
+As he entered the rooms reserved for his private hours, two Indians, in
+the dress of their country, received him at the threshold with the grave
+salutations of the East. They had accompanied him from the far lands in
+which, according to rumour, he had for many years fixed his home.
+But they could communicate nothing to gratify curiosity or justify
+suspicion. They spoke no language but their own. With the exception of
+these two his princely retinue was composed of the native hirelings of
+the city, whom his lavish but imperious generosity made the implicit
+creatures of his will. In his house, and in his habits, so far as they
+were seen, there was nothing to account for the rumours which were
+circulated abroad. He was not, as we are told of Albertus Magnus or the
+great Leonardo da Vinci, served by airy forms; and no brazen image, the
+invention of magic mechanism, communicated to him the influences of
+the stars. None of the apparatus of the alchemist--the crucible and the
+metals--gave solemnity to his chambers, or accounted for his wealth;
+nor did he even seem to interest himself in those serener studies which
+might be supposed to colour his peculiar conversation with abstract
+notions, and often with recondite learning. No books spoke to him in his
+solitude; and if ever he had drawn from them his knowledge, it seemed
+now that the only page he read was the wide one of Nature, and that
+a capacious and startling memory supplied the rest. Yet was there one
+exception to what in all else seemed customary and commonplace, and
+which, according to the authority we have prefixed to this chapter,
+might indicate the follower of the occult sciences. Whether at Rome or
+Naples, or, in fact, wherever his abode, he selected one room remote
+from the rest of the house, which was fastened by a lock scarcely larger
+than the seal of a ring, yet which sufficed to baffle the most cunning
+instruments of the locksmith: at least, one of his servants, prompted by
+irresistible curiosity, had made the attempt in vain; and though he had
+fancied it was tried in the most favourable time for secrecy,--not a
+soul near, in the dead of night, Zanoni himself absent from home,--yet
+his superstition, or his conscience, told him the reason why the next
+day the Major Domo quietly dismissed him. He compensated himself for
+this misfortune by spreading his own story, with a thousand amusing
+exaggerations. He declared that, as he approached the door, invisible
+hands seemed to pluck him away; and that when he touched the lock, he
+was struck, as by a palsy, to the ground. One surgeon, who heard the
+tale, observed, to the distaste of the wonder-mongers, that possibly
+Zanoni made a dexterous use of electricity. Howbeit, this room, once so
+secured, was never entered save by Zanoni himself.
+
+The solemn voice of Time, from the neighbouring church at last aroused
+the lord of the palace from the deep and motionless reverie, rather
+resembling a trance than thought, in which his mind was absorbed.
+
+“It is one more sand out of the mighty hour-glass,” said he,
+murmuringly, “and yet time neither adds to, nor steals from, an atom in
+the Infinite! Soul of mine, the luminous, the Augoeides (Augoeides,--a
+word favoured by the mystical Platonists, sphaira psuches augoeides,
+otan mete ekteinetai epi ti, mete eso suntreche mete sunizane, alla
+photi lampetai, o ten aletheian opa ten panton, kai ten en aute.--Marc.
+Ant., lib. 2.--The sense of which beautiful sentence of the old
+philosophy, which, as Bayle well observes, in his article on Cornelius
+Agrippa, the modern Quietists have (however impotently) sought to
+imitate, is to the effect that ‘the sphere of the soul is luminous when
+nothing external has contact with the soul itself; but when lit by its
+own light, it sees the truth of all things and the truth centred in
+itself.’), why descendest thou from thy sphere,--why from the eternal,
+starlike, and passionless Serene, shrinkest thou back to the mists of
+the dark sarcophagus? How long, too austerely taught that companionship
+with the things that die brings with it but sorrow in its sweetness,
+hast thou dwelt contented with thy majestic solitude?”
+
+As he thus murmured, one of the earliest birds that salute the dawn
+broke into sudden song from amidst the orange-trees in the garden below
+his casement; and as suddenly, song answered song; the mate, awakened at
+the note, gave back its happy answer to the bird. He listened; and not
+the soul he had questioned, but the heart replied. He rose, and with
+restless strides paced the narrow floor. “Away from this world!” he
+exclaimed at length, with an impatient tone. “Can no time loosen its
+fatal ties? As the attraction that holds the earth in space, is the
+attraction that fixes the soul to earth. Away from the dark grey planet!
+Break, ye fetters: arise, ye wings!”
+
+He passed through the silent galleries, and up the lofty stairs, and
+entered the secret chamber....
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.V.
+
+     I and my fellows
+     Are ministers of Fate.
+     --“The Tempest.”
+
+The next day Glyndon bent his steps towards Zanoni’s palace. The young
+man’s imagination, naturally inflammable, was singularly excited by the
+little he had seen and heard of this strange being,--a spell, he could
+neither master nor account for, attracted him towards the stranger.
+Zanoni’s power seemed mysterious and great, his motives kindly and
+benevolent, yet his manners chilling and repellent. Why at one moment
+reject Glyndon’s acquaintance, at another save him from danger? How
+had Zanoni thus acquired the knowledge of enemies unknown to Glyndon
+himself? His interest was deeply roused, his gratitude appealed to; he
+resolved to make another effort to conciliate the ungracious herbalist.
+
+The signor was at home, and Glyndon was admitted into a lofty saloon,
+where in a few moments Zanoni joined him.
+
+“I am come to thank you for your warning last night,” said he, “and to
+entreat you to complete my obligation by informing me of the quarter to
+which I may look for enmity and peril.”
+
+“You are a gallant,” said Zanoni, with a smile, and in the English
+language, “and do you know so little of the South as not to be aware
+that gallants have always rivals?”
+
+“Are you serious?” said Glyndon, colouring.
+
+“Most serious. You love Viola Pisani; you have for rival one of the most
+powerful and relentless of the Neapolitan princes. Your danger is indeed
+great.”
+
+“But pardon me!--how came it known to you?”
+
+“I give no account of myself to mortal man,” replied Zanoni, haughtily;
+“and to me it matters nothing whether you regard or scorn my warning.”
+
+“Well, if I may not question you, be it so; but at least advise me what
+to do.”
+
+“Would you follow my advice?”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because you are constitutionally brave; you are fond of excitement and
+mystery; you like to be the hero of a romance. Were I to advise you to
+leave Naples, would you do so while Naples contains a foe to confront or
+a mistress to pursue?”
+
+“You are right,” said the young Englishman, with energy. “No! and you
+cannot reproach me for such a resolution.”
+
+“But there is another course left to you: do you love Viola Pisani truly
+and fervently?--if so, marry her, and take a bride to your native land.”
+
+“Nay,” answered Glyndon, embarrassed; “Viola is not of my rank. Her
+profession, too, is--in short, I am enslaved by her beauty, but I cannot
+wed her.”
+
+Zanoni frowned.
+
+“Your love, then, is but selfish lust, and I advise you to your own
+happiness no more. Young man, Destiny is less inexorable than it
+appears. The resources of the great Ruler of the Universe are not so
+scanty and so stern as to deny to men the divine privilege of Free
+Will; all of us can carve out our own way, and God can make our very
+contradictions harmonise with His solemn ends. You have before you
+an option. Honourable and generous love may even now work out your
+happiness, and effect your escape; a frantic and selfish passion will
+but lead you to misery and doom.”
+
+“Do you pretend, then, to read the future?”
+
+“I have said all that it pleases me to utter.”
+
+“While you assume the moralist to me, Signor Zanoni,” said Glyndon, with
+a smile, “are you yourself so indifferent to youth and beauty as to act
+the stoic to its allurements?”
+
+“If it were necessary that practice square with precept,” said Zanoni,
+with a bitter smile, “our monitors would be but few. The conduct of the
+individual can affect but a small circle beyond himself; the permanent
+good or evil that he works to others lies rather in the sentiments he
+can diffuse. His acts are limited and momentary; his sentiments may
+pervade the universe, and inspire generations till the day of doom. All
+our virtues, all our laws, are drawn from books and maxims, which ARE
+sentiments, not from deeds. In conduct, Julian had the virtues of a
+Christian, and Constantine the vices of a Pagan. The sentiments of
+Julian reconverted thousands to Paganism; those of Constantine helped,
+under Heaven’s will, to bow to Christianity the nations of the earth.
+In conduct, the humblest fisherman on yonder sea, who believes in
+the miracles of San Gennaro, may be a better man than Luther; to the
+sentiments of Luther the mind of modern Europe is indebted for the
+noblest revolution it has known. Our opinions, young Englishman, are the
+angel part of us; our acts, the earthly.”
+
+“You have reflected deeply for an Italian,” said Glyndon.
+
+“Who told you that I was an Italian?”
+
+“Are you not? And yet, when I hear you speak my own language as a
+native, I--”
+
+“Tush!” interrupted Zanoni, impatiently turning away. Then, after a
+pause, he resumed in a mild voice, “Glyndon, do you renounce Viola
+Pisani? Will you take some days to consider what I have said?”
+
+“Renounce her,--never!”
+
+“Then you will marry her?”
+
+“Impossible!”
+
+“Be it so; she will then renounce you. I tell you that you have rivals.”
+
+“Yes; the Prince di --; but I do not fear him.”
+
+“You have another whom you will fear more.”
+
+“And who is he?”
+
+“Myself.”
+
+Glyndon turned pale, and started from his seat.
+
+“You, Signor Zanoni!--you,--and you dare to tell me so?”
+
+“Dare! Alas! there are times when I wish that I could fear.”
+
+These arrogant words were not uttered arrogantly, but in a tone of the
+most mournful dejection. Glyndon was enraged, confounded, and yet
+awed. However, he had a brave English heart within his breast, and he
+recovered himself quickly.
+
+“Signor,” said he, calmly, “I am not to be duped by these solemn phrases
+and these mystical assumptions. You may have powers which I cannot
+comprehend or emulate, or you may be but a keen imposter.”
+
+“Well, proceed!”
+
+“I mean, then,” continued Glyndon, resolutely, though somewhat
+disconcerted,--“I mean you to understand, that, though I am not to be
+persuaded or compelled by a stranger to marry Viola Pisani, I am not the
+less determined never tamely to yield her to another.”
+
+Zanoni looked gravely at the young man, whose sparkling eyes and
+heightened colour testified the spirit to support his words, and
+replied, “So bold! well; it becomes you. But take my advice; wait yet
+nine days, and tell me then if you will marry the fairest and the purest
+creature that ever crossed your path.”
+
+“But if you love her, why--why--”
+
+“Why am I anxious that she should wed another?--to save her from myself!
+Listen to me. That girl, humble and uneducated though she be, has in her
+the seeds of the most lofty qualities and virtues. She can be all to the
+man she loves,--all that man can desire in wife. Her soul, developed by
+affection, will elevate your own; it will influence your fortunes, exalt
+your destiny; you will become a great and a prosperous man. If, on the
+contrary, she fall to me, I know not what may be her lot; but I know
+that there is an ordeal which few can pass, and which hitherto no woman
+has survived.”
+
+As Zanoni spoke, his face became colourless, and there was something in
+his voice that froze the warm blood of the listener.
+
+“What is this mystery which surrounds you?” exclaimed Glyndon, unable to
+repress his emotion. “Are you, in truth, different from other men? Have
+you passed the boundary of lawful knowledge? Are you, as some declare, a
+sorcerer, or only a--”
+
+“Hush!” interrupted Zanoni, gently, and with a smile of singular
+but melancholy sweetness; “have you earned the right to ask me these
+questions? Though Italy still boast an Inquisition, its power is
+rivelled as a leaf which the first wind shall scatter. The days of
+torture and persecution are over; and a man may live as he pleases, and
+talk as it suits him, without fear of the stake and the rack. Since I
+can defy persecution, pardon me if I do not yield to curiosity.”
+
+Glyndon blushed, and rose. In spite of his love for Viola, and his
+natural terror of such a rival, he felt himself irresistibly drawn
+towards the very man he had most cause to suspect and dread. He held
+out his hand to Zanoni, saying, “Well, then, if we are to be rivals, our
+swords must settle our rights; till then I would fain be friends.”
+
+“Friends! You know not what you ask.”
+
+“Enigmas again!”
+
+“Enigmas!” cried Zanoni, passionately; “ay! can you dare to solve them?
+Not till then could I give you my right hand, and call you friend.”
+
+“I could dare everything and all things for the attainment of superhuman
+wisdom,” said Glyndon, and his countenance was lighted up with wild and
+intense enthusiasm.
+
+Zanoni observed him in thoughtful silence.
+
+“The seeds of the ancestor live in the son,” he muttered; “he
+may--yet--” He broke off abruptly; then, speaking aloud, “Go, Glyndon,”
+ said he; “we shall meet again, but I will not ask your answer till the
+hour presses for decision.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VI.
+
+     ‘Tis certain that this man has an estate of fifty thousand
+     livres, and seems to be a person of very great accomplishments.
+     But, then, if he’s a wizard, are wizards so devoutly given as
+     this man seems to be?  In short, I could make neither head nor
+     tail on’t
+
+     --The Count de Gabalis, Translation affixed to the
+     second edition of the “Rape of the Lock.”
+
+Of all the weaknesses which little men rail against, there is none that
+they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And of
+all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of
+incredulity is the surest.
+
+Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny. While we hear, every
+day, the small pretenders to science talk of the absurdities of alchemy
+and the dream of the Philosopher’s Stone, a more erudite knowledge is
+aware that by alchemists the greatest discoveries in science have been
+made, and much which still seems abstruse, had we the key to the mystic
+phraseology they were compelled to adopt, might open the way to yet
+more noble acquisitions. The Philosopher’s Stone itself has seemed no
+visionary chimera to some of the soundest chemists that even the present
+century has produced. (Mr. Disraeli, in his “Curiosities of Literature”
+ (article “Alchem”), after quoting the sanguine judgments of modern
+chemists as to the transmutation of metals, observes of one yet greater
+and more recent than those to which Glyndon’s thoughts could have
+referred, “Sir Humphry Davy told me that he did not consider this
+undiscovered art as impossible; but should it ever be discovered, it
+would certainly be useless.”) Man cannot contradict the Laws of Nature.
+But are all the laws of Nature yet discovered?
+
+“Give me a proof of your art,” says the rational inquirer. “When I have
+seen the effect, I will endeavour, with you, to ascertain the causes.”
+
+Somewhat to the above effect were the first thoughts of Clarence Glyndon
+on quitting Zanoni. But Clarence Glyndon was no “rational inquirer.” The
+more vague and mysterious the language of Zanoni, the more it imposed
+upon him. A proof would have been something tangible, with which he
+would have sought to grapple. And it would have only disappointed his
+curiosity to find the supernatural reduced to Nature. He endeavoured in
+vain, at some moments rousing himself from credulity to the scepticism
+he deprecated, to reconcile what he had heard with the probable motives
+and designs of an imposter. Unlike Mesmer and Cagliostro, Zanoni,
+whatever his pretensions, did not make them a source of profit; nor was
+Glyndon’s position or rank in life sufficient to render any influence
+obtained over his mind, subservient to schemes, whether of avarice or
+ambition. Yet, ever and anon, with the suspicion of worldly knowledge,
+he strove to persuade himself that Zanoni had at least some sinister
+object in inducing him to what his English pride and manner of thought
+considered a derogatory marriage with the poor actress. Might not Viola
+and the Mystic be in league with each other? Might not all this jargon
+of prophecy and menace be but artifices to dupe him?
+
+He felt an unjust resentment towards Viola at having secured such an
+ally. But with that resentment was mingled a natural jealousy. Zanoni
+threatened him with rivalry. Zanoni, who, whatever his character or his
+arts, possessed at least all the external attributes that dazzle and
+command. Impatient of his own doubts, he plunged into the society of
+such acquaintances as he had made at Naples--chiefly artists, like
+himself, men of letters, and the rich commercialists, who were already
+vying with the splendour, though debarred from the privileges, of the
+nobles. From these he heard much of Zanoni, already with them, as with
+the idler classes, an object of curiosity and speculation.
+
+He had noticed, as a thing remarkable, that Zanoni had conversed with
+him in English, and with a command of the language so complete that he
+might have passed for a native. On the other hand, in Italian, Zanoni
+was equally at ease. Glyndon found that it was the same in languages
+less usually learned by foreigners. A painter from Sweden, who had
+conversed with him, was positive that he was a Swede; and a merchant
+from Constantinople, who had sold some of his goods to Zanoni, professed
+his conviction that none but a Turk, or at least a native of the East,
+could have so thoroughly mastered the soft Oriental intonations. Yet
+in all these languages, when they came to compare their several
+recollections, there was a slight, scarce perceptible distinction, not
+in pronunciation, nor even accent, but in the key and chime, as it were,
+of the voice, between himself and a native. This faculty was one which
+Glyndon called to mind, that sect, whose tenets and powers have never
+been more than most partially explored, the Rosicrucians, especially
+arrogated. He remembered to have heard in Germany of the work of John
+Bringeret (Printed in 1615.), asserting that all the languages of the
+earth were known to the genuine Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. Did
+Zanoni belong to this mystical Fraternity, who, in an earlier age,
+boasted of secrets of which the Philosopher’s Stone was but the least;
+who considered themselves the heirs of all that the Chaldeans, the Magi,
+the Gymnosophists, and the Platonists had taught; and who differed from
+all the darker Sons of Magic in the virtue of their lives, the purity of
+their doctrines, and their insisting, as the foundation of all wisdom,
+on the subjugation of the senses, and the intensity of Religious
+Faith?--a glorious sect, if they lied not! And, in truth, if Zanoni
+had powers beyond the race of worldly sages, they seemed not unworthily
+exercised. The little known of his life was in his favour. Some acts,
+not of indiscriminate, but judicious generosity and beneficence, were
+recorded; in repeating which, still, however, the narrators shook their
+heads, and expressed surprise how a stranger should have possessed so
+minute a knowledge of the quiet and obscure distresses he had relieved.
+Two or three sick persons, when abandoned by their physicians, he had
+visited, and conferred with alone. They had recovered: they ascribed to
+him their recovery; yet they could not tell by what medicines they had
+been healed. They could only depose that he came, conversed with them,
+and they were cured; it usually, however, happened that a deep sleep had
+preceded the recovery.
+
+Another circumstance was also beginning to be remarked, and spoke yet
+more in his commendation. Those with whom he principally associated--the
+gay, the dissipated, the thoughtless, the sinners and publicans of the
+more polished world--all appeared rapidly, yet insensibly to themselves,
+to awaken to purer thoughts and more regulated lives. Even Cetoxa, the
+prince of gallants, duellists, and gamesters, was no longer the same man
+since the night of the singular events which he had related to
+Glyndon. The first trace of his reform was in his retirement from the
+gaming-houses; the next was his reconciliation with an hereditary enemy
+of his house, whom it had been his constant object for the last six
+years to entangle in such a quarrel as might call forth his inimitable
+manoeuvre of the stoccata. Nor when Cetoxa and his young companions were
+heard to speak of Zanoni, did it seem that this change had been brought
+about by any sober lectures or admonitions. They all described Zanoni as
+a man keenly alive to enjoyment: of manners the reverse of formal,--not
+precisely gay, but equable, serene, and cheerful; ever ready to listen
+to the talk of others, however idle, or to charm all ears with an
+inexhaustible fund of brilliant anecdote and worldly experience. All
+manners, all nations, all grades of men, seemed familiar to him. He was
+reserved only if allusion were ever ventured to his birth or history.
+
+The more general opinion of his origin certainly seemed the more
+plausible. His riches, his familiarity with the languages of the East,
+his residence in India, a certain gravity which never deserted his most
+cheerful and familiar hours, the lustrous darkness of his eyes and hair,
+and even the peculiarities of his shape, in the delicate smallness of
+the hands, and the Arab-like turn of the stately head, appeared to fix
+him as belonging to one at least of the Oriental races. And a dabbler
+in the Eastern tongues even sought to reduce the simple name of Zanoni,
+which a century before had been borne by an inoffensive naturalist of
+Bologna (The author of two works on botany and rare plants.), to the
+radicals of the extinct language. Zan was unquestionably the Chaldean
+appellation for the sun. Even the Greeks, who mutilated every Oriental
+name, had retained the right one in this case, as the Cretan inscription
+on the tomb of Zeus (Ode megas keitai Zan.--“Cyril contra Julian.” (Here
+lies great Jove.)) significantly showed. As to the rest, the Zan, or
+Zaun, was, with the Sidonians, no uncommon prefix to On. Adonis was but
+another name for Zanonas, whose worship in Sidon Hesychius records. To
+this profound and unanswerable derivation Mervale listened with great
+attention, and observed that he now ventured to announce an erudite
+discovery he himself had long since made,--namely, that the numerous
+family of Smiths in England were undoubtedly the ancient priests of the
+Phrygian Apollo. “For,” said he, “was not Apollo’s surname, in
+Phrygia, Smintheus? How clear all the ensuing corruptions of the august
+name,--Smintheus, Smitheus, Smithe, Smith! And even now, I may remark
+that the more ancient branches of that illustrious family, unconsciously
+anxious to approximate at least by a letter nearer to the true title,
+take a pious pleasure in writing their names Smith_e_!”
+
+The philologist was much struck with this discovery, and begged
+Mervale’s permission to note it down as an illustration suitable to a
+work he was about to publish on the origin of languages, to be called
+“Babel,” and published in three quartos by subscription.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VII.
+
+     Learn to be poor in spirit, my son, if you would penetrate that
+     sacred night which environs truth.  Learn of the Sages to allow
+     to the Devils no power in Nature, since the fatal stone has shut
+     ‘em up in the depth of the abyss.  Learn of the Philosophers
+     always to look for natural causes in all extraordinary events;
+     and when such natural causes are wanting, recur to God.--The
+     Count de Gabalis.
+
+All these additions to his knowledge of Zanoni, picked up in the various
+lounging-places and resorts that he frequented, were unsatisfactory to
+Glyndon. That night Viola did not perform at the theatre; and the next
+day, still disturbed by bewildered fancies, and averse to the sober and
+sarcastic companionship of Mervale, Glyndon sauntered musingly into the
+public gardens, and paused under the very tree under which he had
+first heard the voice that had exercised upon his mind so singular an
+influence. The gardens were deserted. He threw himself on one of the
+seats placed beneath the shade; and again, in the midst of his reverie,
+the same cold shudder came over him which Zanoni had so distinctly
+defined, and to which he had ascribed so extraordinary a cause.
+
+He roused himself with a sudden effort, and started to see, seated next
+him, a figure hideous enough to have personated one of the malignant
+beings of whom Zanoni had spoken. It was a small man, dressed in a
+fashion strikingly at variance with the elaborate costume of the day:
+an affectation of homeliness and poverty approaching to squalor, in
+the loose trousers, coarse as a ship’s sail; in the rough jacket, which
+appeared rent wilfully into holes; and the black, ragged, tangled locks
+that streamed from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded but
+ill with other details which spoke of comparative wealth. The shirt,
+open at the throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and two
+pendent massive gold chains announced the foppery of two watches.
+
+The man’s figure, if not absolutely deformed, was yet marvellously
+ill-favoured; his shoulders high and square; his chest flattened, as if
+crushed in; his gloveless hands were knotted at the joints, and, large,
+bony, and muscular, dangled from lean, emaciated wrists, as if not
+belonging to them. His features had the painful distortion sometimes
+seen in the countenance of a cripple,--large, exaggerated, with the nose
+nearly touching the chin; the eyes small, but glowing with a cunning
+fire as they dwelt on Glyndon; and the mouth was twisted into a grin
+that displayed rows of jagged, black, broken teeth. Yet over this
+frightful face there still played a kind of disagreeable intelligence,
+an expression at once astute and bold; and as Glyndon, recovering from
+the first impression, looked again at his neighbour, he blushed at his
+own dismay, and recognised a French artist, with whom he had formed an
+acquaintance, and who was possessed of no inconsiderable talents in his
+calling.
+
+Indeed, it was to be remarked that this creature, whose externals were
+so deserted by the Graces, particularly delighted in designs aspiring to
+majesty and grandeur. Though his colouring was hard and shallow, as
+was that generally of the French school at the time, his DRAWINGS were
+admirable for symmetry, simple elegance, and classic vigour; at the same
+time they unquestionably wanted ideal grace. He was fond of selecting
+subjects from Roman history, rather than from the copious world of
+Grecian beauty, or those still more sublime stories of scriptural record
+from which Raphael and Michael Angelo borrowed their inspirations. His
+grandeur was that not of gods and saints, but mortals. His delineation
+of beauty was that which the eye cannot blame and the soul does
+not acknowledge. In a word, as it was said of Dionysius, he was an
+Anthropographos, or Painter of Men. It was also a notable contradiction
+in this person, who was addicted to the most extravagant excesses in
+every passion, whether of hate or love, implacable in revenge, and
+insatiable in debauch, that he was in the habit of uttering the most
+beautiful sentiments of exalted purity and genial philanthropy. The
+world was not good enough for him; he was, to use the expressive German
+phrase, A WORLD-BETTERER! Nevertheless, his sarcastic lip often seemed
+to mock the sentiments he uttered, as if it sought to insinuate that he
+was above even the world he would construct.
+
+Finally, this painter was in close correspondence with the Republicans
+of Paris, and was held to be one of those missionaries whom, from the
+earliest period of the Revolution, the regenerators of mankind were
+pleased to despatch to the various states yet shackled, whether by
+actual tyranny or wholesome laws. Certainly, as the historian of Italy
+(Botta.) has observed, there was no city in Italy where these new
+doctrines would be received with greater favour than Naples, partly from
+the lively temper of the people, principally because the most hateful
+feudal privileges, however partially curtailed some years before by the
+great minister, Tanuccini, still presented so many daily and practical
+evils as to make change wear a more substantial charm than the mere and
+meretricious bloom on the cheek of the harlot, Novelty. This man, whom
+I will call Jean Nicot, was, therefore, an oracle among the younger and
+bolder spirits of Naples; and before Glyndon had met Zanoni, the former
+had not been among the least dazzled by the eloquent aspirations of the
+hideous philanthropist.
+
+“It is so long since we have met, cher confrere,” said Nicot, drawing
+his seat nearer to Glyndon’s, “that you cannot be surprised that I
+see you with delight, and even take the liberty to intrude on your
+meditations.
+
+“They were of no agreeable nature,” said Glyndon; “and never was
+intrusion more welcome.”
+
+“You will be charmed to hear,” said Nicot, drawing several letters
+from his bosom, “that the good work proceeds with marvellous rapidity.
+Mirabeau, indeed, is no more; but, mort Diable! the French people are
+now a Mirabeau themselves.” With this remark, Monsieur Nicot proceeded
+to read and to comment upon several animated and interesting passages in
+his correspondence, in which the word virtue was introduced twenty-seven
+times, and God not once. And then, warmed by the cheering prospects thus
+opened to him, he began to indulge in those anticipations of the future,
+the outline of which we have already seen in the eloquent extravagance
+of Condorcet. All the old virtues were dethroned for a new Pantheon:
+patriotism was a narrow sentiment; philanthropy was to be its successor.
+No love that did not embrace all mankind, as warm for Indus and the
+Pole as for the hearth of home, was worthy the breast of a generous
+man. Opinion was to be free as air; and in order to make it so, it was
+necessary to exterminate all those whose opinions were not the same as
+Mons. Jean Nicot’s. Much of this amused, much revolted Glyndon; but when
+the painter turned to dwell upon a science that all should comprehend,
+and the results of which all should enjoy,--a science that, springing
+from the soil of equal institutions and equal mental cultivation, should
+give to all the races of men wealth without labour, and a life longer
+than the Patriarchs’, without care,--then Glyndon listened with interest
+and admiration, not unmixed with awe. “Observe,” said Nicot, “how much
+that we now cherish as a virtue will then be rejected as meanness. Our
+oppressors, for instance, preach to us of the excellence of gratitude.
+Gratitude, the confession of inferiority! What so hateful to a noble
+spirit as the humiliating sense of obligation? But where there is
+equality there can be no means for power thus to enslave merit. The
+benefactor and the client will alike cease, and--”
+
+“And in the mean time,” said a low voice, at hand,--“in the mean time,
+Jean Nicot?”
+
+The two artists started, and Glyndon recognised Zanoni.
+
+He gazed with a brow of unusual sternness on Nicot, who, lumped together
+as he sat, looked up at him askew, and with an expression of fear and
+dismay upon his distorted countenance.
+
+Ho, ho! Messire Jean Nicot, thou who fearest neither God nor Devil, why
+fearest thou the eye of a man?
+
+“It is not the first time I have been a witness to your opinions on the
+infirmity of gratitude,” said Zanoni.
+
+Nicot suppressed an exclamation, and, after gloomily surveying Zanoni
+with an eye villanous and sinister, but full of hate impotent and
+unutterable, said, “I know you not,--what would you of me?”
+
+“Your absence. Leave us!”
+
+Nicot sprang forward a step, with hands clenched, and showing his teeth
+from ear to ear, like a wild beast incensed. Zanoni stood motionless,
+and smiled at him in scorn. Nicot halted abruptly, as if fixed and
+fascinated by the look, shivered from head to foot, and sullenly, and
+with a visible effort, as if impelled by a power not his own, turned
+away.
+
+Glyndon’s eyes followed him in surprise.
+
+“And what know you of this man?” said Zanoni.
+
+“I know him as one like myself,--a follower of art.”
+
+“Of ART! Do not so profane that glorious word. What Nature is to God,
+art should be to man,--a sublime, beneficent, genial, and warm creation.
+That wretch may be a PAINTER, not an ARTIST.”
+
+“And pardon me if I ask what YOU know of one you thus disparage?”
+
+“I know thus much, that you are beneath my care if it be necessary to
+warn you against him; his own lips show the hideousness of his heart.
+Why should I tell you of the crimes he has committed? He SPEAKS crime!”
+
+“You do not seem, Signor Zanoni, to be one of the admirers of the
+dawning Revolution. Perhaps you are prejudiced against the man because
+you dislike the opinions?”
+
+“What opinions?”
+
+Glyndon paused, somewhat puzzled to define; but at length he said, “Nay,
+I must wrong you; for you, of all men, I suppose, cannot discredit the
+doctrine that preaches the infinite improvement of the human species.”
+
+“You are right; the few in every age improve the many; the many now may
+be as wise as the few were; but improvement is at a standstill, if you
+tell me that the many now are as wise as the few ARE.”
+
+“I comprehend you; you will not allow the law of universal equality!”
+
+“Law! If the whole world conspired to enforce the falsehood they could
+not make it LAW. Level all conditions to-day, and you only smooth away
+all obstacles to tyranny to-morrow. A nation that aspires to EQUALITY
+is unfit for FREEDOM. Throughout all creation, from the archangel to the
+worm, from Olympus to the pebble, from the radiant and completed planet
+to the nebula that hardens through ages of mist and slime into the
+habitable world, the first law of Nature is inequality.”
+
+“Harsh doctrine, if applied to states. Are the cruel disparities of life
+never to be removed?”
+
+“Disparities of the PHYSICAL life? Oh, let us hope so. But disparities
+of the INTELLECTUAL and the MORAL, never! Universal equality of
+intelligence, of mind, of genius, of virtue!--no teacher left to the
+world! no men wiser, better than others,--were it not an impossible
+condition, WHAT A HOPELESS PROSPECT FOR HUMANITY! No, while the world
+lasts, the sun will gild the mountain-top before it shines upon the
+plain. Diffuse all the knowledge the earth contains equally over all
+mankind to-day, and some men will be wiser than the rest to-morrow. And
+THIS is not a harsh, but a loving law,--the REAL law of improvement;
+the wiser the few in one generation, the wiser will be the multitude the
+next!”
+
+As Zanoni thus spoke, they moved on through the smiling gardens, and the
+beautiful bay lay sparkling in the noontide. A gentle breeze just cooled
+the sunbeam, and stirred the ocean; and in the inexpressible clearness
+of the atmosphere there was something that rejoiced the senses. The very
+soul seemed to grow lighter and purer in that lucid air.
+
+“And these men, to commence their era of improvement and equality, are
+jealous even of the Creator. They would deny an intelligence,--a God!”
+ said Zanoni, as if involuntarily. “Are you an artist, and, looking on
+the world, can you listen to such a dogma? Between God and genius there
+is a necessary link,--there is almost a correspondent language. Well
+said the Pythagorean (Sextus, the Pythagorean.), ‘A good intellect is
+the chorus of divinity.’”
+
+Struck and touched with these sentiments, which he little expected to
+fall from one to whom he ascribed those powers which the superstitions
+of childhood ascribe to the darker agencies, Glyndon said: “And yet you
+have confessed that your life, separated from that of others, is one
+that man should dread to share. Is there, then, a connection between
+magic and religion?”
+
+“Magic!” And what is magic! When the traveller beholds in Persia the
+ruins of palaces and temples, the ignorant inhabitants inform him they
+were the work of magicians. What is beyond their own power, the vulgar
+cannot comprehend to be lawfully in the power of others. But if by
+magic you mean a perpetual research amongst all that is more latent and
+obscure in Nature, I answer, I profess that magic, and that he who does
+so comes but nearer to the fountain of all belief. Knowest thou not that
+magic was taught in the schools of old? But how, and by whom? As the
+last and most solemn lesson, by the Priests who ministered to the
+Temple. (Psellus de Daemon (MS.)) And you, who would be a painter, is
+not there a magic also in that art you would advance? Must you not,
+after long study of the Beautiful that has been, seize upon new and airy
+combinations of a beauty that is to be? See you not that the grander
+art, whether of poet or of painter, ever seeking for the TRUE, abhors
+the REAL; that you must seize Nature as her master, not lackey her as
+her slave?
+
+“You demand mastery over the past, a conception of the future. Has not
+the art that is truly noble for its domain the future and the past? You
+would conjure the invisible beings to your charm; and what is painting
+but the fixing into substance the Invisible? Are you discontented with
+this world? This world was never meant for genius! To exist, it must
+create another. What magician can do more; nay, what science can do
+as much? There are two avenues from the little passions and the drear
+calamities of earth; both lead to heaven and away from hell,--art and
+science. But art is more godlike than science; science discovers, art
+creates. You have faculties that may command art; be contented with your
+lot. The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the
+universe; the poet can call a universe from the atom; the chemist may
+heal with his drugs the infirmities of the human form; the painter,
+or the sculptor, fixes into everlasting youth forms divine, which
+no disease can ravage, and no years impair. Renounce those wandering
+fancies that lead you now to myself, and now to yon orator of the human
+race; to us two, who are the antipodes of each other! Your pencil is
+your wand; your canvas may raise Utopias fairer than Condorcet dreams
+of. I press not yet for your decision; but what man of genius ever asked
+more to cheer his path to the grave than love and glory?”
+
+“But,” said Glyndon, fixing his eyes earnestly on Zanoni, “if there be a
+power to baffle the grave itself--”
+
+Zanoni’s brow darkened. “And were this so,” he said, after a pause,
+“would it be so sweet a lot to outlive all you loved, and to recoil from
+every human tie? Perhaps the fairest immortality on earth is that of a
+noble name.”
+
+“You do not answer me,--you equivocate. I have read of the long lives
+far beyond the date common experience assigns to man,” persisted
+Glyndon, “which some of the alchemists enjoyed. Is the golden elixir but
+a fable?”
+
+“If not, and these men discovered it, they died, because they refused to
+live! There may be a mournful warning in your conjecture. Turn once more
+to the easel and the canvas!”
+
+So saying, Zanoni waved his hand, and, with downcast eyes and a slow
+step, bent his way back into the city.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VIII.
+
+     The Goddess Wisdom.
+
+     To some she is the goddess great;
+     To some the milch cow of the field;
+     Their care is but to calculate
+     What butter she will yield.
+     From Schiller.
+
+This last conversation with Zanoni left upon the mind of Glyndon a
+tranquillising and salutary effect.
+
+From the confused mists of his fancy glittered forth again those happy,
+golden schemes which part from the young ambition of art, to play in the
+air, to illumine the space like rays that kindle from the sun. And with
+these projects mingled also the vision of a love purer and serener than
+his life yet had known. His mind went back into that fair childhood of
+genius, when the forbidden fruit is not yet tasted, and we know of no
+land beyond the Eden which is gladdened by an Eve. Insensibly before
+him there rose the scenes of a home, with his art sufficing for all
+excitement, and Viola’s love circling occupation with happiness and
+content; and in the midst of these fantasies of a future that might
+be at his command, he was recalled to the present by the clear, strong
+voice of Mervale, the man of common-sense.
+
+Whoever has studied the lives of persons in whom the imagination is
+stronger than the will, who suspect their own knowledge of actual life,
+and are aware of their facility to impressions, will have observed the
+influence which a homely, vigorous, worldly understanding obtains over
+such natures. It was thus with Glyndon. His friend had often extricated
+him from danger, and saved him from the consequences of imprudence; and
+there was something in Mervale’s voice alone that damped his enthusiasm,
+and often made him yet more ashamed of noble impulses than weak conduct.
+For Mervale, though a downright honest man, could not sympathise with
+the extravagance of generosity any more than with that of presumption
+and credulity. He walked the straight line of life, and felt an equal
+contempt for the man who wandered up the hill-sides, no matter whether
+to chase a butterfly, or to catch a prospect of the ocean.
+
+“I will tell you your thoughts, Clarence,” said Mervale, laughing,
+“though I am no Zanoni. I know them by the moisture of your eyes,
+and the half-smile on your lips. You are musing upon that fair
+perdition,--the little singer of San Carlo.”
+
+The little singer of San Carlo! Glyndon coloured as he answered,--
+
+“Would you speak thus of her if she were my wife?”
+
+“No! for then any contempt I might venture to feel would be for
+yourself. One may dislike the duper, but it is the dupe that one
+despises.”
+
+“Are you sure that I should be the dupe in such a union? Where can I
+find one so lovely and so innocent,--where one whose virtue has been
+tried by such temptation? Does even a single breath of slander sully the
+name of Viola Pisani?”
+
+“I know not all the gossip of Naples, and therefore cannot answer; but I
+know this, that in England no one would believe that a young Englishman,
+of good fortune and respectable birth, who marries a singer from the
+theatre of Naples, has not been lamentably taken in. I would save you
+from a fall of position so irretrievable. Think how many mortifications
+you will be subjected to; how many young men will visit at your
+house,--and how many young wives will as carefully avoid it.”
+
+“I can choose my own career, to which commonplace society is not
+essential. I can owe the respect of the world to my art, and not to the
+accidents of birth and fortune.”
+
+“That is, you still persist in your second folly,--the absurd ambition
+of daubing canvas. Heaven forbid I should say anything against the
+laudable industry of one who follows such a profession for the sake of
+subsistence; but with means and connections that will raise you in life,
+why voluntarily sink into a mere artist? As an accomplishment in leisure
+moments, it is all very well in its way; but as the occupation of
+existence, it is a frenzy.”
+
+“Artists have been the friends of princes.”
+
+“Very rarely so, I fancy, in sober England. There in the great centre of
+political aristocracy, what men respect is the practical, not the ideal.
+Just suffer me to draw two pictures of my own. Clarence Glyndon returns
+to England; he marries a lady of fortune equal to his own, of friends
+and parentage that advance rational ambition. Clarence Glyndon, thus a
+wealthy and respectable man, of good talents, of bustling energies then
+concentrated, enters into practical life. He has a house at which he can
+receive those whose acquaintance is both advantage and honour; he has
+leisure which he can devote to useful studies; his reputation, built on
+a solid base, grows in men’s mouths. He attaches himself to a party; he
+enters political life; and new connections serve to promote his objects.
+At the age of five-and-forty, what, in all probability, may Clarence
+Glyndon be? Since you are ambitious I leave that question for you to
+decide! Now turn to the other picture. Clarence Glyndon returns to
+England with a wife who can bring him no money, unless he lets her out
+on the stage; so handsome, that every one asks who she is, and every one
+hears,--the celebrated singer, Pisani. Clarence Glyndon shuts himself
+up to grind colours and paint pictures in the grand historical school,
+which nobody buys. There is even a prejudice against him, as not having
+studied in the Academy,--as being an amateur. Who is Mr. Clarence
+Glyndon? Oh, the celebrated Pisani’s husband! What else? Oh, he exhibits
+those large pictures! Poor man! they have merit in their way; but
+Teniers and Watteau are more convenient, and almost as cheap. Clarence
+Glyndon, with an easy fortune while single, has a large family which his
+fortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up to callings more plebeian
+than his own. He retires into the country, to save and to paint; he
+grows slovenly and discontented; ‘the world does not appreciate him,’
+he says, and he runs away from the world. At the age of forty-five
+what will be Clarence Glyndon? Your ambition shall decide that question
+also!”
+
+“If all men were as worldly as you,” said Glyndon, rising, “there would
+never have been an artist or a poet!”
+
+“Perhaps we should do just as well without them,” answered Mervale. “Is
+it not time to think of dinner? The mullets here are remarkably fine!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.IX.
+
+     Wollt ihr hoch auf ihren Flugeln schweben,
+     Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch!
+     Fliehet aus dem engen dumpfen Leben
+     In des Ideales Reich!
+     “Das Ideal und das Leben.”
+
+     Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
+     Cast off the earthly burden of the Real;
+     High from this cramped and dungeoned being, spring
+     Into the realm of the Ideal.
+
+As some injudicious master lowers and vitiates the taste of the student
+by fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the Natural, but which,
+in reality, is the Commonplace, and understands not that beauty in
+art is created by what Raphael so well describes,--namely, THE IDEA OF
+BEAUTY IN THE PAINTER’S OWN MIND; and that in every art, whether its
+plastic expression be found in words or marble, colours or sounds, the
+servile imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros,--so in
+conduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold enthusiasm of
+loftier natures by the perpetual reduction of whatever is generous and
+trustful to all that is trite and coarse. A great German poet has well
+defined the distinction between discretion and the larger wisdom. In the
+last there is a certain rashness which the first disdains,--
+
+“The purblind see but the receding shore, Not that to which the bold
+wave wafts them o’er.”
+
+Yet in this logic of the prudent and the worldly there is often a
+reasoning unanswerable of its kind.
+
+You must have a feeling,--a faith in whatever is self-sacrificing
+and divine, whether in religion or in art, in glory or in love; or
+Common-sense will reason you out of the sacrifice, and a syllogism will
+debase the Divine to an article in the market.
+
+Every true critic in art, from Aristotle and Pliny, from Winkelman and
+Vasari to Reynolds and Fuseli, has sought to instruct the painter that
+Nature is not to be copied, but EXALTED; that the loftiest order of art,
+selecting only the loftiest combinations, is the perpetual struggle of
+Humanity to approach the gods. The great painter, as the great author,
+embodies what is POSSIBLE to MAN, it is true, but what is not COMMON
+to MANKIND. There is truth in Hamlet; in Macbeth, and his witches; in
+Desdemona; in Othello; in Prospero, and in Caliban; there is truth in
+the cartoons of Raphael; there is truth in the Apollo, the Antinous,
+and the Laocoon. But you do not meet the originals of the words, the
+cartoons, or the marble, in Oxford Street or St. James’s. All these, to
+return to Raphael, are the creatures of the idea in the artist’s mind.
+This idea is not inborn, it has come from an intense study. But that
+study has been of the ideal that can be raised from the positive and
+the actual into grandeur and beauty. The commonest model becomes full of
+exquisite suggestions to him who has formed this idea; a Venus of flesh
+and blood would be vulgarised by the imitation of him who has not.
+
+When asked where he got his models, Guido summoned a common porter from
+his calling, and drew from a mean original a head of surpassing beauty.
+It resembled the porter, but idealised the porter to the hero. It was
+true, but it was not real. There are critics who will tell you that the
+Boor of Teniers is more true to Nature than the Porter of Guido! The
+commonplace public scarcely understand the idealising principle, even in
+art; for high art is an acquired taste.
+
+But to come to my comparison. Still less is the kindred principle
+comprehended in conduct. And the advice of worldly prudence would as
+often deter from the risks of virtue as from the punishments of vice;
+yet in conduct, as in art, there is an idea of the great and beautiful,
+by which men should exalt the hackneyed and the trite of life. Now
+Glyndon felt the sober prudence of Mervale’s reasonings; he recoiled
+from the probable picture placed before him, in his devotion to the one
+master-talent he possessed, and the one master-passion that, rightly
+directed, might purify his whole being as a strong wind purifies the
+air.
+
+But though he could not bring himself to decide in the teeth of so
+rational a judgment, neither could he resolve at once to abandon the
+pursuit of Viola. Fearful of being influenced by Zanoni’s counsels and
+his own heart, he had for the last two days shunned an interview with
+the young actress. But after a night following his last conversation
+with Zanoni, and that we have just recorded with Mervale,--a night
+coloured by dreams so distinct as to seem prophetic, dreams that
+appeared so to shape his future according to the hints of Zanoni that he
+could have fancied Zanoni himself had sent them from the house of sleep
+to haunt his pillow,--he resolved once more to seek Viola; and though
+without a definite or distinct object, he yielded himself up to the
+impulse of his heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.X.
+
+     O sollecito dubbio e fredda tema
+     Che pensando l’accresci.
+     Tasso, Canzone vi.
+
+     (O anxious doubt and chilling fear that grows by thinking.)
+
+She was seated outside her door,--the young actress! The sea before her
+in that heavenly bay seemed literally to sleep in the arms of the shore;
+while, to the right, not far off, rose the dark and tangled crags to
+which the traveller of to-day is duly brought to gaze on the tomb of
+Virgil, or compare with the cavern of Posilipo the archway of Highgate
+Hill. There were a few fisherman loitering by the cliffs, on which their
+nets were hung to dry; and at a distance the sound of some rustic pipe
+(more common at that day than at this), mingled now and then with the
+bells of the lazy mules, broke the voluptuous silence,--the silence of
+declining noon on the shores of Naples; never, till you have enjoyed it,
+never, till you have felt its enervating but delicious charm, believe
+that you can comprehend all the meaning of the Dolce far niente (The
+pleasure of doing nothing.); and when that luxury has been known, when
+you have breathed that atmosphere of fairy-land, then you will no longer
+wonder why the heart ripens into fruit so sudden and so rich beneath the
+rosy skies and the glorious sunshine of the South.
+
+The eyes of the actress were fixed on the broad blue deep beyond. In the
+unwonted negligence of her dress might be traced the abstraction of her
+mind. Her beautiful hair was gathered up loosely, and partially bandaged
+by a kerchief whose purple colour served to deepen the golden hue of her
+tresses. A stray curl escaped and fell down the graceful neck. A loose
+morning-robe, girded by a sash, left the breeze. That came ever and anon
+from the sea, to die upon the bust half disclosed; and the tiny slipper,
+that Cinderella might have worn, seemed a world too wide for the tiny
+foot which it scarcely covered. It might be the heat of the day that
+deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks, and gave an unwonted languor to
+the large, dark eyes. In all the pomp of her stage attire,--in all the
+flush of excitement before the intoxicating lamps,--never had Viola
+looked so lovely.
+
+By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold,--stood
+Gionetta, with her arms thrust to the elbow in two huge pockets on
+either side of her gown.
+
+“But I assure you,” said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, ear-splitting
+tone in which the old women of the South are more than a match for those
+of the North,--“but I assure you, my darling, that there is not a finer
+cavalier in all Naples, nor a more beautiful, than this Inglese; and I
+am told that all these Inglesi are much richer than they seem. Though
+they have no trees in their country, poor people! and instead of
+twenty-four they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear that they
+shoe their horses with scudi; and since they cannot (the poor heretics!)
+turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they turn gold into
+physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles whenever they are troubled
+with the colic. But you don’t hear me, little pupil of my eyes,--you
+don’t hear me!”
+
+“And these things are whispered of Zanoni!” said Viola, half to herself,
+and unheeding Gionetta’s eulogies on Glyndon and the English.
+
+“Blessed Maria! do not talk of this terrible Zanoni. You may be sure
+that his beautiful face, like his yet more beautiful pistoles, is
+only witchcraft. I look at the money he gave me the other night, every
+quarter of an hour, to see whether it has not turned into pebbles.”
+
+“Do you then really believe,” said Viola, with timid earnestness, “that
+sorcery still exists?”
+
+“Believe! Do I believe in the blessed San Gennaro? How do you think he
+cured old Filippo the fisherman, when the doctor gave him up? How do you
+think he has managed himself to live at least these three hundred years?
+How do you think he fascinates every one to his bidding with a look, as
+the vampires do?”
+
+“Ah, is this only witchcraft? It is like it,--it must be!” murmured
+Viola, turning very pale. Gionetta herself was scarcely more
+superstitious than the daughter of the musician. And her very innocence,
+chilled at the strangeness of virgin passion, might well ascribe to
+magic what hearts more experienced would have resolved to love.
+
+“And then, why has this great Prince di -- been so terrified by him? Why
+has he ceased to persecute us? Why has he been so quiet and still? Is
+there no sorcery in all that?”
+
+“Think you, then,” said Viola, with sweet inconsistency, “that I owe
+that happiness and safety to his protection? Oh, let me so believe! Be
+silent, Gionetta! Why have I only thee and my own terrors to consult?
+O beautiful sun!” and the girl pressed her hand to her heart with wild
+energy; “thou lightest every spot but this. Go, Gionetta! leave me
+alone,--leave me!”
+
+“And indeed it is time I should leave you; for the polenta will be
+spoiled, and you have eat nothing all day. If you don’t eat you will
+lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobody
+cares for us when we grow ugly,--I know that; and then you must, like
+old Gionetta, get some Viola of your own to spoil. I’ll go and see to
+the polenta.”
+
+“Since I have known this man,” said the girl, half aloud,--“since his
+dark eyes have haunted me, I am no longer the same. I long to escape
+from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to become
+something that is not of earth. Phantoms float before me at night; and
+a fluttering, like the wing of a bird, within my heart, seems as if the
+spirit were terrified, and would break its cage.”
+
+While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did not
+hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her arm.
+
+“Viola!--bellissima!--Viola!”
+
+She turned, and saw Glyndon. The sight of his fair young face calmed her
+at once. His presence gave her pleasure.
+
+“Viola,” said the Englishman, taking her hand, and drawing her again
+to the bench from which she had risen, as he seated himself beside her,
+“you shall hear me speak! You must know already that I love thee! It has
+not been pity or admiration alone that has led me ever and ever to thy
+dear side; reasons there may have been why I have not spoken, save by
+my eyes, before; but this day--I know not how it is--I feel a more
+sustained and settled courage to address thee, and learn the happiest or
+the worst. I have rivals, I know,--rivals who are more powerful than the
+poor artist; are they also more favoured?”
+
+Viola blushed faintly; but her countenance was grave and distressed.
+Looking down, and marking some hieroglyphical figures in the dust with
+the point of her slipper, she said, with some hesitation, and a vain
+attempt to be gay, “Signor, whoever wastes his thoughts on an actress
+must submit to have rivals. It is our unhappy destiny not to be sacred
+even to ourselves.”
+
+“But you do not love this destiny, glittering though it seem; your heart
+is not in the vocation which your gifts adorn.”
+
+“Ah, no!” said the actress, her eyes filling with tears. “Once I loved
+to be the priestess of song and music; now I feel only that it is a
+miserable lot to be slave to a multitude.”
+
+“Fly, then, with me,” said the artist, passionately; “quit forever the
+calling that divides that heart I would have all my own. Share my fate
+now and forever,--my pride, my delight, my ideal! Thou shalt inspire my
+canvas and my song; thy beauty shall be made at once holy and renowned.
+In the galleries of princes, crowds shall gather round the effigy of a
+Venus or a Saint, and a whisper shall break forth, ‘It is Viola Pisani!’
+Ah! Viola, I adore thee; tell me that I do not worship in vain.”
+
+“Thou art good and fair,” said Viola, gazing on her lover, as he pressed
+nearer to her, and clasped her hand in his; “but what should I give thee
+in return?”
+
+“Love, love,--only love!”
+
+“A sister’s love?”
+
+“Ah, speak not with such cruel coldness!”
+
+“It is all I have for thee. Listen to me, signor: when I look on your
+face, when I hear your voice, a certain serene and tranquil calm creeps
+over and lulls thoughts,--oh, how feverish, how wild! When thou art
+gone, the day seems a shade more dark; but the shadow soon flies. I
+miss thee not; I think not of thee: no, I love thee not; and I will give
+myself only where I love.”
+
+“But I would teach thee to love me; fear it not. Nay, such love as
+thou describest, in our tranquil climates, is the love of innocence and
+youth.”
+
+“Of innocence!” said Viola. “Is it so? Perhaps--” She paused, and added,
+with an effort, “Foreigner! and wouldst thou wed the orphan? Ah, THOU at
+least art generous! It is not the innocence thou wouldst destroy!”
+
+Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
+
+“No, it may not be!” she said, rising, but not conscious of the
+thoughts, half of shame, half suspicion, that passed through the mind
+of her lover. “Leave me, and forget me. You do not understand, you
+could not comprehend, the nature of her whom you think to love. From my
+childhood upward, I have felt as if I were marked out for some strange
+and preternatural doom; as if I were singled from my kind. This feeling
+(and, oh! at times it is one of delirious and vague delight, at others
+of the darkest gloom) deepens within me day by day. It is like the
+shadow of twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly around. My hour
+approaches: a little while, and it will be night!”
+
+As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and perturbation.
+“Viola!” he exclaimed, as she ceased, “your words more than ever enchain
+me to you. As you feel, I feel. I, too, have been ever haunted with a
+chill and unearthly foreboding. Amidst the crowds of men I have felt
+alone. In all my pleasures, my toils, my pursuits, a warning voice has
+murmured in my ear, ‘Time has a dark mystery in store for thy manhood.’
+When you spoke, it was as the voice of my own soul.”
+
+Viola gazed upon him in wonder and fear. Her countenance was as white as
+marble; and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might have
+served the Greek with a study for the Pythoness, when, from the mystic
+cavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of the
+inspiring god. Gradually the rigour and tension of that wonderful face
+relaxed, the colour returned, the pulse beat: the heart animated the
+frame.
+
+“Tell me,” she said, turning partially aside,--“tell me, have you
+seen--do you know--a stranger in this city,--one of whom wild stories
+are afloat?”
+
+“You speak of Zanoni? I have seen him: I know him,--and you? Ah, he,
+too, would be my rival!--he, too, would bear thee from me!”
+
+“You err,” said Viola, hastily, and with a deep sigh; “he pleads for
+you: he informed me of your love; he besought me not--not to reject it.”
+
+“Strange being! incomprehensible enigma! Why did you name him?”
+
+“Why! ah, I would have asked whether, when you first saw him, the
+foreboding, the instinct, of which you spoke, came on you more
+fearfully, more intelligibly than before; whether you felt at once
+repelled from him, yet attracted towards him; whether you felt,” and the
+actress spoke with hurried animation, “that with HIM was connected the
+secret of your life?”
+
+“All this I felt,” answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, “the first
+time I was in his presence. Though all around me was gay,--music,
+amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven without a cloud
+above,--my knees knocked together, my hair bristled, and my blood
+curdled like ice. Since then he has divided my thoughts with thee.”
+
+“No more, no more!” said Viola, in a stifled tone; “there must be the
+hand of fate in this. I can speak to you no more now. Farewell!” She
+sprung past him into the house, and closed the door. Glyndon did not
+follow her, nor, strange as it may seem, was he so inclined. The thought
+and recollection of that moonlit hour in the gardens, of the strange
+address of Zanoni, froze up all human passion. Viola herself, if not
+forgotten, shrunk back like a shadow into the recesses of his breast.
+He shivered as he stepped into the sunlight, and musingly retraced his
+steps into the more populous parts of that liveliest of Italian cities.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III. -- THEURGIA.
+
+     --i cavalier sen vanno
+     dove il pino fatal gli attende in porto.
+     Gerus. Lib., cant. xv (Argomento.)
+
+     The knights came where the fatal bark
+     Awaited them in the port.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.I.
+
+     But that which especially distinguishes the brotherhood is their
+     marvellous knowledge of all the resources of medical art.  They
+     work not by charms, but simples.
+     --“MS.  Account of the Origin and Attributes of the true
+     Rosicrucians,” by J. Von D--.
+
+At this time it chanced that Viola had the opportunity to return the
+kindness shown to her by the friendly musician whose house had received
+and sheltered her when first left an orphan on the world. Old Bernardi
+had brought up three sons to the same profession as himself, and they
+had lately left Naples to seek their fortunes in the wealthier cities
+of Northern Europe, where the musical market was less overstocked. There
+was only left to glad the household of his aged wife and himself, a
+lively, prattling, dark-eyed girl of some eight years old, the child
+of his second son, whose mother had died in giving her birth. It so
+happened that, about a month previous to the date on which our story has
+now entered, a paralytic affection had disabled Bernardi from the duties
+of his calling. He had been always a social, harmless, improvident,
+generous fellow--living on his gains from day to day, as if the day of
+sickness and old age never was to arrive. Though he received a small
+allowance for his past services, it ill sufficed for his wants,; neither
+was he free from debt. Poverty stood at his hearth,--when Viola’s
+grateful smile and liberal hand came to chase the grim fiend away. But
+it is not enough to a heart truly kind to send and give; more charitable
+is it to visit and console. “Forget not thy father’s friend.” So almost
+daily went the bright idol of Naples to the house of Bernardi. Suddenly
+a heavier affliction than either poverty or the palsy befell the old
+musician. His grandchild, his little Beatrice, fell ill, suddenly and
+dangerously ill, of one of those rapid fevers common to the South; and
+Viola was summoned from her strange and fearful reveries of love or
+fancy, to the sick-bed of the young sufferer.
+
+The child was exceedingly fond of Viola, and the old people thought that
+her mere presence would bring healing; but when Viola arrived, Beatrice
+was insensible. Fortunately there was no performance that evening at San
+Carlo, and she resolved to stay the night and partake its fearful cares
+and dangerous vigil.
+
+But during the night the child grew worse, the physician (the leechcraft
+has never been very skilful at Naples) shook his powdered head, kept his
+aromatics at his nostrils, administered his palliatives, and departed.
+Old Bernardi seated himself by the bedside in stern silence; here was
+the last tie that bound him to life. Well, let the anchor break and the
+battered ship go down! It was an iron resolve, more fearful than sorrow.
+An old man, with one foot in the grave, watching by the couch of a dying
+child, is one of the most awful spectacles in human calamities. The wife
+was more active, more bustling, more hopeful, and more tearful. Viola
+took heed of all three. But towards dawn, Beatrice’s state became so
+obviously alarming, that Viola herself began to despair. At this time
+she saw the old woman suddenly rise from before the image of the saint
+at which she had been kneeling, wrap herself in her cloak and hood, and
+quietly quit the chamber. Viola stole after her.
+
+“It is cold for thee, good mother, to brave the air; let me go for the
+physician?”
+
+“Child, I am not going to him. I have heard of one in the city who has
+been tender to the poor, and who, they say, has cured the sick when
+physicians failed. I will go and say to him, ‘Signor, we are beggars
+in all else, but yesterday we were rich in love. We are at the close
+of life, but we lived in our grandchild’s childhood. Give us back our
+wealth,--give us back our youth. Let us die blessing God that the thing
+we love survives us.’”
+
+She was gone. Why did thy heart beat, Viola? The infant’s sharp cry
+of pain called her back to the couch; and there still sat the old man,
+unconscious of his wife’s movements, not stirring, his eyes glazing fast
+as they watched the agonies of that slight frame. By degrees the wail
+of pain died into a low moan,--the convulsions grew feebler, but more
+frequent; the glow of fever faded into the blue, pale tinge that settles
+into the last bloodless marble.
+
+The daylight came broader and clearer through the casement; steps were
+heard on the stairs,--the old woman entered hastily; she rushed to the
+bed, cast a glance on the patient, “She lives yet, signor, she lives!”
+
+Viola raised her eyes,--the child’s head was pillowed on her bosom,--and
+she beheld Zanoni. He smiled on her with a tender and soft approval,
+and took the infant from her arms. Yet even then, as she saw him bending
+silently over that pale face, a superstitious fear mingled with her
+hopes. “Was it by lawful--by holy art that--” her self-questioning
+ceased abruptly; for his dark eye turned to her as if he read her soul,
+and his aspect accused her conscience for its suspicion, for it spoke
+reproach not unmingled with disdain.
+
+“Be comforted,” he said, gently turning to the old man, “the danger is
+not beyond the reach of human skill;” and, taking from his bosom a small
+crystal vase, he mingled a few drops with water. No sooner did this
+medicine moisten the infant’s lips, than it seemed to produce an
+astonishing effect. The colour revived rapidly on the lips and cheeks;
+in a few moments the sufferer slept calmly, and with the regular
+breathing of painless sleep. And then the old man rose, rigidly, as a
+corpse might rise,--looked down, listened, and creeping gently away,
+stole to the corner of the room, and wept, and thanked Heaven!
+
+Now, old Bernardi had been, hitherto, but a cold believer; sorrow had
+never before led him aloft from earth. Old as he was, he had never
+before thought as the old should think of death,--that endangered life
+of the young had wakened up the careless soul of age. Zanoni whispered
+to the wife, and she drew the old man quietly from the room.
+
+“Dost thou fear to leave me an hour with thy charge, Viola? Thinkest
+thou still that this knowledge is of the Fiend?”
+
+“Ah,” said Viola, humbled and yet rejoiced, “forgive me, forgive me,
+signor. Thou biddest the young live and the old pray. My thoughts never
+shall wrong thee more!”
+
+Before the sun rose, Beatrice was out of danger; at noon Zanoni escaped
+from the blessings of the aged pair, and as he closed the door of the
+house, he found Viola awaiting him without.
+
+She stood before him timidly, her hands crossed meekly on her bosom, her
+downcast eyes swimming with tears.
+
+“Do not let me be the only one you leave unhappy!”
+
+“And what cure can the herbs and anodynes effect for thee? If thou canst
+so readily believe ill of those who have aided and yet would serve thee,
+thy disease is of the heart; and--nay, weep not! nurse of the sick, and
+comforter of the sad, I should rather approve than chide thee. Forgive
+thee! Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to
+forgive.”
+
+“No, do not forgive me yet. I do not deserve a pardon; for even now,
+while I feel how ungrateful I was to believe, suspect, aught injurious
+and false to my preserver, my tears flow from happiness, not remorse.
+Oh!” she continued, with a simple fervour, unconscious, in her innocence
+and her generous emotions, of all the secrets she betrayed,--“thou
+knowest not how bitter it was to believe thee not more good, more pure,
+more sacred than all the world. And when I saw thee,--the wealthy,
+the noble, coming from thy palace to minister to the sufferings of
+the hovel,--when I heard those blessings of the poor breathed upon thy
+parting footsteps, I felt my very self exalted,--good in thy goodness,
+noble at least in those thoughts that did NOT wrong thee.”
+
+“And thinkest thou, Viola, that in a mere act of science there is so
+much virtue? The commonest leech will tend the sick for his fee. Are
+prayers and blessings a less reward than gold?”
+
+“And mine, then, are not worthless? Thou wilt accept of mine?”
+
+“Ah, Viola!” exclaimed Zanoni, with a sudden passion, that covered her
+face with blushes, “thou only, methinks, on all the earth, hast the
+power to wound or delight me!” He checked himself, and his face became
+grave and sad. “And this,” he added, in an altered tone, “because, if
+thou wouldst heed my counsels, methinks I could guide a guileless heart
+to a happy fate.”
+
+“Thy counsels! I will obey them all. Mould me to what thou wilt. In
+thine absence, I am as a child that fears every shadow in the dark; in
+thy presence, my soul expands, and the whole world seems calm with a
+celestial noonday. Do not deny to me that presence. I am fatherless and
+ignorant and alone!”
+
+Zanoni averted his face, and, after a moment’s silence, replied
+calmly,--
+
+“Be it so. Sister, I will visit thee again!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.II.
+
+     Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.
+     Shakespeare.
+
+Who so happy as Viola now! A dark load was lifted from her heart: her
+step seemed to tread on air; she would have sung for very delight as she
+went gayly home. It is such happiness to the pure to love,--but oh, such
+more than happiness to believe in the worth of the one beloved. Between
+them there might be human obstacles,--wealth, rank, man’s little world.
+But there was no longer that dark gulf which the imagination recoils to
+dwell on, and which separates forever soul from soul. He did not love
+her in return. Love her! But did she ask for love? Did she herself love?
+No; or she would never have been at once so humble and so bold. How
+merrily the ocean murmured in her ear; how radiant an aspect the
+commonest passer-by seemed to wear! She gained her home,--she looked
+upon the tree, glancing, with fantastic branches, in the sun. “Yes,
+brother mine!” she said, laughing in her joy, “like thee, I HAVE
+struggled to the light!”
+
+She had never hitherto, like the more instructed Daughters of the North,
+accustomed herself to that delicious Confessional, the transfusion of
+thought to writing. Now, suddenly, her heart felt an impulse; a new-born
+instinct, that bade it commune with itself, bade it disentangle its web
+of golden fancies,--made her wish to look upon her inmost self as in
+a glass. Upsprung from the embrace of Love and Soul--the Eros and the
+Psyche--their beautiful offspring, Genius! She blushed, she sighed, she
+trembled as she wrote. And from the fresh world that she had built for
+herself, she was awakened to prepare for the glittering stage. How dull
+became the music, how dim the scene, so exquisite and so bright of old.
+Stage, thou art the Fairy Land to the vision of the worldly. Fancy,
+whose music is not heard by men, whose scenes shift not by mortal hand,
+as the stage to the present world, art thou to the future and the past!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.III.
+
+     In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes.
+     Shakespeare.
+
+The next day, at noon, Zanoni visited Viola; and the next day and the
+next and again the next,--days that to her seemed like a special time
+set apart from the rest of life. And yet he never spoke to her in the
+language of flattery, and almost of adoration, to which she had been
+accustomed. Perhaps his very coldness, so gentle as it was, assisted to
+this mysterious charm. He talked to her much of her past life, and she
+was scarcely surprised (she now never thought of TERROR) to perceive how
+much of that past seemed known to him.
+
+He made her speak to him of her father; he made her recall some of the
+airs of Pisani’s wild music. And those airs seemed to charm and lull him
+into reverie.
+
+“As music was to the musician,” said he, “may science be to the wise.
+Your father looked abroad in the world; all was discord to the fine
+sympathies that he felt with the harmonies that daily and nightly float
+to the throne of Heaven. Life, with its noisy ambition and its mean
+passions, is so poor and base! Out of his soul he created the life and
+the world for which his soul was fitted. Viola, thou art the daughter of
+that life, and wilt be the denizen of that world.”
+
+In his earlier visits he did not speak of Glyndon. The day soon came on
+which he renewed the subject. And so trustful, obedient, and entire was
+the allegiance that Viola now owned to his dominion, that, unwelcome
+as that subject was, she restrained her heart, and listened to him in
+silence.
+
+At last he said, “Thou hast promised thou wilt obey my counsels, and if,
+Viola, I should ask thee, nay adjure, to accept this stranger’s hand,
+and share his fate, should he offer to thee such a lot,--wouldst thou
+refuse?”
+
+And then she pressed back the tears that gushed to her eyes; and with
+a strange pleasure in the midst of pain,--the pleasure of one who
+sacrifices heart itself to the one who commands that heart,--she
+answered falteringly, “If thou CANST ordain it, why--”
+
+“Speak on.”
+
+“Dispose of me as thou wilt!”
+
+Zanoni stood in silence for some moments: he saw the struggle which
+the girl thought she concealed so well; he made an involuntary movement
+towards her, and pressed her hand to his lips; it was the first time
+he had ever departed even so far from a certain austerity which perhaps
+made her fear him and her own thoughts the less.
+
+“Viola,” said he, and his voice trembled, “the danger that I can avert
+no more, if thou linger still in Naples, comes hourly near and near to
+thee! On the third day from this thy fate must be decided. I accept thy
+promise. Before the last hour of that day, come what may, I shall see
+thee again, HERE, at thine own house. Till then, farewell!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.IV.
+
+     Between two worlds life hovers like a star
+     ‘Twixt night and morn.
+     --Byron.
+
+When Glyndon left Viola, as recorded in the concluding chapter of the
+second division of this work, he was absorbed again in those mystical
+desires and conjectures which the haunting recollection of Zanoni
+always served to create. And as he wandered through the streets, he
+was scarcely conscious of his own movements till, in the mechanism of
+custom, he found himself in the midst of one of the noble collections of
+pictures which form the boast of those Italian cities whose glory is
+in the past. Thither he had been wont, almost daily, to repair, for the
+gallery contained some of the finest specimens of a master especially
+the object of his enthusiasm and study. There, before the works of
+Salvator, he had often paused in deep and earnest reverence. The
+striking characteristic of that artist is the “Vigour of Will;” void
+of the elevated idea of abstract beauty, which furnishes a model and
+archetype to the genius of more illustrious order, the singular energy
+of the man hews out of the rock a dignity of his own. His images have
+the majesty, not of the god, but the savage; utterly free, like the
+sublimer schools, from the common-place of imitation,--apart, with
+them, from the conventional littleness of the Real,--he grasps the
+imagination, and compels it to follow him, not to the heaven, but
+through all that is most wild and fantastic upon earth; a sorcery, not
+of the starry magian, but of the gloomy wizard,--a man of romance whose
+heart beat strongly, griping art with a hand of iron, and forcing it
+to idealise the scenes of his actual life. Before this powerful will,
+Glyndon drew back more awed and admiring than before the calmer beauty
+which rose from the soul of Raphael, like Venus from the deep.
+
+And now, as awaking from his reverie, he stood opposite to that wild and
+magnificent gloom of Nature which frowned on him from the canvas,
+the very leaves on those gnome-like, distorted trees seemed to rustle
+sibylline secrets in his ear. Those rugged and sombre Apennines, the
+cataract that dashed between, suited, more than the actual scenes would
+have done, the mood and temper of his mind. The stern, uncouth forms
+at rest on the crags below, and dwarfed by the giant size of the Matter
+that reigned around them, impressed him with the might of Nature and the
+littleness of Man. As in genius of the more spiritual cast, the living
+man, and the soul that lives in him, are studiously made the prominent
+image; and the mere accessories of scene kept down, and cast back, as if
+to show that the exile from paradise is yet the monarch of the outward
+world,--so, in the landscapes of Salvator, the tree, the mountain,
+the waterfall, become the principal, and man himself dwindles to the
+accessory. The Matter seems to reign supreme, and its true lord to
+creep beneath its stupendous shadow. Inert matter giving interest to
+the immortal man, not the immortal man to the inert matter. A terrible
+philosophy in art!
+
+While something of these thoughts passed through the mind of the
+painter, he felt his arm touched, and saw Nicot by his side.
+
+“A great master,” said Nicot, “but I do not love the school.”
+
+“I do not love, but I am awed by it. We love the beautiful and serene,
+but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.”
+
+“True,” said Nicot, thoughtfully. “And yet that feeling is only a
+superstition. The nursery, with its tales of ghosts and goblins, is the
+cradle of many of our impressions in the world. But art should not seek
+to pander to our ignorance; art should represent only truths. I confess
+that Raphael pleases me less, because I have no sympathy with his
+subjects. His saints and virgins are to me only men and women.”
+
+“And from what source should painting, then, take its themes?”
+
+“From history, without doubt,” returned Nicot, pragmatically,--“those
+great Roman actions which inspire men with sentiments of liberty and
+valour, with the virtues of a republic. I wish the cartoons of Raphael
+had illustrated the story of the Horatii; but it remains for France and
+her Republic to give to posterity the new and the true school, which
+could never have arisen in a country of priestcraft and delusion.”
+
+“And the saints and virgins of Raphael are to you only men and women?”
+ repeated Glyndon, going back to Nicot’s candid confession in amaze, and
+scarcely hearing the deductions the Frenchman drew from his proposition.
+
+“Assuredly. Ha, ha!” and Nicot laughed hideously, “do you ask me to
+believe in the calendar, or what?”
+
+“But the ideal?”
+
+“The ideal!” interrupted Nicot. “Stuff! The Italian critics, and your
+English Reynolds, have turned your head. They are so fond of
+their ‘gusto grande,’ and their ‘ideal beauty that speaks to the
+soul!’--soul!--IS there a soul? I understand a man when he talks of
+composing for a refined taste,--for an educated and intelligent reason;
+for a sense that comprehends truths. But as for the soul,--bah!--we
+are but modifications of matter, and painting is modification of matter
+also.”
+
+Glyndon turned his eyes from the picture before him to Nicot, and from
+Nicot to the picture. The dogmatist gave a voice to the thoughts which
+the sight of the picture had awakened. He shook his head without reply.
+
+“Tell me,” said Nicot, abruptly, “that imposter,--Zanoni!--oh! I have
+now learned his name and quackeries, forsooth,--what did he say to thee
+of me?”
+
+“Of thee? Nothing; but to warn me against thy doctrines.”
+
+“Aha! was that all?” said Nicot. “He is a notable inventor, and since,
+when we met last, I unmasked his delusions, I thought he might retaliate
+by some tale of slander.”
+
+“Unmasked his delusions!--how?”
+
+“A dull and long story: he wished to teach an old doting friend of mine
+his secrets of prolonged life and philosophical alchemy. I advise thee
+to renounce so discreditable an acquaintance.”
+
+With that Nicot nodded significantly, and, not wishing to be further
+questioned, went his way.
+
+Glyndon’s mind at that moment had escaped to his art, and the comments
+and presence of Nicot had been no welcome interruption. He turned
+from the landscape of Salvator, and his eye falling on a Nativity by
+Coreggio, the contrast between the two ranks of genius struck him as
+a discovery. That exquisite repose, that perfect sense of beauty, that
+strength without effort, that breathing moral of high art, which speaks
+to the mind through the eye, and raises the thoughts, by the aid of
+tenderness and love, to the regions of awe and wonder,--ay! THAT was the
+true school. He quitted the gallery with reluctant steps and inspired
+ideas; he sought his own home. Here, pleased not to find the sober
+Mervale, he leaned his face on his hands, and endeavoured to recall the
+words of Zanoni in their last meeting. Yes, he felt Nicot’s talk even on
+art was crime; it debased the imagination itself to mechanism. Could
+he, who saw nothing in the soul but a combination of matter, prate of
+schools that should excel a Raphael? Yes, art was magic; and as he owned
+the truth of the aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there may
+be religion, for religion is an essential to art. His old ambition,
+freeing itself from the frigid prudence with which Mervale sought to
+desecrate all images less substantial than the golden calf of the world,
+revived, and stirred, and kindled. The subtle detection of what he
+conceived to be an error in the school he had hitherto adopted, made
+more manifest to him by the grinning commentary of Nicot, seemed to open
+to him a new world of invention. He seized the happy moment,--he placed
+before him the colours and the canvas. Lost in his conceptions of a
+fresh ideal, his mind was lifted aloft into the airy realms of beauty;
+dark thoughts, unhallowed desires, vanished. Zanoni was right: the
+material world shrunk from his gaze; he viewed Nature as from a
+mountain-top afar; and as the waves of his unquiet heart became calm and
+still, again the angel eyes of Viola beamed on them as a holy star.
+
+Locking himself in his chamber, he refused even the visits of Mervale.
+Intoxicated with the pure air of his fresh existence, he remained for
+three days, and almost nights, absorbed in his employment; but on the
+fourth morning came that reaction to which all labour is exposed. He
+woke listless and fatigued; and as he cast his eyes on the canvas, the
+glory seemed to have gone from it. Humiliating recollections of the
+great masters he aspired to rival forced themselves upon him; defects
+before unseen magnified themselves to deformities in his languid and
+discontented eyes. He touched and retouched, but his hand failed him; he
+threw down his instruments in despair; he opened his casement: the day
+without was bright and lovely; the street was crowded with that life
+which is ever so joyous and affluent in the animated population of
+Naples. He saw the lover, as he passed, conversing with his mistress by
+those mute gestures which have survived all changes of languages, the
+same now as when the Etruscan painted yon vases in the Museo Borbonico.
+Light from without beckoned his youth to its mirth and its pleasures;
+and the dull walls within, lately large enough to comprise heaven and
+earth, seemed now cabined and confined as a felon’s prison. He welcomed
+the step of Mervale at his threshold, and unbarred the door.
+
+“And is that all you have done?” said Mervale, glancing disdainfully
+at the canvas. “Is it for this that you have shut yourself out from the
+sunny days and moonlit nights of Naples?”
+
+“While the fit was on me, I basked in a brighter sun, and imbibed the
+voluptuous luxury of a softer moon.”
+
+“You own that the fit is over. Well, that is some sign of returning
+sense. After all, it is better to daub canvas for three days than make a
+fool of yourself for life. This little siren?”
+
+“Be dumb! I hate to hear you name her.”
+
+Mervale drew his chair nearer to Glyndon’s, thrust his hands deep in his
+breeches-pockets, stretched his legs, and was about to begin a serious
+strain of expostulation, when a knock was heard at the door, and Nicot,
+without waiting for leave, obtruded his ugly head.
+
+“Good-day, mon cher confrere. I wished to speak to you. Hein! you have
+been at work, I see. This is well,--very well! A bold outline,--great
+freedom in that right hand. But, hold! is the composition good? You have
+not got the great pyramidal form. Don’t you think, too, that you have
+lost the advantage of contrast in this figure; since the right leg is
+put forward, surely the right arm should be put back? Peste! but that
+little finger is very fine!”
+
+Mervale detested Nicot. For all speculators, Utopians, alterers of the
+world, and wanderers from the high road, were equally hateful to
+him; but he could have hugged the Frenchman at that moment. He saw
+in Glyndon’s expressive countenance all the weariness and disgust he
+endured. After so wrapped a study, to be prated to about pyramidal
+forms and right arms and right legs, the accidence of the art, the whole
+conception to be overlooked, and the criticism to end in approval of the
+little finger!
+
+“Oh,” said Glyndon, peevishly, throwing the cloth over his design,
+“enough of my poor performance. What is it you have to say to me?”
+
+“In the first place,” said Nicot, huddling himself together upon
+a stool,--“in the first place, this Signor Zanoni,--this second
+Cagliostro,--who disputes my doctrines! (no doubt a spy of the man
+Capet) I am not vindictive; as Helvetius says, ‘our errors arise from
+our passions.’ I keep mine in order; but it is virtuous to hate in the
+cause of mankind; I would I had the denouncing and the judging of Signor
+Zanoni at Paris.” And Nicot’s small eyes shot fire, and he gnashed his
+teeth.
+
+“Have you any new cause to hate him?”
+
+“Yes,” said Nicot, fiercely. “Yes, I hear he is courting the girl I mean
+to marry.”
+
+“You! Whom do you speak of?”
+
+“The celebrated Pisani! She is divinely handsome. She would make my
+fortune in a republic. And a republic we shall have before the year is
+out.”
+
+Mervale rubbed his hands, and chuckled. Glyndon coloured with rage and
+shame.
+
+“Do you know the Signora Pisani? Have you ever spoken to her?”
+
+“Not yet. But when I make up my mind to anything, it is soon done. I
+am about to return to Paris. They write me word that a handsome wife
+advances the career of a patriot. The age of prejudice is over.
+The sublimer virtues begin to be understood. I shall take back the
+handsomest wife in Europe.”
+
+“Be quiet! What are you about?” said Mervale, seizing Glyndon as he saw
+him advance towards the Frenchman, his eyes sparkling, and his hands
+clenched.
+
+“Sir!” said Glyndon, between his teeth, “you know not of whom you thus
+speak. Do you affect to suppose that Viola Pisani would accept YOU?”
+
+“Not if she could get a better offer,” said Mervale, looking up to the
+ceiling.
+
+“A better offer? You don’t understand me,” said Nicot. “I, Jean Nicot,
+propose to marry the girl; marry her! Others may make her more liberal
+offers, but no one, I apprehend, would make one so honourable. I alone
+have pity on her friendless situation. Besides, according to the dawning
+state of things, one will always, in France, be able to get rid of a
+wife whenever one wishes. We shall have new laws of divorce. Do you
+imagine that an Italian girl--and in no country in the world are
+maidens, it seems, more chaste (though wives may console themselves with
+virtues more philosophical)--would refuse the hand of an artist for the
+settlements of a prince? No; I think better of the Pisani than you do. I
+shall hasten to introduce myself to her.”
+
+“I wish you all success, Monsieur Nicot,” said Mervale, rising, and
+shaking him heartily by the hand.
+
+Glyndon cast at them both a disdainful glance.
+
+“Perhaps, Monsieur Nicot,” said he, at length, constraining his lips
+into a bitter smile,--“perhaps you may have rivals.”
+
+“So much the better,” replied Monsieur Nicot, carelessly, kicking his
+heels together, and appearing absorbed in admiration at the size of his
+large feet.
+
+“I myself admire Viola Pisani.”
+
+“Every painter must!”
+
+“I may offer her marriage as well as yourself.”
+
+“That would be folly in you, though wisdom in me. You would not know
+how to draw profit from the speculation! Cher confrere, you have
+prejudices.”
+
+“You do not dare to say you would make profit from your own wife?”
+
+“The virtuous Cato lent his wife to a friend. I love virtue, and I
+cannot do better than imitate Cato. But to be serious,--I do not
+fear you as a rival. You are good-looking, and I am ugly. But you are
+irresolute, and I decisive. While you are uttering fine phrases, I shall
+say, simply, ‘I have a bon etat. Will you marry me?’ So do your worst,
+cher confrere. Au revoir, behind the scenes!”
+
+So saying, Nicot rose, stretched his long arms and short legs, yawned
+till he showed all his ragged teeth from ear to ear, pressed down his
+cap on his shaggy head with an air of defiance, and casting over his
+left shoulder a glance of triumph and malice at the indignant Glyndon,
+sauntered out of the room.
+
+Mervale burst into a violent fit of laughter. “See how your Viola is
+estimated by your friend. A fine victory, to carry her off from the
+ugliest dog between Lapland and the Calmucks.”
+
+Glyndon was yet too indignant to answer, when a new visitor arrived. It
+was Zanoni himself. Mervale, on whom the appearance and aspect of this
+personage imposed a kind of reluctant deference, which he was unwilling
+to acknowledge, and still more to betray, nodded to Glyndon, and saying,
+simply, “More when I see you again,” left the painter and his unexpected
+visitor.
+
+“I see,” said Zanoni, lifting the cloth from the canvas, “that you have
+not slighted the advice I gave you. Courage, young artist; this is an
+escape from the schools: this is full of the bold self-confidence of
+real genius. You had no Nicot--no Mervale--at your elbow when this image
+of true beauty was conceived!”
+
+Charmed back to his art by this unlooked-for praise, Glyndon replied
+modestly, “I thought well of my design till this morning; and then I was
+disenchanted of my happy persuasion.”
+
+“Say, rather, that, unaccustomed to continuous labour, you were fatigued
+with your employment.”
+
+“That is true. Shall I confess it? I began to miss the world without. It
+seemed to me as if, while I lavished my heart and my youth upon visions
+of beauty, I was losing the beautiful realities of actual life. And I
+envied the merry fisherman, singing as he passed below my casement, and
+the lover conversing with his mistress.”
+
+“And,” said Zanoni, with an encouraging smile, “do you blame yourself
+for the natural and necessary return to earth, in which even the most
+habitual visitor of the Heavens of Invention seeks his relaxation and
+repose? Man’s genius is a bird that cannot be always on the wing; when
+the craving for the actual world is felt, it is a hunger that must be
+appeased. They who command best the ideal, enjoy ever most the real.
+See the true artist, when abroad in men’s thoroughfares, ever observant,
+ever diving into the heart, ever alive to the least as to the greatest
+of the complicated truths of existence; descending to what pedants would
+call the trivial and the frivolous. From every mesh in the social web,
+he can disentangle a grace. And for him each airy gossamer floats in
+the gold of the sunlight. Know you not that around the animalcule that
+sports in the water there shines a halo, as around the star (The monas
+mica, found in the purest pools, is encompassed with a halo. And this
+is frequent amongst many other species of animalcule.) that revolves in
+bright pastime through the space? True art finds beauty everywhere. In
+the street, in the market-place, in the hovel, it gathers food for the
+hive of its thoughts. In the mire of politics, Dante and Milton selected
+pearls for the wreath of song.
+
+“Who ever told you that Raphael did not enjoy the life without, carrying
+everywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty which attracted and
+imbedded in its own amber every straw that the feet of the dull man
+trampled into mud? As some lord of the forest wanders abroad for its
+prey, and scents and follows it over plain and hill, through brake and
+jungle, but, seizing it at last, bears the quarry to its unwitnessed
+cave,--so Genius searches through wood and waste, untiringly and
+eagerly, every sense awake, every nerve strained to speed and strength,
+for the scattered and flying images of matter, that it seizes at
+last with its mighty talons, and bears away with it into solitudes
+no footstep can invade. Go, seek the world without; it is for art the
+inexhaustible pasture-ground and harvest to the world within!”
+
+“You comfort me,” said Glyndon, brightening. “I had imagined my
+weariness a proof of my deficiency! But not now would I speak to you
+of these labours. Pardon me, if I pass from the toil to the reward.
+You have uttered dim prophecies of my future, if I wed one who, in
+the judgment of the sober world, would only darken its prospects and
+obstruct its ambition. Do you speak from the wisdom which is experience,
+or that which aspires to prediction?”
+
+“Are they not allied? Is it not he best accustomed to calculation who
+can solve at a glance any new problem in the arithmetic of chances?”
+
+“You evade my question.”
+
+“No; but I will adapt my answer the better to your comprehension, for
+it is upon this very point that I have sought you. Listen to me!”
+ Zanoni fixed his eyes earnestly on his listener, and continued: “For the
+accomplishment of whatever is great and lofty, the clear perception of
+truths is the first requisite,--truths adapted to the object desired.
+The warrior thus reduces the chances of battle to combinations almost
+of mathematics. He can predict a result, if he can but depend upon
+the materials he is forced to employ. At such a loss he can cross that
+bridge; in such a time he can reduce that fort. Still more accurately,
+for he depends less on material causes than ideas at his command, can
+the commander of the purer science or diviner art, if he once perceive
+the truths that are in him and around, foretell what he can achieve,
+and in what he is condemned to fail. But this perception of truths is
+disturbed by many causes,--vanity, passion, fear, indolence in himself,
+ignorance of the fitting means without to accomplish what he designs. He
+may miscalculate his own forces; he may have no chart of the country
+he would invade. It is only in a peculiar state of the mind that it is
+capable of perceiving truth; and that state is profound serenity. Your
+mind is fevered by a desire for truth: you would compel it to your
+embraces; you would ask me to impart to you, without ordeal or
+preparation, the grandest secrets that exist in Nature. But truth can no
+more be seen by the mind unprepared for it, than the sun can dawn upon
+the midst of night. Such a mind receives truth only to pollute it: to
+use the simile of one who has wandered near to the secret of the sublime
+Goetia (or the magic that lies within Nature, as electricity within the
+cloud), ‘He who pours water into the muddy well, does but disturb the
+mud.’” (“Iamb. de Vit. Pythag.”)
+
+“What do you tend to?”
+
+“This: that you have faculties that may attain to surpassing power, that
+may rank you among those enchanters who, greater than the magian,
+leave behind them an enduring influence, worshipped wherever beauty is
+comprehended, wherever the soul is sensible of a higher world than that
+in which matter struggles for crude and incomplete existence.
+
+“But to make available those faculties, need I be a prophet to tell you
+that you must learn to concentre upon great objects all your desires?
+The heart must rest, that the mind may be active. At present you wander
+from aim to aim. As the ballast to the ship, so to the spirit are faith
+and love. With your whole heart, affections, humanity, centred in one
+object, your mind and aspirations will become equally steadfast and in
+earnest. Viola is a child as yet; you do not perceive the high nature
+the trials of life will develop. Pardon me, if I say that her soul,
+purer and loftier than your own, will bear it upward, as a secret hymn
+carries aloft the spirits of the world. Your nature wants the harmony,
+the music which, as the Pythagoreans wisely taught, at once elevates and
+soothes. I offer you that music in her love.”
+
+“But am I sure that she does love me?”
+
+“Artist, no; she loves you not at present; her affections are full of
+another. But if I could transfer to you, as the loadstone transfers its
+attraction to the magnet, the love that she has now for me,--if I could
+cause her to see in you the ideal of her dreams--”
+
+“Is such a gift in the power of man?”
+
+“I offer it to you, if your love be lawful, if your faith in virtue and
+yourself be deep and loyal; if not, think you that I would disenchant
+her with truth to make her adore a falsehood?”
+
+“But if,” persisted Glyndon,--“if she be all that you tell me, and if
+she love you, how can you rob yourself of so priceless a treasure?”
+
+“Oh, shallow and mean heart of man!” exclaimed Zanoni, with unaccustomed
+passion and vehemence, “dost thou conceive so little of love as not to
+know that it sacrifices all--love itself--for the happiness of the thing
+it loves? Hear me!” And Zanoni’s face grew pale. “Hear me! I press this
+upon you, because I love her, and because I fear that with me her fate
+will be less fair than with yourself. Why,--ask not, for I will not
+tell you. Enough! Time presses now for your answer; it cannot long be
+delayed. Before the night of the third day from this, all choice will be
+forbid you!”
+
+“But,” said Glyndon, still doubting and suspicious,--“but why this
+haste?”
+
+“Man, you are not worthy of her when you ask me. All I can tell you
+here, you should have known yourself. This ravisher, this man of will,
+this son of the old Visconti, unlike you,--steadfast, resolute, earnest
+even in his crimes,--never relinquishes an object. But one passion
+controls his lust,--it is his avarice. The day after his attempt on
+Viola, his uncle, the Cardinal --, from whom he has large expectations
+of land and gold, sent for him, and forbade him, on pain of forfeiting
+all the possessions which his schemes already had parcelled out, to
+pursue with dishonourable designs one whom the Cardinal had heeded and
+loved from childhood. This is the cause of his present pause from his
+pursuit. While we speak, the cause expires. Before the hand of the clock
+reaches the hour of noon, the Cardinal -- will be no more. At this very
+moment thy friend, Jean Nicot, is with the Prince di --.”
+
+“He! wherefore?”
+
+“To ask what dower shall go with Viola Pisani, the morning that she
+leaves the palace of the prince.”
+
+“And how do you know all this?”
+
+“Fool! I tell thee again, because a lover is a watcher by night and day;
+because love never sleeps when danger menaces the beloved one!”
+
+“And you it was that informed the Cardinal --?”
+
+“Yes; and what has been my task might as easily have been thine.
+Speak,--thine answer!”
+
+“You shall have it on the third day from this.”
+
+“Be it so. Put off, poor waverer, thy happiness to the last hour. On the
+third day from this, I will ask thee thy resolve.”
+
+“And where shall we meet?”
+
+“Before midnight, where you may least expect me. You cannot shun me,
+though you may seek to do so!”
+
+“Stay one moment! You condemn me as doubtful, irresolute, suspicious.
+Have I no cause? Can I yield without a struggle to the strange
+fascination you exert upon my mind? What interest can you have in me, a
+stranger, that you should thus dictate to me the gravest action in the
+life of man? Do you suppose that any one in his senses would not pause,
+and deliberate, and ask himself, ‘Why should this stranger care thus for
+me?’”
+
+“And yet,” said Zanoni, “if I told thee that I could initiate thee into
+the secrets of that magic which the philosophy of the whole existing
+world treats as a chimera, or imposture; if I promised to show thee how
+to command the beings of air and ocean, how to accumulate wealth more
+easily than a child can gather pebbles on the shore, to place in thy
+hands the essence of the herbs which prolong life from age to age, the
+mystery of that attraction by which to awe all danger and disarm all
+violence and subdue man as the serpent charms the bird,--if I told thee
+that all these it was mine to possess and to communicate, thou wouldst
+listen to me then, and obey me without a doubt!”
+
+“It is true; and I can account for this only by the imperfect
+associations of my childhood,--by traditions in our house of--”
+
+“Your forefather, who, in the revival of science, sought the secrets of
+Apollonius and Paracelsus.”
+
+“What!” said Glyndon, amazed, “are you so well acquainted with the
+annals of an obscure lineage?”
+
+“To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meanest
+student of knowledge should be unknown. You ask me why I have shown this
+interest in your fate? There is one reason which I have not yet told
+you. There is a fraternity as to whose laws and whose mysteries the most
+inquisitive schoolmen are in the dark. By those laws all are pledged to
+warn, to aid, and to guide even the remotest descendants of men who
+have toiled, though vainly, like your ancestor, in the mysteries of the
+Order. We are bound to advise them to their welfare; nay, more,--if they
+command us to it, we must accept them as our pupils. I am a survivor
+of that most ancient and immemorial union. This it was that bound me to
+thee at the first; this, perhaps, attracted thyself unconsciously, Son
+of our Brotherhood, to me.”
+
+“If this be so, I command thee, in the name of the laws thou obeyest, to
+receive me as thy pupil!”
+
+“What do you ask?” said Zanoni, passionately. “Learn, first, the
+conditions. No neophyte must have, at his initiation, one affection or
+desire that chains him to the world. He must be pure from the love of
+woman, free from avarice and ambition, free from the dreams even of
+art, or the hope of earthly fame. The first sacrifice thou must make
+is--Viola herself. And for what? For an ordeal that the most daring
+courage only can encounter, the most ethereal natures alone survive!
+Thou art unfit for the science that has made me and others what we are
+or have been; for thy whole nature is one fear!”
+
+“Fear!” cried Glyndon, colouring with resentment, and rising to the full
+height of his stature.
+
+“Fear! and the worst fear,--fear of the world’s opinion; fear of the
+Nicots and the Mervales; fear of thine own impulses when most generous;
+fear of thine own powers when thy genius is most bold; fear that virtue
+is not eternal; fear that God does not live in heaven to keep watch on
+earth; fear, the fear of little men; and that fear is never known to the
+great.”
+
+With these words Zanoni abruptly left the artist, humbled, bewildered,
+and not convinced. He remained alone with his thoughts till he was
+aroused by the striking of the clock; he then suddenly remembered
+Zanoni’s prediction of the Cardinal’s death; and, seized with an intense
+desire to learn its truth, he hurried into the streets,--he gained the
+Cardinal’s palace. Five minutes before noon his Eminence had expired,
+after an illness of less than an hour. Zanoni’s visit had occupied more
+time than the illness of the Cardinal. Awed and perplexed, he turned
+from the palace, and as he walked through the Chiaja, he saw Jean Nicot
+emerge from the portals of the Prince di --.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.V.
+
+     Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
+     Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
+     --Shakespeare.
+
+Venerable Brotherhood, so sacred and so little known, from whose secret
+and precious archives the materials for this history have been drawn; ye
+who have retained, from century to century, all that time has spared of
+the august and venerable science,--thanks to you, if now, for the
+first time, some record of the thoughts and actions of no false and
+self-styled luminary of your Order be given, however imperfectly, to
+the world. Many have called themselves of your band; many spurious
+pretenders have been so-called by the learned ignorance which still,
+baffled and perplexed, is driven to confess that it knows nothing of
+your origin, your ceremonies or doctrines, nor even if you still have
+local habitation on the earth. Thanks to you if I, the only one of
+my country, in this age, admitted, with a profane footstep, into your
+mysterious Academe (The reader will have the goodness to remember that
+this is said by the author of the original MS., not by the editor.),
+have been by you empowered and instructed to adapt to the comprehension
+of the uninitiated, some few of the starry truths which shone on the
+great Shemaia of the Chaldean Lore, and gleamed dimly through the
+darkened knowledge of latter disciples, labouring, like Psellus and
+Iamblichus, to revive the embers of the fire which burned in the Hamarin
+of the East. Though not to us of an aged and hoary world is vouchsafed
+the NAME which, so say the earliest oracles of the earth, “rushes into
+the infinite worlds,” yet is it ours to trace the reviving truths,
+through each new discovery of the philosopher and chemist. The laws of
+attraction, of electricity, and of the yet more mysterious agency of
+that great principal of life, which, if drawn from the universe, would
+leave the universe a grave, were but the code in which the Theurgy of
+old sought the guides that led it to a legislation and science of its
+own. To rebuild on words the fragments of this history, it seems to me
+as if, in a solemn trance, I was led through the ruins of a city whose
+only remains were tombs. From the sarcophagus and the urn I awake the
+genius (The Greek Genius of Death.) of the extinguished Torch, and so
+closely does its shape resemble Eros, that at moments I scarcely know
+which of ye dictates to me,--O Love! O Death!
+
+And it stirred in the virgin’s heart,--this new, unfathomable, and
+divine emotion! Was it only the ordinary affection of the pulse and the
+fancy, of the eye to the Beautiful, of the ear to the Eloquent, or did
+it not justify the notion she herself conceived of it,--that it was born
+not of the senses, that it was less of earthly and human love than the
+effect of some wondrous but not unholy charm? I said that, from that day
+in which, no longer with awe and trembling, she surrendered herself to
+the influence of Zanoni, she had sought to put her thoughts into words.
+Let the thoughts attest their own nature.
+
+THE SELF CONFESSIONAL.
+
+“Is it the daylight that shines on me, or the memory of thy presence?
+Wherever I look, the world seems full of thee; in every ray that
+trembles on the water, that smiles upon the leaves, I behold but a
+likeness to thine eyes. What is this change, that alters not only
+myself, but the face of the whole universe?
+
+....
+
+“How instantaneously leaped into life the power with which thou swayest
+my heart in its ebb and flow. Thousands were around me, and I saw but
+thee. That was the night in which I first entered upon the world which
+crowds life into a drama, and has no language but music. How strangely
+and how suddenly with thee became that world evermore connected! What
+the delusion of the stage was to others, thy presence was to me. My
+life, too, seemed to centre into those short hours, and from thy lips
+I heard a music, mute to all ears but mine. I sit in the room where my
+father dwelt. Here, on that happy night, forgetting why THEY were so
+happy, I shrunk into the shadow, and sought to guess what thou wert to
+me; and my mother’s low voice woke me, and I crept to my father’s side,
+close--close, from fear of my own thoughts.
+
+“Ah! sweet and sad was the morrow to that night, when thy lips warned me
+of the future. An orphan now,--what is there that lives for me to think
+of, to dream upon, to revere, but thou!
+
+“How tenderly thou hast rebuked me for the grievous wrong that my
+thoughts did thee! Why should I have shuddered to feel thee glancing
+upon my thoughts like the beam on the solitary tree, to which thou didst
+once liken me so well? It was--it was, that, like the tree, I struggled
+for the light, and the light came. They tell me of love, and my very
+life of the stage breathes the language of love into my lips. No; again
+and again, I know THAT is not the love that I feel for thee!--it is not
+a passion, it is a thought! I ask not to be loved again. I murmur not
+that thy words are stern and thy looks are cold. I ask not if I have
+rivals; I sigh not to be fair in thine eyes. It is my SPIRIT that would
+blend itself with thine. I would give worlds, though we were apart,
+though oceans rolled between us, to know the hour in which thy gaze was
+lifted to the stars,--in which thy heart poured itself in prayer. They
+tell me thou art more beautiful than the marble images that are fairer
+than all human forms; but I have never dared to gaze steadfastly on thy
+face, that memory might compare thee with the rest. Only thine eyes and
+thy soft, calm smile haunt me; as when I look upon the moon, all that
+passes into my heart is her silent light.
+
+....
+
+“Often, when the air is calm, I have thought that I hear the strains of
+my father’s music; often, though long stilled in the grave, have they
+waked me from the dreams of the solemn night. Methinks, ere thou comest
+to me that I hear them herald thy approach. Methinks I hear them wail
+and moan, when I sink back into myself on seeing thee depart. Thou art
+OF that music,--its spirit, its genius. My father must have guessed
+at thee and thy native regions, when the winds hushed to listen to his
+tones, and the world deemed him mad! I hear where I sit, the far murmur
+of the sea. Murmur on, ye blessed waters! The waves are the pulses of
+the shore. They beat with the gladness of the morning wind,--so beats my
+heart in the freshness and light that make up the thoughts of thee!
+
+....
+
+“Often in my childhood I have mused and asked for what I was born; and
+my soul answered my heart and said, ‘THOU WERT BORN TO WORSHIP!’ Yes; I
+know why the real world has ever seemed to me so false and cold. I know
+why the world of the stage charmed and dazzled me. I know why it was so
+sweet to sit apart and gaze my whole being into the distant heavens.
+My nature is not formed for this life, happy though that life seem to
+others. It is its very want to have ever before it some image loftier
+than itself! Stranger, in what realm above, when the grave is past,
+shall my soul, hour after hour, worship at the same source as thine?
+
+....
+
+“In the gardens of my neighbour there is a small fountain. I stood by it
+this morning after sunrise. How it sprung up, with its eager spray, to
+the sunbeams! And then I thought that I should see thee again this day,
+and so sprung my heart to the new morning which thou bringest me from
+the skies.
+
+....
+
+“I HAVE seen, I have LISTENED to thee again. How bold I have become! I
+ran on with my childlike thoughts and stories, my recollections of the
+past, as if I had known thee from an infant. Suddenly the idea of my
+presumption struck me. I stopped, and timidly sought thine eyes.
+
+“‘Well, and when you found that the nightingale refused to sing?’--
+
+“‘Ah!’ I said, ‘what to thee this history of the heart of a child?’
+
+“‘Viola,’ didst thou answer, with that voice, so inexpressibly calm
+and earnest!--‘Viola, the darkness of a child’s heart is often but the
+shadow of a star. Speak on! And thy nightingale, when they caught and
+caged it, refused to sing?’
+
+“‘And I placed the cage yonder, amidst the vine-leaves, and took up my
+lute, and spoke to it on the strings; for I thought that all music was
+its native language, and it would understand that I sought to comfort
+it.’
+
+“‘Yes,’ saidst thou. ‘And at last it answered thee, but not with
+song,--in a sharp, brief cry; so mournful, that thy hands let fall the
+lute, and the tears gushed from thine eyes. So softly didst thou unbar
+the cage, and the nightingale flew into yonder thicket; and thou heardst
+the foliage rustle, and, looking through the moonlight, thine eyes saw
+that it had found its mate. It sang to thee then from the boughs a long,
+loud, joyous jubilee. And musing, thou didst feel that it was not the
+vine-leaves or the moonlight that made the bird give melody to night,
+and that the secret of its music was the presence of a thing beloved.’
+
+“How didst thou know my thoughts in that childlike time better than
+I knew myself! How is the humble life of my past years, with its
+mean events, so mysteriously familiar to thee, bright stranger! I
+wonder,--but I do not again dare to fear thee!
+
+....
+
+“Once the thought of him oppressed and weighed me down. As an infant
+that longs for the moon, my being was one vague desire for something
+never to be attained. Now I feel rather as if to think of thee sufficed
+to remove every fetter from my spirit. I float in the still seas of
+light, and nothing seems too high for my wings, too glorious for my
+eyes. It was mine ignorance that made me fear thee. A knowledge that is
+not in books seems to breathe around thee as an atmosphere. How little
+have I read!--how little have I learned! Yet when thou art by my side,
+it seems as if the veil were lifted from all wisdom and all Nature. I
+startle when I look even at the words I have written; they seem not to
+come from myself, but are the signs of another language which thou hast
+taught my heart, and which my hand traces rapidly, as at thy dictation.
+Sometimes, while I write or muse, I could fancy that I heard light wings
+hovering around me, and saw dim shapes of beauty floating round, and
+vanishing as they smiled upon me. No unquiet and fearful dream ever
+comes to me now in sleep, yet sleep and waking are alike but as one
+dream. In sleep I wander with thee, not through the paths of earth, but
+through impalpable air--an air which seems a music--upward and upward,
+as the soul mounts on the tones of a lyre! Till I knew thee, I was as a
+slave to the earth. Thou hast given to me the liberty of the universe!
+Before, it was life; it seems to me now as if I had commenced eternity!
+
+....
+
+“Formerly, when I was to appear upon the stage, my heart beat more
+loudly. I trembled to encounter the audience, whose breath gave shame or
+renown; and now I have no fear of them. I see them, heed them, hear them
+not! I know that there will be music in my voice, for it is a hymn that
+I pour to thee. Thou never comest to the theatre; and that no longer
+grieves me. Thou art become too sacred to appear a part of the common
+world, and I feel glad that thou art not by when crowds have a right to
+judge me.
+
+....
+
+“And he spoke to me of ANOTHER: to another he would consign me! No, it
+is not love that I feel for thee, Zanoni; or why did I hear thee without
+anger, why did thy command seem to me not a thing impossible? As
+the strings of the instrument obey the hand of the master, thy look
+modulates the wildest chords of my heart to thy will. If it please
+thee,--yes, let it be so. Thou art lord of my destinies; they cannot
+rebel against thee! I almost think I could love him, whoever it be, on
+whom thou wouldst shed the rays that circumfuse thyself. Whatever thou
+hast touched, I love; whatever thou speakest of, I love. Thy hand played
+with these vine leaves; I wear them in my bosom. Thou seemest to me the
+source of all love; too high and too bright to be loved thyself,
+but darting light into other objects, on which the eye can gaze less
+dazzled. No, no; it is not love that I feel for thee, and therefore
+it is that I do not blush to nourish and confess it. Shame on me if I
+loved, knowing myself so worthless a thing to thee!
+
+....
+
+“ANOTHER!--my memory echoes back that word. Another! Dost thou mean that
+I shall see thee no more? It is not sadness,--it is not despair that
+seizes me. I cannot weep. It is an utter sense of desolation. I am
+plunged back into the common life; and I shudder coldly at the solitude.
+But I will obey thee, if thou wilt. Shall I not see thee again beyond
+the grave? O how sweet it were to die!
+
+“Why do I not struggle from the web in which my will is thus entangled?
+Hast thou a right to dispose of me thus? Give me back--give me back the
+life I knew before I gave life itself away to thee. Give me back the
+careless dreams of my youth,---my liberty of heart that sung aloud as it
+walked the earth. Thou hast disenchanted me of everything that is not
+of thyself. Where was the sin, at least, to think of thee,--to see thee?
+Thy kiss still glows upon my hand; is that hand mine to bestow? Thy kiss
+claimed and hallowed it to thyself. Stranger, I will NOT obey thee.
+
+....
+
+“Another day,--one day of the fatal three is gone! It is strange to me
+that since the sleep of the last night, a deep calm has settled upon my
+breast. I feel so assured that my very being is become a part of thee,
+that I cannot believe that my life can be separated from thine; and in
+this conviction I repose, and smile even at thy words and my own
+fears. Thou art fond of one maxim, which thou repeatest in a thousand
+forms,--that the beauty of the soul is faith; that as ideal loveliness
+to the sculptor, faith is to the heart; that faith, rightly understood,
+extends over all the works of the Creator, whom we can know but through
+belief; that it embraces a tranquil confidence in ourselves, and a
+serene repose as to our future; that it is the moonlight that sways the
+tides of the human sea. That faith I comprehend now. I reject all doubt,
+all fear. I know that I have inextricably linked the whole that makes
+the inner life to thee; and thou canst not tear me from thee, if
+thou wouldst! And this change from struggle into calm came to me
+with sleep,--a sleep without a dream; but when I woke, it was with
+a mysterious sense of happiness,--an indistinct memory of something
+blessed,--as if thou hadst cast from afar off a smile upon my slumber.
+At night I was so sad; not a blossom that had not closed itself up, as
+if never more to open to the sun; and the night itself, in the heart
+as on the earth, has ripened the blossoms into flowers. The world is
+beautiful once more, but beautiful in repose,--not a breeze stirs thy
+tree, not a doubt my soul!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VI.
+
+     Tu vegga o per violenzia o per inganno
+     Patire o disonore o mortal danno.
+     “Orlando Furioso,” Cant. xlii. i.
+
+     (Thou art about, either through violence or artifice, to suffer
+     either dishonour or mortal loss.)
+
+It was a small cabinet; the walls were covered with pictures, one of
+which was worth more than the whole lineage of the owner of the palace.
+Oh, yes! Zanoni was right. The painter IS a magician; the gold he at
+least wrings from his crucible is no delusion. A Venetian noble might be
+a fribble, or an assassin,--a scoundrel, or a dolt; worthless, or worse
+than worthless, yet he might have sat to Titian, and his portrait may
+be inestimable,--a few inches of painted canvas a thousand times more
+valuable than a man with his veins and muscles, brain, will, heart, and
+intellect!
+
+In this cabinet sat a man of about three-and-forty,--dark-eyed, sallow,
+with short, prominent features, a massive conformation of jaw, and
+thick, sensual, but resolute lips; this man was the Prince di --. His
+form, above the middle height, and rather inclined to corpulence, was
+clad in a loose dressing-robe of rich brocade. On a table before him lay
+an old-fashioned sword and hat, a mask, dice and dice-box, a portfolio,
+and an inkstand of silver curiously carved.
+
+“Well, Mascari,” said the prince, looking up towards his parasite, who
+stood by the embrasure of the deep-set barricadoed window,--“well! the
+Cardinal sleeps with his fathers. I require comfort for the loss of
+so excellent a relation; and where a more dulcet voice than Viola
+Pisani’s?”
+
+“Is your Excellency serious? So soon after the death of his Eminence?”
+
+“It will be the less talked of, and I the less suspected. Hast thou
+ascertained the name of the insolent who baffled us that night, and
+advised the Cardinal the next day?”
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“Sapient Mascari! I will inform thee. It was the strange Unknown.”
+
+“The Signor Zanoni! Are you sure, my prince?”
+
+“Mascari, yes. There is a tone in that man’s voice that I never can
+mistake; so clear, and so commanding, when I hear it I almost fancy
+there is such a thing as conscience. However, we must rid ourselves of
+an impertinent. Mascari, Signor Zanoni hath not yet honoured our poor
+house with his presence. He is a distinguished stranger,--we must give a
+banquet in his honour.”
+
+“Ah, and the Cyprus wine! The cypress is a proper emblem of the grave.”
+
+“But this anon. I am superstitious; there are strange stories of
+Zanoni’s power and foresight; remember the death of Ughelli. No matter,
+though the Fiend were his ally, he should not rob me of my prize; no,
+nor my revenge.”
+
+“Your Excellency is infatuated; the actress has bewitched you.”
+
+“Mascari,” said the prince, with a haughty smile, “through these veins
+rolls the blood of the old Visconti--of those who boasted that no woman
+ever escaped their lust, and no man their resentment. The crown of my
+fathers has shrunk into a gewgaw and a toy,--their ambition and their
+spirit are undecayed! My honour is now enlisted in this pursuit,--Viola
+must be mine!”
+
+“Another ambuscade?” said Mascari, inquiringly.
+
+“Nay, why not enter the house itself?--the situation is lonely, and the
+door is not made of iron.”
+
+“But what if, on her return home, she tell the tale of our violence? A
+house forced,--a virgin stolen! Reflect; though the feudal privileges
+are not destroyed, even a Visconti is not now above the law.”
+
+“Is he not, Mascari? Fool! in what age of the world, even if the Madmen
+of France succeed in their chimeras, will the iron of law not bend
+itself, like an osier twig, to the strong hand of power and gold? But
+look not so pale, Mascari; I have foreplanned all things. The day that
+she leaves this palace, she will leave it for France, with Monsieur Jean
+Nicot.”
+
+Before Mascari could reply, the gentleman of the chamber announced the
+Signor Zanoni.
+
+The prince involuntarily laid his hand upon the sword placed on the
+table, then with a smile at his own impulse, rose, and met his visitor
+at the threshold, with all the profuse and respectful courtesy of
+Italian simulation.
+
+“This is an honour highly prized,” said the prince. “I have long desired
+to clasp the hand of one so distinguished.”
+
+“And I give it in the spirit with which you seek it,” replied Zanoni.
+
+The Neapolitan bowed over the hand he pressed; but as he touched it a
+shiver came over him, and his heart stood still. Zanoni bent on him his
+dark, smiling eyes, and then seated himself with a familiar air.
+
+“Thus it is signed and sealed; I mean our friendship, noble prince. And
+now I will tell you the object of my visit. I find, Excellency, that,
+unconsciously perhaps, we are rivals. Can we not accommodate out
+pretensions!”
+
+“Ah!” said the prince, carelessly, “you, then, were the cavalier who
+robbed me of the reward of my chase. All stratagems fair in love, as in
+war. Reconcile our pretensions! Well, here is the dice-box; let us throw
+for her. He who casts the lowest shall resign his claim.”
+
+“Is this a decision by which you will promise to be bound?”
+
+“Yes, on my faith.”
+
+“And for him who breaks his word so plighted, what shall be the
+forfeit?”
+
+“The sword lies next to the dice-box, Signor Zanoni. Let him who stands
+not by his honour fall by the sword.”
+
+“And you invoke that sentence if either of us fail his word? Be it so;
+let Signor Mascari cast for us.”
+
+“Well said!--Mascari, the dice!”
+
+The prince threw himself back in his chair; and, world-hardened as he
+was, could not suppress the glow of triumph and satisfaction that spread
+itself over his features. Mascari took up the three dice, and rattled
+them noisily in the box. Zanoni, leaning his cheek on his hand, and
+bending over the table, fixed his eyes steadfastly on the parasite;
+Mascari in vain struggled to extricate from that searching gaze; he grew
+pale, and trembled, he put down the box.
+
+“I give the first throw to your Excellency. Signor Mascari, be pleased
+to terminate our suspense.”
+
+Again Mascari took up the box; again his hand shook so that the dice
+rattled within. He threw; the numbers were sixteen.
+
+“It is a high throw,” said Zanoni, calmly; “nevertheless, Signor
+Mascari, I do not despond.”
+
+Mascari gathered up the dice, shook the box, and rolled the contents
+once more on the table: the number was the highest that can be
+thrown,--eighteen.
+
+The prince darted a glance of fire at his minion, who stood with gaping
+mouth, staring at the dice, and trembling from head to foot.
+
+“I have won, you see,” said Zanoni; “may we be friends still?”
+
+“Signor,” said the prince, obviously struggling with anger and
+confusion, “the victory is yours. But pardon me, you have spoken lightly
+of this young girl,--will anything tempt you to yield your claim?”
+
+“Ah, do not think so ill of my gallantry; and,” resumed Zanoni, with a
+stern meaning in his voice, “forget not the forfeit your own lips have
+named.”
+
+The prince knit his brow, but constrained the haughty answer that was
+his first impulse.
+
+“Enough!” he said, forcing a smile; “I yield. Let me prove that I do not
+yield ungraciously; will you favour me with your presence at a little
+feast I propose to give in honour,” he added, with a sardonic mockery,
+“of the elevation of my kinsman, the late Cardinal, of pious memory, to
+the true seat of St. Peter?”
+
+“It is, indeed, a happiness to hear one command of yours I can obey.”
+
+Zanoni then turned the conversation, talked lightly and gayly, and soon
+afterwards departed.
+
+“Villain!” then exclaimed the prince, grasping Mascari by the collar,
+“you betrayed me!”
+
+“I assure your Excellency that the dice were properly arranged; he
+should have thrown twelve; but he is the Devil, and that’s the end of
+it.”
+
+“There is no time to be lost,” said the prince, quitting his hold of his
+parasite, who quietly resettled his cravat.
+
+“My blood is up,--I will win this girl, if I die for it! What noise is
+that?”
+
+“It is but the sword of your illustrious ancestor that has fallen from
+the table.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VII.
+
+     Il ne faut appeler aucun ordre si ce n’est en tems clair et
+     serein.
+     “Les Clavicules du Rabbi Salomon.”
+
+     (No order of spirits must be invoked unless the weather be clear
+     and serene.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+My art is already dim and troubled. I have lost the tranquillity which
+is power. I cannot influence the decisions of those whom I would most
+guide to the shore; I see them wander farther and deeper into the
+infinite ocean where our barks sail evermore to the horizon that flies
+before us! Amazed and awed to find that I can only warn where I would
+control, I have looked into my own soul. It is true that the desires of
+earth chain me to the present, and shut me from the solemn secrets which
+Intellect, purified from all the dross of the clay, alone can examine
+and survey. The stern condition on which we hold our nobler and diviner
+gifts darkens our vision towards the future of those for whom we know
+the human infirmities of jealousy or hate or love. Mejnour, all around
+me is mist and haze; I have gone back in our sublime existence; and
+from the bosom of the imperishable youth that blooms only in the spirit,
+springs up the dark poison-flower of human love.
+
+This man is not worthy of her,--I know that truth; yet in his nature
+are the seeds of good and greatness, if the tares and weeds of worldly
+vanities and fears would suffer them to grow. If she were his, and I had
+thus transplanted to another soil the passion that obscures my gaze and
+disarms my power, unseen, unheard, unrecognised, I could watch over his
+fate, and secretly prompt his deeds, and minister to her welfare through
+his own. But time rushes on! Through the shadows that encircle me, I
+see, gathering round her, the darkest dangers. No choice but flight,--no
+escape save with him or me. With me!--the rapturous thought,--the
+terrible conviction! With me! Mejnour, canst thou wonder that I would
+save her from myself? A moment in the life of ages,--a bubble on the
+shoreless sea. What else to me can be human love? And in this exquisite
+nature of hers,--more pure, more spiritual, even in its young affections
+than ever heretofore the countless volumes of the heart, race after
+race, have given to my gaze: there is yet a deep-buried feeling
+that warns me of inevitable woe. Thou austere and remorseless
+Hierophant,--thou who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood every
+spirit that seemed to thee most high and bold,--even thou knowest, by
+horrible experience, how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the heart of
+woman.
+
+My life would be to her one marvel. Even if, on the other hand, I sought
+to guide her path through the realms of terror to the light, think of
+the Haunter of the Threshold, and shudder with me at the awful hazard!
+I have endeavoured to fill the Englishman’s ambition with the true
+glory of his art; but the restless spirit of his ancestor still seems to
+whisper in him, and to attract to the spheres in which it lost its own
+wandering way. There is a mystery in man’s inheritance from his fathers.
+Peculiarities of the mind, as diseases of the body, rest dormant for
+generations, to revive in some distant descendant, baffle all treatment
+and elude all skill. Come to me from thy solitude amidst the wrecks of
+Rome! I pant for a living confidant,--for one who in the old time has
+himself known jealousy and love. I have sought commune with Adon-Ai; but
+his presence, that once inspired such heavenly content with knowledge,
+and so serene a confidence in destiny, now only troubles and perplexes
+me. From the height from which I strive to search into the shadows of
+things to come, I see confused spectres of menace and wrath. Methinks I
+behold a ghastly limit to the wondrous existence I have held,--methinks
+that, after ages of the Ideal Life, I see my course merge into the most
+stormy whirlpool of the Real. Where the stars opened to me their gates,
+there looms a scaffold,--thick steams of blood rise as from a shambles.
+What is more strange to me, a creature here, a very type of the false
+ideal of common men,--body and mind, a hideous mockery of the art that
+shapes the Beautiful, and the desires that seek the Perfect, ever haunts
+my vision amidst these perturbed and broken clouds of the fate to be.
+By that shadowy scaffold it stands and gibbers at me, with lips dropping
+slime and gore. Come, O friend of the far-time; for me, at least, thy
+wisdom has not purged away thy human affections. According to the bonds
+of our solemn order, reduced now to thee and myself, lone survivors of
+so many haughty and glorious aspirants, thou art pledged, too, to warn
+the descendant of those whom thy counsels sought to initiate into the
+great secret in a former age. The last of that bold Visconti who was
+once thy pupil is the relentless persecutor of this fair child. With
+thoughts of lust and murder, he is digging his own grave; thou mayest
+yet daunt him from his doom. And I also mysteriously, by the same bond,
+am pledged to obey, if he so command, a less guilty descendant of a
+baffled but nobler student. If he reject my counsel, and insist upon
+the pledge, Mejnour, thou wilt have another neophyte. Beware of another
+victim! Come to me! This will reach thee with all speed. Answer it by
+the pressure of one hand that I can dare to clasp!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VIII.
+
+     Il lupo
+     Ferito, credo, mi conobbe e ‘ncontro
+     Mi venne con la bocca sanguinosa.
+     “Aminta,” At. iv. Sc. i.
+
+     (The wounded wolf, I think, knew me, and came to meet me with its
+     bloody mouth.)
+
+At Naples, the tomb of Virgil, beetling over the cave of Posilipo, is
+reverenced, not with the feelings that should hallow the memory of the
+poet, but the awe that wraps the memory of the magician. To his charms
+they ascribe the hollowing of that mountain passage; and tradition yet
+guards his tomb by the spirits he had raised to construct the cavern.
+This spot, in the immediate vicinity of Viola’s home, had often
+attracted her solitary footsteps. She had loved the dim and solemn
+fancies that beset her as she looked into the lengthened gloom of the
+grotto, or, ascending to the tomb, gazed from the rock on the dwarfed
+figures of the busy crowd that seemed to creep like insects along the
+windings of the soil below; and now, at noon, she bent thither her
+thoughtful way. She threaded the narrow path, she passed the gloomy
+vineyard that clambers up the rock, and gained the lofty spot, green
+with moss and luxuriant foliage, where the dust of him who yet soothes
+and elevates the minds of men is believed to rest. From afar rose the
+huge fortress of St. Elmo, frowning darkly amidst spires and domes that
+glittered in the sun. Lulled in its azure splendour lay the Siren’s sea;
+and the grey smoke of Vesuvius, in the clear distance, soared like
+a moving pillar into the lucid sky. Motionless on the brink of the
+precipice, Viola looked upon the lovely and living world that stretched
+below; and the sullen vapour of Vesuvius fascinated her eye yet more
+than the scattered gardens, or the gleaming Caprea, smiling amidst the
+smiles of the sea. She heard not a step that had followed her on her
+path and started to hear a voice at hand. So sudden was the apparition
+of the form that stood by her side, emerging from the bushes that clad
+the crags, and so singularly did it harmonise in its uncouth ugliness
+with the wild nature of the scene immediately around her, and the wizard
+traditions of the place, that the colour left her cheek, and a faint cry
+broke from her lips.
+
+“Tush, pretty trembler!--do not be frightened at my face,” said the
+man, with a bitter smile. “After three months’ marriage, there is no
+different between ugliness and beauty. Custom is a great leveller. I was
+coming to your house when I saw you leave it; so, as I have matters of
+importance to communicate, I ventured to follow your footsteps. My name
+is Jean Nicot, a name already favourably known as a French artist. The
+art of painting and the art of music are nearly connected, and the stage
+is an altar that unites the two.”
+
+There was something frank and unembarrassed in the man’s address that
+served to dispel the fear his appearance had occasioned. He seated
+himself, as he spoke, on a crag beside her, and, looking up steadily
+into her face, continued:--
+
+“You are very beautiful, Viola Pisani, and I am not surprised at the
+number of your admirers. If I presume to place myself in the list, it is
+because I am the only one who loves thee honestly, and woos thee fairly.
+Nay, look not so indignant! Listen to me. Has the Prince di -- ever
+spoken to thee of marriage; or the beautiful imposter Zanoni, or the
+young blue-eyed Englishman, Clarence Glyndon? It is marriage,--it is a
+home, it is safety, it is reputation, that I offer to thee; and these
+last when the straight form grows crooked, and the bright eyes dim. What
+say you?” and he attempted to seize her hand.
+
+Viola shrunk from him, and silently turned to depart. He rose abruptly
+and placed himself on her path.
+
+“Actress, you must hear me! Do you know what this calling of the stage
+is in the eyes of prejudice,--that is, of the common opinion of mankind?
+It is to be a princess before the lamps, and a Pariah before the day.
+No man believes in your virtue, no man credits your vows; you are the
+puppet that they consent to trick out with tinsel for their amusement,
+not an idol for their worship. Are you so enamoured of this career
+that you scorn even to think of security and honour? Perhaps you are
+different from what you seem. Perhaps you laugh at the prejudice that
+would degrade you, and would wisely turn it to advantage. Speak frankly
+to me; I have no prejudice either. Sweet one, I am sure we should agree.
+Now, this Prince di --, I have a message from him. Shall I deliver it?”
+
+Never had Viola felt as she felt then, never had she so thoroughly seen
+all the perils of her forelorn condition and her fearful renown. Nicot
+continued:--
+
+“Zanoni would but amuse himself with thy vanity; Glyndon would despise
+himself, if he offered thee his name, and thee, if thou wouldst accept
+it; but the Prince di -- is in earnest, and he is wealthy. Listen!”
+
+And Nicot approached his lips to her, and hissed a sentence which she
+did not suffer him to complete. She darted from him with one glance of
+unutterable disdain. As he strove to regain his hold of her arm, he
+lost his footing, and fell down the sides of the rock till, bruised and
+lacerated, a pine-branch saved him from the yawning abyss below. She
+heard his exclamation of rage and pain as she bounded down the path,
+and, without once turning to look behind, regained her home. By the
+porch stood Glyndon, conversing with Gionetta. She passed him
+abruptly, entered the house, and, sinking on the floor, wept loud and
+passionately.
+
+Glyndon, who had followed her in surprise, vainly sought to soothe and
+calm her. She would not reply to his questions; she did not seem to
+listen to his protestations of love, till suddenly, as Nicot’s terrible
+picture of the world’s judgment of that profession which to her younger
+thoughts had seemed the service of Song and the Beautiful, forced itself
+upon her, she raised her face from her hands, and, looking steadily upon
+the Englishman, said, “False one, dost thou talk of me of love?”
+
+“By my honour, words fail to tell thee how I love!”
+
+“Wilt thou give me thy home, thy name? Dost thou woo me as thy wife?”
+ And at that moment, had Glyndon answered as his better angel would have
+counselled, perhaps, in that revolution of her whole mind which the
+words of Nicot had effected, which made her despise her very self,
+sicken of her lofty dreams, despair of the future, and distrust her
+whole ideal,--perhaps, I say, in restoring her self-esteem,--he would
+have won her confidence, and ultimately secured her love. But against
+the prompting of his nobler nature rose up at that sudden question all
+those doubts which, as Zanoni had so well implied, made the true enemies
+of his soul. Was he thus suddenly to be entangled into a snare laid for
+his credulity by deceivers? Was she not instructed to seize the moment
+to force him into an avowal which prudence must repent? Was not the
+great actress rehearsing a premeditated part? He turned round, as these
+thoughts, the children of the world, passed across him, for he literally
+fancied that he heard the sarcastic laugh of Mervale without. Nor was
+he deceived. Mervale was passing by the threshold, and Gionetta had told
+him his friend was within. Who does not know the effect of the world’s
+laugh? Mervale was the personation of the world. The whole world seemed
+to shout derision in those ringing tones. He drew back,--he recoiled.
+Viola followed him with her earnest, impatient eyes. At last, he
+faltered forth, “Do all of thy profession, beautiful Viola, exact
+marriage as the sole condition of love?” Oh, bitter question! Oh,
+poisoned taunt! He repented it the moment after. He was seized with
+remorse of reason, of feeling, and of conscience. He saw her form
+shrink, as it were, at his cruel words. He saw the colour come and go,
+to leave the writhing lips like marble; and then, with a sad, gentle
+look of self-pity, rather than reproach, she pressed her hands tightly
+to her bosom, and said,--
+
+“He was right! Pardon me, Englishman; I see now, indeed, that I am the
+Pariah and the outcast.”
+
+“Hear me. I retract. Viola, Viola! it is for you to forgive!”
+
+But Viola waved him from her, and, smiling mournfully as she passed him
+by, glided from the chamber; and he did not dare to detain her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.IX.
+
+     Dafne:  Ma, chi lung’ e d’Amor?
+     Tirsi:  Chi teme e fugge.
+     Dafne:  E che giova fuggir da lui ch’ ha l’ ali?
+     Tirsi:  AMOR NASCENTE HA CORTE L’ ALI!
+     “Aminta,” At. ii. Sc. ii.
+
+     (Dafne:  But, who is far from Love?
+     Tirsi:  He who fears and flies.
+     Dafne:  What use to flee from one who has wings?
+     Tirsi:  The wings of Love, while he yet grows, are short.)
+
+When Glyndon found himself without Viola’s house, Mervale, still
+loitering at the door, seized his arm. Glyndon shook him off abruptly.
+
+“Thou and thy counsels,” said he, bitterly, “have made me a coward and
+a wretch. But I will go home,--I will write to her. I will pour out my
+whole soul; she will forgive me yet.”
+
+Mervale, who was a man of imperturbable temper, arranged his ruffles,
+which his friend’s angry gesture had a little discomposed, and not till
+Glyndon had exhausted himself awhile by passionate exclamations and
+reproaches, did the experienced angler begin to tighten the line. He
+then drew from Glyndon the explanation of what had passed, and artfully
+sought not to irritate, but soothe him. Mervale, indeed, was by no means
+a bad man; he had stronger moral notions than are common amongst the
+young. He sincerely reproved his friend for harbouring dishonourable
+intentions with regard to the actress. “Because I would not have her thy
+wife, I never dreamed that thou shouldst degrade her to thy mistress.
+Better of the two an imprudent match than an illicit connection. But
+pause yet, do not act on the impulse of the moment.”
+
+“But there is no time to lose. I have promised to Zanoni to give him my
+answer by to-morrow night. Later than that time, all option ceases.”
+
+“Ah!” said Mervale, “this seems suspicious. Explain yourself.”
+
+And Glyndon, in the earnestness of his passion, told his friend what
+had passed between himself and Zanoni,--suppressing only, he scarce knew
+why, the reference to his ancestor and the mysterious brotherhood.
+
+This recital gave to Mervale all the advantage he could desire. Heavens!
+with what sound, shrewd common-sense he talked. How evidently some
+charlatanic coalition between the actress, and perhaps,--who knows?--her
+clandestine protector, sated with possession! How equivocal the
+character of one,--the position of the other! What cunning in the
+question of the actress! How profoundly had Glyndon, at the first
+suggestion of his sober reason, seen through the snare. What! was he
+to be thus mystically cajoled and hurried into a rash marriage, because
+Zanoni, a mere stranger, told him with a grave face that he must decide
+before the clock struck a certain hour?
+
+“Do this at least,” said Mervale, reasonably enough,--“wait till the
+time expires; it is but another day. Baffle Zanoni. He tells thee that
+he will meet thee before midnight to-morrow, and defies thee to avoid
+him. Pooh! let us quit Naples for some neighbouring place, where, unless
+he be indeed the Devil, he cannot possibly find us. Show him that you
+will not be led blindfold even into an act that you meditate yourself.
+Defer to write to her, or to see her, till after to-morrow. This is all
+I ask. Then visit her, and decide for yourself.”
+
+Glyndon was staggered. He could not combat the reasonings of his friend;
+he was not convinced, but he hesitated; and at that moment Nicot passed
+them. He turned round, and stopped, as he saw Glyndon.
+
+“Well, and do you think still of the Pisani?”
+
+“Yes; and you--”
+
+“Have seen and conversed with her. She shall be Madame Nicot before this
+day week! I am going to the cafe, in the Toledo; and hark ye, when next
+you meet your friend Signor Zanoni, tell him that he has twice crossed
+my path. Jean Nicot, though a painter, is a plain, honest man, and
+always pays his debts.”
+
+“It is a good doctrine in money matters,” said Mervale; “as to revenge,
+it is not so moral, and certainly not so wise. But is it in your love
+that Zanoni has crossed your path? How that, if your suit prosper so
+well?”
+
+“Ask Viola Pisani that question. Bah! Glyndon, she is a prude only to
+thee. But I have no prejudices. Once more, farewell.”
+
+“Rouse thyself, man!” said Mervale, slapping Glyndon on the shoulder.
+“What think you of your fair one now?”
+
+“This man must lie.”
+
+“Will you write to her at once?”
+
+“No; if she be really playing a game, I could renounce her without a
+sigh. I will watch her closely; and, at all events, Zanoni shall not be
+the master of my fate. Let us, as you advise, leave Naples at daybreak
+to-morrow.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.X.
+
+     O chiunque tu sia, che fuor d’ogni uso
+     Pieghi Natura ad opre altere e strane,
+     E, spiando i segreti, entri al piu chiuso
+     Spazi’ a tua voglia delle menti umane--Deh, Dimmi!
+     “Gerus. Lib.,” Cant. x. xviii.
+
+     (O thou, whoever thou art, who through every use bendest Nature
+     to works foreign and strange; and by spying into her secrets,
+     enterest at thy will into the closest recesses of the human
+     mind,--O speak!  O tell me!)
+
+Early the next morning the young Englishmen mounted their horses, and
+took the road towards Baiae. Glyndon left word at his hotel, that if
+Signor Zanoni sought him, it was in the neighbourhood of that once
+celebrated watering-place of the ancients that he should be found.
+
+They passed by Viola’s house, but Glyndon resisted the temptation of
+pausing there; and after threading the grotto of Posilipo, they wound
+by a circuitous route back into the suburbs of the city, and took the
+opposite road, which conducts to Portici and Pompeii. It was late at
+noon when they arrived at the former of these places. Here they halted
+to dine; for Mervale had heard much of the excellence of the macaroni at
+Portici, and Mervale was a bon vivant.
+
+They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under an
+awning. Mervale was more than usually gay; he pressed the lacrima upon
+his friend, and conversed gayly.
+
+“Well, my dear friend, we have foiled Signor Zanoni in one of his
+predictions at least. You will have no faith in him hereafter.”
+
+“The ides are come, not gone.”
+
+“Tush! If he be the soothsayer, you are not the Caesar. It is your
+vanity that makes you credulous. Thank Heaven, I do not think myself of
+such importance that the operations of Nature should be changed in order
+to frighten me.”
+
+“But why should the operations of Nature be changed? There may be a
+deeper philosophy than we dream of,--a philosophy that discovers the
+secrets of Nature, but does not alter, by penetrating, its courses.”
+
+“Ah, you relapse into your heretical credulity; you seriously suppose
+Zanoni to be a prophet,--a reader of the future; perhaps an associate of
+genii and spirits!”
+
+Here the landlord, a little, fat, oily fellow, came up with a fresh
+bottle of lacrima. He hoped their Excellencies were pleased. He was most
+touched--touched to the heart, that they liked the macaroni. Were their
+Excellencies going to Vesuvius? There was a slight eruption; they could
+not see it where they were, but it was pretty, and would be prettier
+still after sunset.
+
+“A capital idea!” cried Mervale. “What say you, Glyndon?”
+
+“I have not yet seen an eruption; I should like it much.”
+
+“But is there no danger?” asked the prudent Mervale.
+
+“Oh, not at all; the mountain is very civil at present. It only plays a
+little, just to amuse their Excellencies the English.”
+
+“Well, order the horses, and bring the bill; we will go before it is
+dark. Clarence, my friend,--nunc est bibendum; but take care of the pede
+libero, which will scarce do for walking on lava!”
+
+The bottle was finished, the bill paid; the gentlemen mounted, the
+landlord bowed, and they bent their way, in the cool of the delightful
+evening, towards Resina.
+
+The wine, perhaps the excitement of his thoughts, animated Glyndon,
+whose unequal spirits were, at times, high and brilliant as those of a
+schoolboy released; and the laughter of the Northern tourists sounded
+oft and merrily along the melancholy domains of buried cities.
+
+Hesperus had lighted his lamp amidst the rosy skies as they arrived at
+Resina. Here they quitted their horses, and took mules and a guide.
+As the sky grew darker and more dark, the mountain fire burned with an
+intense lustre. In various streaks and streamlets, the fountain of flame
+rolled down the dark summit, and the Englishmen began to feel increase
+upon them, as they ascended, that sensation of solemnity and awe which
+makes the very atmosphere that surrounds the Giant of the Plains of the
+Antique Hades.
+
+It was night, when, leaving the mules, they ascended on foot,
+accompanied by their guide, and a peasant who bore a rude torch. The
+guide was a conversable, garrulous fellow, like most of his country
+and his calling; and Mervale, who possessed a sociable temper, loved to
+amuse or to instruct himself on every incidental occasion.
+
+“Ah, Excellency,” said the guide, “your countrymen have a strong passion
+for the volcano. Long life to them, they bring us plenty of money! If
+our fortunes depended on the Neapolitans, we should starve.”
+
+“True, they have no curiosity,” said Mervale. “Do you remember, Glyndon,
+the contempt with which that old count said to us, ‘You will go to
+Vesuvius, I suppose? I have never been; why should I go? You have cold,
+you have hunger, you have fatigue, you have danger, and all for
+nothing but to see fire, which looks just as well in a brazier as on a
+mountain.’ Ha! ha! the old fellow was right.”
+
+“But, Excellency,” said the guide, “that is not all: some cavaliers
+think to ascend the mountain without our help. I am sure they deserve to
+tumble into the crater.”
+
+“They must be bold fellows to go alone; you don’t often find such.”
+
+“Sometimes among the French, signor. But the other night--I never was
+so frightened--I had been with an English party, and a lady had left a
+pocket-book on the mountain, where she had been sketching. She offered
+me a handsome sum to return for it, and bring it to her at Naples. So I
+went in the evening. I found it, sure enough, and was about to return,
+when I saw a figure that seemed to emerge from the crater itself. The
+air there was so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human
+creature could breathe it, and live. I was so astounded that I stood
+still as a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes, and stood
+before me, face to face. Santa Maria, what a head!”
+
+“What! hideous?”
+
+“No; so beautiful, but so terrible. It had nothing human in its aspect.”
+
+“And what said the salamander?”
+
+“Nothing! It did not even seem to perceive me, though I was near as I am
+to you; but its eyes seemed to emerge prying into the air. It passed by
+me quickly, and, walking across a stream of burning lava, soon vanished
+on the other side of the mountain. I was curious and foolhardy, and
+resolved to see if I could bear the atmosphere which this visitor had
+left; but though I did not advance within thirty yards of the spot at
+which he had first appeared, I was driven back by a vapour that wellnigh
+stifled me. Cospetto! I have spat blood ever since.”
+
+“Now will I lay a wager that you fancy this fire-king must be Zanoni,”
+ whispered Mervale, laughing.
+
+The little party had now arrived nearly at the summit of the mountain;
+and unspeakably grand was the spectacle on which they gazed. From
+the crater arose a vapour, intensely dark, that overspread the whole
+background of the heavens; in the centre whereof rose a flame that
+assumed a form singularly beautiful. It might have been compared to a
+crest of gigantic feathers, the diadem of the mountain, high-arched, and
+drooping downward, with the hues delicately shaded off, and the whole
+shifting and tremulous as the plumage on a warrior’s helmet.
+
+The glare of the flame spread, luminous and crimson, over the dark and
+rugged ground on which they stood, and drew an innumerable variety of
+shadows from crag and hollow. An oppressive and sulphureous exhalation
+served to increase the gloomy and sublime terror of the place. But on
+turning from the mountain, and towards the distant and unseen ocean, the
+contrast was wonderfully great; the heavens serene and blue, the stars
+still and calm as the eyes of Divine Love. It was as if the realms of
+the opposing principles of Evil and of Good were brought in one
+view before the gaze of man! Glyndon--once more the enthusiast, the
+artist--was enchained and entranced by emotions vague and undefinable,
+half of delight and half of pain. Leaning on the shoulder of his friend,
+he gazed around him, and heard with deepening awe the rumbling of the
+earth below, the wheels and voices of the Ministry of Nature in her
+darkest and most inscrutable recess. Suddenly, as a bomb from a shell,
+a huge stone was flung hundreds of yards up from the jaws of the crater,
+and falling with a mighty crash upon the rock below, split into ten
+thousand fragments, which bounded down the sides of the mountain,
+sparkling and groaning as they went. One of these, the largest fragment,
+struck the narrow space of soil between the Englishmen and the guide,
+not three feet from the spot where the former stood. Mervale uttered an
+exclamation of terror, and Glyndon held his breath, and shuddered.
+
+“Diavolo!” cried the guide. “Descend, Excellencies,--descend! we have
+not a moment to lose; follow me close!”
+
+So saying, the guide and the peasant fled with as much swiftness as they
+were able to bring to bear. Mervale, ever more prompt and ready than his
+friend, imitated their example; and Glyndon, more confused than alarmed,
+followed close. But they had not gone many yards, before, with a rushing
+and sudden blast, came from the crater an enormous volume of vapour. It
+pursued,--it overtook, it overspread them. It swept the light from the
+heavens. All was abrupt and utter darkness; and through the gloom was
+heard the shout of the guide, already distant, and lost in an instant
+amidst the sound of the rushing gust and the groans of the earth
+beneath. Glyndon paused. He was separated from his friend, from the
+guide. He was alone,--with the Darkness and the Terror. The vapour
+rolled sullenly away; the form of the plumed fire was again dimly
+visible, and its struggling and perturbed reflection again shed a
+glow over the horrors of the path. Glyndon recovered himself, and sped
+onward. Below, he heard the voice of Mervale calling on him, though
+he no longer saw his form. The sound served as a guide. Dizzy and
+breathless, he bounded forward; when--hark!--a sullen, slow rolling
+sounded in his ear! He halted,--and turned back to gaze. The fire had
+overflowed its course; it had opened itself a channel amidst the furrows
+of the mountain. The stream pursued him fast--fast; and the hot breath
+of the chasing and preternatural foe came closer and closer upon his
+cheek! He turned aside; he climbed desperately with hands and feet upon
+a crag that, to the right, broke the scathed and blasted level of the
+soil. The stream rolled beside and beneath him, and then taking a sudden
+wind round the spot on which he stood, interposed its liquid fire,--a
+broad and impassable barrier between his resting-place and escape. There
+he stood, cut off from descent, and with no alternative but to retrace
+his steps towards the crater, and thence seek, without guide or clew,
+some other pathway.
+
+For a moment his courage left him; he cried in despair, and in that
+overstrained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off, to the guide,
+to Mervale, to return to aid him.
+
+No answer came; and the Englishman, thus abandoned solely to his own
+resources, felt his spirit and energy rise against the danger. He turned
+back, and ventured as far towards the crater as the noxious exhalation
+would permit; then, gazing below, carefully and deliberately he chalked
+out for himself a path by which he trusted to shun the direction the
+fire-stream had taken, and trod firmly and quickly over the crumbling
+and heated strata.
+
+He had proceeded about fifty yards, when he halted abruptly; an
+unspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto experienced amidst
+all his peril, came over him. He shook in every limb; his muscles
+refused his will,--he felt, as it were, palsied and death-stricken. The
+horror, I say, was unaccountable, for the path seemed clear and safe.
+The fire, above and behind, burned clear and far; and beyond, the stars
+lent him their cheering guidance. No obstacle was visible,--no danger
+seemed at hand. As thus, spell-bound, and panic-stricken, he stood
+chained to the soil,--his breast heaving, large drops rolling down his
+brow, and his eyes starting wildly from their sockets,--he saw before
+him, at some distance, gradually shaping itself more and more distinctly
+to his gaze, a colossal shadow; a shadow that seemed partially borrowed
+from the human shape, but immeasurably above the human stature; vague,
+dark, almost formless; and differing, he could not tell where or why,
+not only from the proportions, but also from the limbs and outline of
+man.
+
+The glare of the volcano, that seemed to shrink and collapse from this
+gigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its light,
+redly and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside, quiet and
+motionless; and it was, perhaps, the contrast of these two things--the
+Being and the Shadow--that impressed the beholder with the difference
+between them,--the Man and the Superhuman. It was but for a moment--nay,
+for the tenth part of a moment--that this sight was permitted to the
+wanderer. A second eddy of sulphureous vapours from the volcano, yet
+more rapidly, yet more densely than its predecessor, rolled over the
+mountain; and either the nature of the exhalation, or the excess of his
+own dread, was such, that Glyndon, after one wild gasp for breath, fell
+senseless on the earth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XI.
+
+     Was hab’ich,
+     Wenn ich nicht Alles habe?--sprach der Jungling.
+     “Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais.”
+
+     (“What have I, if I possess not All?” said the youth.)
+
+Mervale and the Italians arrived in safety at the spot where they had
+left the mules; and not till they had recovered their own alarm and
+breath did they think of Glyndon. But then, as the minutes passed, and
+he appeared not, Mervale, whose heart was as good at least as human
+hearts are in general, grew seriously alarmed. He insisted on returning
+to search for his friend; and by dint of prodigal promises prevailed at
+last on the guide to accompany him. The lower part of the mountain lay
+calm and white in the starlight; and the guide’s practised eye could
+discern all objects on the surface at a considerable distance. They
+had not, however, gone very far, before they perceived two forms slowly
+approaching them.
+
+As they came near, Mervale recognised the form of his friend. “Thank
+Heaven, he is safe!” he cried, turning to the guide.
+
+“Holy angels befriend us!” said the Italian, trembling,--“behold the
+very being that crossed me last Friday night. It is he, but his face is
+human now!”
+
+“Signor Inglese,” said the voice of Zanoni, as Glyndon--pale, wan, and
+silent--returned passively the joyous greeting of Mervale,--“Signor
+Inglese, I told your friend that we should meet to-night. You see you
+have NOT foiled my prediction.”
+
+“But how?--but where?” stammered Mervale, in great confusion and
+surprise.
+
+“I found your friend stretched on the ground, overpowered by the
+mephitic exhalation of the crater. I bore him to a purer atmosphere; and
+as I know the mountain well, I have conducted him safely to you. This is
+all our history. You see, sir, that were it not for that prophecy which
+you desired to frustrate, your friend would ere this time have been
+a corpse; one minute more, and the vapour had done its work. Adieu;
+goodnight, and pleasant dreams.”
+
+“But, my preserver, you will not leave us?” said Glyndon, anxiously, and
+speaking for the first time. “Will you not return with us?”
+
+Zanoni paused, and drew Glyndon aside. “Young man,” said he, gravely,
+“it is necessary that we should again meet to-night. It is necessary
+that you should, ere the first hour of morning, decide on your own fate.
+I know that you have insulted her whom you profess to love. It is not
+too late to repent. Consult not your friend: he is sensible and wise;
+but not now is his wisdom needed. There are times in life when, from the
+imagination, and not the reason, should wisdom come,--this, for you, is
+one of them. I ask not your answer now. Collect your thoughts,--recover
+your jaded and scattered spirits. It wants two hours of midnight. Before
+midnight I will be with you.”
+
+“Incomprehensible being!” replied the Englishman, “I would leave the
+life you have preserved in your own hands; but what I have seen this
+night has swept even Viola from my thoughts. A fiercer desire than that
+of love burns in my veins,--the desire not to resemble but to surpass
+my kind; the desire to penetrate and to share the secret of your own
+existence--the desire of a preternatural knowledge and unearthly power.
+I make my choice. In my ancestor’s name, I adjure and remind thee of thy
+pledge. Instruct me; school me; make me thine; and I surrender to thee
+at once, and without a murmur, the woman whom, till I saw thee, I would
+have defied a world to obtain.”
+
+“I bid thee consider well: on the one hand, Viola, a tranquil home, a
+happy and serene life; on the other hand, all is darkness,--darkness,
+that even these eyes cannot penetrate.”
+
+“But thou hast told me, that if I wed Viola, I must be contented with
+the common existence,--if I refuse, it is to aspire to thy knowledge and
+thy power.”
+
+“Vain man, knowledge and power are not happiness.”
+
+“But they are better than happiness. Say!--if I marry Viola, wilt thou
+be my master,--my guide? Say this, and I am resolved.
+
+“It were impossible.”
+
+“Then I renounce her? I renounce love. I renounce happiness. Welcome
+solitude,--welcome despair; if they are the entrances to thy dark and
+sublime secret.”
+
+“I will not take thy answer now. Before the last hour of night thou
+shalt give it in one word,--ay or no! Farewell till then.”
+
+Zanoni waved his hand, and, descending rapidly, was seen no more.
+
+Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Mervale, gazing
+on his face, saw that a great change had passed there. The flexile and
+dubious expression of youth was forever gone. The features were locked,
+rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bloom, that an hour
+seemed to have done the work of years.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XII.
+
+     Was ist’s
+     Das hinter diesem Schleier sich verbirgt?
+     “Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais.”
+
+     (What is it that conceals itself behind this veil?)
+
+On returning from Vesuvius or Pompeii, you enter Naples through its most
+animated, its most Neapolitan quarter,--through that quarter in which
+modern life most closely resembles the ancient; and in which, when, on
+a fair-day, the thoroughfare swarms alike with Indolence and Trade, you
+are impressed at once with the recollection of that restless, lively
+race from which the population of Naples derives its origin; so that in
+one day you may see at Pompeii the habitations of a remote age; and on
+the Mole, at Naples, you may imagine you behold the very beings with
+whom those habitations had been peopled.
+
+But now, as the Englishmen rode slowly through the deserted streets,
+lighted but by the lamps of heaven, all the gayety of day was hushed and
+breathless. Here and there, stretched under a portico or a dingy booth,
+were sleeping groups of houseless Lazzaroni,--a tribe now merging its
+indolent individuality amidst an energetic and active population.
+
+The Englishman rode on in silence; for Glyndon neither appeared to heed
+nor hear the questions and comments of Mervale, and Mervale himself was
+almost as weary as the jaded animal he bestrode.
+
+Suddenly the silence of earth and ocean was broken by the sound of a
+distant clock that proclaimed the quarter preceding the last hour of
+night. Glyndon started from his reverie, and looked anxiously round. As
+the final stroke died, the noise of hoofs rung on the broad stones of
+the pavement, and from a narrow street to the right emerged the form of
+a solitary horseman. He neared the Englishmen, and Glyndon recognised
+the features and mien of Zanoni.
+
+“What! do we meet again, signor?” said Mervale, in a vexed but drowsy
+tone.
+
+“Your friend and I have business together,” replied Zanoni, as
+he wheeled his steed to the side of Glyndon. “But it will be soon
+transacted. Perhaps you, sir, will ride on to your hotel.”
+
+“Alone!”
+
+“There is no danger!” returned Zanoni, with a slight expression of
+disdain in his voice.
+
+“None to me; but to Glyndon?”
+
+“Danger from me! Ah, perhaps you are right.”
+
+“Go on, my dear Mervale,” said Glyndon; “I will join you before you
+reach the hotel.”
+
+Mervale nodded, whistled, and pushed his horse into a kind of amble.
+
+“Now your answer,--quick?”
+
+“I have decided. The love of Viola has vanished from my heart. The
+pursuit is over.”
+
+“You have decided?”
+
+“I have; and now my reward.”
+
+“Thy reward! Well; ere this hour to-morrow it shall await thee.”
+
+Zanoni gave the rein to his horse; it sprang forward with a bound: the
+sparks flew from its hoofs, and horse and rider disappeared amidst the
+shadows of the street whence they had emerged.
+
+Mervale was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute after they
+had parted.
+
+“What has passed between you and Zanoni?”
+
+“Mervale, do not ask me to-night! I am in a dream.”
+
+“I do not wonder at it, for even I am in a sleep. Let us push on.”
+
+In the retirement of his chamber, Glyndon sought to recollect his
+thoughts. He sat down on the foot of his bed, and pressed his hands
+tightly to his throbbing temples. The events of the last few hours; the
+apparition of the gigantic and shadowy Companion of the Mystic, amidst
+the fires and clouds of Vesuvius; the strange encounter with Zanoni
+himself, on a spot in which he could never, by ordinary reasoning, have
+calculated on finding Glyndon, filled his mind with emotions, in which
+terror and awe the least prevailed. A fire, the train of which had been
+long laid, was lighted at his heart,--the asbestos-fire that, once lit,
+is never to be quenched. All his early aspirations--his young ambition,
+his longings for the laurel--were merged in one passionate yearning to
+surpass the bounds of the common knowledge of man, and reach that solemn
+spot, between two worlds, on which the mysterious stranger appeared to
+have fixed his home.
+
+Far from recalling with renewed affright the remembrance of the
+apparition that had so appalled him, the recollection only served to
+kindle and concentrate his curiosity into a burning focus. He had said
+aright,--LOVE HAD VANISHED FROM HIS HEART; there was no longer a serene
+space amidst its disordered elements for human affection to move and
+breathe. The enthusiast was rapt from this earth; and he would have
+surrendered all that mortal beauty ever promised, that mortal hope ever
+whispered, for one hour with Zanoni beyond the portals of the visible
+world.
+
+He rose, oppressed and fevered with the new thoughts that raged within
+him, and threw open his casement for air. The ocean lay suffused in the
+starry light, and the stillness of the heavens never more eloquently
+preached the morality of repose to the madness of earthly passions. But
+such was Glyndon’s mood that their very hush only served to deepen the
+wild desires that preyed upon his soul; and the solemn stars, that are
+mysteries in themselves, seemed, by a kindred sympathy, to agitate the
+wings of the spirit no longer contented with its cage. As he gazed, a
+star shot from its brethren, and vanished from the depth of space!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XIII.
+
+     O, be gone!
+     By Heaven, I love thee better than myself,
+     For I came hither armed against myself.
+     --“Romeo and Juliet.”
+
+The young actress and Gionetta had returned from the theatre; and Viola
+fatigued and exhausted, had thrown herself on a sofa, while Gionetta
+busied herself with the long tresses which, released from the fillet
+that bound them, half-concealed the form of the actress, like a veil of
+threads of gold. As she smoothed the luxuriant locks, the old nurse
+ran gossiping on about the little events of the night, the scandal and
+politics of the scenes and the tireroom. Gionetta was a worthy soul.
+Almanzor, in Dryden’s tragedy of “Almahide,” did not change sides with
+more gallant indifference than the exemplary nurse. She was at last
+grieved and scandalised that Viola had not selected one chosen cavalier.
+But the choice she left wholly to her fair charge. Zegri or Abencerrage,
+Glyndon or Zanoni, it had been the same to her, except that the
+rumours she had collected respecting the latter, combined with his
+own recommendations of his rival, had given her preference to the
+Englishman. She interpreted ill the impatient and heavy sigh with which
+Viola greeted her praises of Glyndon, and her wonder that he had of late
+so neglected his attentions behind the scenes, and she exhausted all
+her powers of panegyric upon the supposed object of the sigh. “And
+then, too,” she said, “if nothing else were to be said against the other
+signor, it is enough that he is about to leave Naples.”
+
+“Leave Naples!--Zanoni?”
+
+“Yes, darling! In passing by the Mole to-day, there was a crowd round
+some outlandish-looking sailors. His ship arrived this morning, and
+anchors in the bay. The sailors say that they are to be prepared to sail
+with the first wind; they were taking in fresh stores. They--”
+
+“Leave me, Gionetta! Leave me!”
+
+The time had already passed when the girl could confide in Gionetta.
+Her thoughts had advanced to that point when the heart recoils from all
+confidence, and feels that it cannot be comprehended. Alone now, in the
+principal apartment of the house, she paced its narrow boundaries
+with tremulous and agitated steps: she recalled the frightful suit
+of Nicot,--the injurious taunt of Glyndon; and she sickened at the
+remembrance of the hollow applauses which, bestowed on the actress, not
+the woman, only subjected her to contumely and insult. In that room the
+recollection of her father’s death, the withered laurel and the broken
+chords, rose chillingly before her. Hers, she felt, was a yet gloomier
+fate,--the chords may break while the laurel is yet green. The lamp,
+waning in its socket, burned pale and dim, and her eyes instinctively
+turned from the darker corner of the room. Orphan, by the hearth of thy
+parent, dost thou fear the presence of the dead!
+
+And was Zanoni indeed about to quit Naples? Should she see him no
+more? Oh, fool, to think that there was grief in any other thought! The
+past!--that was gone! The future!--there was no future to her, Zanoni
+absent! But this was the night of the third day on which Zanoni had told
+her that, come what might, he would visit her again. It was, then, if
+she might believe him, some appointed crisis in her fate; and how should
+she tell him of Glyndon’s hateful words? The pure and the proud mind
+can never confide its wrongs to another, only its triumphs and its
+happiness. But at that late hour would Zanoni visit her,--could she
+receive him? Midnight was at hand. Still in undefined suspense, in
+intense anxiety, she lingered in the room. The quarter before midnight
+sounded, dull and distant. All was still, and she was about to pass to
+her sleeping-room, when she heard the hoofs of a horse at full speed;
+the sound ceased, there was a knock at the door. Her heart beat
+violently; but fear gave way to another sentiment when she heard a
+voice, too well known, calling on her name. She paused, and then, with
+the fearlessness of innocence, descended and unbarred the door.
+
+Zanoni entered with a light and hasty step. His horseman’s cloak fitted
+tightly to his noble form, and his broad hat threw a gloomy shade over
+his commanding features.
+
+The girl followed him into the room she had just left, trembling and
+blushing deeply, and stood before him with the lamp she held shining
+upward on her cheek and the long hair that fell like a shower of light
+over the half-clad shoulders and heaving bust.
+
+“Viola,” said Zanoni, in a voice that spoke deep emotion, “I am by thy
+side once more to save thee. Not a moment is to be lost. Thou must fly
+with me, or remain the victim of the Prince di --. I would have made the
+charge I now undertake another’s; thou knowest I would,--thou knowest
+it!--but he is not worthy of thee, the cold Englishman! I throw myself
+at thy feet; have trust in me, and fly.”
+
+He grasped her hand passionately as he dropped on his knee, and looked
+up into her face with his bright, beseeching eyes.
+
+“Fly with thee!” said Viola, scarce believing her senses.
+
+“With me. Name, fame, honour,--all will be sacrificed if thou dost not.”
+
+“Then--then,” said the wild girl, falteringly, and turning aside her
+face,--“then I am not indifferent to thee; thou wouldst not give me to
+another?”
+
+Zanoni was silent; but his breast heaved, his cheeks flushed, his eyes
+darted dark and impassioned fire.
+
+“Speak!” exclaimed Viola, in jealous suspicion of his silence.
+
+“Indifferent to me! No; but I dare not yet say that I love thee.”
+
+“Then what matters my fate?” said Viola, turning pale, and shrinking
+from his side; “leave me,--I fear no danger. My life, and therefore my
+honour, is in mine own hands.”
+
+“Be not so mad,” said Zanoni. “Hark! do you hear the neigh of my
+steed?--it is an alarm that warns us of the approaching peril. Haste, or
+you are lost!”
+
+“Why dost thou care for me?” said the girl, bitterly. “Thou hast read my
+heart; thou knowest that thou art become the lord of my destiny. But to
+be bound beneath the weight of a cold obligation; to be the beggar on
+the eyes of indifference; to cast myself on one who loves me not,--THAT
+were indeed the vilest sin of my sex. Ah, Zanoni, rather let me die!”
+
+She had thrown back her clustering hair from her face while she spoke;
+and as she now stood, with her arms drooping mournfully, and her hands
+clasped together with the proud bitterness of her wayward spirit, giving
+new zest and charm to her singular beauty, it was impossible to conceive
+a sight more irresistible to the eye and the heart.
+
+“Tempt me not to thine own danger,--perhaps destruction!” exclaimed
+Zanoni, in faltering accents. “Thou canst not dream of what thou wouldst
+demand,--come!” and, advancing, he wound his arm round her waist. “Come,
+Viola; believe at least in my friendship, my honour, my protection--”
+
+“And not thy love,” said the Italian, turning on him her reproachful
+eyes. Those eyes met his, and he could not withdraw from the charm of
+their gaze. He felt her heart throbbing beneath his own; her breath came
+warm upon his cheek. He trembled,--HE! the lofty, the mysterious Zanoni,
+who seemed to stand aloof from his race. With a deep and burning sigh,
+he murmured, “Viola, I love thee! Oh!” he continued passionately, and,
+releasing his hold, he threw himself abruptly at her feet, “I no more
+command,--as woman should be wooed, I woo thee. From the first glance of
+those eyes, from the first sound of thy voice, thou becamest too fatally
+dear to me. Thou speakest of fascination,--it lives and it breathes
+in thee! I fled from Naples to fly from thy presence,--it pursued me.
+Months, years passed, and thy sweet face still shone upon my heart. I
+returned, because I pictured thee alone and sorrowful in the world, and
+knew that dangers, from which I might save thee, were gathering
+near thee and around. Beautiful Soul! whose leaves I have read with
+reverence, it was for thy sake, thine alone, that I would have given
+thee to one who might make thee happier on earth than I can. Viola!
+Viola! thou knowest not--never canst thou know--how dear thou art to
+me!”
+
+It is in vain to seek for words to describe the delight--the proud, the
+full, the complete, and the entire delight--that filled the heart of the
+Neapolitan. He whom she had considered too lofty even for love,--more
+humble to her than those she had half-despised! She was silent, but her
+eyes spoke to him; and then slowly, as aware, at last, that the human
+love had advanced on the ideal, she shrank into the terrors of a modest
+and virtuous nature. She did not dare,--she did not dream to ask him the
+question she had so fearlessly made to Glyndon; but she felt a sudden
+coldness,--a sense that a barrier was yet between love and love. “Oh,
+Zanoni!” she murmured, with downcast eyes, “ask me not to fly with
+thee; tempt me not to my shame. Thou wouldst protect me from others. Oh,
+protect me from thyself!”
+
+“Poor orphan!” said he, tenderly, “and canst thou think that I ask from
+thee one sacrifice,--still less the greatest that woman can give to
+love? As my wife I woo thee, and by every tie, and by every vow that can
+hallow and endear affection. Alas! they have belied love to thee indeed,
+if thou dost not know the religion that belongs to it! They who truly
+love would seek, for the treasure they obtain, every bond that can make
+it lasting and secure. Viola, weep not, unless thou givest me the holy
+right to kiss away thy tears!”
+
+And that beautiful face, no more averted, drooped upon his bosom; and
+as he bent down, his lips sought the rosy mouth: a long and burning
+kiss,--danger, life, the world was forgotten! Suddenly Zanoni tore
+himself from her.
+
+“Hearest thou the wind that sighs, and dies away? As that wind, my power
+to preserve thee, to guard thee, to foresee the storm in thy skies, is
+gone. No matter. Haste, haste; and may love supply the loss of all that
+it has dared to sacrifice! Come.”
+
+Viola hesitated no more. She threw her mantle over her shoulders, and
+gathered up her dishevelled hair; a moment, and she was prepared, when a
+sudden crash was heard below.
+
+“Too late!--fool that I was, too late!” cried Zanoni, in a sharp tone of
+agony, as he hurried to the door. He opened it, only to be borne back by
+the press of armed men. The room literally swarmed with the followers of
+the ravisher, masked, and armed to the teeth.
+
+Viola was already in the grasp of two of the myrmidons. Her shriek smote
+the ear of Zanoni. He sprang forward; and Viola heard his wild cry in
+a foreign tongue. She saw the blades of the ruffians pointed at his
+breast! She lost her senses; and when she recovered, she found herself
+gagged, and in a carriage that was driven rapidly, by the side of a
+masked and motionless figure. The carriage stopped at the portals of a
+gloomy mansion. The gates opened noiselessly; a broad flight of steps,
+brilliantly illumined, was before her. She was in the palace of the
+Prince di --.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XIV.
+
+     Ma lasciamo, per Dio, Signore, ormai
+     Di parlar d’ ira, e di cantar di morte.
+     “Orlando Furioso,” Canto xvii. xvii.
+
+     (But leave me, I solemnly conjure thee, signor, to speak of
+     wrath, and to sing of death.)
+
+The young actress was led to, and left alone in a chamber adorned with
+all the luxurious and half-Eastern taste that at one time characterised
+the palaces of the great seigneurs of Italy. Her first thought was for
+Zanoni. Was he yet living? Had he escaped unscathed the blades of the
+foe,--her new treasure, the new light of her life, her lord, at last her
+lover?
+
+She had short time for reflection. She heard steps approaching the
+chamber; she drew back, but trembled not. A courage not of herself,
+never known before, sparkled in her eyes, and dilated her stature.
+Living or dead, she would be faithful still to Zanoni! There was a new
+motive to the preservation of honour. The door opened, and the prince
+entered in the gorgeous and gaudy custume still worn at that time in
+Naples.
+
+“Fair and cruel one,” said he, advancing with a half-sneer upon his lip,
+“thou wilt not too harshly blame the violence of love.” He attempted to
+take her hand as he spoke.
+
+“Nay,” said he, as she recoiled, “reflect that thou art now in the power
+of one that never faltered in the pursuit of an object less dear to him
+than thou art. Thy lover, presumptuous though he be, is not by to save
+thee. Mine thou art; but instead of thy master, suffer me to be thy
+slave.”
+
+“Prince,” said Viola, with a stern gravity, “your boast is in vain. Your
+power! I am NOT in your power. Life and death are in my own hands. I
+will not defy; but I do not fear you. I feel--and in some feelings,”
+ added Viola, with a solemnity almost thrilling, “there is all the
+strength, and all the divinity of knowledge--I feel that I am safe even
+here; but you--you, Prince di --, have brought danger to your home and
+hearth!”
+
+The Neapolitan seemed startled by an earnestness and boldness he was but
+little prepared for. He was not, however, a man easily intimidated or
+deterred from any purpose he had formed; and, approaching Viola, he
+was about to reply with much warmth, real or affected, when a knock
+was heard at the door of the chamber. The sound was repeated, and
+the prince, chafed at the interruption, opened the door and demanded
+impatiently who had ventured to disobey his orders, and invade his
+leisure. Mascari presented himself, pale and agitated: “My lord,” said
+he, in a whisper, “pardon me; but a stranger is below, who insists on
+seeing you; and, from some words he let fall, I judged it advisable even
+to infringe your commands.”
+
+“A stranger!--and at this hour! What business can he pretend? Why was he
+even admitted?”
+
+“He asserts that your life is in imminent danger. The source whence it
+proceeds he will relate to your Excellency alone.”
+
+The prince frowned; but his colour changed. He mused a moment, and then,
+re-entering the chamber and advancing towards Viola, he said,--
+
+“Believe me, fair creature, I have no wish to take advantage of my
+power. I would fain trust alone to the gentler authorities of affection.
+Hold yourself queen within these walls more absolutely than you have
+ever enacted that part on the stage. To-night, farewell! May your sleep
+be calm, and your dreams propitious to my hopes.”
+
+With these words he retired, and in a few moments Viola was surrounded
+by officious attendants, whom she at length, with some difficulty,
+dismissed; and, refusing to retire to rest, she spent the night in
+examining the chamber, which she found was secured, and in thoughts of
+Zanoni, in whose power she felt an almost preternatural confidence.
+
+Meanwhile the prince descended the stairs and sought the room into which
+the stranger had been shown.
+
+He found the visitor wrapped from head to foot in a long robe,
+half-gown, half-mantle, such as was sometimes worn by ecclesiastics. The
+face of this stranger was remarkable. So sunburnt and swarthy were his
+hues, that he must, apparently, have derived his origin amongst the
+races of the farthest East. His forehead was lofty, and his eyes so
+penetrating yet so calm in their gaze that the prince shrank from them
+as we shrink from a questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest secret
+of our hearts.
+
+“What would you with me?” asked the prince, motioning his visitor to a
+seat.
+
+“Prince of --,” said the stranger, in a voice deep and sweet, but
+foreign in its accent,--“son of the most energetic and masculine race
+that ever applied godlike genius to the service of Human Will, with its
+winding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur; descendant of the great
+Visconti in whose chronicles lies the history of Italy in her palmy
+day, and in whose rise was the development of the mightiest intellect,
+ripened by the most restless ambition,--I come to gaze upon the last
+star in a darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space shall know
+it not. Man, unless thy whole nature change, thy days are numbered!”
+
+“What means this jargon?” said the prince, in visible astonishment and
+secret awe. “Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldst
+thou warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some
+unguessed-of friend? Speak out, and plainly. What danger threatens me?”
+
+“Zanoni and thy ancestor’s sword,” replied the stranger.
+
+“Ha! ha!” said the prince, laughing scournfully; “I half-suspected thee
+from the first. Thou art then the accomplice or the tool of that most
+dexterous, but, at present, defeated charlatan? And I suppose thou wilt
+tell me that if I were to release a certain captive I have made, the
+danger would vanish, and the hand of the dial would be put back?”
+
+“Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di --. I confess my knowledge of
+Zanoni. Thou, too, wilt know his power, but not till it consume thee.
+I would save, therefore I warn thee. Dost thou ask me why? I will tell
+thee. Canst thou remember to have heard wild tales of thy grandsire;
+of his desire for a knowledge that passes that of the schools and
+cloisters; of a strange man from the East who was his familiar and
+master in lore against which the Vatican has, from age to age,
+launched its mimic thunder? Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy
+ancestor?--how he succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after a
+career wild and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper,
+and a self-exile; how, after years spent, none knew in what climes or
+in what pursuits, he again revisited the city where his progenitors had
+reigned; how with him came the wise man of the East, the mystic Mejnour;
+how they who beheld him, beheld with amaze and fear that time had
+ploughed no furrow on his brow; that youth seemed fixed, as by a spell,
+upon his face and form? Dost thou not know that from that hour his
+fortunes rose? Kinsmen the most remote died; estate upon estate fell
+into the hands of the ruined noble. He became the guide of princes, the
+first magnate of Italy. He founded anew the house of which thou art the
+last lineal upholder, and transferred his splendour from Milan to the
+Sicilian realms. Visions of high ambition were then present with him
+nightly and daily. Had he lived, Italy would have known a new dynasty,
+and the Visconti would have reigned over Magna-Graecia. He was a man
+such as the world rarely sees; but his ends, too earthly, were at war
+with the means he sought. Had his ambition been more or less, he had
+been worthy of a realm mightier than the Caesars swayed; worthy of our
+solemn order; worthy of the fellowship of Mejnour, whom you now behold
+before you.”
+
+The prince, who had listened with deep and breathless attention to the
+words of his singular guest, started from his seat at his last words.
+“Imposter!” he cried, “can you dare thus to play with my credulity?
+Sixty years have flown since my grandsire died; were he living, he had
+passed his hundred and twentieth year; and you, whose old age is
+erect and vigorous, have the assurance to pretend to have been his
+contemporary! But you have imperfectly learned your tale. You know not,
+it seems, that my grandsire, wise and illustrious indeed, in all save
+his faith in a charlatan, was found dead in his bed, in the very hour
+when his colossal plans were ripe for execution, and that Mejnour was
+guilty of his murder.”
+
+“Alas!” answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness, “had he
+but listened to Mejnour,--had he but delayed the last and most perilous
+ordeal of daring wisdom until the requisite training and initiation had
+been completed,--your ancestor would have stood with me upon an
+eminence which the waters of Death itself wash everlastingly, but cannot
+overflow. Your grandsire resisted my fervent prayers, disobeyed my most
+absolute commands, and in the sublime rashness of a soul that panted
+for secrets, which he who desires orbs and sceptres never can obtain,
+perished, the victim of his own frenzy.”
+
+“He was poisoned, and Mejnour fled.”
+
+“Mejnour fled not,” answered the stranger, proudly--“Mejnour could not
+fly from danger; for to him danger is a thing long left behind. It was
+the day before the duke took the fatal draft which he believed was to
+confer on the mortal the immortal boon, that, finding my power over him
+was gone, I abandoned him to his doom. But a truce with this: I loved
+your grandsire! I would save the last of his race. Oppose not thyself
+to Zanoni. Yield not thy soul to thine evil passions. Draw back from the
+precipice while there is yet time. In thy front, and in thine eyes, I
+detect some of that diviner glory which belonged to thy race. Thou hast
+in thee some germs of their hereditary genius, but they are choked up
+by worse than thy hereditary vices. Recollect that by genius thy house
+rose; by vice it ever failed to perpetuate its power. In the laws
+which regulate the universe, it is decreed that nothing wicked can long
+endure. Be wise, and let history warn thee. Thou standest on the verge
+of two worlds, the past and the future; and voices from either shriek
+omen in thy ear. I have done. I bid thee farewell!”
+
+“Not so; thou shalt not quit these walls. I will make experiment of thy
+boasted power. What, ho there!--ho!”
+
+The prince shouted; the room was filled with his minions.
+
+“Seize that man!” he cried, pointing to the spot which had been filled
+by the form of Mejnour. To his inconceivable amaze and horror, the spot
+was vacant. The mysterious stranger had vanished like a dream; but a
+thin and fragrant mist undulated, in pale volumes, round the walls of
+the chamber. “Look to my lord,” cried Mascari. The prince had fallen to
+the floor insensible. For many hours he seemed in a kind of trance. When
+he recovered, he dismissed his attendants, and his step was heard in his
+chamber, pacing to and fro, with heavy and disordered strides. Not till
+an hour before his banquet the next day did he seem restored to his
+wonted self.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XV.
+
+     Oime! come poss’ io
+     Altri trovar, se me trovar non posso.
+     “Amint.,” At. i. Sc. ii.
+
+     (Alas! how can I find another when I cannot find myself?)
+
+The sleep of Glyndon, the night after his last interview with Zanoni,
+was unusually profound; and the sun streamed full upon his eyes as he
+opened them to the day. He rose refreshed, and with a strange sentiment
+of calmness that seemed more the result of resolution than exhaustion.
+The incidents and emotions of the past night had settled into distinct
+and clear impressions. He thought of them but slightly,--he thought
+rather of the future. He was as one of the initiated in the old Egyptian
+mysteries who have crossed the gate only to long more ardently for the
+penetralia.
+
+He dressed himself, and was relieved to find that Mervale had joined a
+party of his countrymen on an excursion to Ischia. He spent the heat of
+noon in thoughtful solitude, and gradually the image of Viola returned
+to his heart. It was a holy--for it was a HUMAN--image. He had resigned
+her; and though he repented not, he was troubled at the thought that
+repentance would have come too late.
+
+He started impatiently from his seat, and strode with rapid steps to the
+humble abode of the actress.
+
+The distance was considerable, and the air oppressive. Glyndon arrived
+at the door breathless and heated. He knocked; no answer came. He lifted
+the latch and entered. He ascended the stairs; no sound, no sight of
+life met his ear and eye. In the front chamber, on a table, lay the
+guitar of the actress, and some manuscript parts in the favourite
+operas. He paused, and, summoning courage, tapped at the door which
+seemed to lead into the inner apartment. The door was ajar; and, hearing
+no sound within, he pushed it open. It was the sleeping-chamber of the
+young actress, that holiest ground to a lover; and well did the place
+become the presiding deity: none of the tawdry finery of the profession
+was visible, on the one hand; none of the slovenly disorder common to
+the humbler classes of the South, on the other. All was pure and simple;
+even the ornaments were those of an innocent refinement,--a few books,
+placed carefully on shelves, a few half-faded flowers in an earthen
+vase, which was modelled and painted in the Etruscan fashion. The
+sunlight streamed over the snowy draperies of the bed, and a few
+articles of clothing on the chair beside it. Viola was not there; but
+the nurse!--was she gone also? He made the house resound with the name
+of Gionetta, but there was not even an echo to reply. At last, as he
+reluctantly quitted the desolate abode, he perceived Gionetta coming
+towards him from the street.
+
+The poor old woman uttered an exclamation of joy on seeing him; but,
+to their mutual disappointment, neither had any cheerful tidings or
+satisfactory explanation to afford the other. Gionetta had been aroused
+from her slumber the night before by the noise in the rooms below; but
+ere she could muster courage to descend, Viola was gone! She found the
+marks of violence on the door without; and all she had since been able
+to learn in the neighbourhood was, that a Lazzarone, from his nocturnal
+resting-place on the Chiaja, had seen by the moonlight a carriage, which
+he recognised as belonging to the Prince di --, pass and repass that
+road about the first hour of morning. Glyndon, on gathering from the
+confused words and broken sobs of the old nurse the heads of this
+account, abruptly left her, and repaired to the palace of Zanoni. There
+he was informed that the signor was gone to the banquet of the Prince
+di --, and would not return till late. Glyndon stood motionless with
+perplexity and dismay; he knew not what to believe, or how to act.
+Even Mervale was not at hand to advise him. His conscience smote him
+bitterly. He had had the power to save the woman he had loved, and had
+foregone that power; but how was it that in this Zanoni himself had
+failed? How was it that he was gone to the very banquet of the ravisher?
+Could Zanoni be aware of what had passed? If not, should he lose a
+moment in apprising him? Though mentally irresolute, no man was more
+physically brave. He would repair at once to the palace of the prince
+himself; and if Zanoni failed in the trust he had half-appeared to
+arrogate, he, the humble foreigner, would demand the captive of fraud
+and force, in the very halls and before the assembled guests of the
+Prince di --.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVI.
+
+     Ardua vallatur duris sapientia scrupis.
+     Hadr. Jun., “Emblem.” xxxvii.
+
+     (Lofty wisdom is circled round with rugged rocks.)
+
+We must go back some hours in the progress of this narrative. It was the
+first faint and gradual break of the summer dawn; and two men stood in
+a balcony overhanging a garden fragrant with the scents of the awakening
+flowers. The stars had not yet left the sky,--the birds were yet silent
+on the boughs: all was still, hushed, and tranquil; but how different
+the tranquillity of reviving day from the solemn repose of night! In the
+music of silence there are a thousand variations. These men, who alone
+seemed awake in Naples, were Zanoni and the mysterious stranger who
+had but an hour or two ago startled the Prince di -- in his voluptuous
+palace.
+
+“No,” said the latter; “hadst thou delayed the acceptance of the
+Arch-gift until thou hadst attained to the years, and passed through
+all the desolate bereavements that chilled and seared myself ere my
+researches had made it mine, thou wouldst have escaped the curse of
+which thou complainest now,--thou wouldst not have mourned over the
+brevity of human affection as compared to the duration of thine own
+existence; for thou wouldst have survived the very desire and dream
+of the love of woman. Brightest, and, but for that error, perhaps the
+loftiest, of the secret and solemn race that fills up the interval in
+creation between mankind and the children of the Empyreal, age after age
+wilt thou rue the splendid folly which made thee ask to carry the
+beauty and the passions of youth into the dreary grandeur of earthly
+immortality.”
+
+“I do not repent, nor shall I,” answered Zanoni. “The transport and the
+sorrow, so wildly blended, which have at intervals diversified my doom,
+are better than the calm and bloodless tenor of thy solitary way--thou,
+who lovest nothing, hatest nothing, feelest nothing, and walkest the
+world with the noiseless and joyless footsteps of a dream!”
+
+“You mistake,” replied he who had owned the name of Mejnour,--“though I
+care not for love, and am dead to every PASSION that agitates the sons
+of clay, I am not dead to their more serene enjoyments. I carry down the
+stream of the countless years, not the turbulent desires of youth,
+but the calm and spiritual delights of age. Wisely and deliberately I
+abandoned youth forever when I separated my lot from men. Let us not
+envy or reproach each other. I would have saved this Neapolitan,
+Zanoni (since so it now pleases thee to be called), partly because
+his grandsire was but divided by the last airy barrier from our own
+brotherhood, partly because I know that in the man himself lurk the
+elements of ancestral courage and power, which in earlier life would
+have fitted him for one of us. Earth holds but few to whom Nature has
+given the qualities that can bear the ordeal. But time and excess,
+that have quickened his grosser senses, have blunted his imagination. I
+relinquish him to his doom.”
+
+“And still, then, Mejnour, you cherish the desire to revive our
+order, limited now to ourselves alone, by new converts and allies.
+Surely--surely--thy experience might have taught thee, that scarcely
+once in a thousand years is born the being who can pass through the
+horrible gates that lead into the worlds without! Is not thy path
+already strewed with thy victims? Do not their ghastly faces of agony
+and fear--the blood-stained suicide, the raving maniac--rise before
+thee, and warn what is yet left to thee of human sympathy from thy
+insane ambition?”
+
+“Nay,” answered Mejnour; “have I not had success to counterbalance
+failure? And can I forego this lofty and august hope, worthy alone of
+our high condition,--the hope to form a mighty and numerous race with
+a force and power sufficient to permit them to acknowledge to mankind
+their majestic conquests and dominion, to become the true lords of this
+planet, invaders, perchance, of others, masters of the inimical and
+malignant tribes by which at this moment we are surrounded: a race
+that may proceed, in their deathless destinies, from stage to stage of
+celestial glory, and rank at last amongst the nearest ministrants and
+agents gathered round the Throne of Thrones? What matter a thousand
+victims for one convert to our band? And you, Zanoni,” continued
+Mejnour, after a pause,--“you, even you, should this affection for a
+mortal beauty that you have dared, despite yourself, to cherish, be more
+than a passing fancy; should it, once admitted into your inmost nature,
+partake of its bright and enduring essence,--even you may brave all
+things to raise the beloved one into your equal. Nay, interrupt me not.
+Can you see sickness menace her; danger hover around; years creep on;
+the eyes grow dim; the beauty fade, while the heart, youthful still,
+clings and fastens round your own,--can you see this, and know it is
+yours to--”
+
+“Cease!” cried Zanoni, fiercely. “What is all other fate as compared
+to the death of terror? What, when the coldest sage, the most heated
+enthusiast, the hardiest warrior with his nerves of iron, have been
+found dead in their beds, with straining eyeballs and horrent hair,
+at the first step of the Dread Progress,--thinkest thou that this
+weak woman--from whose cheek a sound at the window, the screech of the
+night-owl, the sight of a drop of blood on a man’s sword, would start
+the colour--could brave one glance of--Away! the very thought of such
+sights for her makes even myself a coward!”
+
+“When you told her you loved her,--when you clasped her to your breast,
+you renounced all power to foresee her future lot, or protect her from
+harm. Henceforth to her you are human, and human only. How know you,
+then, to what you may be tempted; how know you what her curiosity may
+learn and her courage brave? But enough of this,--you are bent on your
+pursuit?”
+
+“The fiat has gone forth.”
+
+“And to-morrow?”
+
+“To-morrow, at this hour, our bark will be bounding over yonder ocean,
+and the weight of ages will have fallen from my heart! I compassionate
+thee, O foolish sage,--THOU hast given up THY youth!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVII.
+
+     Alch:  Thou always speakest riddles.  Tell me if thou art that
+     fountain of which Bernard Lord Trevizan writ?
+
+     Merc:  I am not that fountain, but I am the water.  The fountain
+     compasseth me about.
+
+     Sandivogius, “New Light of Alchymy.”
+
+The Prince di -- was not a man whom Naples could suppose to be addicted
+to superstitious fancies. Still, in the South of Italy, there was then,
+and there still lingers a certain spirit of credulity, which may, ever
+and anon, be visible amidst the boldest dogmas of their philosophers and
+sceptics. In his childhood, the prince had learned strange tales of the
+ambition, the genius, and the career of his grandsire,--and secretly,
+perhaps influenced by ancestral example, in earlier youth he himself
+had followed science, not only through her legitimate course, but her
+antiquated and erratic windings. I have, indeed, been shown in Naples a
+little volume, blazoned with the arms of the Visconti, and ascribed
+to the nobleman I refer to, which treats of alchemy in a spirit
+half-mocking and half-reverential.
+
+Pleasure soon distracted him from such speculations, and his talents,
+which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagant
+intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation with
+something of classic grace. His immense wealth, his imperious pride,
+his unscrupulous and daring character, made him an object of no
+inconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid court; and the ministers of
+the indolent government willingly connived at excesses which allured him
+at least from ambition. The strange visit and yet more strange departure
+of Mejnour filled the breast of the Neapolitan with awe and wonder,
+against which all the haughty arrogance and learned scepticism of his
+maturer manhood combated in vain. The apparition of Mejnour served,
+indeed, to invest Zanoni with a character in which the prince had not
+hitherto regarded him. He felt a strange alarm at the rival he had
+braved,--at the foe he had provoked. When, a little before his banquet,
+he had resumed his self-possession, it was with a fell and gloomy
+resolution that he brooded over the perfidious schemes he had previously
+formed. He felt as if the death of the mysterious Zanoni were necessary
+for the preservation of his own life; and if at an earlier period of
+their rivalry he had determined on the fate of Zanoni, the warnings of
+Mejnour only served to confirm his resolve.
+
+“We will try if his magic can invent an antidote to the bane,” said
+he, half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned Mascari to his
+presence. The poison which the prince, with his own hands, mixed into
+the wine intended for his guest, was compounded from materials, the
+secret of which had been one of the proudest heir-looms of that able
+and evil race which gave to Italy her wisest and guiltiest tyrants. Its
+operation was quick yet not sudden: it produced no pain,--it left on
+the form no grim convulsion, on the skin no purpling spot, to arouse
+suspicion; you might have cut and carved every membrane and fibre of the
+corpse, but the sharpest eyes of the leech would not have detected the
+presence of the subtle life-queller. For twelve hours the victim felt
+nothing save a joyous and elated exhilaration of the blood; a delicious
+languor followed, the sure forerunner of apoplexy. No lancet then
+could save! Apoplexy had run much in the families of the enemies of the
+Visconti!
+
+The hour of the feast arrived,--the guests assembled. There were the
+flower of the Neapolitan seignorie, the descendants of the Norman, the
+Teuton, the Goth; for Naples had then a nobility, but derived it from
+the North, which has indeed been the Nutrix Leonum,--the nurse of the
+lion-hearted chivalry of the world.
+
+Last of the guests came Zanoni; and the crowd gave way as the dazzling
+foreigner moved along to the lord of the palace. The prince greeted him
+with a meaning smile, to which Zanoni answered by a whisper, “He who
+plays with loaded dice does not always win.”
+
+The prince bit his lip, and Zanoni, passing on, seemed deep in
+conversation with the fawning Mascari.
+
+“Who is the prince’s heir?” asked the guest.
+
+“A distant relation on the mother’s side; with his Excellency dies the
+male line.”
+
+“Is the heir present at our host’s banquet?”
+
+“No; they are not friends.”
+
+“No matter; he will be here to-morrow.”
+
+Mascari stared in surprise; but the signal for the banquet was given,
+and the guests were marshalled to the board. As was the custom then, the
+feast took place not long after mid-day. It was a long, oval hall, the
+whole of one side opening by a marble colonnade upon a court or garden,
+in which the eye rested gratefully upon cool fountains and statues of
+whitest marble, half-sheltered by orange-trees. Every art that
+luxury could invent to give freshness and coolness to the languid and
+breezeless heat of the day without (a day on which the breath of the
+sirocco was abroad) had been called into existence. Artificial currents
+of air through invisible tubes, silken blinds waving to and fro, as if
+to cheat the senses into the belief of an April wind, and miniature jets
+d’eau in each corner of the apartment, gave to the Italians the same
+sense of exhilaration and COMFORT (if I may use the word) which the
+well-drawn curtains and the blazing hearth afford to the children of
+colder climes.
+
+The conversation was somewhat more lively and intellectual than is
+common amongst the languid pleasure-hunters of the South; for the
+prince, himself accomplished, sought his acquaintance not only amongst
+the beaux esprits of his own country, but amongst the gay foreigners who
+adorned and relieved the monotony of the Neapolitan circles. There were
+present two or three of the brilliant Frenchmen of the old regime, who
+had already emigrated from the advancing Revolution; and their peculiar
+turn of thought and wit was well calculated for the meridian of a
+society that made the dolce far niente at once its philosophy and its
+faith. The prince, however, was more silent than usual; and when he
+sought to rouse himself, his spirits were forced and exaggerated. To the
+manners of his host, those of Zanoni afforded a striking contrast. The
+bearing of this singular person was at all times characterised by a calm
+and polished ease, which was attributed by the courtiers to the long
+habit of society. He could scarcely be called gay; yet few persons more
+tended to animate the general spirits of a convivial circle. He seemed,
+by a kind of intuition, to elicit from each companion the qualities in
+which he most excelled; and if occasionally a certain tone of latent
+mockery characterised his remarks upon the topics on which the
+conversation fell, it appeared to men who took nothing in earnest to be
+the language both of wit and wisdom. To the Frenchmen, in particular,
+there was something startling in his intimate knowledge of the minutest
+events in their own capital and country, and his profound penetration
+(evinced but in epigrams and sarcasms) into the eminent characters who
+were then playing a part upon the great stage of continental intrigue.
+
+It was while this conversation grew animated, and the feast was at its
+height, that Glyndon arrived at the palace. The porter, perceiving by
+his dress that he was not one of the invited guests, told him that
+his Excellency was engaged, and on no account could be disturbed;
+and Glyndon then, for the first time, became aware how strange and
+embarrassing was the duty he had taken on himself. To force an entrance
+into the banquet-hall of a great and powerful noble, surrounded by the
+rank of Naples, and to arraign him for what to his boon-companions would
+appear but an act of gallantry, was an exploit that could not fail to be
+at once ludicrous and impotent. He mused a moment, and, slipping a piece
+of gold into the porter’s hand, said that he was commissioned to seek
+the Signor Zanoni upon an errand of life and death, and easily won his
+way across the court, and into the interior building. He passed up the
+broad staircase, and the voices and merriment of the revellers smote
+his ear at a distance. At the entrance of the reception-rooms he found
+a page, whom he despatched with a message to Zanoni. The page did the
+errand; and Zanoni, on hearing the whispered name of Glyndon, turned to
+his host.
+
+“Pardon me, my lord; an English friend of mine, the Signor Glyndon (not
+unknown by name to your Excellency) waits without,--the business must
+indeed be urgent on which he has sought me in such an hour. You will
+forgive my momentary absence.”
+
+“Nay, signor,” answered the prince, courteously, but with a sinister
+smile on his countenance, “would it not be better for your friend
+to join us? An Englishman is welcome everywhere; and even were he a
+Dutchman, your friendship would invest his presence with attraction.
+Pray his attendance; we would not spare you even for a moment.”
+
+Zanoni bowed; the page was despatched with all flattering messages
+to Glyndon,--a seat next to Zanoni was placed for him, and the young
+Englishman entered.
+
+“You are most welcome, sir. I trust your business to our illustrious
+guest is of good omen and pleasant import. If you bring evil news, defer
+it, I pray you.”
+
+Glyndon’s brow was sullen; and he was about to startle the guests by
+his reply, when Zanoni, touching his arm significantly, whispered in
+English, “I know why you have sought me. Be silent, and witness what
+ensues.”
+
+“You know then that Viola, whom you boasted you had the power to save
+from danger--”
+
+“Is in this house!--yes. I know also that Murder sits at the right hand
+of our host. But his fate is now separated from hers forever; and the
+mirror which glasses it to my eye is clear through the streams of blood.
+Be still, and learn the fate that awaits the wicked!
+
+“My lord,” said Zanoni, speaking aloud, “the Signor Glyndon has indeed
+brought me tidings not wholly unexpected. I am compelled to leave
+Naples,--an additional motive to make the most of the present hour.”
+
+“And what, if I may venture to ask, may be the cause that brings such
+affliction on the fair dames of Naples?”
+
+“It is the approaching death of one who honoured me with most loyal
+friendship,” replied Zanoni, gravely. “Let us not speak of it; grief
+cannot put back the dial. As we supply by new flowers those that fade
+in our vases, so it is the secret of worldly wisdom to replace by fresh
+friendships those that fade from our path.”
+
+“True philosophy!” exclaimed the prince. “‘Not to admire,’ was the
+Roman’s maxim; ‘Never to mourn,’ is mine. There is nothing in life to
+grieve for, save, indeed, Signor Zanoni, when some young beauty, on whom
+we have set our hearts, slips from our grasp. In such a moment we have
+need of all our wisdom, not to succumb to despair, and shake hands with
+death. What say you, signor? You smile! Such never could be your lot.
+Pledge me in a sentiment, ‘Long life to the fortunate lover,--a quick
+release to the baffled suitor’?”
+
+“I pledge you,” said Zanoni; and, as the fatal wine was poured into his
+glass, he repeated, fixing his eyes on the prince, “I pledge you even in
+this wine!”
+
+He lifted the glass to his lips. The prince seemed ghastly pale,
+while the gaze of his guest bent upon him, with an intent and stern
+brightness, beneath which the conscience-stricken host cowered and
+quailed. Not till he had drained his draft, and replaced the glass upon
+the board, did Zanoni turn his eyes from the prince; and he then said,
+“Your wine has been kept too long; it has lost its virtues. It might
+disagree with many, but do not fear: it will not harm me, prince, Signor
+Mascari, you are a judge of the grape; will you favour us with your
+opinion?”
+
+“Nay,” answered Mascari, with well-affected composure, “I like not the
+wines of Cyprus; they are heating. Perhaps Signor Glyndon may not have
+the same distaste? The English are said to love their potations warm and
+pungent.”
+
+“Do you wish my friend also to taste the wine, prince?” said Zanoni.
+“Recollect, all cannot drink it with the same impunity as myself.”
+
+“No,” said the prince, hastily; “if you do not recommend the wine,
+Heaven forbid that we should constrain our guests! My lord duke,”
+ turning to one of the Frenchmen, “yours is the true soil of Bacchus.
+What think you of this cask from Burgundy? Has it borne the journey?”
+
+“Ah,” said Zanoni, “let us change both the wine and the theme.”
+
+With that, Zanoni grew yet more animated and brilliant. Never did wit
+more sparkling, airy, exhilarating, flash from the lips of reveller.
+His spirits fascinated all present--even the prince himself, even
+Glyndon--with a strange and wild contagion. The former, indeed, whom the
+words and gaze of Zanoni, when he drained the poison, had filled with
+fearful misgivings, now hailed in the brilliant eloquence of his wit a
+certain sign of the operation of the bane. The wine circulated fast; but
+none seemed conscious of its effects. One by one the rest of the party
+fell into a charmed and spellbound silence, as Zanoni continued to pour
+forth sally upon sally, tale upon tale. They hung on his words, they
+almost held their breath to listen. Yet, how bitter was his mirth; how
+full of contempt for the triflers present, and for the trifles which
+made their life!
+
+Night came on; the room grew dim, and the feast had lasted several hours
+longer than was the customary duration of similar entertainments at
+that day. Still the guests stirred not, and still Zanoni continued, with
+glittering eye and mocking lip, to lavish his stores of intellect
+and anecdote; when suddenly the moon rose, and shed its rays over the
+flowers and fountains in the court without, leaving the room itself half
+in shadow, and half tinged by a quiet and ghostly light.
+
+It was then that Zanoni rose. “Well, gentlemen,” said he, “we have not
+yet wearied our host, I hope; and his garden offers a new temptation to
+protract our stay. Have you no musicians among your train, prince,
+that might regale our ears while we inhale the fragrance of your
+orange-trees?”
+
+“An excellent thought!” said the prince. “Mascari, see to the music.”
+
+The party rose simultaneously to adjourn to the garden; and then, for
+the first time, the effect of the wine they had drunk seemed to make
+itself felt.
+
+With flushed cheeks and unsteady steps they came into the open air,
+which tended yet more to stimulate that glowing fever of the grape.
+As if to make up for the silence with which the guests had hitherto
+listened to Zanoni, every tongue was now loosened,--every man talked,
+no man listened. There was something wild and fearful in the contrast
+between the calm beauty of the night and scene, and the hubbub and
+clamour of these disorderly roysters. One of the Frenchmen, in especial,
+the young Duc de R--, a nobleman of the highest rank, and of all the
+quick, vivacious, and irascible temperament of his countrymen, was
+particularly noisy and excited. And as circumstances, the remembrance
+of which is still preserved among certain circles of Naples, rendered it
+afterwards necessary that the duc should himself give evidence of what
+occurred, I will here translate the short account he drew up, and which
+was kindly submitted to me some few years ago by my accomplished and
+lively friend, Il Cavaliere di B--.
+
+“I never remember,” writes the duc, “to have felt my spirits so excited
+as on that evening; we were like so many boys released from school,
+jostling each other as we reeled or ran down the flight of seven
+or eight stairs that led from the colonnade into the garden,--some
+laughing, some whooping, some scolding, some babbling. The wine had
+brought out, as it were, each man’s inmost character. Some were loud and
+quarrelsome, others sentimental and whining; some, whom we had hitherto
+thought dull, most mirthful; some, whom we had ever regarded as discreet
+and taciturn, most garrulous and uproarious. I remember that in the
+midst of our clamorous gayety, my eye fell upon the cavalier Signor
+Zanoni, whose conversation had so enchanted us all; and I felt a
+certain chill come over me to perceive that he wore the same calm and
+unsympathising smile upon his countenance which had characterised it
+in his singular and curious stories of the court of Louis XIV. I felt,
+indeed, half-inclined to seek a quarrel with one whose composure
+was almost an insult to our disorder. Nor was such an effect of this
+irritating and mocking tranquillity confined to myself alone. Several of
+the party have told me since, that on looking at Zanoni they felt their
+blood yet more heated, and gayety change to resentment. There seemed in
+his icy smile a very charm to wound vanity and provoke rage. It was at
+this moment that the prince came up to me, and, passing his arm into
+mine, led me a little apart from the rest. He had certainly indulged in
+the same excess as ourselves, but it did not produce the same effect of
+noisy excitement. There was, on the contrary, a certain cold arrogance
+and supercilious scorn in his bearing and language, which, even while
+affecting so much caressing courtesy towards me, roused my self-love
+against him. He seemed as if Zanoni had infected him; and in imitating
+the manner of his guest, he surpassed the original. He rallied me on
+some court gossip, which had honoured my name by associating it with a
+certain beautiful and distinguished Sicilian lady, and affected to treat
+with contempt that which, had it been true, I should have regarded as a
+boast. He spoke, indeed, as if he himself had gathered all the flowers
+of Naples, and left us foreigners only the gleanings he had scorned.
+At this my natural and national gallantry was piqued, and I retorted
+by some sarcasms that I should certainly have spared had my blood been
+cooler. He laughed heartily, and left me in a strange fit of resentment
+and anger. Perhaps (I must own the truth) the wine had produced in me a
+wild disposition to take offence and provoke quarrel. As the prince left
+me, I turned, and saw Zanoni at my side.
+
+“‘The prince is a braggart,’ said he, with the same smile that
+displeased me before. ‘He would monopolize all fortune and all love. Let
+us take our revenge.’
+
+“‘And how?’
+
+“‘He has at this moment, in his house, the most enchanting singer in
+Naples,--the celebrated Viola Pisani. She is here, it is true, not by
+her own choice; he carried her hither by force, but he will pretend that
+she adores him. Let us insist on his producing this secret treasure, and
+when she enters, the Duc de R-- can have no doubt that his flatteries
+and attentions will charm the lady, and provoke all the jealous fears of
+our host. It would be a fair revenge upon his imperious self-conceit.’
+
+“This suggestion delighted me. I hastened to the prince. At that instant
+the musicians had just commenced; I waved my hand, ordered the music to
+stop, and, addressing the prince, who was standing in the centre of one
+of the gayest groups, complained of his want of hospitality in affording
+to us such poor proficients in the art, while he reserved for his own
+solace the lute and voice of the first performer in Naples. I demanded,
+half-laughingly, half-seriously, that he should produce the Pisani. My
+demand was received with shouts of applause by the rest. We drowned the
+replies of our host with uproar, and would hear no denial. ‘Gentlemen,’
+at last said the prince, when he could obtain an audience, ‘even were
+I to assent to your proposal, I could not induce the signora to present
+herself before an assemblage as riotous as they are noble. You have too
+much chivalry to use compulsion with her, though the Duc de R--forgets
+himself sufficiently to administer it to me.’
+
+“I was stung by this taunt, however well deserved. ‘Prince,’ said I, ‘I
+have for the indelicacy of compulsion so illustrious an example that I
+cannot hesitate to pursue the path honoured by your own footsteps. All
+Naples knows that the Pisani despises at once your gold and your love;
+that force alone could have brought her under your roof; and that you
+refuse to produce her, because you fear her complaints, and know enough
+of the chivalry your vanity sneers at to feel assured that the gentlemen
+of France are not more disposed to worship beauty than to defend it from
+wrong.’
+
+“‘You speak well, sir,’ said Zanoni, gravely. ‘The prince dares not
+produce his prize!’
+
+“The prince remained speechless for a few moments, as if with
+indignation. At last he broke out into expressions the most injurious
+and insulting against Signor Zanoni and myself. Zanoni replied not; I
+was more hot and hasty. The guests appeared to delight in our dispute.
+None, except Mascari, whom we pushed aside and disdained to hear, strove
+to conciliate; some took one side, some another. The issue may be well
+foreseen. Swords were called for and procured. Two were offered me by
+one of the party. I was about to choose one, when Zanoni placed in
+my hand the other, which, from its hilt, appeared of antiquated
+workmanship. At the same moment, looking towards the prince, he said,
+smilingly, ‘The duc takes your grandsire’s sword. Prince, you are too
+brave a man for superstition; you have forgot the forfeit!’ Our host
+seemed to me to recoil and turn pale at those words; nevertheless, he
+returned Zanoni’s smile with a look of defiance. The next moment all was
+broil and disorder. There might be some six or eight persons engaged
+in a strange and confused kind of melee, but the prince and myself only
+sought each other. The noise around us, the confusion of the guests,
+the cries of the musicians, the clash of our own swords, only served
+to stimulate our unhappy fury. We feared to be interrupted by the
+attendants, and fought like madmen, without skill or method. I thrust
+and parried mechanically, blind and frantic, as if a demon had entered
+into me, till I saw the prince stretched at my feet, bathed in his
+blood, and Zanoni bending over him, and whispering in his ear. That
+sight cooled us all. The strife ceased; we gathered, in shame, remorse,
+and horror, round our ill-fated host; but it was too late,--his eyes
+rolled fearfully in his head. I have seen many men die, but never one
+who wore such horror on his countenance. At last all was over! Zanoni
+rose from the corpse, and, taking, with great composure, the sword from
+my hand, said calmly, ‘Ye are witnesses, gentlemen, that the prince
+brought his fate upon himself. The last of that illustrious house has
+perished in a brawl.’
+
+“I saw no more of Zanoni. I hastened to our envoy to narrate the event,
+and abide the issue. I am grateful to the Neapolitan government, and to
+the illustrious heir of the unfortunate nobleman, for the lenient and
+generous, yet just, interpretation put upon a misfortune the memory of
+which will afflict me to the last hour of my life.
+
+(Signed) “Louis Victor, Duc de R.”
+
+In the above memorial, the reader will find the most exact and minute
+account yet given of an event which created the most lively sensation at
+Naples in that day.
+
+Glyndon had taken no part in the affray, neither had he participated
+largely in the excesses of the revel. For his exemption from both he was
+perhaps indebted to the whispered exhortations of Zanoni. When the last
+rose from the corpse, and withdrew from that scene of confusion, Glyndon
+remarked that in passing the crowd he touched Mascari on the shoulder,
+and said something which the Englishman did not overhear. Glyndon
+followed Zanoni into the banquet-room, which, save where the moonlight
+slept on the marble floor, was wrapped in the sad and gloomy shadows of
+the advancing night.
+
+“How could you foretell this fearful event? He fell not by your arm!”
+ said Glyndon, in a tremulous and hollow tone.
+
+“The general who calculates on the victory does not fight in person,”
+ answered Zanoni; “let the past sleep with the dead. Meet me at midnight
+by the sea-shore, half a mile to the left of your hotel. You will know
+the spot by a rude pillar--the only one near--to which a broken chain
+is attached. There and then, if thou wouldst learn our lore, thou shalt
+find the master. Go; I have business here yet. Remember, Viola is still
+in the house of the dead man!”
+
+Here Mascari approached, and Zanoni, turning to the Italian, and waving
+his hand to Glyndon, drew the former aside. Glyndon slowly departed.
+
+“Mascari,” said Zanoni, “your patron is no more; your services will
+be valueless to his heir,--a sober man whom poverty has preserved
+from vice. For yourself, thank me that I do not give you up to the
+executioner; recollect the wine of Cyprus. Well, never tremble, man; it
+could not act on me, though it might react on others; in that it is a
+common type of crime. I forgive you; and if the wine should kill me,
+I promise you that my ghost shall not haunt so worshipful a penitent.
+Enough of this; conduct me to the chamber of Viola Pisani. You have
+no further need of her. The death of the jailer opens the cell of the
+captive. Be quick; I would be gone.”
+
+Mascari muttered some inaudible words, bowed low, and led the way to the
+chamber in which Viola was confined.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVIII.
+
+     Merc:  Tell me, therefore, what thou seekest after, and what thou
+     wilt have.  What dost thou desire to make?
+
+     Alch:  The Philosopher’s Stone.
+
+     Sandivogius.
+
+It wanted several minutes of midnight, and Glyndon repaired to the
+appointed spot. The mysterious empire which Zanoni had acquired over
+him, was still more solemnly confirmed by the events of the last few
+hours; the sudden fate of the prince, so deliberately foreshadowed, and
+yet so seemingly accidental, brought out by causes the most commonplace,
+and yet associated with words the most prophetic, impressed him with
+the deepest sentiments of admiration and awe. It was as if this dark and
+wondrous being could convert the most ordinary events and the meanest
+instruments into the agencies of his inscrutable will; yet, if so, why
+have permitted the capture of Viola? Why not have prevented the crime
+rather than punish the criminal? And did Zanoni really feel love for
+Viola? Love, and yet offer to resign her to himself,--to a rival whom
+his arts could not have failed to baffle. He no longer reverted to the
+belief that Zanoni or Viola had sought to dupe him into marriage. His
+fear and reverence for the former now forbade the notion of so poor an
+imposture. Did he any longer love Viola himself? No; when that morning
+he had heard of her danger, he had, it is true, returned to the
+sympathies and the fears of affection; but with the death of the prince
+her image faded from his heart, and he felt no jealous pang at the
+thought that she had been saved by Zanoni,--that at that moment she
+was perhaps beneath his roof. Whoever has, in the course of his life,
+indulged the absorbing passion of the gamester, will remember how all
+other pursuits and objects vanished from his mind; how solely he was
+wrapped in the one wild delusion; with what a sceptre of magic power
+the despot-demon ruled every feeling and every thought. Far more intense
+than the passion of the gamester was the frantic yet sublime desire that
+mastered the breast of Glyndon. He would be the rival of Zanoni, not in
+human and perishable affections, but in preternatural and eternal lore.
+He would have laid down life with content--nay, rapture--as the price of
+learning those solemn secrets which separated the stranger from mankind.
+Enamoured of the goddess of goddesses, he stretched forth his arms--the
+wild Ixion--and embraced a cloud!
+
+The night was most lovely and serene, and the waves scarcely rippled at
+his feet as the Englishman glided on by the cool and starry beach. At
+length he arrived at the spot, and there, leaning against the broken
+pillar, he beheld a man wrapped in a long mantle, and in an attitude
+of profound repose. He approached, and uttered the name of Zanoni. The
+figure turned, and he saw the face of a stranger: a face not stamped by
+the glorious beauty of Zanoni, but equally majestic in its aspect, and
+perhaps still more impressive from the mature age and the passionless
+depth of thought that characterised the expanded forehead, and deep-set
+but piercing eyes.
+
+“You seek Zanoni,” said the stranger; “he will be here anon; but,
+perhaps, he whom you see before you is more connected with your destiny,
+and more disposed to realise your dreams.”
+
+“Hath the earth, then, another Zanoni?”
+
+“If not,” replied the stranger, “why do you cherish the hope and the
+wild faith to be yourself a Zanoni? Think you that none others
+have burned with the same godlike dream? Who, indeed in his first
+youth,--youth when the soul is nearer to the heaven from which it
+sprang, and its divine and primal longings are not all effaced by the
+sordid passions and petty cares that are begot in time,--who is there
+in youth that has not nourished the belief that the universe has
+secrets not known to the common herd, and panted, as the hart for the
+water-springs, for the fountains that lie hid and far away amidst the
+broad wilderness of trackless science? The music of the fountain is
+heard in the soul WITHIN, till the steps, deceived and erring, rove away
+from its waters, and the wanderer dies in the mighty desert. Think you
+that none who have cherished the hope have found the truth, or that the
+yearning after the Ineffable Knowledge was given to us utterly in vain?
+No! Every desire in human hearts is but a glimpse of things that exist,
+alike distant and divine. No! in the world there have been from age to
+age some brighter and happier spirits who have attained to the air in
+which the beings above mankind move and breathe. Zanoni, great though
+he be, stands not alone. He has had his predecessors, and long lines of
+successors may be yet to come.”
+
+“And will you tell me,” said Glyndon, “that in yourself I behold one
+of that mighty few over whom Zanoni has no superiority in power and
+wisdom?”
+
+“In me,” answered the stranger, “you see one from whom Zanoni himself
+learned some of his loftiest secrets. On these shores, on this spot,
+have I stood in ages that your chroniclers but feebly reach. The
+Phoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman, the Lombard, I have seen
+them all!--leaves gay and glittering on the trunk of the universal life,
+scattered in due season and again renewed; till, indeed, the same race
+that gave its glory to the ancient world bestowed a second youth upon
+the new. For the pure Greeks, the Hellenes, whose origin has bewildered
+your dreaming scholars, were of the same great family as the Norman
+tribe, born to be the lords of the universe, and in no land on earth
+destined to become the hewers of wood. Even the dim traditions of the
+learned, which bring the sons of Hellas from the vast and undetermined
+territories of Northern Thrace, to be the victors of the pastoral
+Pelasgi, and the founders of the line of demi-gods; which assign to a
+population bronzed beneath the suns of the West, the blue-eyed Minerva
+and the yellow-haired Achilles (physical characteristics of the North);
+which introduce, amongst a pastoral people, warlike aristocracies and
+limited monarchies, the feudalism of the classic time,--even these might
+serve you to trace back the primeval settlements of the Hellenes to the
+same region whence, in later times, the Norman warriors broke on
+the dull and savage hordes of the Celt, and became the Greeks of the
+Christian world. But this interests you not, and you are wise in
+your indifference. Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the
+perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be
+more than man.”
+
+“And what books contain that science; from what laboratory is it
+wrought?”
+
+“Nature supplies the materials; they are around you in your daily walks.
+In the herbs that the beast devours and the chemist disdains to cull; in
+the elements from which matter in its meanest and its mightiest shapes
+is deduced; in the wide bosom of the air; in the black abysses of the
+earth; everywhere are given to mortals the resources and libraries
+of immortal lore. But as the simplest problems in the simplest of
+all studies are obscure to one who braces not his mind to their
+comprehension; as the rower in yonder vessel cannot tell you why two
+circles can touch each other only in one point,--so though all earth
+were carved over and inscribed with the letters of diviner knowledge,
+the characters would be valueless to him who does not pause to inquire
+the language and meditate the truth. Young man, if thy imagination is
+vivid, if thy heart is daring, if thy curiosity is insatiate, I will
+accept thee as my pupil. But the first lessons are stern and dread.”
+
+“If thou hast mastered them, why not I?” answered Glyndon, boldly. “I
+have felt from my boyhood that strange mysteries were reserved for my
+career; and from the proudest ends of ordinary ambition I have carried
+my gaze into the cloud and darkness that stretch beyond. The instant I
+beheld Zanoni, I felt as if I had discovered the guide and the tutor for
+which my youth had idly languished and vainly burned.”
+
+“And to me his duty is transferred,” replied the stranger. “Yonder lies,
+anchored in the bay, the vessel in which Zanoni seeks a fairer home;
+a little while and the breeze will rise, the sail will swell; and the
+stranger will have passed, like a wind, away. Still, like the wind, he
+leaves in thy heart the seeds that may bear the blossom and the fruit.
+Zanoni hath performed his task,--he is wanted no more; the perfecter of
+his work is at thy side. He comes! I hear the dash of the oar. You will
+have your choice submitted to you. According as you decide we shall meet
+again.” With these words the stranger moved slowly away, and disappeared
+beneath the shadow of the cliffs. A boat glided rapidly across the
+waters: it touched land; a man leaped on shore, and Glyndon recognised
+Zanoni.
+
+“I give thee, Glyndon,--I give thee no more the option of happy love and
+serene enjoyment. That hour is past, and fate has linked the hand that
+might have been thine own to mine. But I have ample gifts to bestow
+upon thee, if thou wilt abandon the hope that gnaws thy heart, and the
+realisation of which even _I_ have not the power to foresee. Be thine
+ambition human, and I can gratify it to the full. Men desire four things
+in life,--love, wealth, fame, power. The first I cannot give thee, the
+rest are at my disposal. Select which of them thou wilt, and let us part
+in peace.”
+
+“Such are not the gifts I covet. I choose knowledge; that knowledge must
+be thine own. For this, and for this alone, I surrendered the love of
+Viola; this, and this alone, must be my recompense.”
+
+“I cannot gain say thee, though I can warn. The desire to learn does not
+always contain the faculty to acquire. I can give thee, it is true, the
+teacher,--the rest must depend on thee. Be wise in time, and take that
+which I can assure to thee.”
+
+“Answer me but these questions, and according to your answer I will
+decide. Is it in the power of man to attain intercourse with the beings
+of other worlds? Is it in the power of man to influence the elements,
+and to insure life against the sword and against disease?”
+
+“All this may be possible,” answered Zanoni, evasively, “to the few; but
+for one who attains such secrets, millions may perish in the attempt.”
+
+“One question more. Thou--”
+
+“Beware! Of myself, as I have said before, I render no account.”
+
+“Well, then, the stranger I have met this night,--are his boasts to be
+believed? Is he in truth one of the chosen seers whom you allow to have
+mastered the mysteries I yearn to fathom?”
+
+“Rash man,” said Zanoni, in a tone of compassion, “thy crisis is past,
+and thy choice made! I can only bid thee be bold and prosper; yes, I
+resign thee to a master who HAS the power and the will to open to thee
+the gates of an awful world. Thy weal or woe are as nought in the eyes
+of his relentless wisdom. I would bid him spare thee, but he will heed
+me not. Mejnour, receive thy pupil!” Glyndon turned, and his heart beat
+when he perceived that the stranger, whose footsteps he had not heard
+upon the pebbles, whose approach he had not beheld in the moonlight, was
+once more by his side.
+
+“Farewell,” resumed Zanoni; “thy trial commences. When next we meet,
+thou wilt be the victim or the victor.”
+
+Glyndon’s eyes followed the receding form of the mysterious stranger.
+He saw him enter the boat, and he then for the first time noticed that
+besides the rowers there was a female, who stood up as Zanoni gained the
+boat. Even at the distance he recognised the once-adored form of Viola.
+She waved her hand to him, and across the still and shining air came
+her voice, mournfully and sweetly, in her mother’s tongue, “Farewell,
+Clarence,--I forgive thee!--farewell, farewell!”
+
+He strove to answer; but the voice touched a chord at his heart, and
+the words failed him. Viola was then lost forever, gone with this dread
+stranger; darkness was round her lot! And he himself had decided her
+fate and his own! The boat bounded on, the soft waves flashed and
+sparkled beneath the oars, and it was along one sapphire track of
+moonlight that the frail vessel bore away the lovers. Farther and
+farther from his gaze sped the boat, till at last the speck, scarcely
+visible, touched the side of the ship that lay lifeless in the glorious
+bay. At that instant, as if by magic, up sprang, with a glad murmur, the
+playful and freshening wind: and Glyndon turned to Mejnour and broke the
+silence.
+
+“Tell me--if thou canst read the future--tell me that HER lot will be
+fair, and that HER choice at least is wise?”
+
+“My pupil!” answered Mejnour, in a voice the calmness of which well
+accorded with the chilling words, “thy first task must be to withdraw
+all thought, feeling, sympathy from others. The elementary stage of
+knowledge is to make self, and self alone, thy study and thy world.
+Thou hast decided thine own career; thou hast renounced love; thou hast
+rejected wealth, fame, and the vulgar pomps of power. What, then, are
+all mankind to thee? To perfect thy faculties, and concentrate thy
+emotions, is henceforth thy only aim!”
+
+“And will happiness be the end?”
+
+“If happiness exist,” answered Mejnour, “it must be centred in a SELF to
+which all passion is unknown. But happiness is the last state of being;
+and as yet thou art on the threshold of the first.”
+
+As Mejnour spoke, the distant vessel spread its sails to the wind,
+and moved slowly along the deep. Glyndon sighed, and the pupil and the
+master retraced their steps towards the city.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV. -- THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD.
+
+     Bey hinter ihm was will! Ich heb ihn auf.
+     “Das Verschleierte Bildzu Sais”
+
+     (Be behind what there may,--I raise the veil.)
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.I.
+
+     Come vittima io vengo all’ ara.
+     “Metast.,” At. ii. Sc. 7.
+
+     (As a victim I go to the altar.)
+
+It was about a month after the date of Zanoni’s departure and Glyndon’s
+introduction to Mejnour, when two Englishmen were walking, arm-in-arm,
+through the Toledo.
+
+“I tell you,” said one (who spoke warmly), “that if you have a particle
+of common-sense left in you, you will accompany me to England. This
+Mejnour is an imposter more dangerous, because more in earnest, than
+Zanoni. After all, what do his promises amount to? You allow that
+nothing can be more equivocal. You say that he has left Naples,--that he
+has selected a retreat more congenial than the crowded thoroughfares of
+men to the studies in which he is to initiate you; and this retreat is
+among the haunts of the fiercest bandits of Italy,--haunts which justice
+itself dares not penetrate. Fitting hermitage for a sage! I tremble for
+you. What if this stranger--of whom nothing is known--be leagued with
+the robbers; and these lures for your credulity bait but the traps
+for your property,--perhaps your life? You might come off cheaply by
+a ransom of half your fortune. You smile indignantly! Well, put
+common-sense out of the question; take your own view of the matter.
+You are to undergo an ordeal which Mejnour himself does not profess to
+describe as a very tempting one. It may, or it may not, succeed: if it
+does not, you are menaced with the darkest evils; and if it does, you
+cannot be better off than the dull and joyless mystic whom you have
+taken for a master. Away with this folly; enjoy youth while it is left
+to you; return with me to England; forget these dreams; enter your
+proper career; form affections more respectable than those which lured
+you awhile to an Italian adventuress. Attend to your fortune, make
+money, and become a happy and distinguished man. This is the advice of
+sober friendship; yet the promises I hold out to you are fairer than
+those of Mejnour.”
+
+“Mervale,” said Glyndon, doggedly, “I cannot, if I would, yield to
+your wishes. A power that is above me urges me on; I cannot resist
+its influence. I will proceed to the last in the strange career I have
+commenced. Think of me no more. Follow yourself the advice you give to
+me, and be happy.”
+
+“This is madness,” said Mervale; “your health is already failing; you
+are so changed I should scarcely know you. Come; I have already had your
+name entered in my passport; in another hour I shall be gone, and you,
+boy that you are, will be left, without a friend, to the deceits of your
+own fancy and the machinations of this relentless mountebank.”
+
+“Enough,” said Glyndon, coldly; “you cease to be an effective counsellor
+when you suffer your prejudices to be thus evident. I have already had
+ample proof,” added the Englishman, and his pale cheek grew more pale,
+“of the power of this man,--if man he be, which I sometimes doubt,--and,
+come life, come death, I will not shrink from the paths that allure me.
+Farewell, Mervale; if we never meet again,--if you hear, amidst our old
+and cheerful haunts, that Clarence Glyndon sleeps the last sleep by the
+shores of Naples, or amidst yon distant hills, say to the friends of
+our youth, ‘He died worthily, as thousands of martyr-students have died
+before him, in the pursuit of knowledge.’”
+
+He wrung Mervale’s hand as he spoke, darted from his side, and
+disappeared amidst the crowd.
+
+By the corner of the Toledo he was arrested by Nicot.
+
+“Ah, Glyndon! I have not seen you this month. Where have you hid
+yourself? Have you been absorbed in your studies?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I am about to leave Naples for Paris. Will you accompany me? Talent of
+all order is eagerly sought for there, and will be sure to rise.”
+
+“I thank you; I have other schemes for the present.”
+
+“So laconic!--what ails you? Do you grieve for the loss of the
+Pisani? Take example by me. I have already consoled myself with Bianca
+Sacchini,--a handsome woman, enlightened, no prejudices. A valuable
+creature I shall find her, no doubt. But as for this Zanoni!”
+
+“What of him?”
+
+“If ever I paint an allegorical subject, I will take his likeness as
+Satan. Ha, ha! a true painter’s revenge,--eh? And the way of the world,
+too! When we can do nothing else against a man whom we hate, we can at
+least paint his effigies as the Devil’s. Seriously, though: I abhor that
+man.”
+
+“Wherefore?’
+
+“Wherefore! Has he not carried off the wife and the dowry I had marked
+for myself! Yet, after all,” added Nicot, musingly, “had he served
+instead of injured me, I should have hated him all the same. His very
+form, and his very face, made me at once envy and detest him. I felt
+that there is something antipathetic in our natures. I feel, too, that
+we shall meet again, when Jean Nicot’s hate may be less impotent. We,
+too, cher confrere,--we, too, may meet again! Vive la Republique! I to
+my new world!”
+
+“And I to mine. Farewell!”
+
+That day Mervale left Naples; the next morning Glyndon also quitted
+the City of Delight alone, and on horseback. He bent his way into those
+picturesque but dangerous parts of the country which at that time were
+infested by banditti, and which few travellers dared to pass, even in
+broad daylight, without a strong escort. A road more lonely cannot well
+be conceived than that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking upon
+the fragments of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dull
+and melancholy echo. Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank and
+profuse foliage of the South, lay before him; occasionally a wild goat
+peeped down from some rocky crag, or the discordant cry of a bird of
+prey, startled in its sombre haunt, was heard above the hills. These
+were the only signs of life; not a human being was met,--not a hut was
+visible. Wrapped in his own ardent and solemn thoughts, the young man
+continued his way, till the sun had spent its noonday heat, and a breeze
+that announced the approach of eve sprung up from the unseen ocean
+which lay far distant to his right. It was then that a turn in the road
+brought before him one of those long, desolate, gloomy villages which
+are found in the interior of the Neapolitan dominions: and now he came
+upon a small chapel on one side the road, with a gaudily painted image
+of the Virgin in the open shrine. Around this spot, which, in the heart
+of a Christian land, retained the vestige of the old idolatry (for
+just such were the chapels that in the pagan age were dedicated to the
+demon-saints of mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalid
+wretches, whom the curse of the leper had cut off from mankind. They
+set up a shrill cry as they turned their ghastly visages towards the
+horseman; and, without stirring from the spot, stretched out their gaunt
+arms, and implored charity in the name of the Merciful Mother! Glyndon
+hastily threw them some small coins, and, turning away his face, clapped
+spurs to his horse, and relaxed not his speed till he entered the
+village. On either side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard
+forms--some leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some
+seated at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud--presented
+groups that at once invoked pity and aroused alarm: pity for their
+squalor, alarm for the ferocity imprinted on their savage aspects. They
+gazed at him, grim and sullen, as he rode slowly up the rugged street;
+sometimes whispering significantly to each other, but without attempting
+to stop his way. Even the children hushed their babble, and ragged
+urchins, devouring him with sparkling eyes, muttered to their mothers;
+“We shall feast well to-morrow!” It was, indeed, one of those hamlets
+in which Law sets not its sober step, in which Violence and Murder house
+secure,--hamlets common then in the wilder parts of Italy, in which the
+peasant was but the gentler name for the robber.
+
+Glyndon’s heart somewhat failed him as he looked around, and the
+question he desired to ask died upon his lips. At length from one of
+the dismal cabins emerged a form superior to the rest. Instead of the
+patched and ragged over-all, which made the only garment of the men he
+had hitherto seen, the dress of this person was characterised by all the
+trappings of the national bravery. Upon his raven hair, the glossy curls
+of which made a notable contrast to the matted and elfin locks of the
+savages around, was placed a cloth cap, with a gold tassel that hung
+down to his shoulder; his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silk
+kerchief of gay hues was twisted round a well-shaped but sinewy throat;
+a short jacket of rough cloth was decorated with several rows of gilt
+filagree buttons; his nether garments fitted tight to his limbs, and
+were curiously braided; while in a broad parti-coloured sash were placed
+two silver-hilted pistols, and the sheathed knife, usually worn by
+Italians of the lower order, mounted in ivory elaborately carved. A
+small carbine of handsome workmanship was slung across his shoulder and
+completed his costume. The man himself was of middle size, athletic yet
+slender, with straight and regular features, sunburnt, but not swarthy;
+and an expression of countenance which, though reckless and bold, had in
+it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if defying, was not altogether
+unprepossessing.
+
+Glyndon, after eyeing this figure for some moments with great attention,
+checked his rein, and asked the way to the “Castle of the Mountain.”
+
+The man lifted his cap as he heard the question, and, approaching
+Glyndon, laid his hand upon the neck of the horse, and said, in a low
+voice, “Then you are the cavalier whom our patron the signor expected.
+He bade me wait for you here, and lead you to the castle. And indeed,
+signor, it might have been unfortunate if I had neglected to obey the
+command.”
+
+The man then, drawing a little aside, called out to the bystanders in a
+loud voice, “Ho, ho! my friends, pay henceforth and forever all respect
+to this worshipful cavalier. He is the expected guest of our blessed
+patron of the Castle of the Mountain. Long life to him! May he, like his
+host, be safe by day and by night; on the hill and in the waste; against
+the dagger and the bullet,--in limb and in life! Cursed be he who
+touches a hair of his head, or a baioccho in his pouch. Now and forever
+we will protect and honour him,--for the law or against the law; with
+the faith and to the death. Amen! Amen!”
+
+“Amen!” responded, in wild chorus, a hundred voices; and the scattered
+and straggling groups pressed up the street, nearer and nearer to the
+horseman.
+
+“And that he may be known,” continued the Englishman’s strange
+protector, “to the eye and to the ear, I place around him the white
+sash, and I give him the sacred watchword, ‘Peace to the Brave.’ Signor,
+when you wear this sash, the proudest in these parts will bare the head
+and bend the knee. Signor, when you utter this watchword, the bravest
+hearts will be bound to your bidding. Desire you safety, or ask you
+revenge--to gain a beauty, or to lose a foe,--speak but the word, and we
+are yours: we are yours! Is it not so, comrades?”
+
+And again the hoarse voices shouted, “Amen, Amen!”
+
+“Now, signor,” whispered the bravo, “if you have a few coins to spare,
+scatter them amongst the crowd, and let us be gone.”
+
+Glyndon, not displeased at the concluding sentence, emptied his purse
+in the streets; and while, with mingled oaths, blessings, shrieks, and
+yells, men, women, and children scrambled for the money, the bravo,
+taking the rein of the horse, led it a few paces through the village at
+a brisk trot, and then, turning up a narrow lane to the left, in a few
+minutes neither houses nor men were visible, and the mountains closed
+their path on either side. It was then that, releasing the bridle and
+slackening his pace, the guide turned his dark eyes on Glyndon with an
+arch expression, and said,--
+
+“Your Excellency was not, perhaps, prepared for the hearty welcome we
+have given you.”
+
+“Why, in truth, I OUGHT to have been prepared for it, since the signor,
+to whose house I am bound, did not disguise from me the character of the
+neighbourhood. And your name, my friend, if I may so call you?”
+
+“Oh, no ceremonies with me, Excellency. In the village I am generally
+called Maestro Paolo. I had a surname once, though a very equivocal one;
+and I have forgotten THAT since I retired from the world.”
+
+“And was it from disgust, from poverty, or from some--some ebullition
+of passion which entailed punishment, that you betook yourself to the
+mountains?”
+
+“Why, signor,” said the bravo, with a gay laugh, “hermits of my class
+seldom love the confessional. However, I have no secrets while my step
+is in these defiles, my whistle in my pouch, and my carbine at my back.”
+ With that the robber, as if he loved permission to talk at his
+will, hemmed thrice, and began with much humour; though, as his tale
+proceeded, the memories it roused seemed to carry him farther than he
+at first intended, and reckless and light-hearted ease gave way to
+that fierce and varied play of countenance and passion of gesture which
+characterise the emotions of his countrymen.
+
+“I was born at Terracina,--a fair spot, is it not? My father was a
+learned monk of high birth; my mother--Heaven rest her!--an innkeeper’s
+pretty daughter. Of course there could be no marriage in the case;
+and when I was born, the monk gravely declared my appearance to be
+miraculous. I was dedicated from my cradle to the altar; and my head was
+universally declared to be the orthodox shape for a cowl. As I grew up,
+the monk took great pains with my education; and I learned Latin and
+psalmody as soon as less miraculous infants learn crowing. Nor did the
+holy man’s care stint itself to my interior accomplishments. Although
+vowed to poverty, he always contrived that my mother should have
+her pockets full; and between her pockets and mine there was soon
+established a clandestine communication; accordingly, at fourteen,
+I wore my cap on one side, stuck pistols in my belt, and assumed the
+swagger of a cavalier and a gallant. At that age my poor mother died;
+and about the same period my father, having written a History of the
+Pontifical Bulls, in forty volumes, and being, as I said, of high birth,
+obtained a cardinal’s hat. From that time he thought fit to disown your
+humble servant. He bound me over to an honest notary at Naples, and gave
+me two hundred crowns by way of provision. Well, signor, I saw enough of
+the law to convince me that I should never be rogue enough to shine in
+the profession. So, instead of spoiling parchment, I made love to the
+notary’s daughter. My master discovered our innocent amusement, and
+turned me out of doors; that was disagreeable. But my Ninetta loved
+me, and took care that I should not lie out in the streets with the
+Lazzaroni. Little jade! I think I see her now with her bare feet, and
+her finger to her lips, opening the door in the summer nights, and
+bidding me creep softly into the kitchen, where, praised be the saints!
+a flask and a manchet always awaited the hungry amoroso. At last,
+however, Ninetta grew cold. It is the way of the sex, signor. Her
+father found her an excellent marriage in the person of a withered old
+picture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very properly clapped the door
+in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened, Excellency; no, not I.
+Women are plentiful while we are young. So, without a ducat in my pocket
+or a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune on board of a
+Spanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected; but luckily
+we were attacked by a pirate,--half the crew were butchered, the
+rest captured. I was one of the last: always in luck, you see,
+signor,--monks’ sons have a knack that way! The captain of the pirates
+took a fancy to me. ‘Serve with us?’ said he. ‘Too happy,’ said I.
+Behold me, then, a pirate! O jolly life! how I blessed the old notary
+for turning me out of doors! What feasting, what fighting, what wooing,
+what quarrelling! Sometimes we ran ashore and enjoyed ourselves like
+princes; sometimes we lay in a calm for days together on the loveliest
+sea that man ever traversed. And then, if the breeze rose and a sail
+came in sight, who so merry as we? I passed three years in that charming
+profession, and then, signor, I grew ambitious. I caballed against the
+captain; I wanted his post. One still night we struck the blow. The ship
+was like a log in the sea, no land to be seen from the mast-head, the
+waves like glass, and the moon at its full. Up we rose, thirty of us and
+more. Up we rose with a shout; we poured into the captain’s cabin, I at
+the head. The brave old boy had caught the alarm, and there he stood at
+the doorway, a pistol in each hand; and his one eye (he had only one)
+worse to meet than the pistols were.
+
+“‘Yield!’ cried I; ‘your life shall be safe.’
+
+“‘Take that,’ said he, and whiz went the pistol; but the saints took
+care of their own, and the ball passed by my cheek, and shot the
+boatswain behind me. I closed with the captain, and the other pistol
+went off without mischief in the struggle. Such a fellow he was,--six
+feet four without his shoes! Over we went, rolling each on the other.
+Santa Maria! no time to get hold of one’s knife. Meanwhile all the crew
+were up, some for the captain, some for me,--clashing and firing, and
+swearing and groaning, and now and then a heavy splash in the sea. Fine
+supper for the sharks that night! At last old Bilboa got uppermost; out
+flashed his knife; down it came, but not in my heart. No! I gave my left
+arm as a shield; and the blade went through to the hilt, with the blood
+spurting up like the rain from a whale’s nostril! With the weight of the
+blow the stout fellow came down so that his face touched mine; with
+my right hand I caught him by the throat, turned him over like a lamb,
+signor, and faith it was soon all up with him: the boatswain’s brother,
+a fat Dutchman, ran him through with a pike.
+
+“‘Old fellow,’ said I, as he turned his terrible eye to me, ‘I bear
+you no malice, but we must try to get on in the world, you know.’ The
+captain grinned and gave up the ghost. I went upon deck,--what a sight!
+Twenty bold fellows stark and cold, and the moon sparkling on the
+puddles of blood as calmly as if it were water. Well, signor, the
+victory was ours, and the ship mine; I ruled merrily enough for six
+months. We then attacked a French ship twice our size; what sport it
+was! And we had not had a good fight so long, we were quite like virgins
+at it! We got the best of it, and won ship and cargo. They wanted to
+pistol the captain, but that was against my laws: so we gagged him, for
+he scolded as loud as if we were married to him; left him and the
+rest of his crew on board our own vessel, which was terribly battered;
+clapped our black flag on the Frenchman’s, and set off merrily, with a
+brisk wind in our favour. But luck deserted us on forsaking our own dear
+old ship. A storm came on, a plank struck; several of us escaped in a
+boat; we had lots of gold with us, but no water. For two days and two
+nights we suffered horribly; but at last we ran ashore near a French
+seaport. Our sorry plight moved compassion, and as we had money, we were
+not suspected,--people only suspect the poor. Here we soon recovered
+our fatigues, rigged ourselves out gayly, and your humble servant was
+considered as noble a captain as ever walked deck. But now, alas! my
+fate would have it that I should fall in love with a silk-mercer’s
+daughter. Ah, how I loved her!--the pretty Clara! Yes, I loved her
+so well that I was seized with horror at my past life! I resolved to
+repent, to marry her, and settle down into an honest man. Accordingly, I
+summoned my messmates, told them my resolution, resigned my command,
+and persuaded them to depart. They were good fellows, engaged with a
+Dutchman, against whom I heard afterwards they made a successful mutiny,
+but I never saw them more. I had two thousand crowns still left; with
+this sum I obtained the consent of the silk-mercer, and it was agreed
+that I should become a partner in the firm. I need not say that no one
+suspected that I had been so great a man, and I passed for a Neapolitan
+goldsmith’s son instead of a cardinal’s. I was very happy then, signor,
+very,--I could not have harmed a fly! Had I married Clara, I had been as
+gentle a mercer as ever handled a measure.”
+
+The bravo paused a moment, and it was easy to see that he felt more than
+his words and tone betokened. “Well, well, we must not look back at the
+past too earnestly,--the sunlight upon it makes one’s eyes water. The
+day was fixed for our wedding,--it approached. On the evening before the
+appointed day, Clara, her mother, her little sister, and myself, were
+walking by the port; and as we looked on the sea, I was telling them
+old gossip-tales of mermaids and sea-serpents, when a red-faced,
+bottle-nosed Frenchman clapped himself right before me, and, placing his
+spectacles very deliberately astride his proboscis, echoed out, ‘Sacre,
+mille tonnerres! this is the damned pirate who boarded the “Niobe”!’”
+
+“‘None of your jests,’ said I, mildly. ‘Ho, ho!’ said he; ‘I can’t be
+mistaken; help there!’ and he griped me by the collar. I replied, as
+you may suppose, by laying him in the kennel; but it would not do. The
+French captain had a French lieutenant at his back, whose memory was as
+good as his chief’s. A crowd assembled; other sailors came up: the
+odds were against me. I slept that night in prison; and in a few weeks
+afterwards I was sent to the galleys. They spared my life, because the
+old Frenchman politely averred that I had made my crew spare his. You
+may believe that the oar and the chain were not to my taste. I and two
+others escaped; they took to the road, and have, no doubt, been long
+since broken on the wheel. I, soft soul, would not commit another crime
+to gain my bread, for Clara was still at my heart with her sweet eyes;
+so, limiting my rogueries to the theft of a beggar’s rags, which I
+compensated by leaving him my galley attire instead, I begged my way
+to the town where I left Clara. It was a clear winter’s day when I
+approached the outskirts of the town. I had no fear of detection, for my
+beard and hair were as good as a mask. Oh, Mother of Mercy! there came
+across my way a funeral procession! There, now you know it; I can tell
+you no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more likely of shame. Can
+you guess how I spent that night?--I stole a pickaxe from a mason’s
+shed, and all alone and unseen, under the frosty heavens, I dug the
+fresh mould from the grave; I lifted the coffin, I wrenched the lid, I
+saw her again--again! Decay had not touched her. She was always pale in
+life! I could have sworn she lived! It was a blessed thing to see her
+once more, and all alone too! But then, at dawn, to give her back to the
+earth,--to close the lid, to throw down the mould, to hear the pebbles
+rattle on the coffin: that was dreadful! Signor, I never knew before,
+and I don’t wish to think now, how valuable a thing human life is. At
+sunrise I was again a wanderer; but now that Clara was gone, my scruples
+vanished, and again I was at war with my betters. I contrived at last,
+at O--, to get taken on board a vessel bound to Leghorn, working out my
+passage. From Leghorn I went to Rome, and stationed myself at the door
+of the cardinal’s palace. Out he came, his gilded coach at the gate.
+
+“‘Ho, father!’ said I; ‘don’t you know me?’
+
+“‘Who are you?’
+
+“‘Your son,’ said I, in a whisper.
+
+“The cardinal drew back, looked at me earnestly, and mused a moment.
+‘All men are my sons,’ quoth he then, very mildly; ‘there is gold for
+thee! To him who begs once, alms are due; to him who begs twice, jails
+are open. Take the hint and molest me no more. Heaven bless thee!’ With
+that he got into his coach, and drove off to the Vatican. His purse
+which he had left behind was well supplied. I was grateful and
+contented, and took my way to Terracina. I had not long passed the
+marshes when I saw two horsemen approach at a canter.
+
+“‘You look poor, friend,’ said one of them, halting; ‘yet you are
+strong.’
+
+“‘Poor men and strong are both serviceable and dangerous, Signor
+Cavalier.’
+
+“‘Well said; follow us.’
+
+“I obeyed, and became a bandit. I rose by degrees; and as I have always
+been mild in my calling, and have taken purses without cutting throats,
+I bear an excellent character, and can eat my macaroni at Naples without
+any danger to life and limb. For the last two years I have settled in
+these parts, where I hold sway, and where I have purchased land. I am
+called a farmer, signor; and I myself now only rob for amusement, and to
+keep my hand in. I trust I have satisfied your curiosity. We are within
+a hundred yards of the castle.”
+
+“And how,” asked the Englishman, whose interest had been much excited
+by his companion’s narrative,--“and how came you acquainted with my
+host?--and by what means has he so well conciliated the goodwill of
+yourself and friends?”
+
+Maestro Paolo turned his black eyes very gravely towards his questioner.
+“Why, signor,” said he, “you must surely know more of the foreign
+cavalier with the hard name than I do. All I can say is, that about
+a fortnight ago I chanced to be standing by a booth in the Toledo at
+Naples, when a sober-looking gentleman touched me by the arm, and said,
+‘Maestro Paolo, I want to make your acquaintance; do me the favour to
+come into yonder tavern, and drink a flask of lacrima.’ ‘Willingly,’
+said I. So we entered the tavern. When we were seated, my new
+acquaintance thus accosted me: ‘The Count d’O-- has offered to let me
+hire his old castle near B--. You know the spot?’
+
+“‘Extremely well; no one has inhabited it for a century at least; it
+is half in ruins, signor. A queer place to hire; I hope the rent is not
+heavy.’
+
+“‘Maestro Paolo,’ said he, ‘I am a philosopher, and don’t care for
+luxuries. I want a quiet retreat for some scientific experiments.
+The castle will suit me very well, provided you will accept me as a
+neighbour, and place me and my friends under your special protection.
+I am rich; but I shall take nothing to the castle worth robbing. I will
+pay one rent to the count, and another to you.’
+
+“With that we soon came to terms; and as the strange signor doubled the
+sum I myself proposed, he is in high favour with all his neighbours. We
+would guard the whole castle against an army. And now, signor, that I
+have been thus frank, be frank with me. Who is this singular cavalier?”
+
+“Who?--he himself told you, a philosopher.”
+
+“Hem! searching for the Philosopher’s Stone,--eh, a bit of a magician;
+afraid of the priests?”
+
+“Precisely; you have hit it.”
+
+“I thought so; and you are his pupil?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“I wish you well through it,” said the robber, seriously, and crossing
+himself with much devotion; “I am not much better than other people,
+but one’s soul is one’s soul. I do not mind a little honest robbery, or
+knocking a man on the head if need be,--but to make a bargain with the
+devil! Ah, take care, young gentleman, take care!”
+
+“You need not fear,” said Glyndon, smiling; “my preceptor is too wise
+and too good for such a compact. But here we are, I suppose. A noble
+ruin,--a glorious prospect!”
+
+Glyndon paused delightedly, and surveyed the scene before and below with
+the eye of a painter. Insensibly, while listening to the bandit, he had
+wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon a broad ledge of
+rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this eminence and
+another of equal height, upon which the castle was built, there was a
+deep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, so
+that the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged surface of
+the abyss; but the profoundness might be well conjectured by the
+hoarse, low, monotonous roar of waters unseen that rolled below, and the
+subsequent course of which was visible at a distance in a perturbed and
+rapid stream that intersected the waste and desolate valleys.
+
+To the left, the prospect seemed almost boundless,--the extreme
+clearness of the purple air serving to render distinct the features of
+a range of country that a conqueror of old might have deemed in itself
+a kingdom. Lonely and desolate as the road which Glyndon had passed that
+day had appeared, the landscape now seemed studded with castles, spires,
+and villages. Afar off, Naples gleamed whitely in the last rays of the
+sun, and the rose-tints of the horizon melted into the azure of her
+glorious bay. Yet more remote, and in another part of the prospect,
+might be caught, dim and shadowy, and backed by the darkest foliage,
+the ruined pillars of the ancient Posidonia. There, in the midst of his
+blackened and sterile realms, rose the dismal Mount of Fire; while on
+the other hand, winding through variegated plains, to which distance
+lent all its magic, glittered many and many a stream by which Etruscan
+and Sybarite, Roman and Saracen and Norman had, at intervals of ages,
+pitched the invading tent. All the visions of the past--the stormy and
+dazzling histories of Southern Italy--rushed over the artist’s mind as
+he gazed below. And then, slowly turning to look behind, he saw the grey
+and mouldering walls of the castle in which he sought the secrets that
+were to give to hope in the future a mightier empire than memory owns in
+the past. It was one of those baronial fortresses with which Italy was
+studded in the earlier middle ages, having but little of the Gothic
+grace or grandeur which belongs to the ecclesiastical architecture of
+the same time, but rude, vast, and menacing, even in decay. A wooden
+bridge was thrown over the chasm, wide enough to admit two horsemen
+abreast; and the planks trembled and gave back a hollow sound as Glyndon
+urged his jaded steed across.
+
+A road which had once been broad and paved with rough flags, but which
+now was half-obliterated by long grass and rank weeds, conducted to the
+outer court of the castle hard by; the gates were open, and half the
+building in this part was dismantled; the ruins partially hid by ivy
+that was the growth of centuries. But on entering the inner court,
+Glyndon was not sorry to notice that there was less appearance of
+neglect and decay; some wild roses gave a smile to the grey walls, and
+in the centre there was a fountain in which the waters still trickled
+coolly, and with a pleasing murmur, from the jaws of a gigantic Triton.
+Here he was met by Mejnour with a smile.
+
+“Welcome, my friend and pupil,” said he: “he who seeks for Truth can
+find in these solitudes an immortal Academe.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.II.
+
+     And Abaris, so far from esteeming Pythagoras, who taught these
+     things, a necromancer or wizard, rather revered and admired him
+     as something divine.--Iamblich., “Vit. Pythag.”
+
+The attendants whom Mejnour had engaged for his strange abode were such
+as might suit a philosopher of few wants. An old Armenian whom Glyndon
+recognised as in the mystic’s service at Naples, a tall, hard-featured
+woman from the village, recommended by Maestro Paolo, and two
+long-haired, smooth-spoken, but fierce-visaged youths from the
+same place, and honoured by the same sponsorship, constituted
+the establishment. The rooms used by the sage were commodious and
+weather-proof, with some remains of ancient splendour in the faded
+arras that clothed the walls, and the huge tables of costly marble and
+elaborate carving. Glyndon’s sleeping apartment communicated with a kind
+of belvedere, or terrace, that commanded prospects of unrivalled beauty
+and extent, and was separated on the other side by a long gallery, and
+a flight of ten or a dozen stairs, from the private chambers of the
+mystic. There was about the whole place a sombre and yet not displeasing
+depth of repose. It suited well with the studies to which it was now to
+be appropriated.
+
+For several days Mejnour refused to confer with Glyndon on the subjects
+nearest to his heart.
+
+“All without,” said he, “is prepared, but not all within; your own
+soul must grow accustomed to the spot, and filled with the surrounding
+nature; for Nature is the source of all inspiration.”
+
+With these words Mejnour turned to lighter topics. He made the
+Englishman accompany him in long rambles through the wild scenes
+around, and he smiled approvingly when the young artist gave way to the
+enthusiasm which their fearful beauty could not have failed to rouse in
+a duller breast; and then Mejnour poured forth to his wondering pupil
+the stores of a knowledge that seemed inexhaustible and boundless. He
+gave accounts the most curious, graphic, and minute of the various races
+(their characters, habits, creeds, and manners) by which that fair land
+had been successively overrun. It is true that his descriptions could
+not be found in books, and were unsupported by learned authorities; but
+he possessed the true charm of the tale-teller, and spoke of all with
+the animated confidence of a personal witness. Sometimes, too, he would
+converse upon the more durable and the loftier mysteries of Nature with
+an eloquence and a research which invested them with all the colours
+rather of poetry than science. Insensibly the young artist found himself
+elevated and soothed by the lore of his companion; the fever of his wild
+desires was slaked. His mind became more and more lulled into the divine
+tranquillity of contemplation; he felt himself a nobler being, and in
+the silence of his senses he imagined that he heard the voice of his
+soul.
+
+It was to this state that Mejnour evidently sought to bring the
+neophyte, and in this elementary initiation the mystic was like every
+more ordinary sage. For he who seeks to DISCOVER must first reduce
+himself into a kind of abstract idealism, and be rendered up, in solemn
+and sweet bondage, to the faculties which CONTEMPLATE and IMAGINE.
+
+Glyndon noticed that, in their rambles, Mejnour often paused, where the
+foliage was rifest, to gather some herb or flower; and this reminded him
+that he had seen Zanoni similarly occupied. “Can these humble children
+of Nature,” said he one day to Mejnour,--“things that bloom and wither
+in a day, be serviceable to the science of the higher secrets? Is there
+a pharmacy for the soul as well as the body, and do the nurslings of the
+summer minister not only to human health but spiritual immortality?”
+
+“If,” answered Mejnour, “a stranger had visited a wandering tribe before
+one property of herbalism was known to them; if he had told the savages
+that the herbs which every day they trampled under foot were endowed
+with the most potent virtues; that one would restore to health a brother
+on the verge of death; that another would paralyse into idiocy their
+wisest sage; that a third would strike lifeless to the dust their most
+stalwart champion; that tears and laughter, vigour and disease, madness
+and reason, wakefulness and sleep, existence and dissolution, were
+coiled up in those unregarded leaves,--would they not have held him a
+sorcerer or a liar? To half the virtues of the vegetable world mankind
+are yet in the darkness of the savages I have supposed. There are
+faculties within us with which certain herbs have affinity, and over
+which they have power. The moly of the ancients is not all a fable.”
+
+The apparent character of Mejnour differed in much from that of Zanoni;
+and while it fascinated Glyndon less, it subdued and impressed him
+more. The conversation of Zanoni evinced a deep and general interest for
+mankind,--a feeling approaching to enthusiasm for art and beauty. The
+stories circulated concerning his habits elevated the mystery of his
+life by actions of charity and beneficence. And in all this there
+was something genial and humane that softened the awe he created, and
+tended, perhaps, to raise suspicions as to the loftier secrets that he
+arrogated to himself. But Mejnour seemed wholly indifferent to all the
+actual world. If he committed no evil, he seemed equally apathetic to
+good. His deeds relieved no want, his words pitied no distress. What
+we call the heart appeared to have merged into the intellect. He moved,
+thought, and lived like some regular and calm abstraction, rather than
+one who yet retained, with the form, the feelings and sympathies of his
+kind.
+
+Glyndon once, observing the tone of supreme indifference with which he
+spoke of those changes on the face of earth which he asserted he had
+witnessed, ventured to remark to him the distinction he had noted.
+
+“It is true,” said Mejnour, coldly. “My life is the life that
+contemplates,--Zanoni’s is the life that enjoys: when I gather the herb,
+I think but of its uses; Zanoni will pause to admire its beauties.”
+
+“And you deem your own the superior and the loftier existence?”
+
+“No. His is the existence of youth,--mine of age. We have cultivated
+different faculties. Each has powers the other cannot aspire to. Those
+with whom he associates live better,--those who associate with me know
+more.”
+
+“I have heard, in truth,” said Glyndon, “that his companions at Naples
+were observed to lead purer and nobler lives after intercourse with
+Zanoni; yet were they not strange companions, at the best, for a sage?
+This terrible power, too, that he exercises at will, as in the death of
+the Prince di --, and that of the Count Ughelli, scarcely becomes the
+tranquil seeker after good.”
+
+“True,” said Mejnour, with an icy smile; “such must ever be the error of
+those philosophers who would meddle with the active life of mankind. You
+cannot serve some without injuring others; you cannot protect the good
+without warring on the bad; and if you desire to reform the faulty, why,
+you must lower yourself to live with the faulty to know their faults.
+Even so saith Paracelsus, a great man, though often wrong. [‘It is as
+necessary to know evil things as good; for who can know what is good
+without the knowing what is evil?’ etc.--Paracelsus, ‘De Nat. Rer.,’
+lib. 3.) Not mine this folly; I live but in knowledge,--I have no life
+in mankind!”
+
+Another time Glyndon questioned the mystic as to the nature of that
+union or fraternity to which Zanoni had once referred.
+
+“I am right, I suppose,” said he, “in conjecturing that you and himself
+profess to be the brothers of the Rosy Cross?”
+
+“Do you imagine,” answered Mejnour, “that there were no mystic and
+solemn unions of men seeking the same end through the same means before
+the Arabians of Damus, in 1378, taught to a wandering German the secrets
+which founded the Institution of the Rosicrucians? I allow, however,
+that the Rosicrucians formed a sect descended from the greater and
+earlier school. They were wiser than the Alchemists,--their masters are
+wiser than they.”
+
+“And of this early and primary order how many still exist?”
+
+“Zanoni and myself.”
+
+“What, two only!--and you profess the power to teach to all the secret
+that baffles Death?”
+
+“Your ancestor attained that secret; he died rather than survive the
+only thing he loved. We have, my pupil, no arts by which we CAN PUT
+DEATH OUT OF OUR OPTION, or out of the will of Heaven. These walls may
+crush me as I stand. All that we profess to do is but this,--to find
+out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the
+blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventives to the effects of
+time. This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood.
+In our order we hold most noble,--first, that knowledge which elevates
+the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art
+(extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour
+and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret, which I
+will only hint to thee at present, by which HEAT, or CALORIC, as ye
+call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle
+of life, can be made its perpetual renovater,--these I say, would not
+suffice for safety. It is ours also to disarm and elude the wrath of
+men, to turn the swords of our foes against each other, to glide (if
+not incorporeal) invisible to eyes over which we can throw a mist and
+darkness. And this some seers have professed to be the virtue of a stone
+of agate. Abaris placed it in his arrow. I will find you an herb in yon
+valley that will give a surer charm than the agate and the arrow. In one
+word, know this, that the humblest and meanest products of Nature are
+those from which the sublimest properties are to be drawn.”
+
+“But,” said Glyndon, “if possessed of these great secrets, why
+so churlish in withholding their diffusion? Does not the false or
+charlatanic science differ in this from the true and indisputable,--that
+the last communicates to the world the process by which it attains its
+discoveries; the first boasts of marvellous results, and refuses to
+explain the causes?”
+
+“Well said, O Logician of the Schools; but think again. Suppose we were
+to impart all our knowledge to all mankind indiscriminately,--alike to
+the vicious and the virtuous,--should we be benefactors or scourges?
+Imagine the tyrant, the sensualist, the evil and corrupted being
+possessed of these tremendous powers; would he not be a demon let loose
+on earth? Grant that the same privilege be accorded also to the good;
+and in what state would be society? Engaged in a Titan war,--the good
+forever on the defensive, the bad forever in assault. In the present
+condition of the earth, evil is a more active principle than good, and
+the evil would prevail. It is for these reasons that we are not only
+solemnly bound to administer our lore only to those who will not misuse
+and pervert it, but that we place our ordeal in tests that purify
+the passions and elevate the desires. And Nature in this controls and
+assists us: for it places awful guardians and insurmountable barriers
+between the ambition of vice and the heaven of the loftier science.”
+
+Such made a small part of the numerous conversations Mejnour held
+with his pupil,--conversations that, while they appeared to address
+themselves to the reason, inflamed yet more the fancy. It was the very
+disclaiming of all powers which Nature, properly investigated, did
+not suffice to create, that gave an air of probability to those which
+Mejnour asserted Nature might bestow.
+
+Thus days and weeks rolled on; and the mind of Glyndon, gradually fitted
+to this sequestered and musing life, forgot at last the vanities and
+chimeras of the world without.
+
+One evening he had lingered alone and late upon the ramparts, watching
+the stars as, one by one, they broke upon the twilight. Never had he
+felt so sensibly the mighty power of the heavens and the earth upon man;
+how much the springs of our intellectual being are moved and acted upon
+by the solemn influences of Nature. As a patient on whom, slowly and by
+degrees, the agencies of mesmerism are brought to bear, he acknowledged
+to his heart the growing force of that vast and universal magnetism
+which is the life of creation, and binds the atom to the whole. A
+strange and ineffable consciousness of power, of the SOMETHING GREAT
+within the perishable clay, appealed to feelings at once dim and
+glorious,--like the faint recognitions of a holier and former being. An
+impulse, that he could not resist, led him to seek the mystic. He would
+demand, that hour, his initiation into the worlds beyond our world,--he
+was prepared to breathe a diviner air. He entered the castle, and strode
+the shadowy and starlit gallery which conducted to Mejnour’s apartment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.III.
+
+     Man is the eye of things.--Euryph, “de Vit. Hum.”
+
+     ...There is, therefore, a certain ecstatical or transporting
+     power, which, if at any time it shall be excited or stirred up by
+     an ardent desire and most strong imagination, is able to conduct
+     the spirit of the more outward even to some absent and
+     far-distant object.--Von Helmont.
+
+The rooms that Mejnour occupied consisted of two chambers communicating
+with each other, and a third in which he slept. All these rooms
+were placed in the huge square tower that beetled over the dark and
+bush-grown precipice. The first chamber which Glyndon entered was empty.
+With a noiseless step he passed on, and opened the door that admitted
+into the inner one. He drew back at the threshold, overpowered by a
+strong fragrance which filled the chamber: a kind of mist thickened the
+air rather than obscured it, for this vapour was not dark, but resembled
+a snow-cloud moving slowly, and in heavy undulations, wave upon wave
+regularly over the space. A mortal cold struck to the Englishman’s
+heart, and his blood froze. He stood rooted to the spot; and as his eyes
+strained involuntarily through the vapour, he fancied (for he could not
+be sure that it was not the trick of his imagination) that he saw dim,
+spectre-like, but gigantic forms floating through the mist; or was it
+not rather the mist itself that formed its vapours fantastically into
+those moving, impalpable, and bodiless apparitions? A great painter
+of antiquity is said, in a picture of Hades, to have represented the
+monsters that glide through the ghostly River of the Dead, so artfully,
+that the eye perceived at once that the river itself was but a spectre,
+and the bloodless things that tenanted it had no life, their forms
+blending with the dead waters till, as the eye continued to gaze, it
+ceased to discern them from the preternatural element they were supposed
+to inhabit. Such were the moving outlines that coiled and floated
+through the mist; but before Glyndon had even drawn breath in this
+atmosphere--for his life itself seemed arrested or changed into a kind
+of horrid trance--he felt his hand seized, and he was led from that room
+into the outer one. He heard the door close,--his blood rushed again
+through his veins, and he saw Mejnour by his side. Strong convulsions
+then suddenly seized his whole frame,--he fell to the ground insensible.
+When he recovered, he found himself in the open air in a rude balcony of
+stone that jutted from the chamber, the stars shining serenely over the
+dark abyss below, and resting calmly upon the face of the mystic, who
+stood beside him with folded arms.
+
+“Young man,” said Mejnour, “judge by what you have just felt, how
+dangerous it is to seek knowledge until prepared to receive it. Another
+moment in the air of that chamber and you had been a corpse.”
+
+“Then of what nature was the knowledge that you, once mortal like
+myself, could safely have sought in that icy atmosphere, which it was
+death for me to breathe? Mejnour,” continued Glyndon, and his wild
+desire, sharpened by the very danger he had passed, once more animated
+and nerved him, “I am prepared at least for the first steps. I come to
+you as of old the pupil to the Hierophant, and demand the initiation.”
+
+Mejnour passed his hand over the young man’s heart,--it beat loud,
+regularly, and boldly. He looked at him with something almost like
+admiration in his passionless and frigid features, and muttered, half
+to himself, “Surely, in so much courage the true disciple is found at
+last.” Then, speaking aloud, he added, “Be it so; man’s first initiation
+is in TRANCE. In dreams commences all human knowledge; in dreams
+hovers over measureless space the first faint bridge between spirit and
+spirit,--this world and the worlds beyond! Look steadfastly on yonder
+star!”
+
+Glyndon obeyed, and Mejnour retired into the chamber, from which there
+then slowly emerged a vapour, somewhat paler and of fainter odour than
+that which had nearly produced so fatal an effect on his frame. This,
+on the contrary, as it coiled around him, and then melted in thin spires
+into the air, breathed a refreshing and healthful fragrance. He still
+kept his eyes on the star, and the star seemed gradually to fix and
+command his gaze. A sort of languor next seized his frame, but without,
+as he thought, communicating itself to the mind; and as this crept over
+him, he felt his temples sprinkled with some volatile and fiery essence.
+At the same moment a slight tremor shook his limbs and thrilled through
+his veins. The languor increased, still he kept his gaze upon the star,
+and now its luminous circumference seemed to expand and dilate. It
+became gradually softer and clearer in its light; spreading wider and
+broader, it diffused all space,--all space seemed swallowed up in it.
+And at last, in the midst of a silver shining atmosphere, he felt as if
+something burst within his brain,--as if a strong chain were broken; and
+at that moment a sense of heavenly liberty, of unutterable delight, of
+freedom from the body, of birdlike lightness, seemed to float him
+into the space itself. “Whom, now upon earth, dost thou wish to see?”
+ whispered the voice of Mejnour. “Viola and Zanoni!” answered Glyndon, in
+his heart; but he felt that his lips moved not.
+
+Suddenly at that thought,--through this space, in which nothing save one
+mellow translucent light had been discernible,--a swift succession
+of shadowy landscapes seemed to roll: trees, mountains, cities, seas,
+glided along like the changes of a phantasmagoria; and at last,
+settled and stationary, he saw a cave by the gradual marge of an ocean
+shore,--myrtles and orange-trees clothing the gentle banks. On a height,
+at a distance, gleamed the white but shattered relics of some ruined
+heathen edifice; and the moon, in calm splendour, shining over all,
+literally bathed with its light two forms without the cave, at whose
+feet the blue waters crept, and he thought that he even heard them
+murmur. He recognised both the figures. Zanoni was seated on a fragment
+of stone; Viola, half-reclining by his side, was looking into his face,
+which was bent down to her, and in her countenance was the expression of
+that perfect happiness which belongs to perfect love. “Wouldst thou hear
+them speak?” whispered Mejnour; and again, without sound, Glyndon inly
+answered, “Yes!” Their voices then came to his ear, but in tones that
+seemed to him strange; so subdued were they, and sounding, as it were,
+so far off, that they were as voices heard in the visions of some holier
+men from a distant sphere.
+
+“And how is it,” said Viola, “that thou canst find pleasure in listening
+to the ignorant?”
+
+“Because the heart is never ignorant; because the mysteries of the
+feelings are as full of wonder as those of the intellect. If at times
+thou canst not comprehend the language of my thoughts, at times also I
+hear sweet enigmas in that of thy emotions.”
+
+“Ah, say not so!” said Viola, winding her arm tenderly round his neck,
+and under that heavenly light her face seemed lovelier for its blushes.
+“For the enigmas are but love’s common language, and love should solve
+them. Till I knew thee,--till I lived with thee; till I learned to
+watch for thy footstep when absent: yet even in absence to see
+thee everywhere!--I dreamed not how strong and all-pervading is the
+connection between nature and the human soul!...
+
+“And yet,” she continued, “I am now assured of what I at first
+believed,--that the feelings which attracted me towards thee at first
+were not those of love. I know THAT, by comparing the present with the
+past,--it was a sentiment then wholly of the mind or the spirit! I could
+not hear thee now say, ‘Viola, be happy with another!’”
+
+“And I could not now tell thee so! Ah, Viola, never be weary of assuring
+me that thou art happy!”
+
+“Happy while thou art so. Yet at times, Zanoni, thou art so sad!”
+
+“Because human life is so short; because we must part at last; because
+yon moon shines on when the nightingale sings to it no more! A little
+while, and thine eyes will grow dim, and thy beauty haggard, and these
+locks that I toy with now will be grey and loveless.”
+
+“And thou, cruel one!” said Viola, touchingly, “I shall never see the
+signs of age in thee! But shall we not grow old together, and our eyes
+be accustomed to a change which the heart shall not share!”
+
+Zanoni sighed. He turned away, and seemed to commune with himself.
+
+Glyndon’s attention grew yet more earnest.
+
+“But were it so,” muttered Zanoni; and then looking steadfastly at
+Viola, he said, with a half-smile, “Hast thou no curiosity to learn more
+of the lover thou once couldst believe the agent of the Evil One?”
+
+“None; all that one wishes to know of the beloved one, I know--THAT THOU
+LOVEST ME!”
+
+“I have told thee that my life is apart from others. Wouldst thou not
+seek to share it?”
+
+“I share it now!”
+
+“But were it possible to be thus young and fair forever, till the world
+blazes round us as one funeral pyre!”
+
+“We shall be so, when we leave the world!”
+
+Zanoni was mute for some moments, and at length he said,--
+
+“Canst thou recall those brilliant and aerial dreams which once visited
+thee, when thou didst fancy that thou wert preordained to some fate
+aloof and afar from the common children of the earth?”
+
+“Zanoni, the fate is found.”
+
+“And hast thou no terror of the future?”
+
+“The future! I forget it! Time past and present and to come reposes
+in thy smile. Ah, Zanoni, play not with the foolish credulities of my
+youth! I have been better and humbler since thy presence has dispelled
+the mist of the air. The future!--well, when I have cause to dread it, I
+will look up to heaven, and remember who guides our fate!”
+
+As she lifted her eyes above, a dark cloud swept suddenly over the
+scene. It wrapped the orange-trees, the azure ocean, the dense sands;
+but still the last images that it veiled from the charmed eyes of
+Glyndon were the forms of Viola and Zanoni. The face of the one rapt,
+serene, and radiant; the face of the other, dark, thoughtful, and locked
+in more than its usual rigidness of melancholy beauty and profound
+repose.
+
+“Rouse thyself,” said Mejnour; “thy ordeal has commenced! There are
+pretenders to the solemn science who could have shown thee the
+absent, and prated to thee, in their charlatanic jargon, of the secret
+electricities and the magnetic fluid of whose true properties they know
+but the germs and elements. I will lend thee the books of those glorious
+dupes, and thou wilt find, in the dark ages, how many erring steps have
+stumbled upon the threshold of the mighty learning, and fancied they
+had pierced the temple. Hermes and Albert and Paracelsus, I knew ye all;
+but, noble as ye were, ye were fated to be deceived. Ye had not souls
+of faith, and daring fitted for the destinies at which ye aimed! Yet
+Paracelsus--modest Paracelsus--had an arrogance that soared higher than
+all our knowledge. Ho, ho!--he thought he could make a race of men from
+chemistry; he arrogated to himself the Divine gift,--the breath of life.
+(Paracelsus, ‘De Nat. Rer.,’ lib. i.)
+
+“He would have made men, and, after all, confessed that they could be but
+pygmies! My art is to make men above mankind. But you are impatient of
+my digressions. Forgive me. All these men (they were great dreamers, as
+you desire to be) were intimate friends of mine. But they are dead and
+rotten. They talked of spirits,--but they dreaded to be in other company
+than that of men. Like orators whom I have heard, when I stood by the
+Pnyx of Athens, blazing with words like comets in the assembly, and
+extinguishing their ardour like holiday rockets when they were in the
+field. Ho, ho! Demosthenes, my hero-coward, how nimble were thy heels
+at Chaeronea! And thou art impatient still! Boy, I could tell thee such
+truths of the past as would make thee the luminary of schools. But thou
+lustest only for the shadows of the future. Thou shalt have thy wish.
+But the mind must be first exercised and trained. Go to thy room, and
+sleep; fast austerely, read no books; meditate, imagine, dream, bewilder
+thyself if thou wilt. Thought shapes out its own chaos at last. Before
+midnight, seek me again!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.IV.
+
+     It is fit that we who endeavour to rise to an elevation so
+     sublime, should study first to leave behind carnal affections,
+     the frailty of the senses, the passions that belong to matter;
+     secondly, to learn by what means we may ascend to the climax of
+     pure intellect, united with the powers above, without which never
+     can we gain the lore of secret things, nor the magic that effects
+     true wonders.--Tritemius “On Secret Things and Secret Spirits.”
+
+It wanted still many minutes of midnight, and Glyndon was once more in
+the apartment of the mystic. He had rigidly observed the fast ordained
+to him; and in the rapt and intense reveries into which his excited
+fancy had plunged him, he was not only insensible to the wants of the
+flesh,--he felt above them.
+
+Mejnour, seated beside his disciple, thus addressed him:--
+
+“Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man’s natural tendency
+is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all
+creation was formed for him. For several ages he saw in the countless
+worlds that sparkle through space like the bubbles of a shoreless ocean
+only the petty candles, the household torches, that Providence had
+been pleased to light for no other purpose but to make the night more
+agreeable to man. Astronomy has corrected this delusion of human vanity;
+and man now reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds larger and
+more glorious than his own,--that the earth on which he crawls is a
+scarce visible speck on the vast chart of creation. But in the small as
+in the vast, God is equally profuse of life. The traveller looks upon
+the tree, and fancies its boughs were formed for his shelter in the
+summer sun, or his fuel in the winter frosts. But in each leaf of these
+boughs the Creator has made a world; it swarms with innumerable races.
+Each drop of the water in yon moat is an orb more populous than a
+kingdom is of men. Everywhere, then, in this immense design, science
+brings new life to light. Life is the one pervading principle, and even
+the thing that seems to die and putrify but engenders new life, and
+changes to fresh forms of matter. Reasoning, then, by evident analogy:
+if not a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less than yonder star,
+a habitable and breathing world,--nay, if even man himself is a world to
+other lives, and millions and myriads dwell in the rivers of his blood,
+and inhabit man’s frame as man inhabits earth, commonsense (if your
+schoolmen had it) would suffice to teach that the circumfluent infinite
+which you call space--the countless Impalpable which divides earth
+from the moon and stars--is filled also with its correspondent and
+appropriate life. Is it not a visible absurdity to suppose that being is
+crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from the immensities of space?
+The law of the Great System forbids the waste even of an atom; it
+knows no spot where something of life does not breathe. In the very
+charnel-house is the nursery of production and animation. Is that true?
+Well, then, can you conceive that space, which is the Infinite itself,
+is alone a waste, is alone lifeless, is less useful to the one design of
+universal being than the dead carcass of a dog, than the peopled leaf,
+than the swarming globule? The microscope shows you the creatures on the
+leaf; no mechanical tube is yet invented to discover the nobler and more
+gifted things that hover in the illimitable air. Yet between these last
+and man is a mysterious and terrible affinity. And hence, by tales and
+legends, not wholly false nor wholly true, have arisen from time to
+time, beliefs in apparitions and spectres. If more common to the earlier
+and simpler tribes than to the men of your duller age, it is but that,
+with the first, the senses are more keen and quick. And as the savage
+can see or scent miles away the traces of a foe, invisible to the gross
+sense of the civilised animal, so the barrier itself between him and
+the creatures of the airy world is less thickened and obscured. Do you
+listen?”
+
+“With my soul!”
+
+“But first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you listen
+must be sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all earthlier
+desires. Not without reason have the so-styled magicians, in all
+lands and times, insisted on chastity and abstemious reverie as the
+communicants of inspiration. When thus prepared, science can be brought
+to aid it; the sight itself may be rendered more subtle, the nerves more
+acute, the spirit more alive and outward, and the element itself--the
+air, the space--may be made, by certain secrets of the higher chemistry,
+more palpable and clear. And this, too, is not magic, as the credulous
+call it; as I have so often said before, magic (or science that violates
+Nature) exists not: it is but the science by which Nature can be
+controlled. Now, in space there are millions of beings not literally
+spiritual, for they have all, like the animalculae unseen by the naked
+eye, certain forms of matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and
+subtle, that it is, as it were, but a film, a gossamer that clothes the
+spirit. Hence the Rosicrucian’s lovely phantoms of sylph and gnome. Yet,
+in truth, these races and tribes differ more widely, each from each,
+than the Calmuc from the Greek,--differ in attributes and powers. In the
+drop of water you see how the animalculae vary, how vast and terrible
+are some of those monster mites as compared with others. Equally so with
+the inhabitants of the atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some of
+horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as
+messengers between earth and heaven.
+
+“He who would establish intercourse with these varying beings resembles
+the traveller who would penetrate into unknown lands. He is exposed to
+strange dangers and unconjectured terrors. THAT INTERCOURSE ONCE GAINED,
+I CANNOT SECURE THEE FROM THE CHANCES TO WHICH THY JOURNEY IS EXPOSED.
+I cannot direct thee to paths free from the wanderings of the deadliest
+foes. Thou must alone, and of thyself, face and hazard all. But if thou
+art so enamoured of life as to care only to live on, no matter for what
+ends, recruiting the nerves and veins with the alchemist’s vivifying
+elixir, why seek these dangers from the intermediate tribes? Because the
+very elixir that pours a more glorious life into the frame, so sharpens
+the senses that those larvae of the air become to thee audible and
+apparent; so that, unless trained by degrees to endure the phantoms and
+subdue their malice, a life thus gifted would be the most awful doom
+man could bring upon himself. Hence it is, that though the elixir be
+compounded of the simplest herbs, his frame only is prepared to receive
+it who has gone through the subtlest trials. Nay, some, scared and
+daunted into the most intolerable horror by the sights that burst upon
+their eyes at the first draft, have found the potion less powerful to
+save than the agony and travail of Nature to destroy. To the unprepared
+the elixir is thus but the deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers of
+the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her
+tribe,--one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power
+increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy
+courage falter?”
+
+“Nay; thy words but kindle it.”
+
+“Follow me, then, and submit to the initiatory labours.”
+
+With that, Mejnour led him into the interior chamber, and proceeded
+to explain to him certain chemical operations which, though extremely
+simple in themselves, Glyndon soon perceived were capable of very
+extraordinary results.
+
+“In the remoter times,” said Mejnour, smiling, “our brotherhood were
+often compelled to recur to delusions to protect realities; and, as
+dexterous mechanicians or expert chemists, they obtained the name
+of sorcerers. Observe how easy to construct is the Spectre Lion that
+attended the renowned Leonardo da Vinci!”
+
+And Glyndon beheld with delighted surprise the simple means by which the
+wildest cheats of the imagination can be formed. The magical landscapes
+in which Baptista Porta rejoiced; the apparent change of the seasons
+with which Albertus Magnus startled the Earl of Holland; nay, even those
+more dread delusions of the Ghost and Image with which the necromancers
+of Heraclea woke the conscience of the conqueror of Plataea
+(Pausanias,--see Plutarch.),--all these, as the showman enchants
+some trembling children on a Christmas Eve with his lantern and
+phantasmagoria, Mejnour exhibited to his pupil.
+
+....
+
+“And now laugh forever at magic! when these, the very tricks, the very
+sports and frivolities of science, were the very acts which men viewed
+with abhorrence, and inquisitors and kings rewarded with the rack and
+the stake.”
+
+“But the alchemist’s transmutation of metals--”
+
+“Nature herself is a laboratory in which metals, and all elements, are
+forever at change. Easy to make gold,--easier, more commodious, and
+cheaper still, to make the pearl, the diamond, and the ruby. Oh, yes;
+wise men found sorcery in this too; but they found no sorcery in the
+discovery that by the simplest combination of things of every-day use
+they could raise a devil that would sweep away thousands of their kind
+by the breath of consuming fire. Discover what will destroy life, and
+you are a great man!--what will prolong it, and you are an imposter!
+Discover some invention in machinery that will make the rich more rich
+and the poor more poor, and they will build you a statue! Discover some
+mystery in art that will equalise physical disparities, and they will
+pull down their own houses to stone you! Ha, ha, my pupil! such is
+the world Zanoni still cares for!--you and I will leave this world to
+itself. And now that you have seen some few of the effects of science,
+begin to learn its grammar.”
+
+Mejnour then set before his pupil certain tasks, in which the rest of
+the night wore itself away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.V.
+
+     Great travell hath the gentle Calidore
+     And toyle endured...
+     There on a day,--He chaunst to spy a sort of shepheard groomes,
+     Playing on pipes and caroling apace.
+     ...He, there besyde
+     Saw a faire damzell.
+     --Spenser, “Faerie Queene,” cant. ix.
+
+For a considerable period the pupil of Mejnour was now absorbed in
+labour dependent on the most vigilant attention, on the most minute and
+subtle calculation. Results astonishing and various rewarded his toils
+and stimulated his interest. Nor were these studies limited to chemical
+discovery,--in which it is permitted me to say that the greatest marvels
+upon the organisation of physical life seemed wrought by experiments
+of the vivifying influence of heat. Mejnour professed to find a
+link between all intellectual beings in the existence of a certain
+all-pervading and invisible fluid resembling electricity, yet distinct
+from the known operations of that mysterious agency--a fluid that
+connected thought to thought with the rapidity and precision of the
+modern telegraph, and the influence of this fluid, according to Mejnour,
+extended to the remotest past,--that is to say, whenever and wheresoever
+man had thought. Thus, if the doctrine were true, all human knowledge
+became attainable through a medium established between the brain of the
+individual inquirer and all the farthest and obscurest regions in the
+universe of ideas. Glyndon was surprised to find Mejnour attached to the
+abstruse mysteries which the Pythagoreans ascribed to the occult science
+of NUMBERS. In this last, new lights glimmered dimly on his eyes; and
+he began to perceive that even the power to predict, or rather to
+calculate, results, might by-- (Here there is an erasure in the MS.)
+
+....
+
+But he observed that the last brief process by which, in each of these
+experiments, the wonder was achieved, Mejnour reserved for himself,
+and refused to communicate the secret. The answer he obtained to his
+remonstrances on this head was more stern than satisfactory:
+
+“Dost thou think,” said Mejnour, “that I would give to the mere pupil,
+whose qualities are not yet tried, powers that might change the face of
+the social world? The last secrets are intrusted only to him of whose
+virtue the Master is convinced. Patience! It is labour itself that is
+the great purifier of the mind; and by degrees the secrets will grow
+upon thyself as thy mind becomes riper to receive them.”
+
+At last Mejnour professed himself satisfied with the progress made by
+his pupil. “The hour now arrives,” he said, “when thou mayst pass the
+great but airy barrier,--when thou mayst gradually confront the terrible
+Dweller of the Threshold. Continue thy labours--continue to surpass
+thine impatience for results until thou canst fathom the causes. I leave
+thee for one month; if at the end of that period, when I return, the
+tasks set thee are completed, and thy mind prepared by contemplation
+and austere thought for the ordeal, I promise thee the ordeal shall
+commence. One caution alone I give thee: regard it as a peremptory
+command, enter not this chamber!” (They were then standing in the room
+where their experiments had been chiefly made, and in which Glyndon, on
+the night he had sought the solitude of the mystic, had nearly fallen a
+victim to his intrusion.)
+
+“Enter not this chamber till my return; or, above all, if by any search
+for materials necessary to thy toils thou shouldst venture hither,
+forbear to light the naphtha in those vessels, and to open the vases on
+yonder shelves. I leave the key of the room in thy keeping, in order to
+try thy abstinence and self-control. Young man, this very temptation is
+a part of thy trial.”
+
+With that, Mejnour placed the key in his hands; and at sunset he left
+the castle.
+
+For several days Glyndon continued immersed in employments which
+strained to the utmost all the faculties of his intellect. Even the most
+partial success depended so entirely on the abstraction of the mind, and
+the minuteness of its calculations, that there was scarcely room for any
+other thought than those absorbed in the occupation. And doubtless this
+perpetual strain of the faculties was the object of Mejnour in works
+that did not seem exactly pertinent to the purposes in view. As the
+study of the elementary mathematics, for example, is not so profitable
+in the solving of problems, useless in our after-callings, as it is
+serviceable in training the intellect to the comprehension and analysis
+of general truths.
+
+But in less than half the time which Mejnour had stated for the duration
+of his absence, all that the mystic had appointed to his toils was
+completed by the pupil; and then his mind, thus relieved from the
+drudgery and mechanism of employment, once more sought occupation in dim
+conjecture and restless fancies. His inquisitive and rash nature grew
+excited by the prohibition of Mejnour, and he found himself gazing
+too often, with perturbed and daring curiosity, upon the key of the
+forbidden chamber. He began to feel indignant at a trial of constancy
+which he deemed frivolous and puerile. What nursery tales of Bluebeard
+and his closet were revived to daunt and terrify him! How could the
+mere walls of a chamber, in which he had so often securely pursued his
+labours, start into living danger? If haunted, it could be but by those
+delusions which Mejnour had taught him to despise,--a shadowy lion,--a
+chemical phantasm! Tush! he lost half his awe of Mejnour, when he
+thought that by such tricks the sage could practise upon the very
+intellect he had awakened and instructed! Still he resisted the impulses
+of his curiosity and his pride, and, to escape from their dictation, he
+took long rambles on the hills, or amidst the valleys that surrounded
+the castle,--seeking by bodily fatigue to subdue the unreposing mind.
+One day suddenly emerging from a dark ravine, he came upon one of those
+Italian scenes of rural festivity and mirth in which the classic age
+appears to revive. It was a festival, partly agricultural, partly
+religious, held yearly by the peasants of that district. Assembled
+at the outskirts of a village, animated crowds, just returned from a
+procession to a neighbouring chapel, were now forming themselves into
+groups: the old to taste the vintage, the young to dance,--all to be
+gay and happy. This sudden picture of easy joy and careless ignorance,
+contrasting so forcibly with the intense studies and that parching
+desire for wisdom which had so long made up his own life, and burned at
+his own heart, sensibly affected Glyndon. As he stood aloof and gazing
+on them, the young man felt once more that he was young. The memory of
+all he had been content to sacrifice spoke to him like the sharp voice
+of remorse. The flitting forms of the women in their picturesque attire,
+their happy laughter ringing through the cool, still air of the autumn
+noon, brought back to the heart, or rather perhaps to the senses, the
+images of his past time, the “golden shepherd hours,” when to live was
+but to enjoy.
+
+He approached nearer and nearer to the scene, and suddenly a noisy
+group swept round him; and Maestro Paolo, tapping him familiarly on the
+shoulder, exclaimed in a hearty voice, “Welcome, Excellency!--we are
+rejoiced to see you amongst us.” Glyndon was about to reply to this
+salutation, when his eyes rested upon the face of a young girl leaning
+on Paolo’s arm, of a beauty so attractive that his colour rose and his
+heart beat as he encountered her gaze. Her eyes sparkled with a roguish
+and petulant mirth, her parted lips showed teeth like pearls; as if
+impatient at the pause of her companion from the revel of the rest,
+her little foot beat the ground to a measure that she half-hummed,
+half-chanted. Paolo laughed as he saw the effect the girl had produced
+upon the young foreigner.
+
+“Will you not dance, Excellency? Come, lay aside your greatness, and be
+merry, like us poor devils. See how our pretty Fillide is longing for a
+partner. Take compassion on her.”
+
+Fillide pouted at this speech, and, disengaging her arm from Paolo’s,
+turned away, but threw over her shoulder a glance half inviting, half
+defying. Glyndon, almost involuntarily, advanced to her, and addressed
+her.
+
+Oh, yes; he addresses her! She looks down, and smiles. Paolo leaves them
+to themselves, sauntering off with a devil-me-carish air. Fillide speaks
+now, and looks up at the scholar’s face with arch invitation. He shakes
+his head; Fillide laughs, and her laugh is silvery. She points to a gay
+mountaineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon feel
+jealous? Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more? He
+offers his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry.
+What! is it so, indeed! They whirl into the noisy circle of the
+revellers. Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, and
+breaking thy brains on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide bounds
+along! How her lithesome waist supples itself to thy circling arm!
+Tara-ra-tara, ta-tara, rara-ra! What the devil is in the measure that
+it makes the blood course like quicksilver through the veins? Was there
+ever a pair of eyes like Fillide’s? Nothing of the cold stars there! Yet
+how they twinkle and laugh at thee! And that rosy, pursed-up mouth that
+will answer so sparingly to thy flatteries, as if words were a waste of
+time, and kisses were their proper language. Oh, pupil of Mejnour! Oh,
+would-be Rosicrucian, Platonist, Magian, I know not what! I am ashamed
+of thee! What, in the names of Averroes and Burri and Agrippa and Hermes
+have become of thy austere contemplations? Was it for this thou didst
+resign Viola? I don’t think thou hast the smallest recollection of the
+elixir or the Cabala. Take care! What are you about, sir? Why do you
+clasp that small hand locked within your own? Why do you--Tara-rara
+tara-ra tara-rara-ra, rarara, ta-ra, a-ra! Keep your eyes off those
+slender ankles and that crimson bodice! Tara-rara-ra! There they go
+again! And now they rest under the broad trees. The revel has whirled
+away from them. They hear--or do they not hear--the laughter at the
+distance? They see--or if they have their eyes about them, they SHOULD
+see--couple after couple gliding by, love-talking and love-looking. But
+I will lay a wager, as they sit under that tree, and the round sun goes
+down behind the mountains, that they see or hear very little except
+themselves.
+
+“Hollo, Signor Excellency! and how does your partner please you? Come
+and join our feast, loiterers; one dances more merrily after wine.”
+
+Down goes the round sun; up comes the autumn moon. Tara, tara, rarara,
+rarara, tarara-ra! Dancing again; is it a dance, or some movement gayer,
+noisier, wilder still? How they glance and gleam through the night
+shadows, those flitting forms! What confusion!--what order! Ha, that is
+the Tarantula dance; Maestro Paolo foots it bravely! Diavolo, what
+fury! the Tarantula has stung them all. Dance or die; it is fury,--the
+Corybantes, the Maenads, the--Ho, ho! more wine! the Sabbat of the
+Witches at Benevento is a joke to this! From cloud to cloud wanders the
+moon,--now shining, now lost. Dimness while the maiden blushes; light
+when the maiden smiles.
+
+“Fillide, thou art an enchantress!”
+
+“Buona notte, Excellency; you will see me again!”
+
+“Ah, young man,” said an old, decrepit, hollow-eyed octogenarian,
+leaning on his staff, “make the best of your youth. I, too, once had
+a Fillide! I was handsomer than you then! Alas! if we could be always
+young!”
+
+“Always young!” Glyndon started, as he turned his gaze from the fresh,
+fair, rosy face of the girl, and saw the eyes dropping rheum, the yellow
+wrinkled skin, the tottering frame of the old man.
+
+“Ha, ha!” said the decrepit creature, hobbling near to him, and with a
+malicious laugh. “Yet I, too, was young once! Give me a baioccho for a
+glass of aqua vitae!”
+
+Tara, rara, ra-rara, tara, rara-ra! There dances Youth! Wrap thy rags
+round thee, and totter off, Old Age!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VI.
+
+     Whilest Calidore does follow that faire mayd,
+     Unmindful of his vow and high beheast
+     Which by the Faerie Queene was on him layd.
+     --Spenser, “Faerie Queene,” cant. x. s. 1.
+
+It was that grey, indistinct, struggling interval between the night and
+the dawn, when Clarence stood once more in his chamber. The abstruse
+calculations lying on his table caught his eye, and filled him with a
+sentiment of weariness and distaste. But--“Alas, if we could be
+always young! Oh, thou horrid spectre of the old, rheum-eyed man!
+What apparition can the mystic chamber shadow forth more ugly and more
+hateful than thou? Oh, yes, if we could be always young! But not [thinks
+the neophyte now]--not to labour forever at these crabbed figures and
+these cold compounds of herbs and drugs. No; but to enjoy, to love, to
+revel! What should be the companion of youth but pleasure? And the gift
+of eternal youth may be mine this very hour! What means this prohibition
+of Mejnour’s? Is it not of the same complexion as his ungenerous
+reserve even in the minutest secrets of chemistry, or the numbers of
+his Cabala?--compelling me to perform all the toils, and yet withholding
+from me the knowledge of the crowning result? No doubt he will still,
+on his return, show me that the great mystery CAN be attained; but will
+still forbid ME to attain it. Is it not as if he desired to keep my
+youth the slave to his age; to make me dependent solely on himself; to
+bind me to a journeyman’s service by perpetual excitement to curiosity,
+and the sight of the fruits he places beyond my lips?” These, and many
+reflections still more repining, disturbed and irritated him. Heated
+with wine--excited by the wild revels he had left--he was unable to
+sleep. The image of that revolting Old Age which Time, unless defeated,
+must bring upon himself, quickened the eagerness of his desire for the
+dazzling and imperishable Youth he ascribed to Zanoni. The prohibition
+only served to create a spirit of defiance. The reviving day, laughing
+jocundly through his lattice, dispelled all the fears and superstitions
+that belong to night. The mystic chamber presented to his imagination
+nothing to differ from any other apartment in the castle. What foul or
+malignant apparition could harm him in the light of that blessed sun!
+It was the peculiar, and on the whole most unhappy, contradiction in
+Glyndon’s nature, that while his reasonings led him to doubt,--and doubt
+rendered him in MORAL conduct irresolute and unsteady; he was PHYSICALLY
+brave to rashness. Nor is this uncommon: scepticism and presumption are
+often twins. When a man of this character determines upon any action,
+personal fear never deters him; and for the moral fear, any sophistry
+suffices to self-will. Almost without analysing himself the mental
+process by which his nerves hardened themselves and his limbs moved,
+he traversed the corridor, gained Mejnour’s apartment, and opened the
+forbidden door. All was as he had been accustomed to see it, save
+that on a table in the centre of the room lay open a large volume. He
+approached, and gazed on the characters on the page; they were in a
+cipher, the study of which had made a part of his labours. With but
+slight difficulty he imagined that he interpreted the meaning of the
+first sentences, and that they ran thus:--
+
+“To quaff the inner life, is to see the outer life: to live in defiance
+of time, is to live in the whole. He who discovers the elixir discovers
+what lies in space; for the spirit that vivifies the frame strengthens
+the senses. There is attraction in the elementary principle of light.
+In the lamps of Rosicrucius the fire is the pure elementary principle.
+Kindle the lamps while thou openst the vessel that contains the elixir,
+and the light attracts towards thee those beings whose life is that
+light. Beware of Fear. Fear is the deadliest enemy to Knowledge.” Here
+the ciphers changed their character, and became incomprehensible. But
+had he not read enough? Did not the last sentence suffice?--“Beware of
+Fear!” It was as if Mejnour had purposely left the page open,--as if the
+trial was, in truth, the reverse of the one pretended; as if the mystic
+had designed to make experiment of his COURAGE while affecting but that
+of his FORBEARANCE. Not Boldness, but Fear, was the deadliest enemy
+to Knowledge. He moved to the shelves on which the crystal vases were
+placed; with an untrembling hand he took from one of them the stopper,
+and a delicious odor suddenly diffused itself through the room. The air
+sparkled as if with a diamond-dust. A sense of unearthly delight,--of an
+existence that seemed all spirit, flashed through his whole frame; and
+a faint, low, but exquisite music crept, thrilling, through the chamber.
+At this moment he heard a voice in the corridor calling on his name;
+and presently there was a knock at the door without. “Are you there,
+signor?” said the clear tones of Maestro Paolo. Glyndon hastily reclosed
+and replaced the vial, and bidding Paolo await him in his own apartment,
+tarried till he heard the intruder’s steps depart; he then reluctantly
+quitted the room. As he locked the door, he still heard the dying
+strain of that fairy music; and with a light step and a joyous heart he
+repaired to Paolo, inly resolving to visit again the chamber at an hour
+when his experiment would be safe from interruption.
+
+As he crossed his threshold, Paolo started back, and exclaimed, “Why,
+Excellency! I scarcely recognise you! Amusement, I see, is a great
+beautifier to the young. Yesterday you looked so pale and haggard; but
+Fillide’s merry eyes have done more for you than the Philosopher’s
+Stone (saints forgive me for naming it) ever did for the wizards.”
+ And Glyndon, glancing at the old Venetian mirror as Paolo spoke, was
+scarcely less startled than Paolo himself at the change in his own mien
+and bearing. His form, before bent with thought, seemed to him taller by
+half the head, so lithesome and erect rose his slender stature; his
+eyes glowed, his cheeks bloomed with health and the innate and pervading
+pleasure. If the mere fragrance of the elixir was thus potent, well
+might the alchemists have ascribed life and youth to the draught!
+
+“You must forgive me, Excellency, for disturbing you,” said Paolo,
+producing a letter from his pouch; “but our Patron has just written to
+me to say that he will be here to-morrow, and desired me to lose not a
+moment in giving to yourself this billet, which he enclosed.”
+
+“Who brought the letter?”
+
+“A horseman, who did not wait for any reply.”
+
+Glyndon opened the letter, and read as follows:--
+
+“I return a week sooner than I had intended, and you will expect me
+to-morrow. You will then enter on the ordeal you desire, but remember
+that, in doing so, you must reduce Being as far as possible into Mind.
+The senses must be mortified and subdued,--not the whisper of one
+passion heard. Thou mayst be master of the Cabala and the Chemistry; but
+thou must be master also over the Flesh and the Blood,--over Love
+and Vanity, Ambition and Hate. I will trust to find thee so. Fast and
+meditate till we meet!”
+
+Glyndon crumpled the letter in his hand with a smile of disdain. What!
+more drudgery,--more abstinence! Youth without love and pleasure! Ha,
+ha! baffled Mejnour, thy pupil shall gain thy secrets without thine aid!
+
+“And Fillide! I passed her cottage in my way,--she blushed and sighed
+when I jested her about you, Excellency!”
+
+“Well, Paolo! I thank thee for so charming an introduction. Thine must
+be a rare life.”
+
+“Ah, Excellency, while we are young, nothing like adventure,--except
+love, wine, and laughter!”
+
+“Very true. Farewell, Maestro Paolo; we will talk more with each other
+in a few days.”
+
+All that morning Glyndon was almost overpowered with the new sentiment
+of happiness that had entered into him. He roamed into the woods, and
+he felt a pleasure that resembled his earlier life of an artist, but a
+pleasure yet more subtle and vivid, in the various colours of the
+autumn foliage. Certainly Nature seemed to be brought closer to him; he
+comprehended better all that Mejnour had often preached to him of the
+mystery of sympathies and attractions. He was about to enter into the
+same law as those mute children of the forests. He was to know THE
+RENEWAL OF LIFE; the seasons that chilled to winter should yet bring
+again the bloom and the mirth of spring. Man’s common existence is as
+one year to the vegetable world: he has his spring, his summer, his
+autumn, and winter,--but only ONCE. But the giant oaks round him go
+through a revolving series of verdure and youth, and the green of the
+centenarian is as vivid in the beams of May as that of the sapling by
+its side. “Mine shall be your spring, but not your winter!” exclaimed
+the aspirant.
+
+Wrapped in these sanguine and joyous reveries, Glyndon, quitting the
+woods, found himself amidst cultivated fields and vineyards to which his
+footstep had not before wandered; and there stood, by the skirts of a
+green lane that reminded him of verdant England, a modest house,--half
+cottage, half farm. The door was open, and he saw a girl at work with
+her distaff. She looked up, uttered a slight cry, and, tripping gayly
+into the lane to his side, he recognised the dark-eyed Fillide.
+
+“Hist!” she said, archly putting her finger to her lip; “do not speak
+loud,--my mother is asleep within; and I knew you would come to see me.
+It is kind!”
+
+Glyndon, with a little embarrassment, accepted the compliment to his
+kindness, which he did not exactly deserve. “You have thought, then, of
+me, fair Fillide?”
+
+“Yes,” answered the girl, colouring, but with that frank, bold
+ingenuousness, which characterises the females of Italy, especially
+of the lower class, and in the southern provinces,--“oh, yes! I have
+thought of little else. Paolo said he knew you would visit me.”
+
+“And what relation is Paolo to you?”
+
+“None; but a good friend to us all. My brother is one of his band.”
+
+“One of his band!--a robber?”
+
+“We of the mountains do not call a mountaineer ‘a robber,’ signor.”
+
+“I ask pardon. Do you not tremble sometimes for your brother’s life? The
+law--”
+
+“Law never ventures into these defiles. Tremble for him! No. My father
+and grandsire were of the same calling. I often wish I were a man!”
+
+“By these lips, I am enchanted that your wish cannot be realised.”
+
+“Fie, signor! And do you really love me?”
+
+“With my whole heart!”
+
+“And I thee!” said the girl, with a candour that seemed innocent, as she
+suffered him to clasp her hand.
+
+“But,” she added, “thou wilt soon leave us; and I--” She stopped short,
+and the tears stood in her eyes.
+
+There was something dangerous in this, it must be confessed. Certainly
+Fillide had not the seraphic loveliness of Viola; but hers was a beauty
+that equally at least touched the senses. Perhaps Glyndon had never
+really loved Viola; perhaps the feelings with which she had inspired
+him were not of that ardent character which deserves the name of love.
+However that be, he thought, as he gazed on those dark eyes, that he had
+never loved before.
+
+“And couldst thou not leave thy mountains?” he whispered, as he drew yet
+nearer to her.
+
+“Dost thou ask me?” she said, retreating, and looking him steadfastly
+in the face. “Dost thou know what we daughters of the mountains are? You
+gay, smooth cavaliers of cities seldom mean what you speak. With you,
+love is amusement; with us, it is life. Leave these mountains! Well! I
+should not leave my nature.”
+
+“Keep thy nature ever,--it is a sweet one.”
+
+“Yes, sweet while thou art true; stern, if thou art faithless. Shall I
+tell thee what I--what the girls of this country are? Daughters of men
+whom you call robbers, we aspire to be the companions of our lovers or
+our husbands. We love ardently; we own it boldly. We stand by your side
+in danger; we serve you as slaves in safety: we never change, and we
+resent change. You may reproach, strike us, trample us as a dog,--we
+bear all without a murmur; betray us, and no tiger is more relentless.
+Be true, and our hearts reward you; be false, and our hands revenge!
+Dost thou love me now?”
+
+During this speech the Italian’s countenance had most eloquently aided
+her words,--by turns soft, frank, fierce,--and at the last question she
+inclined her head humbly, and stood, as in fear of his reply, before
+him. The stern, brave, wild spirit, in which what seemed unfeminine
+was yet, if I may so say, still womanly, did not recoil, it rather
+captivated Glyndon. He answered readily, briefly, and freely,
+“Fillide,--yes!”
+
+Oh, “yes!” forsooth, Clarence Glyndon! Every light nature answers “yes”
+ lightly to such a question from lips so rosy! Have a care,--have a care!
+Why the deuce, Mejnour, do you leave your pupil of four-and-twenty to
+the mercy of these wild cats-a-mountain! Preach fast, and abstinence,
+and sublime renunciation of the cheats of the senses! Very well in
+you, sir, Heaven knows how many ages old; but at four-and-twenty, your
+Hierophant would have kept you out of Fillide’s way, or you would have
+had small taste for the Cabala.
+
+And so they stood, and talked, and vowed, and whispered, till the girl’s
+mother made some noise within the house, and Fillide bounded back to the
+distaff, her finger once more on her lip.
+
+“There is more magic in Fillide than in Mejnour,” said Glyndon to
+himself, walking gayly home; “yet on second thoughts, I know not if I
+quite so well like a character so ready for revenge. But he who has the
+real secret can baffle even the vengeance of a woman, and disarm all
+danger!”
+
+Sirrah! dost thou even already meditate the possibility of treason?
+Oh, well said Zanoni, “to pour pure water into the muddy well does but
+disturb the mud.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VII.
+
+     Cernis, custodia qualis
+     Vestibulo sedeat? facies quae limina servet?
+     “Aeneid,” lib. vi. 574.
+
+     (See you what porter sits within the vestibule?--what face
+     watches at the threshold?)
+
+And it is profound night. All is at rest within the old castle,--all is
+breathless under the melancholy stars. Now is the time. Mejnour with his
+austere wisdom,--Mejnour the enemy to love; Mejnour, whose eye will read
+thy heart, and refuse thee the promised secrets because the sunny face
+of Fillide disturbs the lifeless shadow that he calls repose,--Mejnour
+comes to-morrow! Seize the night! Beware of fear! Never, or this hour!
+So, brave youth,--brave despite all thy errors,--so, with a steady
+pulse, thy hand unlocks once more the forbidden door.
+
+He placed his lamp on the table beside the book, which still lay there
+opened; he turned over the leaves, but could not decipher their meaning
+till he came to the following passage:--
+
+“When, then, the pupil is thus initiated and prepared, let him open the
+casement, light the lamps, and bathe his temples with the elixir. He
+must beware how he presume yet to quaff the volatile and fiery spirit.
+To taste till repeated inhalations have accustomed the frame gradually
+to the ecstatic liquid, is to know not life, but death.”
+
+He could penetrate no farther into the instructions; the cipher again
+changed. He now looked steadily and earnestly round the chamber. The
+moonlight came quietly through the lattice as his hand opened it,
+and seemed, as it rested on the floor, and filled the walls, like the
+presence of some ghostly and mournful Power. He ranged the mystic lamps
+(nine in number) round the centre of the room, and lighted them one by
+one. A flame of silvery and azure tints sprung up from each, and lighted
+the apartment with a calm and yet most dazzling splendour; but presently
+this light grew more soft and dim, as a thin, grey cloud, like a mist,
+gradually spread over the room; and an icy thrill shot through the heart
+of the Englishman, and quickly gathered over him like the coldness
+of death. Instinctively aware of his danger, he tottered, though with
+difficulty, for his limbs seemed rigid and stone-like, to the shelf that
+contained the crystal vials; hastily he inhaled the spirit, and laved
+his temples with the sparkling liquid. The same sensation of vigour
+and youth, and joy and airy lightness, that he had felt in the morning,
+instantaneously replaced the deadly numbness that just before had
+invaded the citadel of life. He stood, with his arms folded on his bosom
+erect and dauntless, to watch what should ensue.
+
+The vapour had now assumed almost the thickness and seeming consistency
+of a snow-cloud; the lamps piercing it like stars. And now he distinctly
+saw shapes, somewhat resembling in outline those of the human form,
+gliding slowly and with regular evolutions through the cloud. They
+appeared bloodless; their bodies were transparent, and contracted or
+expanded like the folds of a serpent. As they moved in majestic order,
+he heard a low sound--the ghost, as it were, of voice--which each caught
+and echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed the
+chant of some unspeakably tranquil joy. None of these apparitions heeded
+him. His intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one of
+this movement of aerial happiness,--for such it seemed to him,--made him
+stretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud, but only an inarticulate
+whisper passed his lips; and the movement and the music went on the same
+as if the mortal were not there. Slowly they glided round and aloft,
+till, in the same majestic order, one after one, they floated through
+the casement and were lost in the moonlight; then, as his eyes followed
+them, the casement became darkened with some object undistinguishable at
+the first gaze, but which sufficed mysteriously to change into ineffable
+horror the delight he had before experienced. By degrees this object
+shaped itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head covered with
+a dark veil through which glared, with livid and demoniac fire, eyes
+that froze the marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face was
+distinguishable,--nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror,
+that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased a
+thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the phantom glided slowly into the
+chamber.
+
+The cloud retreated from it as it advanced; the bright lamps grew wan,
+and flickered restlessly as at the breath of its presence. Its form was
+veiled as the face, but the outline was that of a female; yet it moved
+not as move even the ghosts that simulate the living. It seemed rather
+to crawl as some vast misshapen reptile; and pausing, at length it
+cowered beside the table which held the mystic volume, and again fixed
+its eyes through the filmy veil on the rash invoker. All fancies, the
+most grotesque, of monk or painter in the early North, would have failed
+to give to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity
+which spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone. All else
+so dark,--shrouded, veiled and larva-like. But that burning glare so
+intense, so livid, yet so living, had in it something that was almost
+HUMAN in its passion of hate and mockery,--something that served to
+show that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook of
+matter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an enemy to
+material forms. As, clinging with the grasp of agony to the wall,--his
+hair erect, his eyeballs starting, he still gazed back upon that
+appalling gaze,--the Image spoke to him: his soul rather than his ear
+comprehended the words it said.
+
+“Thou hast entered the immeasurable region. I am the Dweller of the
+Threshold. What wouldst thou with me? Silent? Dost thou fear me? Am
+I not thy beloved? Is it not for me that thou hast rendered up the
+delights of thy race? Wouldst thou be wise? Mine is the wisdom of the
+countless ages. Kiss me, my mortal lover.” And the Horror crawled near
+and nearer to him; it crept to his side, its breath breathed upon his
+cheek! With a sharp cry he fell to the earth insensible, and knew no
+more till, far in the noon of the next day, he opened his eyes and found
+himself in his bed,--the glorious sun streaming through his lattice,
+and the bandit Paolo by his side, engaged in polishing his carbine, and
+whistling a Calabrian love-air.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VIII.
+
+     Thus man pursues his weary calling,
+     And wrings the hard life from the sky,
+     While happiness unseen is falling
+     Down from God’s bosom silently.
+     --Schiller.
+
+In one of those islands whose history the imperishable literature and
+renown of Athens yet invest with melancholy interest, and on which
+Nature, in whom “there is nothing melancholy,” still bestows a glory of
+scenery and climate equally radiant for the freeman or the
+slave,--the Ionian, the Venetian, the Gaul, the Turk, or the restless
+Briton,--Zanoni had fixed his bridal home. There the air carries with it
+the perfumes of the plains for miles along the blue, translucent deep.
+(See Dr. Holland’s “Travels to the Ionian Isles,” etc., page 18.) Seen
+from one of its green sloping heights, the island he had selected seemed
+one delicious garden. The towers and turrets of its capital gleaming
+amidst groves of oranges and lemons; vineyards and olive-woods filling
+up the valleys, and clambering along the hill-sides; and villa, farm,
+and cottage covered with luxuriant trellises of dark-green leaves and
+purple fruit. For there the prodigal beauty yet seems half to justify
+those graceful superstitions of a creed that, too enamoured of earth,
+rather brought the deities to man, than raised the man to their less
+alluring and less voluptuous Olympus.
+
+And still to the fishermen, weaving yet their antique dances on the
+sand; to the maiden, adorning yet, with many a silver fibula, her glossy
+tresses under the tree that overshadows her tranquil cot,--the same
+Great Mother that watched over the wise of Samos, the democracy of
+Corcyra, the graceful and deep-taught loveliness of Miletus, smiles
+as graciously as of yore. For the North, philosophy and freedom are
+essentials to human happiness; in the lands which Aphrodite rose from
+the waves to govern, as the Seasons, hand in hand, stood to welcome her
+on the shores, Nature is all sufficient. (Homeric Hymn.)
+
+The isle which Zanoni had selected was one of the loveliest in that
+divine sea. His abode, at some distance from the city, but near one of
+the creeks on the shore, belonged to a Venetian, and, though small, had
+more of elegance than the natives ordinarily cared for. On the seas, and
+in sight, rode his vessel. His Indians, as before, ministered in
+mute gravity to the service of the household. No spot could be more
+beautiful,--no solitude less invaded. To the mysterious knowledge of
+Zanoni, to the harmless ignorance of Viola, the babbling and garish
+world of civilised man was alike unheeded. The loving sky and the lovely
+earth are companions enough to Wisdom and to Ignorance while they love.
+
+Although, as I have before said, there was nothing in the visible
+occupations of Zanoni that betrayed a cultivator of the occult sciences,
+his habits were those of a man who remembers or reflects. He loved
+to roam alone, chiefly at dawn, or at night, when the moon was clear
+(especially in each month, at its rise and full), miles and miles away
+over the rich inlands of the island, and to cull herbs and flowers,
+which he hoarded with jealous care. Sometimes, at the dead of night,
+Viola would wake by an instinct that told her he was not by her side,
+and, stretching out her arms, find that the instinct had not deceived
+her. But she early saw that he was reserved on his peculiar habits; and
+if at times a chill, a foreboding, a suspicious awe crept over her, she
+forebore to question him.
+
+But his rambles were not always unaccompanied,--he took pleasure in
+excursions less solitary. Often, when the sea lay before them like
+a lake, the barren dreariness of the opposite coast of Cephallenia
+contrasting the smiling shores on which they dwelt, Viola and himself
+would pass days in cruising slowly around the coast, or in visits to
+the neighbouring isles. Every spot of the Greek soil, “that fair
+Fable-Land,” seemed to him familiar; and as he conversed of the past and
+its exquisite traditions, he taught Viola to love the race from which
+have descended the poetry and the wisdom of the world. There was much in
+Zanoni, as she knew him better, that deepened the fascination in which
+Viola was from the first enthralled. His love for herself was so tender,
+so vigilant, and had that best and most enduring attribute, that it
+seemed rather grateful for the happiness in its own cares than vain of
+the happiness it created. His habitual mood with all who approached him
+was calm and gentle, almost to apathy. An angry word never passed his
+lips,--an angry gleam never shot from his eyes. Once they had been
+exposed to the danger not uncommon in those then half-savage lands. Some
+pirates who infested the neighbouring coasts had heard of the arrival
+of the strangers, and the seamen Zanoni employed had gossiped of their
+master’s wealth. One night, after Viola had retired to rest, she was
+awakened by a slight noise below. Zanoni was not by her side; she
+listened in some alarm. Was that a groan that came upon her ear? She
+started up, she went to the door; all was still. A footstep now slowly
+approached, and Zanoni entered calm as usual, and seemed unconscious of
+her fears.
+
+The next morning three men were found dead at the threshold of the
+principal entrance, the door of which had been forced. They were
+recognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and terrible
+marauders of the coasts,--men stained with a thousand murders, and who
+had never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of rapine
+had impelled them. The footsteps of many others were tracked to the
+seashore. It seemed that their accomplices must have fled on the death
+of their leaders. But when the Venetian Proveditore, or authority, of
+the island, came to examine into the matter, the most unaccountable
+mystery was the manner in which these ruffians had met their fate.
+Zanoni had not stirred from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursued
+his chemical studies. None of the servants had even been disturbed from
+their slumbers. No marks of human violence were on the bodies of the
+dead. They died, and made no sign. From that moment Zanoni’s house--nay,
+the whole vicinity--was sacred. The neighbouring villages, rejoiced
+to be delivered from a scourge, regarded the stranger as one whom the
+Pagiana (or Virgin) held under her especial protection.
+
+In truth, the lively Greeks around, facile to all external impressions,
+and struck with the singular and majestic beauty of the man who knew
+their language as a native, whose voice often cheered them in their
+humble sorrows, and whose hand was never closed to their wants,
+long after he had left their shore preserved his memory by grateful
+traditions, and still point to the lofty platanus beneath which they had
+often seen him seated, alone and thoughtful, in the heats of noon. But
+Zanoni had haunts less open to the gaze than the shade of the platanus.
+In that isle there are the bituminous springs which Herodotus has
+commemorated. Often at night, the moon, at least, beheld him emerging
+from the myrtle and cystus that clothe the hillocks around the marsh
+that imbeds the pools containing the inflammable materia, all the
+medical uses of which, as applied to the nerves of organic life, modern
+science has not yet perhaps explored. Yet more often would he pass
+his hours in a cavern, by the loneliest part of the beach, where the
+stalactites seem almost arranged by the hand of art, and which the
+superstition of the peasants associates, in some ancient legends, with
+the numerous and almost incessant earthquakes to which the island is so
+singularly subjected.
+
+Whatever the pursuits that instigated these wanderings and favoured
+these haunts, either they were linked with, or else subordinate to, one
+main and master desire, which every fresh day passed in the sweet human
+company of Viola confirmed and strengthened.
+
+The scene that Glyndon had witnessed in his trance was faithful to
+truth. And some little time after the date of that night, Viola
+was dimly aware that an influence, she knew not of what nature, was
+struggling to establish itself over her happy life. Visions indistinct
+and beautiful, such as those she had known in her earlier days, but more
+constant and impressive, began to haunt her night and day when Zanoni
+was absent, to fade in his presence, and seem less fair than THAT.
+Zanoni questioned her eagerly and minutely of these visitations, but
+seemed dissatisfied, and at times perplexed, by her answers.
+
+“Tell me not,” he said, one day, “of those unconnected images, those
+evolutions of starry shapes in a choral dance, or those delicious
+melodies that seem to thee of the music and the language of the distant
+spheres. Has no ONE shape been to thee more distinct and more beautiful
+than the rest,--no voice uttering, or seeming to utter, thine own
+tongue, and whispering to thee of strange secrets and solemn knowledge?”
+
+“No; all is confused in these dreams, whether of day or night; and when
+at the sound of thy footsteps I recover, my memory retains nothing but
+a vague impression of happiness. How different--how cold--to the rapture
+of hanging on thy smile, and listening to thy voice, when it says, ‘I
+love thee!’”
+
+“Yet, how is it that visions less fair than these once seemed to thee
+so alluring? How is it that they then stirred thy fancies and filled
+thy heart? Once thou didst desire a fairy-land, and now thou seemest so
+contented with common life.”
+
+“Have I not explained it to thee before? Is it common life, then, to
+love, and to live with the one we love? My true fairy-land is won! Speak
+to me of no other.”
+
+And so night surprised them by the lonely beach; and Zanoni, allured
+from his sublimer projects, and bending over that tender face, forgot
+that, in the Harmonious Infinite which spread around, there were other
+worlds than that one human heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.IX.
+
+     There is a principle of the soul, superior to all nature, through
+     which we are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the
+     world.  When the soul is elevated to natures better than itself,
+     THEN it is entirely separated from subordinate natures, exchanges
+     this for another life, and, deserting the order of things with
+     which it was connected, links and mingles itself with another.
+     --Iamblichus.
+
+“Adon-Ai! Adon-Ai!--appear, appear!”
+
+And in the lonely cave, whence once had gone forth the oracles of
+a heathen god, there emerged from the shadows of fantastic rocks a
+luminous and gigantic column, glittering and shifting. It resembled the
+shining but misty spray which, seen afar off, a fountain seems to send
+up on a starry night. The radiance lit the stalactites, the crags,
+the arches of the cave, and shed a pale and tremulous splendour on the
+features of Zanoni.
+
+“Son of Eternal Light,” said the invoker, “thou to whose knowledge,
+grade after grade, race after race, I attained at last, on the
+broad Chaldean plains; thou from whom I have drawn so largely of the
+unutterable knowledge that yet eternity alone can suffice to drain; thou
+who, congenial with myself, so far as our various beings will permit,
+hast been for centuries my familiar and my friend,--answer me and
+counsel!”
+
+From the column there emerged a shape of unimaginable glory. Its
+face was that of a man in its first youth, but solemn, as with the
+consciousness of eternity and the tranquillity of wisdom; light, like
+starbeams, flowed through its transparent veins; light made its limbs
+themselves, and undulated, in restless sparkles, through the waves of
+its dazzling hair. With its arms folded on its breast, it stood distant
+a few feet from Zanoni, and its low voice murmured gently, “My counsels
+were sweet to thee once; and once, night after night, thy soul could
+follow my wings through the untroubled splendours of the Infinite. Now
+thou hast bound thyself back to the earth by its strongest chains, and
+the attraction to the clay is more potent than the sympathies that drew
+to thy charms the Dweller of the Starbeam and the Air. When last thy
+soul hearkened to me, the senses already troubled thine intellect and
+obscured thy vision. Once again I come to thee; but thy power even to
+summon me to thy side is fading from thy spirit, as sunshine fades from
+the wave when the winds drive the cloud between the ocean and the sky.”
+
+“Alas, Adon-Ai!” answered the seer, mournfully, “I know too well the
+conditions of the being which thy presence was wont to rejoice. I know
+that our wisdom comes but from the indifference to the things of the
+world which the wisdom masters. The mirror of the soul cannot reflect
+both earth and heaven; and the one vanishes from the surface as the
+other is glassed upon its deeps. But it is not to restore me to that
+sublime abstraction in which the intellect, free and disembodied, rises,
+region after region, to the spheres,--that once again, and with the
+agony and travail of enfeebled power I have called thee to mine aid. I
+love; and in love I begin to live in the sweet humanities of another. If
+wise, yet in all which makes danger powerless against myself, or those
+on whom I can gaze from the calm height of indifferent science, I am
+blind as the merest mortal to the destinies of the creature that makes
+my heart beat with the passions which obscure my gaze.”
+
+“What matter!” answered Adon-Ai. “Thy love must be but a mockery of the
+name; thou canst not love as they do for whom there are death and the
+grave. A short time,--like a day in thy incalculable life,--and the form
+thou dotest on is dust! Others of the nether world go hand in hand, each
+with each, unto the tomb; hand in hand they ascend from the worm to new
+cycles of existence. For thee, below are ages; for her, but hours. And
+for her and thee--O poor, but mighty one!--will there be even a joint
+hereafter! Through what grades and heavens of spiritualised being will
+her soul have passed when thou, the solitary loiterer, comest from the
+vapours of the earth to the gates of light!”
+
+“Son of the Starbeam, thinkest thou that this thought is not with me
+forever; and seest thou not that I have invoked thee to hearken and
+minister to my design? Readest thou not my desire and dream to raise the
+conditions of her being to my own? Thou, Adon-Ai, bathing the celestial
+joy that makes thy life in the oceans of eternal splendour,--thou,
+save by the sympathies of knowledge, canst conjecture not what I,
+the offspring of mortals, feel--debarred yet from the objects of the
+tremendous and sublime ambition that first winged my desires above the
+clay--when I see myself compelled to stand in this low world alone. I
+have sought amongst my tribe for comrades, and in vain. At last I have
+found a mate. The wild bird and the wild beast have theirs; and my
+mastery over the malignant tribes of terror can banish their larvae from
+the path that shall lead her upward, till the air of eternity fits the
+frame for the elixir that baffles death.”
+
+“And thou hast begun the initiation, and thou art foiled! I know it.
+Thou hast conjured to her sleep the fairest visions; thou hast invoked
+the loveliest children of the air to murmur their music to her trance,
+and her soul heeds them not, and, returning to the earth, escapes from
+their control. Blind one, wherefore? canst thou not perceive? Because
+in her soul all is love. There is no intermediate passion with which the
+things thou wouldst charm to her have association and affinities. Their
+attraction is but to the desires and cravings of the INTELLECT. What
+have they with the PASSION that is of earth, and the HOPE that goes
+direct to heaven?”
+
+“But can there be no medium--no link--in which our souls, as our hearts,
+can be united, and so mine may have influence over her own?”
+
+“Ask me not,--thou wilt not comprehend me!”
+
+“I adjure thee!--speak!”
+
+“When two souls are divided, knowest thou not that a third in which both
+meet and live is the link between them!”
+
+“I do comprehend thee, Adon-Ai,” said Zanoni, with a light of more human
+joy upon his face than it had ever before been seen to wear; “and if my
+destiny, which here is dark to mine eyes, vouchsafes to me the happy lot
+of the humble,--if ever there be a child that I may clasp to my bosom
+and call my own--”
+
+“And is it to be man at last, that thou hast aspired to be more than
+man?”
+
+“But a child,--a second Viola!” murmured Zanoni, scarcely heeding the
+Son of Light; “a young soul fresh from heaven, that I may rear from the
+first moment it touches earth,--whose wings I may train to follow mine
+through the glories of creation; and through whom the mother herself may
+be led upward over the realm of death!”
+
+“Beware,--reflect! Knowest thou not that thy darkest enemy dwells in the
+Real? Thy wishes bring thee near and nearer to humanity.”
+
+“Ah, humanity is sweet!” answered Zanoni.
+
+And as the seer spoke, on the glorious face of Adon-Ai there broke a
+smile.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.X.
+
+     Aeterna aeternus tribuit, mortalia confert
+     Mortalis; divina Deus, peritura caducus.
+     “Aurel. Prud. contra Symmachum,” lib. ii.
+
+     (The Eternal gives eternal things, the Mortal gathers mortal
+     things:  God, that which is divine, and the perishable that which
+     is perishable.)
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF ZANONI TO MEJNOUR.
+
+Letter 1.
+
+Thou hast not informed me of the progress of thy pupil; and I fear that
+so differently does circumstance shape the minds of the generations to
+which we are descended, from the intense and earnest children of the
+earlier world, that even thy most careful and elaborate guidance would
+fail, with loftier and purer natures than that of the neophyte thou hast
+admitted within thy gates. Even that third state of being, which the
+Indian sage (The Brahmins, speaking of Brahm, say, “To the Omniscient
+the three modes of being--sleep, waking, and trance--are not;”
+ distinctly recognising trance as a third and coequal condition of
+being.) rightly recognises as being between the sleep and the waking,
+and describes imperfectly by the name of TRANCE, is unknown to the
+children of the Northern world; and few but would recoil to indulge it,
+regarding its peopled calm as maya and delusion of the mind. Instead of
+ripening and culturing that airy soil, from which Nature, duly known,
+can evoke fruits so rich and flowers so fair, they strive but to exclude
+it from their gaze; they esteem that struggle of the intellect from
+men’s narrow world to the spirit’s infinite home, as a disease which the
+leech must extirpate with pharmacy and drugs, and know not even that it
+is from this condition of their being, in its most imperfect and infant
+form, that poetry, music, art--all that belong to an Idea of Beauty
+to which neither SLEEPING nor WAKING can furnish archetype and actual
+semblance--take their immortal birth. When we, O Mejnour in the far
+time, were ourselves the neophytes and aspirants, we were of a class
+to which the actual world was shut and barred. Our forefathers had no
+object in life but knowledge. From the cradle we were predestined and
+reared to wisdom as to a priesthood. We commenced research where modern
+Conjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those were common
+elements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild
+chimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries. Even the fundamental
+principles, the large yet simple theories of electricity and magnetism,
+rest obscure and dim in the disputes of their blinded schools; yet,
+even in our youth, how few ever attained to the first circle of the
+brotherhood, and, after wearily enjoying the sublime privileges they
+sought, they voluntarily abandoned the light of the sun, and sunk,
+without effort, to the grave, like pilgrims in a trackless desert,
+overawed by the stillness of their solitude, and appalled by the absence
+of a goal. Thou, in whom nothing seems to live BUT THE DESIRE TO KNOW;
+thou, who, indifferent whether it leads to weal or to woe, lendest
+thyself to all who would tread the path of mysterious science, a human
+book, insensate to the precepts it enounces,--thou hast ever sought,
+and often made additions to our number. But to these have only been
+vouchsafed partial secrets; vanity and passion unfitted them for the
+rest; and now, without other interest than that of an experiment in
+science, without love, and without pity, thou exposest this new soul
+to the hazards of the tremendous ordeal! Thou thinkest that a zeal
+so inquisitive, a courage so absolute and dauntless, may suffice to
+conquer, where austerer intellect and purer virtue have so often failed.
+Thou thinkest, too, that the germ of art that lies in the painter’s
+mind, as it comprehends in itself the entire embryo of power and beauty,
+may be expanded into the stately flower of the Golden Science. It is a
+new experiment to thee. Be gentle with thy neophyte, and if his nature
+disappoint thee in the first stages of the process, dismiss him back to
+the Real while it is yet time to enjoy the brief and outward life which
+dwells in the senses, and closes with the tomb. And as I thus admonish
+thee, O Mejnour, wilt thou smile at my inconsistent hopes? I, who have
+so invariably refused to initiate others into our mysteries,--I begin at
+last to comprehend why the great law, which binds man to his kind, even
+when seeking most to set himself aloof from their condition, has made
+thy cold and bloodless science the link between thyself and thy race;
+why, THOU has sought converts and pupils; why, in seeing life after life
+voluntarily dropping from our starry order, thou still aspirest to
+renew the vanished, and repair the lost; why, amidst thy calculations,
+restless and unceasing as the wheels of Nature herself, thou recoilest
+from the THOUGHT TO BE ALONE! So with myself; at last I, too, seek a
+convert, an equal,--I, too, shudder to be alone! What thou hast warned
+me of has come to pass. Love reduces all things to itself. Either must I
+be drawn down to the nature of the beloved, or hers must be lifted to
+my own. As whatever belongs to true Art has always necessarily had
+attraction for US, whose very being is in the ideal whence Art descends,
+so in this fair creature I have learned, at last, the secret that bound
+me to her at the first glance. The daughter of music,--music, passing
+into her being, became poetry. It was not the stage that attracted her,
+with its hollow falsehoods; it was the land in her own fancy which
+the stage seemed to centre and represent. There the poetry found a
+voice,--there it struggled into imperfect shape; and then (that land
+insufficient for it) it fell back upon itself. It coloured her thoughts,
+it suffused her soul; it asked not words, it created not things; it gave
+birth but to emotions, and lavished itself on dreams. At last came love;
+and there, as a river into the sea, it poured its restless waves, to
+become mute and deep and still,--the everlasting mirror of the heavens.
+
+And is it not through this poetry which lies within her that she may
+be led into the large poetry of the universe! Often I listen to her
+careless talk, and find oracles in its unconscious beauty, as we find
+strange virtues in some lonely flower. I see her mind ripening under my
+eyes; and in its fair fertility what ever-teeming novelties of thought!
+O Mejnour! how many of our tribe have unravelled the laws of the
+universe,--have solved the riddles of the exterior nature, and deduced
+the light from darkness! And is not the POET, who studies nothing but
+the human heart, a greater philosopher than all? Knowledge and atheism
+are incompatible. To know Nature is to know that there must be a God.
+But does it require this to examine the method and architecture of
+creation? Methinks, when I look upon a pure mind, however ignorant and
+childlike, that I see the August and Immaterial One more clearly than in
+all the orbs of matter which career at His bidding through space.
+
+Rightly is it the fundamental decree of our order, that we must impart
+our secrets only to the pure. The most terrible part of the ordeal is
+in the temptations that our power affords to the criminal. If it were
+possible that a malevolent being could attain to our faculties, what
+disorder it might introduce into the globe! Happy that it is NOT
+possible; the malevolence would disarm the power. It is in the purity of
+Viola that I rely, as thou more vainly hast relied on the courage or the
+genius of thy pupils. Bear me witness, Mejnour! Never since the distant
+day in which I pierced the Arcana of our knowledge, have I ever sought
+to make its mysteries subservient to unworthy objects; though, alas! the
+extension of our existence robs us of a country and a home; though the
+law that places all science, as all art, in the abstraction from the
+noisy passions and turbulent ambition of actual life, forbids us to
+influence the destinies of nations, for which Heaven selects ruder and
+blinder agencies; yet, wherever have been my wanderings, I have sought
+to soften distress, and to convert from sin. My power has been hostile
+only to the guilty; and yet with all our lore, how in each step we are
+reduced to be but the permitted instruments of the Power that vouchsafes
+our own, but only to direct it. How all our wisdom shrinks into nought,
+compared with that which gives the meanest herb its virtues, and peoples
+the smallest globule with its appropriate world. And while we are
+allowed at times to influence the happiness of others, how mysteriously
+the shadows thicken round our own future doom! We cannot be prophets
+to ourselves! With what trembling hope I nurse the thought that I may
+preserve to my solitude the light of a living smile!
+
+....
+
+Extracts from Letter II.
+
+Deeming myself not pure enough to initiate so pure a heart, I invoke to
+her trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants of space that have
+furnished to poetry, which is the instinctive guess into creation, the
+ideas of the Glendoveer and Sylph. And these were less pure than her own
+thoughts, and less tender than her own love! They could not raise her
+above her human heart, for THAT has a heaven of its own.
+
+....
+
+I have just looked on her in sleep,--I have heard her breathe my name.
+Alas! that which is so sweet to others has its bitterness to me; for
+I think how soon the time may come when that sleep will be without a
+dream,--when the heart that dictates the name will be cold, and the
+lips that utter it be dumb. What a twofold shape there is in love! If we
+examine it coarsely,--if we look but on its fleshy ties, its enjoyments
+of a moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction,--how strange it
+seems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the world; that
+it is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and influenced
+all societies and all times; that to this the loftiest and loveliest
+genius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love, there
+were no civilisation, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no life beyond the
+brute’s.
+
+But examine it in its heavenlier shape,--in its utter abnegation of
+self; in its intimate connection with all that is most delicate and
+subtle in the spirit,--its power above all that is sordid in existence;
+its mastery over the idols of the baser worship; its ability to create
+a palace of the cottage, an oasis in the desert, a summer in the
+Iceland,--where it breathes, and fertilises, and glows; and the wonder
+rather becomes how so few regard it in its holiest nature. What the
+sensual call its enjoyments, are the least of its joys. True love is
+less a passion than a symbol. Mejnour, shall the time come when I can
+speak to thee of Viola as a thing that was?
+
+....
+
+Extract from Letter III.
+
+Knowest thou that of late I have sometimes asked myself, “Is there no
+guilt in the knowledge that has so divided us from our race?” It is true
+that the higher we ascend the more hateful seem to us the vices of the
+short-lived creepers of the earth,--the more the sense of the goodness
+of the All-good penetrates and suffuses us, and the more immediately
+does our happiness seem to emanate from him. But, on the other hand, how
+many virtues must lie dead in those who live in the world of death, and
+refuse to die! Is not this sublime egotism, this state of abstraction
+and reverie,--this self-wrapped and self-dependent majesty of existence,
+a resignation of that nobility which incorporates our own welfare, our
+joys, our hopes, our fears with others? To live on in no dread of foes,
+undegraded by infirmity, secure through the cares, and free from the
+disease of flesh, is a spectacle that captivates our pride. And yet dost
+thou not more admire him who dies for another? Since I have loved her,
+Mejnour, it seems almost cowardice to elude the grave which devours the
+hearts that wrap us in their folds. I feel it,--the earth grows upon
+my spirit. Thou wert right; eternal age, serene and passionless, is a
+happier boon than eternal youth, with its yearnings and desires. Until
+we can be all spirit, the tranquillity of solitude must be indifference.
+
+....
+
+Extracts from Letter IV.
+
+I have received thy communication. What! is it so? Has thy pupil
+disappointed thee? Alas, poor pupil! But--
+
+....
+
+(Here follow comments on those passages in Glyndon’s life already known
+to the reader, or about to be made so, with earnest adjurations to
+Mejnour to watch yet over the fate of his scholar.)
+
+....
+
+But I cherish the same desire, with a warmer heart. My pupil! how the
+terrors that shall encompass thine ordeal warn me from the task! Once
+more I will seek the Son of Light.
+
+....
+
+Yes; Adon-Ai, long deaf to my call, at last has descended to my vision,
+and left behind him the glory of his presence in the shape of Hope. Oh,
+not impossible, Viola,--not impossible, that we yet may be united, soul
+with soul!
+
+Extract from Letter V.--(Many months after the last.)
+
+Mejnour, awake from thine apathy,--rejoice! A new soul will be born to
+the world,--a new soul that shall call me father. Ah, if they for whom
+exist all the occupations and resources of human life,--if they can
+thrill with exquisite emotion at the thought of hailing again their own
+childhood in the faces of their children; if in that birth they are born
+once more into the holy Innocence which is the first state of existence;
+if they can feel that on man devolves almost an angel’s duty, when
+he has a life to guide from the cradle, and a soul to nurture for the
+heaven,--what to me must be the rapture to welcome an inheritor of all
+the gifts which double themselves in being shared! How sweet the power
+to watch, and to guard,--to instil the knowledge, to avert the evil,
+and to guide back the river of life in a richer and broader and deeper
+stream to the paradise from which it flows! And beside that river our
+souls shall meet, sweet mother. Our child shall supply the sympathy that
+fails as yet; and what shape shall haunt thee, what terror shall dismay,
+when thy initiation is beside the cradle of thy child!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.XI.
+
+     They thus beguile the way
+     Untill the blustring storme is overblowne,
+     When weening to returne whence they did stray,
+     They cannot finde that path which first was showne,
+     But wander to and fro in waies unknowne.
+     --Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” book i. canto i. st. x.
+
+Yes, Viola, thou art another being than when, by the threshold of thy
+Italian home, thou didst follow thy dim fancies through the Land of
+Shadow; or when thou didst vainly seek to give voice to an ideal beauty,
+on the boards where illusion counterfeits earth and heaven for an
+hour, till the weary sense, awaking, sees but the tinsel and the
+scene-shifter. Thy spirit reposes in its own happiness. Its wanderings
+have found a goal. In a moment there often dwells the sense of eternity;
+for when profoundly happy, we know that it is impossible to die.
+Whenever the soul FEELS ITSELF, it feels everlasting life.
+
+The initiation is deferred,--thy days and nights are left to no other
+visions than those with which a contented heart enchants a guileless
+fancy. Glendoveers and Sylphs, pardon me if I question whether those
+visions are not lovelier than yourselves.
+
+They stand by the beach, and see the sun sinking into the sea. How long
+now have they dwelt on that island? What matters!--it may be months, or
+years--what matters! Why should I, or they, keep account of that happy
+time? As in the dream of a moment ages may seem to pass, so shall we
+measure transport or woe,--by the length of the dream, or the number of
+emotions that the dream involves?
+
+The sun sinks slowly down; the air is arid and oppressive; on the sea,
+the stately vessel lies motionless; on the shore, no leaf trembles on
+the trees.
+
+Viola drew nearer to Zanoni. A presentiment she could not define made
+her heart beat more quickly; and, looking into his face, she was struck
+with its expression: it was anxious, abstracted, perturbed. “This
+stillness awes me,” she whispered.
+
+Zanoni did not seem to hear her. He muttered to himself, and his eyes
+gazed round restlessly. She knew not why, but that gaze, which seemed
+to pierce into space,--that muttered voice in some foreign
+language--revived dimly her earlier superstitions. She was more fearful
+since the hour when she knew that she was to be a mother. Strange crisis
+in the life of woman, and in her love! Something yet unborn begins
+already to divide her heart with that which had been before its only
+monarch.
+
+“Look on me, Zanoni,” she said, pressing his hand.
+
+He turned: “Thou art pale, Viola; thy hand trembles!”
+
+“It is true. I feel as if some enemy were creeping near us.”
+
+“And the instinct deceives thee not. An enemy is indeed at hand. I see
+it through the heavy air; I hear it through the silence: the Ghostly
+One,--the Destroyer, the PESTILENCE! Ah, seest thou how the leaves swarm
+with insects, only by an effort visible to the eye. They follow the
+breath of the plague!” As he spoke, a bird fell from the boughs at
+Viola’s feet; it fluttered, it writhed an instant, and was dead.
+
+“Oh, Viola!” cried Zanoni, passionately, “that is death. Dost thou not
+fear to die?”
+
+“To leave thee? Ah, yes!”
+
+“And if I could teach thee how Death may be defied; if I could arrest
+for thy youth the course of time; if I could--”
+
+He paused abruptly, for Viola’s eyes spoke only terror; her cheek and
+lips were pale.
+
+“Speak not thus,--look not thus,” she said, recoiling from him. “You
+dismay me. Ah, speak not thus, or I should tremble,--no, not for myself,
+but for thy child.”
+
+“Thy child! But wouldst thou reject for thy child the same glorious
+boon?”
+
+“Zanoni!”
+
+“Well!”
+
+“The sun has sunk from our eyes, but to rise on those of others. To
+disappear from this world is to live in the world afar. Oh, lover,--oh,
+husband!” she continued, with sudden energy, “tell me that thou didst
+but jest,--that thou didst but trifle with my folly! There is less
+terror in the pestilence than in thy words.”
+
+Zanoni’s brow darkened; he looked at her in silence for some moments,
+and then said, almost severely,--
+
+“What hast thou known of me to distrust?”
+
+“Oh, pardon, pardon!--nothing!” cried Viola, throwing herself on his
+breast, and bursting into tears. “I will not believe even thine own
+words, if they seem to wrong thee!” He kissed the tears from her eyes,
+but made no answer.
+
+“And ah!” she resumed, with an enchanting and child-like smile, “if thou
+wouldst give me a charm against the pestilence! see, I will take it from
+thee.” And she laid her hand on a small, antique amulet that he wore on
+his breast.
+
+“Thou knowest how often this has made me jealous of the past; surely
+some love-gift, Zanoni? But no, thou didst not love the giver as thou
+dost me. Shall I steal thine amulet?”
+
+“Infant!” said Zanoni, tenderly; “she who placed this round my neck
+deemed it indeed a charm, for she had superstitions like thyself; but
+to me it is more than the wizard’s spell,--it is the relic of a sweet
+vanished time when none who loved me could distrust.”
+
+He said these words in a tone of such melancholy reproach that it went
+to the heart of Viola; but the tone changed into a solemnity which
+chilled back the gush of her feelings as he resumed: “And this, Viola,
+one day, perhaps, I will transfer from my breast to thine; yes, whenever
+thou shalt comprehend me better,--WHENEVER THE LAWS OF OUR BEING SHALL
+BE THE SAME!”
+
+He moved on gently. They returned slowly home; but fear still was in the
+heart of Viola, though she strove to shake it off. Italian and Catholic
+she was, with all the superstitions of land and sect. She stole to
+her chamber and prayed before a little relic of San Gennaro, which
+the priest of her house had given to her in childhood, and which had
+accompanied her in all her wanderings. She had never deemed it
+possible to part with it before. Now, if there was a charm against the
+pestilence, did she fear the pestilence for herself? The next morning,
+when he awoke, Zanoni found the relic of the saint suspended with his
+mystic amulet round his neck.
+
+“Ah! thou wilt have nothing to fear from the pestilence now,” said
+Viola, between tears and smiles; “and when thou wouldst talk to me again
+as thou didst last night, the saint shall rebuke thee.”
+
+Well, Zanoni, can there ever indeed be commune of thought and spirit,
+except with equals?
+
+Yes, the plague broke out,--the island home must be abandoned. Mighty
+Seer, THOU HAST NO POWER TO SAVE THOSE WHOM THOU LOVEST! Farewell, thou
+bridal roof!--sweet resting-place from care, farewell! Climates as soft
+may greet ye, O lovers,--skies as serene, and waters as blue and calm;
+but THAT TIME,--can it ever more return? Who shall say that the heart
+does not change with the scene,--the place where we first dwelt with the
+beloved one? Every spot THERE has so many memories which the place only
+can recall. The past that haunts it seems to command such constancy in
+the future. If a thought less kind, less trustful, enter within us, the
+sight of a tree under which a vow has been exchanged, a tear has
+been kissed away, restores us again to the hours of the first divine
+illusion. But in a home where nothing speaks of the first nuptials,
+where there is no eloquence of association, no holy burial-places of
+emotions, whose ghosts are angels!--yes, who that has gone through the
+sad history of affection will tell us that the heart changes not with
+the scene! Blow fair, ye favouring winds; cheerily swell, ye sails; away
+from the land where death has come to snatch the sceptre of Love! The
+shores glide by; new coasts succeed to the green hills and orange-groves
+of the Bridal Isle. From afar now gleam in the moonlight the columns,
+yet extant, of a temple which the Athenian dedicated to wisdom; and,
+standing on the bark that bounded on in the freshening gale, the votary
+who had survived the goddess murmured to himself,--
+
+“Has the wisdom of ages brought me no happier hours than those common
+to the shepherd and the herdsman, with no world beyond their village, no
+aspiration beyond the kiss and the smile of home?”
+
+And the moon, resting alike over the ruins of the temple of the
+departed creed, over the hut of the living peasant, over the immemorial
+mountain-top, and the perishable herbage that clothed its sides, seemed
+to smile back its answer of calm disdain to the being who, perchance,
+might have seen the temple built, and who, in his inscrutable existence,
+might behold the mountain shattered from its base.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V. -- THE EFFECTS OF THE ELIXIR.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.I.
+
+     Frommet’s den Schleier aufzuheben,
+     Wo das nahe Schreckness droht?
+     Nur das Irrthum ist das Leben
+     Und das Wissen ist der Tod,
+
+     --Schiller, Kassandro.
+
+     Delusion is the life we live
+     And knowledge death; oh wherefore, then,
+     To sight the coming evils give
+     And lift the veil of Fate to Man?
+
+     Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.
+
+     (Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.)
+
+     ....
+
+     Was stehst du so, und blickst erstaunt hinaus?
+
+     (Why standest thou so, and lookest out astonished?)
+
+     --“Faust.”
+
+It will be remembered that we left Master Paolo by the bedside of
+Glyndon; and as, waking from that profound slumber, the recollections of
+the past night came horribly back to his mind, the Englishman uttered a
+cry, and covered his face with his hands.
+
+“Good morrow, Excellency!” said Paolo, gayly. “Corpo di Bacco, you have
+slept soundly!”
+
+The sound of this man’s voice, so lusty, ringing, and healthful, served
+to scatter before it the phantasma that yet haunted Glyndon’s memory.
+
+He rose erect in his bed. “And where did you find me? Why are you here?”
+
+“Where did I find you!” repeated Paolo, in surprise,--“in your bed, to
+be sure. Why am I here!--because the Padrone bade me await your waking,
+and attend your commands.”
+
+“The Padrone, Mejnour!--is he arrived?”
+
+“Arrived and departed, signor. He has left this letter for you.”
+
+“Give it me, and wait without till I am dressed.”
+
+“At your service. I have bespoke an excellent breakfast: you must be
+hungry. I am a very tolerable cook; a monk’s son ought to be! You will
+be startled at my genius in the dressing of fish. My singing, I
+trust, will not disturb you. I always sing while I prepare a salad; it
+harmonises the ingredients.” And slinging his carbine over his shoulder,
+Paolo sauntered from the room, and closed the door.
+
+Glyndon was already deep in the contents of the following letter:--
+
+“When I first received thee as my pupil, I promised Zanoni, if convinced
+by thy first trials that thou couldst but swell, not the number of our
+order, but the list of the victims who have aspired to it in vain, I
+would not rear thee to thine own wretchedness and doom,--I would dismiss
+thee back to the world. I fulfil my promise. Thine ordeal has been the
+easiest that neophyte ever knew. I asked for nothing but abstinence from
+the sensual, and a brief experiment of thy patience and thy faith. Go
+back to thine own world; thou hast no nature to aspire to ours!
+
+“It was I who prepared Paolo to receive thee at the revel. It was I who
+instigated the old beggar to ask thee for alms. It was I who left open
+the book that thou couldst not read without violating my command. Well,
+thou hast seen what awaits thee at the threshold of knowledge. Thou hast
+confronted the first foe that menaces him whom the senses yet grasp and
+inthrall. Dost thou wonder that I close upon thee the gates forever?
+Dost thou not comprehend, at last, that it needs a soul tempered and
+purified and raised, not by external spells, but by its own sublimity
+and valour, to pass the threshold and disdain the foe? Wretch! all
+my silence avails nothing for the rash, for the sensual,--for him who
+desires our secrets but to pollute them to gross enjoyments and selfish
+vice. How have the imposters and sorcerers of the earlier times perished
+by their very attempt to penetrate the mysteries that should purify, and
+not deprave! They have boasted of the Philosopher’s Stone, and died in
+rags; of the immortal elixir, and sunk to their grave, grey before their
+time. Legends tell you that the fiend rent them into fragments. Yes;
+the fiend of their own unholy desires and criminal designs! What they
+coveted, thou covetest; and if thou hadst the wings of a seraph thou
+couldst soar not from the slough of thy mortality. Thy desire for
+knowledge, but petulant presumption; thy thirst for happiness, but
+the diseased longing for the unclean and muddied waters of corporeal
+pleasure; thy very love, which usually elevates even the mean, a passion
+that calculates treason amidst the first glow of lust. THOU one of us;
+thou a brother of the August Order; thou an Aspirant to the Stars that
+shine in the Shemaia of the Chaldean lore! The eagle can raise but the
+eaglet to the sun. I abandon thee to thy twilight!
+
+“But, alas for thee, disobedient and profane! thou hast inhaled the
+elixir; thou hast attracted to thy presence a ghastly and remorseless
+foe. Thou thyself must exorcise the phantom thou hast raised. Thou must
+return to the world; but not without punishment and strong effort canst
+thou regain the calm and the joy of the life thou hast left behind.
+This, for thy comfort, will I tell thee: he who has drawn into his frame
+even so little of the volatile and vital energy of the aerial juices as
+thyself, has awakened faculties that cannot sleep,--faculties that may
+yet, with patient humility, with sound faith, and the courage that
+is not of the body like thine, but of the resolute and virtuous mind,
+attain, if not to the knowledge that reigns above, to high achievement
+in the career of men. Thou wilt find the restless influence in all that
+thou wouldst undertake. Thy heart, amidst vulgar joys will aspire to
+something holier; thy ambition, amidst coarse excitement, to something
+beyond thy reach. But deem not that this of itself will suffice for
+glory. Equally may the craving lead thee to shame and guilt. It is but
+an imperfect and new-born energy which will not suffer thee to repose.
+As thou directest it, must thou believe it to be the emanation of thine
+evil genius or thy good.
+
+“But woe to thee! insect meshed in the web in which thou hast entangled
+limbs and wings! Thou hast not only inhaled the elixir, thou hast
+conjured the spectre; of all the tribes of the space, no foe is so
+malignant to man,--and thou hast lifted the veil from thy gaze. I cannot
+restore to thee the happy dimness of thy vision. Know, at least, that
+all of us--the highest and the wisest--who have, in sober truth, passed
+beyond the threshold, have had, as our first fearful task, to master and
+subdue its grisly and appalling guardian. Know that thou CANST deliver
+thyself from those livid eyes,--know that, while they haunt, they cannot
+harm, if thou resistest the thoughts to which they tempt, and the horror
+they engender. DREAD THEM MOST WHEN THOU BEHOLDEST THEM NOT. And thus,
+son of the worm, we part! All that I can tell thee to encourage, yet to
+warn and to guide, I have told thee in these lines. Not from me, from
+thyself has come the gloomy trial from which I yet trust thou wilt
+emerge into peace. Type of the knowledge that I serve, I withhold no
+lesson from the pure aspirant; I am a dark enigma to the general seeker.
+As man’s only indestructible possession is his memory, so it is not in
+mine art to crumble into matter the immaterial thoughts that have sprung
+up within thy breast. The tyro might shatter this castle to the dust,
+and topple down the mountain to the plain. The master has no power to
+say, ‘Exist no more,’ to one THOUGHT that his knowledge has inspired.
+Thou mayst change the thoughts into new forms; thou mayst rarefy and
+sublimate it into a finer spirit,--but thou canst not annihilate that
+which has no home but in the memory, no substance but the idea. EVERY
+THOUGHT IS A SOUL! Vainly, therefore, would I or thou undo the past,
+or restore to thee the gay blindness of thy youth. Thou must endure the
+influence of the elixir thou hast inhaled; thou must wrestle with the
+spectre thou hast invoked!”
+
+The letter fell from Glyndon’s hand. A sort of stupor succeeded to the
+various emotions which had chased each other in the perusal,--a stupor
+resembling that which follows the sudden destruction of any ardent and
+long-nursed hope in the human heart, whether it be of love, of avarice,
+of ambition. The loftier world for which he had so thirsted, sacrificed,
+and toiled, was closed upon him “forever,” and by his own faults of
+rashness and presumption. But Glyndon’s was not of that nature which
+submits long to condemn itself. His indignation began to kindle against
+Mejnour, who owned he had tempted, and who now abandoned him,--abandoned
+him to the presence of a spectre. The mystic’s reproaches stung rather
+than humbled him. What crime had he committed to deserve language so
+harsh and disdainful? Was it so deep a debasement to feel pleasure in
+the smile and the eyes of Fillide? Had not Zanoni himself confessed
+love for Viola; had he not fled with her as his companion? Glyndon never
+paused to consider if there are no distinctions between one kind of
+love and another. Where, too, was the great offence of yielding to a
+temptation which only existed for the brave? Had not the mystic volume
+which Mejnour had purposely left open, bid him but “Beware of fear”? Was
+not, then, every wilful provocative held out to the strongest influences
+of the human mind, in the prohibition to enter the chamber, in the
+possession of the key which excited his curiosity, in the volume which
+seemed to dictate the mode by which the curiosity was to be gratified?
+As rapidly these thoughts passed over him, he began to consider the
+whole conduct of Mejnour either as a perfidious design to entrap him to
+his own misery, or as the trick of an imposter, who knew that he could
+not realise the great professions he had made. On glancing again over
+the more mysterious threats and warnings in Mejnour’s letter, they
+seemed to assume the language of mere parable and allegory,--the jargon
+of the Platonists and Pythagoreans. By little and little, he began to
+consider that the very spectra he had seen--even that one phantom so
+horrid in its aspect--were but the delusions which Mejnour’s science had
+enable him to raise. The healthful sunlight, filling up every cranny
+in his chamber, seemed to laugh away the terrors of the past night. His
+pride and his resentment nerved his habitual courage; and when, having
+hastily dressed himself, he rejoined Paolo, it was with a flushed cheek
+and a haughty step.
+
+“So, Paolo,” said he, “the Padrone, as you call him, told you to expect
+and welcome me at your village feast?”
+
+“He did so by a message from a wretched old cripple. This surprised
+me at the time, for I thought he was far distant; but these great
+philosophers make a joke of two or three hundred leagues.”
+
+“Why did you not tell me you had heard from Mejnour?”
+
+“Because the old cripple forbade me.”
+
+“Did you not see the man afterwards during the dance?”
+
+“No, Excellency.”
+
+“Humph!”
+
+“Allow me to serve you,” said Paolo, piling Glyndon’s plate, and then
+filling his glass. “I wish, signor, now the Padrone is gone,--not,”
+ added Paolo, as he cast rather a frightened and suspicious glance round
+the room, “that I mean to say anything disrespectful of him,--I wish, I
+say, now that he is gone, that you would take pity on yourself, and ask
+your own heart what your youth was meant for? Not to bury yourself alive
+in these old ruins, and endanger body and soul by studies which I am
+sure no saint could approve of.”
+
+“Are the saints so partial, then, to your own occupations, Master
+Paolo?”
+
+“Why,” answered the bandit, a little confused, “a gentleman with plenty
+of pistoles in his purse need not, of necessity, make it his profession
+to take away the pistoles of other people! It is a different thing for
+us poor rogues. After all, too, I always devote a tithe of my gains
+to the Virgin; and I share the rest charitably with the poor. But eat,
+drink, enjoy yourself; be absolved by your confessor for any little
+peccadilloes and don’t run too long scores at a time,--that’s my advice.
+Your health, Excellency! Pshaw, signor, fasting, except on the days
+prescribed to a good Catholic, only engenders phantoms.”
+
+“Phantoms!”
+
+“Yes; the devil always tempts the empty stomach. To covet, to hate, to
+thieve, to rob, and to murder,--these are the natural desires of a man
+who is famishing. With a full belly, signor, we are at peace with all
+the world. That’s right; you like the partridge! Cospetto! when I myself
+have passed two or three days in the mountains, with nothing from sunset
+to sunrise but a black crust and an onion, I grow as fierce as a wolf.
+That’s not the worst, too. In these times I see little imps dancing
+before me. Oh, yes; fasting is as full of spectres as a field of
+battle.”
+
+Glyndon thought there was some sound philosophy in the reasoning of
+his companion; and certainly the more he ate and drank, the more the
+recollection of the past night and of Mejnour’s desertion faded from his
+mind. The casement was open, the breeze blew, the sun shone,--all Nature
+was merry; and merry as Nature herself grew Maestro Paolo. He talked
+of adventures, of travel, of women, with a hearty gusto that had its
+infection. But Glyndon listened yet more complacently when Paolo turned
+with an arch smile to praises of the eye, the teeth, the ankles, and the
+shape of the handsome Fillide.
+
+This man, indeed, seemed the very personation of animal sensual life. He
+would have been to Faust a more dangerous tempter than Mephistopheles.
+There was no sneer on HIS lip at the pleasures which animated his voice.
+To one awaking to a sense of the vanities in knowledge, this reckless
+ignorant joyousness of temper was a worse corrupter than all the icy
+mockeries of a learned Fiend. But when Paolo took his leave, with a
+promise to return the next day, the mind of the Englishman again settled
+back to a graver and more thoughtful mood. The elixir seemed, in truth,
+to have left the refining effects Mejnour had ascribed to it. As Glyndon
+paced to and fro the solitary corridor, or, pausing, gazed upon the
+extended and glorious scenery that stretched below, high thoughts
+of enterprise and ambition--bright visions of glory--passed in rapid
+succession through his soul.
+
+“Mejnour denies me his science. Well,” said the painter, proudly, “he
+has not robbed me of my art.”
+
+What! Clarence Glyndon, dost thou return to that from which thy career
+commenced? Was Zanoni right after all?
+
+He found himself in the chamber of the mystic; not a vessel,--not an
+herb! the solemn volume is vanished,--the elixir shall sparkle for him
+no more! But still in the room itself seems to linger the atmosphere of
+a charm. Faster and fiercer it burns within thee, the desire to achieve,
+to create! Thou longest for a life beyond the sensual!--but the life
+that is permitted to all genius,--that which breathes through the
+immortal work, and endures in the imperishable name.
+
+Where are the implements for thine art? Tush!--when did the true workman
+ever fail to find his tools? Thou art again in thine own chamber,--the
+white wall thy canvas, a fragment of charcoal for thy pencil. They
+suffice, at least, to give outline to the conception that may otherwise
+vanish with the morrow.
+
+The idea that thus excited the imagination of the artist was
+unquestionably noble and august. It was derived from that Egyptian
+ceremonial which Diodorus has recorded,--the Judgment of the Dead by the
+Living (Diod., lib. i.): when the corpse, duly embalmed, is placed by
+the margin of the Acherusian Lake; and before it may be consigned to the
+bark which is to bear it across the waters to its final resting-place,
+it is permitted to the appointed judges to hear all accusations of the
+past life of the deceased, and, if proved, to deprive the corpse of the
+rites of sepulture.
+
+Unconsciously to himself, it was Mejnour’s description of this custom,
+which he had illustrated by several anecdotes not to be found in books,
+that now suggested the design to the artist, and gave it reality and
+force. He supposed a powerful and guilty king whom in life scarce a
+whisper had dared to arraign, but against whom, now the breath was gone,
+came the slave from his fetters, the mutilated victim from his dungeon,
+livid and squalid as if dead themselves, invoking with parched lips the
+justice that outlives the grave.
+
+Strange fervour this, O artist! breaking suddenly forth from the mists
+and darkness which the occult science had spread so long over thy
+fancies,--strange that the reaction of the night’s terror and the day’s
+disappointment should be back to thine holy art! Oh, how freely goes
+the bold hand over the large outline! How, despite those rude materials,
+speaks forth no more the pupil, but the master! Fresh yet from the
+glorious elixir, how thou givest to thy creatures the finer life denied
+to thyself!--some power not thine own writes the grand symbols on the
+wall. Behind rises the mighty sepulchre, on the building of which repose
+to the dead the lives of thousands had been consumed. There sit in a
+semicircle the solemn judges. Black and sluggish flows the lake. There
+lies the mummied and royal dead. Dost thou quail at the frown on
+his lifelike brow? Ha!--bravely done, O artist!--up rise the haggard
+forms!--pale speak the ghastly faces! Shall not Humanity after death
+avenge itself on Power? Thy conception, Clarence Glyndon, is a sublime
+truth; thy design promises renown to genius. Better this magic than the
+charms of the volume and the vessel. Hour after hour has gone; thou hast
+lighted the lamp; night sees thee yet at thy labour. Merciful Heaven!
+what chills the atmosphere; why does the lamp grow wan; why does thy
+hair bristle? There!--there!--there! at the casement! It gazes on thee,
+the dark, mantled, loathsome thing! There, with their devilish mockery
+and hateful craft, glare on thee those horrid eyes!
+
+He stood and gazed,--it was no delusion. It spoke not, moved not, till,
+unable to bear longer that steady and burning look, he covered his face
+with his hands. With a start, with a thrill, he removed them; he felt
+the nearer presence of the nameless. There it cowered on the floor
+beside his design; and lo! the figures seemed to start from the wall!
+Those pale accusing figures, the shapes he himself had raised, frowned
+at him, and gibbered. With a violent effort that convulsed his whole
+being, and bathed his body in the sweat of agony, the young man mastered
+his horror. He strode towards the phantom; he endured its eyes; he
+accosted it with a steady voice; he demanded its purpose and defied its
+power.
+
+And then, as a wind from a charnel, was heard its voice. What it said,
+what revealed, it is forbidden the lips to repeat, the hand to record.
+Nothing save the subtle life that yet animated the frame to which
+the inhalations of the elixir had given vigour and energy beyond the
+strength of the strongest, could have survived that awful hour. Better
+to wake in the catacombs and see the buried rise from their cerements,
+and hear the ghouls, in their horrid orgies, amongst the festering
+ghastliness of corruption, than to front those features when the veil
+was lifted, and listen to that whispered voice!
+
+....
+
+The next day Glyndon fled from the ruined castle. With what hopes of
+starry light had he crossed the threshold; with what memories to shudder
+evermore at the darkness did he look back at the frown of its time-worn
+towers!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.II.
+
+     Faust:  Wohin soll es nun gehm?
+     Mephist:  Wohin es Dir gefallt.
+     Wir sehn die kleine, dann die grosse Welt.
+     “Faust.”
+
+     (Faust:  Whither go now!
+     Mephist:  Whither it pleases thee.
+     We see the small world, then the great.)
+
+Draw your chair to the fireside, brush clean the hearth, and trim the
+lights. Oh, home of sleekness, order, substance, comfort! Oh, excellent
+thing art thou, Matter of Fact!
+
+It is some time after the date of the last chapter. Here we are, not in
+moonlit islands or mouldering castles, but in a room twenty-six feet by
+twenty-two,--well carpeted, well cushioned, solid arm-chairs and eight
+such bad pictures, in such fine frames, upon the walls! Thomas Mervale,
+Esq., merchant, of London, you are an enviable dog!
+
+It was the easiest thing in the world for Mervale, on returning from his
+Continental episode of life, to settle down to his desk,--his heart had
+been always there. The death of his father gave him, as a birthright,
+a high position in a respectable though second-rate firm. To make this
+establishment first-rate was an honourable ambition,--it was his! He had
+lately married, not entirely for money,--no! he was worldly rather than
+mercenary. He had no romantic ideas of love; but he was too sensible
+a man not to know that a wife should be a companion,--not merely a
+speculation. He did not care for beauty and genius, but he liked health
+and good temper, and a certain proportion of useful understanding. He
+chose a wife from his reason, not his heart, and a very good choice he
+made. Mrs. Mervale was an excellent young woman,--bustling, managing,
+economical, but affectionate and good. She had a will of her own, but
+was no shrew. She had a great notion of the rights of a wife, and a
+strong perception of the qualities that insure comfort. She would never
+have forgiven her husband, had she found him guilty of the most passing
+fancy for another; but, in return, she had the most admirable sense of
+propriety herself. She held in abhorrence all levity, all flirtation,
+all coquetry,--small vices which often ruin domestic happiness, but
+which a giddy nature incurs without consideration. But she did not think
+it right to love a husband over much. She left a surplus of affection,
+for all her relations, all her friends, some of her acquaintances, and
+the possibility of a second marriage, should any accident happen to Mr.
+M. She kept a good table, for it suited their station; and her temper
+was considered even, though firm; but she could say a sharp thing
+or two, if Mr. Mervale was not punctual to a moment. She was very
+particular that he should change his shoes on coming home,--the carpets
+were new and expensive. She was not sulky, nor passionate,--Heaven
+bless her for that!--but when displeased she showed it, administered a
+dignified rebuke, alluded to her own virtues, to her uncle who was an
+admiral, and to the thirty thousand pounds which she had brought to the
+object of her choice. But as Mr. Mervale was a good-humoured man, owned
+his faults, and subscribed to her excellence, the displeasure was soon
+over.
+
+Every household has its little disagreements, none fewer than that of
+Mr. and Mrs. Mervale. Mrs. Mervale, without being improperly fond of
+dress, paid due attention to it. She was never seen out of her chamber
+with papers in her hair, nor in that worst of dis-illusions,--a morning
+wrapper. At half-past eight every morning Mrs. Mervale was dressed
+for the day,--that is, till she re-dressed for dinner,--her stays well
+laced, her cap prim, her gowns, winter and summer, of a thick, handsome
+silk. Ladies at that time wore very short waists; so did Mrs. Mervale.
+Her morning ornaments were a thick, gold chain, to which was suspended
+a gold watch,--none of those fragile dwarfs of mechanism that look so
+pretty and go so ill, but a handsome repeater which chronicled Father
+Time to a moment; also a mosaic brooch; also a miniature of her uncle,
+the admiral, set in a bracelet. For the evening she had two handsome
+sets,--necklace, earrings, and bracelets complete,--one of amethysts,
+the other topazes. With these, her costume for the most part was a
+gold-coloured satin and a turban, in which last her picture had been
+taken. Mrs. Mervale had an aquiline nose, good teeth, fair hair, and
+light eyelashes, rather a high complexion, what is generally called a
+fine bust; full cheeks; large useful feet made for walking; large, white
+hands with filbert nails, on which not a speck of dust had, even in
+childhood, ever been known to a light. She looked a little older than
+she really was; but that might arise from a certain air of dignity and
+the aforesaid aquiline nose. She generally wore short mittens. She never
+read any poetry but Goldsmith’s and Cowper’s. She was not amused by
+novels, though she had no prejudice against them. She liked a play and
+a pantomime, with a slight supper afterwards. She did not like concerts
+nor operas. At the beginning of the winter she selected some book to
+read, and some piece of work to commence. The two lasted her till the
+spring, when, though she continued to work, she left off reading. Her
+favourite study was history, which she read through the medium of Dr.
+Goldsmith. Her favourite author in the belles lettres was, of course,
+Dr. Johnson. A worthier woman, or one more respected, was not to be
+found, except in an epitaph!
+
+It was an autumn night. Mr. and Mrs. Mervale, lately returned from an
+excursion to Weymouth, are in the drawing-room,--“the dame sat on this
+side, the man sat on that.”
+
+“Yes, I assure you, my dear, that Glyndon, with all his eccentricities,
+was a very engaging, amiable fellow. You would certainly have liked
+him,--all the women did.”
+
+“My dear Thomas, you will forgive the remark,--but that expression of
+yours, ‘all the WOMEN’--”
+
+“I beg your pardon,--you are right. I meant to say that he was a general
+favourite with your charming sex.”
+
+“I understand,--rather a frivolous character.”
+
+“Frivolous! no, not exactly; a little unsteady,--very odd, but certainly
+not frivolous; presumptuous and headstrong in character, but modest and
+shy in his manners, rather too much so,--just what you like. However,
+to return; I am seriously uneasy at the accounts I have heard of him
+to-day. He has been living, it seems, a very strange and irregular life,
+travelling from place to place, and must have spent already a great deal
+of money.”
+
+“Apropos of money,” said Mrs. Mervale; “I fear we must change our
+butcher; he is certainly in league with the cook.”
+
+“That is a pity; his beef is remarkably fine. These London servants are
+as bad as the Carbonari. But, as I was saying, poor Glyndon--”
+
+Here a knock was heard at the door. “Bless me,” said Mrs. Mervale, “it
+is past ten! Who can that possibly be?”
+
+“Perhaps your uncle, the admiral,” said the husband, with a slight
+peevishness in his accent. “He generally favours us about this hour.”
+
+“I hope, my love, that none of my relations are unwelcome visitors at
+your house. The admiral is a most entertaining man, and his fortune is
+entirely at his own disposal.”
+
+“No one I respect more,” said Mr. Mervale, with emphasis.
+
+The servant threw open the door, and announced Mr. Glyndon.
+
+“Mr. Glyndon!--what an extraordinary--” exclaimed Mrs. Mervale; but
+before she could conclude the sentence, Glyndon was in the room.
+
+The two friends greeted each other with all the warmth of early
+recollection and long absence. An appropriate and proud presentation
+to Mrs. Mervale ensued; and Mrs. Mervale, with a dignified smile, and
+a furtive glance at his boots, bade her husband’s friend welcome to
+England.
+
+Glyndon was greatly altered since Mervale had seen him last. Though
+less than two years had elapsed since then, his fair complexion was more
+bronzed and manly. Deep lines of care, or thought, or dissipation, had
+replaced the smooth contour of happy youth. To a manner once gentle
+and polished had succeeded a certain recklessness of mien, tone, and
+bearing, which bespoke the habits of a society that cared little for the
+calm decorums of conventional ease. Still a kind of wild nobleness, not
+before apparent in him, characterised his aspect, and gave something of
+dignity to the freedom of his language and gestures.
+
+“So, then, you are settled, Mervale,--I need not ask you if you are
+happy. Worth, sense, wealth, character, and so fair a companion deserve
+happiness, and command it.”
+
+“Would you like some tea, Mr. Glyndon?” asked Mrs. Mervale, kindly.
+
+“Thank you,--no. I propose a more convivial stimulus to my old friend.
+Wine, Mervale,--wine, eh!--or a bowl of old English punch. Your wife
+will excuse us,--we will make a night of it!”
+
+Mrs. Mervale drew back her chair, and tried not to look aghast. Glyndon
+did not give his friend time to reply.
+
+“So at last I am in England,” he said, looking round the room, with
+a slight sneer on his lips; “surely this sober air must have its
+influence; surely here I shall be like the rest.”
+
+“Have you been ill, Glyndon?”
+
+“Ill, yes. Humph! you have a fine house. Does it contain a spare room
+for a solitary wanderer?”
+
+Mr. Mervale glanced at his wife, and his wife looked steadily on the
+carpet. “Modest and shy in his manners--rather too much so!” Mrs.
+Mervale was in the seventh heaven of indignation and amaze!
+
+“My dear?” said Mr. Mervale at last, meekly and interogatingly.
+
+“My dear!” returned Mrs. Mervale, innocently and sourly.
+
+“We can make up a room for my old friend, Sarah?”
+
+The old friend had sunk back on his chair, and, gazing intently on the
+fire, with his feet at ease upon the fender, seemed to have forgotten
+his question.
+
+Mrs. Mervale bit her lips, looked thoughtful, and at last coldly
+replied, “Certainly, Mr. Mervale; your friends do right to make
+themselves at home.”
+
+With that she lighted a candle, and moved majestically from the room.
+When she returned, the two friends had vanished into Mr. Mervale’s
+study.
+
+Twelve o’clock struck,--one o’clock, two! Thrice had Mrs. Mervale sent
+into the room to know,--first, if they wanted anything; secondly, if Mr.
+Glyndon slept on a mattress or feather-bed; thirdly, to inquire if Mr.
+Glyndon’s trunk, which he had brought with him, should be unpacked. And
+to the answer to all these questions was added, in a loud voice from the
+visitor,--a voice that pierced from the kitchen to the attic,--“Another
+bowl! stronger, if you please, and be quick with it!”
+
+At last Mr. Mervale appeared in the conjugal chamber, not penitent, nor
+apologetic,--no, not a bit of it. His eyes twinkled, his cheek flushed,
+his feet reeled; he sang,--Mr. Thomas Mervale positively sang!
+
+“Mr. Mervale! is it possible, sir--”
+
+“‘Old King Cole was a merry old soul--’”
+
+“Mr. Mervale! sir!--leave me alone, sir!”
+
+“‘And a merry old soul was he--’”
+
+“What an example to the servants!”
+
+“‘And he called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl--’”
+
+“If you don’t behave yourself, sir, I shall call--”
+
+“‘Call for his fiddlers three!’”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.III.
+
+     In der Welt weit
+     Aus der Einsamkeit
+     Wollen sie Dich locken.
+     --“Faust.”
+
+     (In the wide world, out of the solitude, will these allure thee.)
+
+The next morning, at breakfast, Mrs. Mervale looked as if all the wrongs
+of injured woman sat upon her brow. Mr. Mervale seemed the picture of
+remorseful guilt and avenging bile. He said little, except to complain
+of headache, and to request the eggs to be removed from the table.
+Clarence Glyndon--impervious, unconscious, unailing, impenitent--was in
+noisy spirits, and talked for three.
+
+“Poor Mervale! he has lost the habit of good-fellowship, madam. Another
+night or two, and he will be himself again!”
+
+“Sir,” said Mrs. Mervale, launching a premeditated sentence with more
+than Johnsonian dignity, “permit me to remind you that Mr. Mervale is
+now a married man, the destined father of a family, and the present
+master of a household.”
+
+“Precisely the reasons why I envy him so much. I myself have a great
+mind to marry. Happiness is contagious.”
+
+“Do you still take to painting?” asked Mervale, languidly, endeavouring
+to turn the tables on his guest.
+
+“Oh, no; I have adopted your advice. No art, no ideal,--nothing loftier
+than Commonplace for me now. If I were to paint again, I positively
+think YOU would purchase my pictures. Make haste and finish your
+breakfast, man; I wish to consult you. I have come to England to see
+after my affairs. My ambition is to make money; your counsels and
+experience cannot fail to assist me here.”
+
+“Ah, you were soon disenchanted of your Philosopher’s Stone! You must
+know, Sarah, that when I last left Glyndon, he was bent upon turning
+alchemist and magician.”
+
+“You are witty to-day, Mr. Mervale.”
+
+“Upon my honour it is true, I told you so before.”
+
+Glyndon rose abruptly.
+
+“Why revive those recollections of folly and presumption? Have I not
+said that I have returned to my native land to pursue the healthful
+avocations of my kind! Oh, yes! what so healthful, so noble, so
+fitted to our nature, as what you call the Practical Life? If we
+have faculties, what is their use, but to sell them to advantage! Buy
+knowledge as we do our goods; buy it at the cheapest market, sell it at
+the dearest. Have you not breakfasted yet?”
+
+The friends walked into the streets, and Mervale shrank from the irony
+with which Glyndon complimented him on his respectability, his station,
+his pursuits, his happy marriage, and his eight pictures in their
+handsome frames. Formerly the sober Mervale had commanded an influence
+over his friend: HIS had been the sarcasm; Glyndon’s the irresolute
+shame at his own peculiarities. Now this position was reversed. There
+was a fierce earnestness in Glyndon’s altered temper which awed and
+silenced the quiet commonplace of his friend’s character. He seemed to
+take a malignant delight in persuading himself that the sober life of
+the world was contemptible and base.
+
+“Ah!” he exclaimed, “how right you were to tell me to marry respectably;
+to have a solid position; to live in decorous fear of the world and
+one’s wife; and to command the envy of the poor, the good opinion of
+the rich. You have practised what you preach. Delicious existence! The
+merchant’s desk and the curtain lecture! Ha! ha! Shall we have another
+night of it?”
+
+Mervale, embarrassed and irritated, turned the conversation upon
+Glyndon’s affairs. He was surprised at the knowledge of the world which
+the artist seemed to have suddenly acquired, surprised still more at
+the acuteness and energy with which he spoke of the speculations most in
+vogue at the market. Yes; Glyndon was certainly in earnest: he desired
+to be rich and respectable,--and to make at least ten per cent for his
+money!
+
+After spending some days with the merchant, during which time he
+contrived to disorganise all the mechanism of the house, to turn
+night into day, harmony into discord, to drive poor Mrs. Mervale
+half-distracted, and to convince her husband that he was horribly
+hen-pecked, the ill-omened visitor left them as suddenly as he had
+arrived. He took a house of his own; he sought the society of persons
+of substance; he devoted himself to the money-market; he seemed to
+have become a man of business; his schemes were bold and colossal; his
+calculations rapid and profound. He startled Mervale by his energy,
+and dazzled him by his success. Mervale began to envy him,--to be
+discontented with his own regular and slow gains. When Glyndon bought or
+sold in the funds, wealth rolled upon him like the tide of a sea; what
+years of toil could not have done for him in art, a few months, by
+a succession of lucky chances, did for him in speculation. Suddenly,
+however, he relaxed his exertions; new objects of ambition seemed to
+attract him. If he heard a drum in the streets, what glory like the
+soldier’s? If a new poem were published, what renown like the poet’s?
+He began works in literature, which promised great excellence, to throw
+them aside in disgust. All at once he abandoned the decorous and formal
+society he had courted; he joined himself, with young and riotous
+associates; he plunged into the wildest excesses of the great city,
+where Gold reigns alike over Toil and Pleasure. Through all he carried
+with him a certain power and heat of soul. In all society he aspired
+to command,--in all pursuits to excel. Yet whatever the passion of the
+moment, the reaction was terrible in its gloom. He sank, at times, into
+the most profound and the darkest reveries. His fever was that of a mind
+that would escape memory,--his repose, that of a mind which the memory
+seizes again, and devours as a prey. Mervale now saw little of him; they
+shunned each other. Glyndon had no confidant, and no friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.IV.
+
+     Ich fuhle Dich mir nahe;
+     Die Einsamkeit belebt;
+     Wie uber seinen Welten
+     Der Unsichtbare schwebt.
+     Uhland.
+
+     (I feel thee near to me,
+     The loneliness takes life,--As over its world
+     The Invisible hovers.)
+
+From this state of restlessness and agitation rather than continuous
+action, Glyndon was aroused by a visitor who seemed to exercise the most
+salutary influence over him. His sister, an orphan with himself, had
+resided in the country with her aunt. In the early years of hope and
+home he had loved this girl, much younger than himself, with all a
+brother’s tenderness. On his return to England, he had seemed to forget
+her existence. She recalled herself to him on her aunt’s death by
+a touching and melancholy letter: she had now no home but his,--no
+dependence save on his affection; he wept when he read it, and was
+impatient till Adela arrived.
+
+This girl, then about eighteen, concerned beneath a gentle and calm
+exterior much of the romance or enthusiasm that had, at her own age,
+characterised her brother. But her enthusiasm was of a far purer order,
+and was restrained within proper bounds, partly by the sweetness of a
+very feminine nature, and partly by a strict and methodical education.
+She differed from him especially in a timidity of character which
+exceeded that usual at her age, but which the habit of self-command
+concealed no less carefully than that timidity itself concealed the
+romance I have ascribed to her.
+
+Adela was not handsome: she had the complexion and the form of delicate
+health; and too fine an organisation of the nerves rendered her
+susceptible to every impression that could influence the health of the
+frame through the sympathy of the mind. But as she never complained, and
+as the singular serenity of her manners seemed to betoken an
+equanimity of temperament which, with the vulgar, might have passed for
+indifference, her sufferings had so long been borne unnoticed that it
+ceased to be an effort to disguise them. Though, as I have said, not
+handsome, her countenance was interesting and pleasing; and there
+was that caressing kindness, that winning charm about her smile, her
+manners, her anxiety to please, to comfort, and to soothe which went at
+once to the heart, and made her lovely,--because so loving.
+
+Such was the sister whom Glyndon had so long neglected, and whom he
+now so cordially welcomed. Adela had passed many years a victim to
+the caprices, and a nurse to the maladies, of a selfish and exacting
+relation. The delicate and generous and respectful affection of her
+brother was no less new to her than delightful. He took pleasure in the
+happiness he created; he gradually weaned himself from other society;
+he felt the charm of home. It is not surprising, then, that this
+young creature, free and virgin from every more ardent attachment,
+concentrated all her grateful love on this cherished and protecting
+relative. Her study by day, her dream by night, was to repay him for
+his affection. She was proud of his talents, devoted to his welfare;
+the smallest trifle that could interest him swelled in her eyes to the
+gravest affairs of life. In short, all the long-hoarded enthusiasm,
+which was her perilous and only heritage, she invested in this one
+object of her holy tenderness, her pure ambition.
+
+But in proportion as Glyndon shunned those excitements by which he had
+so long sought to occupy his time or distract his thoughts, the gloom
+of his calmer hours became deeper and more continuous. He ever and
+especially dreaded to be alone; he could not bear his new companion to
+be absent from his eyes: he rode with her, walked with her, and it was
+with visible reluctance, which almost partook of horror, that he retired
+to rest at an hour when even revel grows fatigued. This gloom was not
+that which could be called by the soft name of melancholy,--it was far
+more intense; it seemed rather like despair. Often after a silence as of
+death--so heavy, abstracted, motionless, did it appear--he would start
+abruptly, and cast hurried glances around him,--his limbs trembling, his
+lips livid, his brows bathed in dew. Convinced that some secret sorrow
+preyed upon his mind, and would consume his health, it was the dearest
+as the most natural desire of Adela to become his confidant and
+consoler. She observed, with the quick tact of the delicate, that he
+disliked her to seem affected by, or even sensible of, his darker moods.
+She schooled herself to suppress her fears and her feelings. She would
+not ask his confidence,--she sought to steal into it. By little and
+little she felt that she was succeeding. Too wrapped in his own strange
+existence to be acutely observant of the character of others, Glyndon
+mistook the self-content of a generous and humble affection for
+constitutional fortitude; and this quality pleased and soothed him. It
+is fortitude that the diseased mind requires in the confidant whom
+it selects as its physician. And how irresistible is that desire to
+communicate! How often the lonely man thought to himself, “My heart
+would be lightened of its misery, if once confessed!” He felt, too, that
+in the very youth, the inexperience, the poetical temperament of Adela,
+he could find one who would comprehend and bear with him better than
+any sterner and more practical nature. Mervale would have looked on his
+revelations as the ravings of madness, and most men, at best, as the
+sicklied chimeras, the optical delusions, of disease. Thus gradually
+preparing himself for that relief for which he yearned, the moment for
+his disclosure arrived thus:--
+
+One evening, as they sat alone together, Adela, who inherited some
+portion of her brother’s talent in art, was employed in drawing, and
+Glyndon, rousing himself from meditations less gloomy than usual, rose,
+and affectionately passing his arm round her waist, looked over her as
+she sat. An exclamation of dismay broke from his lips,--he snatched the
+drawing from her hand: “What are you about?--what portrait is this?”
+
+“Dear Clarence, do you not remember the original?--it is a copy from
+that portrait of our wise ancestor which our poor mother used to say
+so strongly resembled you. I thought it would please you if I copied it
+from memory.”
+
+“Accursed was the likeness!” said Glyndon, gloomily. “Guess you not the
+reason why I have shunned to return to the home of my fathers!--because
+I dreaded to meet that portrait!--because--because--but pardon me; I
+alarm you!”
+
+“Ah, no,--no, Clarence, you never alarm me when you speak: only when you
+are silent! Oh, if you thought me worthy of your trust; oh, if you had
+given me the right to reason with you in the sorrows that I yearn to
+share!”
+
+Glyndon made no answer, but paced the room for some moments with
+disordered strides. He stopped at last, and gazed at her earnestly.
+“Yes, you, too, are his descendant; you know that such men have lived
+and suffered; you will not mock me,--you will not disbelieve! Listen!
+hark!--what sound is that?”
+
+“But the wind on the house-top, Clarence,--but the wind.”
+
+“Give me your hand; let me feel its living clasp; and when I have told
+you, never revert to the tale again. Conceal it from all: swear that it
+shall die with us,--the last of our predestined race!”
+
+“Never will I betray your trust; I swear it,--never!” said Adela,
+firmly; and she drew closer to his side. Then Glyndon commenced his
+story. That which, perhaps, in writing, and to minds prepared to
+question and disbelieve, may seem cold and terrorless, became far
+different when told by those blanched lips, with all that truth of
+suffering which convinces and appalls. Much, indeed, he concealed,
+much he involuntarily softened; but he revealed enough to make his
+tale intelligible and distinct to his pale and trembling listener. “At
+daybreak,” he said, “I left that unhallowed and abhorred abode. I had
+one hope still,--I would seek Mejnour through the world. I would force
+him to lay at rest the fiend that haunted my soul. With this intent I
+journeyed from city to city. I instituted the most vigilant researches
+through the police of Italy. I even employed the services of the
+Inquisition at Rome, which had lately asserted its ancient powers in the
+trial of the less dangerous Cagliostro. All was in vain; not a trace of
+him could be discovered. I was not alone, Adela.” Here Glyndon paused a
+moment, as if embarrassed; for in his recital, I need scarcely say that
+he had only indistinctly alluded to Fillide, whom the reader may
+surmise to be his companion. “I was not alone, but the associate of
+my wanderings was not one in whom my soul could confide,--faithful and
+affectionate, but without education, without faculties to comprehend me,
+with natural instincts rather than cultivated reason; one in whom the
+heart might lean in its careless hours, but with whom the mind could
+have no commune, in whom the bewildered spirit could seek no guide. Yet
+in the society of this person the demon troubled me not. Let me
+explain yet more fully the dread conditions of its presence. In coarse
+excitement, in commonplace life, in the wild riot, in the fierce excess,
+in the torpid lethargy of that animal existence which we share with the
+brutes, its eyes were invisible, its whisper was unheard. But whenever
+the soul would aspire, whenever the imagination kindled to the loftier
+ends, whenever the consciousness of our proper destiny struggled against
+the unworthy life I pursued, then, Adela--then, it cowered by my side
+in the light of noon, or sat by my bed,--a Darkness visible through the
+Dark. If, in the galleries of Divine Art, the dreams of my youth woke
+the early emulation,--if I turned to the thoughts of sages; if the
+example of the great, if the converse of the wise, aroused the silenced
+intellect, the demon was with me as by a spell. At last, one evening, at
+Genoa, to which city I had travelled in pursuit of the mystic, suddenly,
+and when least expected, he appeared before me. It was the time of the
+Carnival. It was in one of those half-frantic scenes of noise and revel,
+call it not gayety, which establish a heathen saturnalia in the midst
+of a Christian festival. Wearied with the dance, I had entered a room in
+which several revellers were seated, drinking, singing, shouting; and
+in their fantastic dresses and hideous masks, their orgy seemed scarcely
+human. I placed myself amongst them, and in that fearful excitement of
+the spirits which the happy never know, I was soon the most riotous of
+all. The conversation fell on the Revolution of France, which had
+always possessed for me an absorbing fascination. The masks spoke of the
+millennium it was to bring on earth, not as philosophers rejoicing in
+the advent of light, but as ruffians exulting in the annihilation of
+law. I know not why it was, but their licentious language infected
+myself; and, always desirous to be foremost in every circle, I soon
+exceeded even these rioters in declamations on the nature of the liberty
+which was about to embrace all the families of the globe,--a liberty
+that should pervade not only public legislation, but domestic life; an
+emancipation from every fetter that men had forged for themselves. In
+the midst of this tirade one of the masks whispered me,--
+
+“‘Take care. One listens to you who seems to be a spy!’
+
+“My eyes followed those of the mask, and I observed a man who took
+no part in the conversation, but whose gaze was bent upon me. He was
+disguised like the rest, yet I found by a general whisper that none had
+observed him enter. His silence, his attention, had alarmed the fears of
+the other revellers,--they only excited me the more. Rapt in my subject,
+I pursued it, insensible to the signs of those about me; and, addressing
+myself only to the silent mask who sat alone, apart from the group, I
+did not even observe that, one by one, the revellers slunk off, and that
+I and the silent listener were left alone, until, pausing from my heated
+and impetuous declamations, I said,--
+
+“‘And you, signor,--what is your view of this mighty era? Opinion
+without persecution; brotherhood without jealousy; love without
+bondage--’
+
+“‘And life without God,’ added the mask as I hesitated for new images.
+
+“The sound of that well-known voice changed the current of my thought. I
+sprang forward, and cried,--
+
+“‘Imposter or Fiend, we meet at last!’
+
+“The figure rose as I advanced, and, unmasking, showed the features of
+Mejnour. His fixed eye, his majestic aspect, awed and repelled me. I
+stood rooted to the ground.
+
+“‘Yes,’ he said solemnly, ‘we meet, and it is this meeting that I have
+sought. How hast thou followed my admonitions! Are these the scenes in
+which the Aspirant for the Serene Science thinks to escape the Ghastly
+Enemy? Do the thoughts thou hast uttered--thoughts that would strike all
+order from the universe--express the hopes of the sage who would rise to
+the Harmony of the Eternal Spheres?’
+
+“‘It is thy fault,--it is thine!’ I exclaimed. ‘Exorcise the phantom!
+Take the haunting terror from my soul!’
+
+“Mejnour looked at me a moment with a cold and cynical disdain which
+provoked at once my fear and rage, and replied,--
+
+“‘No; fool of thine own senses! No; thou must have full and entire
+experience of the illusions to which the Knowledge that is without Faith
+climbs its Titan way. Thou pantest for this Millennium,--thou shalt
+behold it! Thou shalt be one of the agents of the era of Light and
+Reason. I see, while I speak, the Phantom thou fliest, by thy side; it
+marshals thy path; it has power over thee as yet,--a power that defies
+my own. In the last days of that Revolution which thou hailest, amidst
+the wrecks of the Order thou cursest as Oppression, seek the fulfilment
+of thy destiny, and await thy cure.’
+
+“At that instant a troop of masks, clamorous, intoxicated, reeling, and
+rushing, as they reeled, poured into the room, and separated me from the
+mystic. I broke through them, and sought him everywhere, but in vain.
+All my researches the next day were equally fruitless. Weeks were
+consumed in the same pursuit,--not a trace of Mejnour could be
+discovered. Wearied with false pleasures, roused by reproaches I had
+deserved, recoiling from Mejnour’s prophecy of the scene in which I was
+to seek deliverance, it occurred to me, at last, that in the sober air
+of my native country, and amidst its orderly and vigorous pursuits, I
+might work out my own emancipation from the spectre. I left all whom
+I had before courted and clung to,--I came hither. Amidst mercenary
+schemes and selfish speculations, I found the same relief as in debauch
+and excess. The Phantom was invisible; but these pursuits soon became
+to me distasteful as the rest. Ever and ever I felt that I was born for
+something nobler than the greed of gain,--that life may be made equally
+worthless, and the soul equally degraded by the icy lust of avarice, as
+by the noisier passions. A higher ambition never ceased to torment
+me. But, but,” continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and a visible
+shudder, “at every attempt to rise into loftier existence, came that
+hideous form. It gloomed beside me at the easel. Before the volumes of
+poet and sage it stood with its burning eyes in the stillness of night,
+and I thought I heard its horrible whispers uttering temptations never
+to be divulged.” He paused, and the drops stood upon his brow.
+
+“But I,” said Adela, mastering her fears and throwing her arms around
+him,--“but I henceforth will have no life but in thine. And in this love
+so pure, so holy, thy terror shall fade away.”
+
+“No, no!” exclaimed Glyndon, starting from her. “The worst revelation is
+to come. Since thou hast been here, since I have sternly and resolutely
+refrained from every haunt, every scene in which this preternatural
+enemy troubled me not, I--I--have--Oh, Heaven! Mercy--mercy! There it
+stands,--there, by thy side,--there, there!” And he fell to the ground
+insensible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.V.
+
+     Doch wunderbar ergriff mich’s diese Nacht;
+     Die Glieder schienen schon in Todes Macht.
+     Uhland.
+
+     (This night it fearfully seized on me; my limbs appeared already
+     in the power of death.)
+
+A fever, attended with delirium, for several days deprived Glyndon of
+consciousness; and when, by Adela’s care more than the skill of the
+physicians, he was restored to life and reason, he was unutterably
+shocked by the change in his sister’s appearance; at first, he fondly
+imagined that her health, affected by her vigils, would recover with his
+own. But he soon saw, with an anguish which partook of remorse, that the
+malady was deep-seated,--deep, deep, beyond the reach of Aesculapius and
+his drugs. Her imagination, little less lively than his own, was awfully
+impressed by the strange confessions she had heard,--by the ravings
+of his delirium. Again and again had he shrieked forth, “It is
+there,--there, by thy side, my sister!” He had transferred to her fancy
+the spectre, and the horror that cursed himself. He perceived this, not
+by her words, but her silence; by the eyes that strained into space; by
+the shiver that came over her frame; by the start of terror; by the look
+that did not dare to turn behind. Bitterly he repented his confession;
+bitterly he felt that between his sufferings and human sympathy there
+could be no gentle and holy commune; vainly he sought to retract,--to
+undo what he had done, to declare all was but the chimera of an
+overheated brain!
+
+And brave and generous was this denial of himself; for, often and often,
+as he thus spoke, he saw the Thing of Dread gliding to her side, and
+glaring at him as he disowned its being. But what chilled him, if
+possible, yet more than her wasting form and trembling nerves, was the
+change in her love for him; a natural terror had replaced it. She turned
+paler if he approached,--she shuddered if he took her hand. Divided from
+the rest of earth, the gulf of the foul remembrance yawned now between
+his sister and himself. He could endure no more the presence of the one
+whose life HIS life had embittered. He made some excuses for departure,
+and writhed to see that they were greeted eagerly. The first gleam of
+joy he had detected since that fatal night, on Adela’s face, he beheld
+when he murmured “Farewell.” He travelled for some weeks through the
+wildest parts of Scotland; scenery which MAKES the artist, was loveless
+to his haggard eyes. A letter recalled him to London on the wings of
+new agony and fear; he arrived to find his sister in a condition both of
+mind and health which exceeded his worst apprehensions.
+
+Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as one who
+gazed on the Medusa’s head, and felt, without a struggle, the human
+being gradually harden to the statue. It was not frenzy, it was not
+idiocy,--it was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking. Only as
+the night advanced towards the eleventh hour--the hour in which Glyndon
+had concluded his tale--she grew visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed.
+Then her lips muttered; her hands writhed; she looked round with a look
+of unspeakable appeal for succour, for protection, and suddenly, as the
+clock struck, fell with a shriek to the ground, cold and lifeless. With
+difficulty, and not until after the most earnest prayers, did she answer
+the agonised questions of Glyndon; at last she owned that at that hour,
+and that hour alone, wherever she was placed, however occupied, she
+distinctly beheld the apparition of an old hag, who, after thrice
+knocking at the door, entered the room, and hobbling up to her with a
+countenance distorted by hideous rage and menace, laid its icy fingers
+on her forehead: from that moment she declared that sense forsook her;
+and when she woke again, it was only to wait, in suspense that froze up
+her blood, the repetition of the ghastly visitation.
+
+The physician who had been summoned before Glyndon’s return, and whose
+letter had recalled him to London, was a commonplace practitioner,
+ignorant of the case, and honestly anxious that one more experienced
+should be employed. Clarence called in one of the most eminent of the
+faculty, and to him he recited the optical delusion of his sister. The
+physician listened attentively, and seemed sanguine in his hopes of
+cure. He came to the house two hours before the one so dreaded by the
+patient. He had quietly arranged that the clocks should be put forward
+half an hour, unknown to Adela, and even to her brother. He was a man of
+the most extraordinary powers of conversation, of surpassing wit, of
+all the faculties that interest and amuse. He first administered to the
+patient a harmless potion, which he pledged himself would dispel the
+delusion. His confident tone woke her own hopes,--he continued to excite
+her attention, to rouse her lethargy; he jested, he laughed away the
+time. The hour struck. “Joy, my brother!” she exclaimed, throwing
+herself in his arms; “the time is past!” And then, like one released
+from a spell, she suddenly assumed more than her ancient
+cheerfulness. “Ah, Clarence!” she whispered, “forgive me for my former
+desertion,--forgive me that I feared YOU. I shall live!--I shall live!
+in my turn to banish the spectre that haunts my brother!” And Clarence
+smiled and wiped the tears from his burning eyes. The physician renewed
+his stories, his jests. In the midst of a stream of rich humour that
+seemed to carry away both brother and sister, Glyndon suddenly saw over
+Adela’s face the same fearful change, the same anxious look, the same
+restless, straining eye, he had beheld the night before. He rose,--he
+approached her. Adela started up, “look--look--look!” she exclaimed.
+“She comes! Save me,--save me!” and she fell at his feet in strong
+convulsions as the clock, falsely and in vain put forward, struck the
+half-hour.
+
+The physician lifted her in his arms. “My worst fears are confirmed,”
+ he said gravely; “the disease is epilepsy.” (The most celebrated
+practitioner in Dublin related to the editor a story of optical delusion
+precisely similar in its circumstances and its physical cause to the one
+here narrated.)
+
+The next night, at the same hour, Adela Glyndon died.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.VI.
+
+     La loi, dont le regne vous epouvante, a son glaive leve sur vous:
+     elle vous frappera tous:  le genre humain a besoin de cet
+     exemple.--Couthon.
+
+     (The law, whose reign terrifies you, has its sword raised against
+     you; it will strike you all:  humanity has need of this example.)
+
+“Oh, joy, joy!--thou art come again! This is thy hand--these thy lips.
+Say that thou didst not desert me from the love of another; say it
+again,--say it ever!--and I will pardon thee all the rest!”
+
+“So thou hast mourned for me?”
+
+“Mourned!--and thou wert cruel enough to leave me gold; there it
+is,--there, untouched!”
+
+“Poor child of Nature! how, then, in this strange town of Marseilles,
+hast thou found bread and shelter?”
+
+“Honestly, soul of my soul! honestly, but yet by the face thou didst
+once think so fair; thinkest thou THAT now?”
+
+“Yes, Fillide, more fair than ever. But what meanest thou?”
+
+“There is a painter here--a great man, one of their great men at Paris,
+I know not what they call them; but he rules over all here,--life and
+death; and he has paid me largely but to sit for my portrait. It is for
+a picture to be given to the Nation, for he paints only for glory. Think
+of thy Fillide’s renown!” And the girl’s wild eyes sparkled; her vanity
+was roused. “And he would have married me if I would!--divorced his wife
+to marry me! But I waited for thee, ungrateful!”
+
+A knock at the door was heard,--a man entered.
+
+“Nicot!”
+
+“Ah, Glyndon!--hum!--welcome! What! thou art twice my rival! But Jean
+Nicot bears no malice. Virtue is my dream,--my country, my mistress.
+Serve my country, citizen; and I forgive thee the preference of beauty.
+Ca ira! ca ira!”
+
+But as the painter spoke, it hymned, it rolled through the streets,--the
+fiery song of the Marseillaise! There was a crowd, a multitude, a people
+up, abroad, with colours and arms, enthusiasm and song,--with song, with
+enthusiasm, with colours and arms! And who could guess that that
+martial movement was one, not of war, but massacre,--Frenchmen against
+Frenchmen? For there are two parties in Marseilles,--and ample work for
+Jourdan Coupe-tete! But this, the Englishman, just arrived, a stranger
+to all factions, did not as yet comprehend. He comprehended nothing but
+the song, the enthusiasm, the arms, and the colours that lifted to the
+sun the glorious lie, “Le peuple Francais, debout contre les tyrans!”
+ (Up, Frenchmen, against tyrants!)
+
+The dark brow of the wretched wanderer grew animated; he gazed from the
+window on the throng that marched below, beneath their waving Oriflamme.
+They shouted as they beheld the patriot Nicot, the friend of Liberty and
+relentless Hebert, by the stranger’s side, at the casement.
+
+“Ay, shout again!” cried the painter,--“shout for the brave Englishman
+who abjures his Pitts and his Coburgs to be a citizen of Liberty and
+France!”
+
+A thousand voices rent the air, and the hymn of the Marseillaise rose in
+majesty again.
+
+“Well, and if it be among these high hopes and this brave people that
+the phantom is to vanish, and the cure to come!” muttered Glyndon; and
+he thought he felt again the elixir sparkling through his veins.
+
+“Thou shalt be one of the Convention with Paine and Clootz,--I will
+manage it all for thee!” cried Nicot, slapping him on the shoulder: “and
+Paris--”
+
+“Ah, if I could but see Paris!” cried Fillide, in her joyous voice.
+Joyous! the whole time, the town, the air--save where, unheard, rose the
+cry of agony and the yell of murder--were joy! Sleep unhaunting in thy
+grave, cold Adela. Joy, joy! In the Jubilee of Humanity all private
+griefs should cease! Behold, wild mariner, the vast whirlpool draws thee
+to its stormy bosom! There the individual is not. All things are of the
+whole! Open thy gates, fair Paris, for the stranger-citizen! Receive in
+your ranks, O meek Republicans, the new champion of liberty, of reason,
+of mankind! “Mejnour is right; it was in virtue, in valour, in glorious
+struggle for the human race, that the spectre was to shrink to her
+kindred darkness.”
+
+And Nicot’s shrill voice praised him; and lean Robespierre--“Flambeau,
+colonne, pierre angulaire de l’edifice de la Republique!” (“The light,
+column, and keystone of the Republic.”--“Lettre du Citoyen P--; Papiers
+inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” tom 11, page 127.)--smiled ominously
+on him from his bloodshot eyes; and Fillide clasped him with passionate
+arms to her tender breast. And at his up-rising and down-sitting, at
+board and in bed, though he saw it not, the Nameless One guided him with
+the demon eyes to the sea whose waves were gore.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI. -- SUPERSTITION DESERTING FAITH.
+
+     Why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix
+     my hair.--Shakespeare
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.I.
+
+     Therefore the Genii were painted with a platter full of garlands
+     and flowers in one hand, and a whip in the other.--Alexander
+     Ross, “Mystag. Poet.”
+
+According to the order of the events related in this narrative, the
+departure of Zanoni and Viola from the Greek isle, in which two happy
+years appear to have been passed, must have been somewhat later in date
+than the arrival of Glyndon at Marseilles. It must have been in the
+course of the year 1791 when Viola fled from Naples with her mysterious
+lover, and when Glyndon sought Mejnour in the fatal castle. It is now
+towards the close of 1793, when our story again returns to Zanoni. The
+stars of winter shone down on the lagunes of Venice. The hum of the
+Rialto was hushed,--the last loiterers had deserted the Place of St.
+Mark’s, and only at distant intervals might be heard the oars of the
+rapid gondolas, bearing reveller or lover to his home. But lights still
+flitted to and fro across the windows of one of the Palladian palaces,
+whose shadow slept in the great canal; and within the palace watched the
+twin Eumenides that never sleep for Man,--Fear and Pain.
+
+“I will make thee the richest man in all Venice, if thou savest her.”
+
+“Signor,” said the leech; “your gold cannot control death, and the will
+of Heaven, signor, unless within the next hour there is some blessed
+change, prepare your courage.”
+
+Ho--ho, Zanoni! man of mystery and might, who hast walked amidst the
+passions of the world, with no changes on thy brow, art thou tossed at
+last upon the billows of tempestuous fear? Does thy spirit reel to and
+fro?--knowest thou at last the strength and the majesty of Death?
+
+He fled, trembling, from the pale-faced man of art,--fled through
+stately hall and long-drawn corridor, and gained a remote chamber in the
+palace, which other step than his was not permitted to profane. Out
+with thy herbs and vessels. Break from the enchanted elements, O
+silvery-azure flame! Why comes he not,--the Son of the Starbeam! Why
+is Adon-Ai deaf to thy solemn call? It comes not,--the luminous and
+delightsome Presence! Cabalist! are thy charms in vain? Has thy throne
+vanished from the realms of space? Thou standest pale and trembling.
+Pale trembler! not thus didst thou look when the things of glory
+gathered at thy spell. Never to the pale trembler bow the things of
+glory: the soul, and not the herbs, nor the silvery-azure flame, nor the
+spells of the Cabala, commands the children of the air; and THY soul, by
+Love and Death, is made sceptreless and discrowned!
+
+At length the flame quivers,--the air grows cold as the wind in
+charnels. A thing not of earth is present,--a mistlike, formless thing.
+It cowers in the distance,--a silent Horror! it rises; it creeps; it
+nears thee--dark in its mantle of dusky haze; and under its veil it
+looks on thee with its livid, malignant eyes,--the thing of malignant
+eyes!
+
+“Ha, young Chaldean! young in thy countless ages,--young as when, cold
+to pleasure and to beauty, thou stoodest on the old Firetower, and
+heardest the starry silence whisper to thee the last mystery that
+baffles Death,--fearest thou Death at length? Is thy knowledge but a
+circle that brings thee back whence thy wanderings began! Generations on
+generations have withered since we two met! Lo! thou beholdest me now!”
+
+“But I behold thee without fear! Though beneath thine eyes thousands
+have perished; though, where they burn, spring up the foul poisons of
+the human heart, and to those whom thou canst subject to thy will, thy
+presence glares in the dreams of the raving maniac, or blackens the
+dungeon of despairing crime, thou art not my vanquisher, but my slave!”
+
+“And as a slave will I serve thee! Command thy slave, O beautiful
+Chaldean! Hark, the wail of women!--hark, the sharp shriek of thy
+beloved one! Death is in thy palace! Adon-Ai comes not to thy call. Only
+where no cloud of the passion and the flesh veils the eye of the Serene
+Intelligence can the Sons of the Starbeam glide to man. But _I_ can aid
+thee!--hark!” And Zanoni heard distinctly in his heart, even at that
+distance from the chamber, the voice of Viola calling in delirium on her
+beloved one.
+
+“Oh, Viola, I can save thee not!” exclaimed the seer, passionately; “my
+love for thee has made me powerless!”
+
+“Not powerless; I can gift thee with the art to save her,--I can place
+healing in thy hand!”
+
+“For both?--child and mother,--for both?”
+
+“Both!”
+
+A convulsion shook the limbs of the seer,--a mighty struggle shook him
+as a child: the Humanity and the Hour conquered the repugnant spirit.
+
+“I yield! Mother and child--save both!”
+
+....
+
+In the dark chamber lay Viola, in the sharpest agonies of travail; life
+seemed rending itself away in the groans and cries that spoke of pain in
+the midst of frenzy; and still, in groan and cry, she called on Zanoni,
+her beloved. The physician looked to the clock; on it beat: the Heart
+of Time,--regularly and slowly,--Heart that never sympathised with Life,
+and never flagged for Death! “The cries are fainter,” said the leech;
+“in ten minutes more all will be past.”
+
+Fool! the minutes laugh at thee; Nature, even now, like a blue sky
+through a shattered temple, is smiling through the tortured frame. The
+breathing grows more calm and hushed; the voice of delirium is dumb,--a
+sweet dream has come to Viola. Is it a dream, or is it the soul that
+sees? She thinks suddenly that she is with Zanoni, that her burning head
+is pillowed on his bosom; she thinks, as he gazes on her, that his eyes
+dispel the tortures that prey upon her,--the touch of his hand cools the
+fever on her brow; she hears his voice in murmurs,--it is a music from
+which the fiends fly. Where is the mountain that seemed to press upon
+her temples? Like a vapour, it rolls away. In the frosts of the winter
+night, she sees the sun laughing in luxurious heaven,--she hears the
+whisper of green leaves; the beautiful world, valley and stream and
+woodland, lie before, and with a common voice speak to her, “We are
+not yet past for thee!” Fool of drugs and formula, look to thy
+dial-plate!--the hand has moved on; the minutes are with Eternity; the
+soul thy sentence would have dismissed, still dwells on the shores of
+Time. She sleeps: the fever abates; the convulsions are gone; the living
+rose blooms upon her cheek; the crisis is past! Husband, thy wife lives;
+lover, thy universe is no solitude! Heart of Time, beat on! A while, a
+little while,--joy! joy! joy!--father, embrace thy child!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.II.
+
+     Tristis Erinnys
+     Praetulit infaustas sanguinolenta faces.
+     Ovid.
+
+     (Erinnys, doleful and bloody, extends the unblessed torches.)
+
+And they placed the child in the father’s arms! As silently he bent
+over it, tears--tears, how human!--fell from his eyes like rain! And
+the little one smiled through the tears that bathed its cheeks! Ah, with
+what happy tears we welcome the stranger into our sorrowing world!
+With what agonising tears we dismiss the stranger back to the angels!
+Unselfish joy; but how selfish is the sorrow!
+
+And now through the silent chamber a faint sweet voice is heard,--the
+young mother’s voice.
+
+“I am here: I am by thy side!” murmured Zanoni.
+
+The mother smiled, and clasped his hand, and asked no more; she was
+contented.
+
+....
+
+Viola recovered with a rapidity that startled the physician; and the
+young stranger thrived as if it already loved the world to which it had
+descended. From that hour Zanoni seemed to live in the infant’s life,
+and in that life the souls of mother and father met as in a new bond.
+Nothing more beautiful than this infant had eye ever dwelt upon. It was
+strange to the nurses that it came not wailing to the light, but smiled
+to the light as a thing familiar to it before. It never uttered one cry
+of childish pain. In its very repose it seemed to be listening to some
+happy voice within its heart: it seemed itself so happy. In its eyes
+you would have thought intellect already kindled, though it had not yet
+found a language. Already it seemed to recognise its parents; already
+it stretched forth its arms when Zanoni bent over the bed, in which
+it breathed and bloomed,--the budding flower! And from that bed he was
+rarely absent: gazing upon it with his serene, delighted eyes, his soul
+seemed to feed its own. At night and in utter darkness he was still
+there; and Viola often heard him murmuring over it as she lay in
+a half-sleep. But the murmur was in a language strange to her; and
+sometimes when she heard she feared, and vague, undefined superstitions
+came back to her,--the superstitions of earlier youth. A mother fears
+everything, even the gods, for her new-born. The mortals shrieked aloud
+when of old they saw the great Demeter seeking to make their child
+immortal.
+
+But Zanoni, wrapped in the sublime designs that animated the human love
+to which he was now awakened, forgot all, even all he had forfeited or
+incurred, in the love that blinded him.
+
+But the dark, formless thing, though he nor invoked nor saw it, crept,
+often, round and round him, and often sat by the infant’s couch, with
+its hateful eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.III.
+
+     Fuscis tellurem amplectitur alis.
+     Virgil.
+
+     (Embraces the Earth with gloomy wings.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+Mejnour, Humanity, with all its sorrows and its joys, is mine once more.
+Day by day, I am forging my own fetters. I live in other lives than my
+own, and in them I have lost more than half my empire. Not lifting them
+aloft, they drag me by the strong bands of the affections to their own
+earth. Exiled from the beings only visible to the most abstract sense,
+the grim Enemy that guards the Threshold has entangled me in its web.
+Canst thou credit me, when I tell thee that I have accepted its gifts,
+and endure the forfeit? Ages must pass ere the brighter beings can again
+obey the spirit that has bowed to the ghastly one! And--
+
+....
+
+In this hope, then, Mejnour, I triumph still; I yet have supreme power
+over this young life. Insensibly and inaudibly my soul speaks to its
+own, and prepares it even now. Thou knowest that for the pure and
+unsullied infant spirit, the ordeal has no terror and no peril. Thus
+unceasingly I nourish it with no unholy light; and ere it yet be
+conscious of the gift, it will gain the privileges it has been mine to
+attain: the child, by slow and scarce-seen degrees, will communicate its
+own attributes to the mother; and content to see Youth forever radiant
+on the brows of the two that now suffice to fill up my whole infinity of
+thought, shall I regret the airier kingdom that vanishes hourly from my
+grasp? But thou, whose vision is still clear and serene, look into the
+far deeps shut from my gaze, and counsel me, or forewarn! I know that
+the gifts of the Being whose race is so hostile to our own are, to the
+common seeker, fatal and perfidious as itself. And hence, when, at the
+outskirts of knowledge, which in earlier ages men called Magic,
+they encountered the things of the hostile tribes, they believed the
+apparitions to be fiends, and, by fancied compacts, imagined they had
+signed away their souls; as if man could give for an eternity that over
+which he has control but while he lives! Dark, and shrouded forever from
+human sight, dwell the demon rebels, in their impenetrable realm; in
+them is no breath of the Divine One. In every human creature the Divine
+One breathes; and He alone can judge His own hereafter, and allot its
+new career and home. Could man sell himself to the fiend, man could
+prejudge himself, and arrogate the disposal of eternity! But these
+creatures, modifications as they are of matter, and some with more
+than the malignanty of man, may well seem, to fear and unreasoning
+superstition, the representatives of fiends. And from the darkest and
+mightiest of them I have accepted a boon,--the secret that startled
+Death from those so dear to me. Can I not trust that enough of power yet
+remains to me to baffle or to daunt the Phantom, if it seek to pervert
+the gift? Answer me, Mejnour, for in the darkness that veils me, I see
+only the pure eyes of the new-born; I hear only the low beating of my
+heart. Answer me, thou whose wisdom is without love!
+
+Mejnour to Zanoni.
+
+Rome.
+
+Fallen One!--I see before thee Evil and Death and Woe! Thou to have
+relinquished Adon-Ai for the nameless Terror,--the heavenly stars for
+those fearful eyes! Thou, at the last to be the victim of the Larva of
+the dreary Threshold, that, in thy first novitiate, fled, withered
+and shrivelled, from thy kingly brow! When, at the primary grades of
+initiation, the pupil I took from thee on the shores of the changed
+Parthenope, fell senseless and cowering before that Phantom-Darkness, I
+knew that his spirit was not formed to front the worlds beyond; for
+FEAR is the attraction of man to earthiest earth, and while he fears, he
+cannot soar. But THOU, seest thou not that to love is but to fear; seest
+thou not that the power of which thou boastest over the malignant one
+is already gone? It awes, it masters thee; it will mock thee and betray.
+Lose not a moment; come to me. If there can yet be sufficient sympathy
+between us, through MY eyes shalt thou see, and perhaps guard against
+the perils that, shapeless yet, and looming through the shadow, marshal
+themselves around thee and those whom thy very love has doomed. Come
+from all the ties of thy fond humanity; they will but obscure thy
+vision! Come forth from thy fears and hopes, thy desires and passions.
+Come, as alone Mind can be the monarch and the seer, shining through the
+home it tenants,--a pure, impressionless, sublime intelligence!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.IV.
+
+     Plus que vous ne pensez ce moment est terrible.
+     La Harpe, “Le Comte de Warwick,” Act 3, sc. 5.
+
+     (The moment is more terrible than you think.)
+
+For the first time since their union, Zanoni and Viola were
+separated,--Zanoni went to Rome on important business. “It was,” he
+said, “but for a few days;” and he went so suddenly that there was
+little time either for surprise or sorrow. But first parting is always
+more melancholy than it need be: it seems an interruption to the
+existence which Love shares with Love; it makes the heart feel what a
+void life will be when the last parting shall succeed, as succeed it
+must, the first. But Viola had a new companion; she was enjoying that
+most delicious novelty which ever renews the youth and dazzles the eyes
+of woman. As the mistress--the wife--she leans on another; from another
+are reflected her happiness, her being,--as an orb that takes light from
+its sun. But now, in turn, as the mother, she is raised from dependence
+into power; it is another that leans on her,--a star has sprung into
+space, to which she herself has become the sun!
+
+A few days,--but they will be sweet through the sorrow! A few
+days,--every hour of which seems an era to the infant, over whom bend
+watchful the eyes and the heart. From its waking to its sleep, from
+its sleep to its waking, is a revolution in Time. Every gesture to be
+noted,--every smile to seem a new progress into the world it has come
+to bless! Zanoni has gone,--the last dash of the oar is lost, the last
+speck of the gondola has vanished from the ocean-streets of Venice! Her
+infant is sleeping in the cradle at the mother’s feet; and she thinks
+through her tears what tales of the fairy-land, that spreads far and
+wide, with a thousand wonders, in that narrow bed, she shall have to
+tell the father! Smile on, weep on, young mother! Already the fairest
+leaf in the wild volume is closed for thee, and the invisible finger
+turns the page!
+
+....
+
+By the bridge of the Rialto stood two Venetians--ardent Republicans and
+Democrats--looking to the Revolution of France as the earthquake which
+must shatter their own expiring and vicious constitution, and give
+equality of ranks and rights to Venice.
+
+“Yes, Cottalto,” said one; “my correspondent of Paris has promised to
+elude all obstacles, and baffle all danger. He will arrange with us the
+hour of revolt, when the legions of France shall be within hearing of
+our guns. One day in this week, at this hour, he is to meet me here.
+This is but the fourth day.”
+
+He had scarce said these words before a man, wrapped in his roquelaire,
+emerging from one of the narrow streets to the left, halted opposite
+the pair, and eying them for a few moments with an earnest scrutiny,
+whispered, “Salut!”
+
+“Et fraternite,” answered the speaker.
+
+“You, then, are the brave Dandolo with whom the Comite deputed me to
+correspond? And this citizen--”
+
+“Is Cottalto, whom my letters have so often mentioned.” (I know not if
+the author of the original MSS. designs, under these names, to introduce
+the real Cottalto and the true Dandolo, who, in 1797, distinguished
+themselves by their sympathy with the French, and their democratic
+ardor.--Ed.)
+
+“Health and brotherhood to him! I have much to impart to you both. I
+will meet you at night, Dandolo. But in the streets we may be observed.”
+
+“And I dare not appoint my own house; tyranny makes spies of our very
+walls. But the place herein designated is secure;” and he slipped an
+address into the hand of his correspondent.
+
+“To-night, then, at nine! Meanwhile I have other business.” The man
+paused, his colour changed, and it was with an eager and passionate
+voice that he resumed,--
+
+“Your last letter mentioned this wealthy and mysterious visitor,--this
+Zanoni. He is still at Venice?”
+
+“I heard that he had left this morning; but his wife is still here.”
+
+“His wife!--that is well!”
+
+“What know you of him? Think you that he would join us? His wealth would
+be--”
+
+“His house, his address,--quick!” interrupted the man.
+
+“The Palazzo di --, on the Grand Canal.”
+
+“I thank you,--at nine we meet.”
+
+The man hurried on through the street from which he had emerged; and,
+passing by the house in which he had taken up his lodging (he had
+arrived at Venice the night before), a woman who stood by the door
+caught his arm.
+
+“Monsieur,” she said in French, “I have been watching for your return.
+Do you understand me? I will brave all, risk all, to go back with you to
+France,--to stand, through life or in death, by my husband’s side!”
+
+“Citoyenne, I promised your husband that, if such your choice, I would
+hazard my own safety to aid it. But think again! Your husband is one of
+the faction which Robespierre’s eyes have already marked; he cannot
+fly. All France is become a prison to the ‘suspect.’ You do not endanger
+yourself by return. Frankly, citoyenne, the fate you would share may be
+the guillotine. I speak (as you know by his letter) as your husband bade
+me.”
+
+“Monsieur, I will return with you,” said the woman, with a smile upon
+her pale face.
+
+“And yet you deserted your husband in the fair sunshine of the
+Revolution, to return to him amidst its storms and thunder,” said the
+man, in a tone half of wonder, half rebuke.
+
+“Because my father’s days were doomed; because he had no safety but in
+flight to a foreign land; because he was old and penniless, and had none
+but me to work for him; because my husband was not then in danger,
+and my father was! HE is dead--dead! My husband is in danger now. The
+daughter’s duties are no more,--the wife’s return!”
+
+“Be it so, citoyenne; on the third night I depart. Before then you may
+retract your choice.”
+
+“Never!”
+
+A dark smile passed over the man’s face.
+
+“O guillotine!” he said, “how many virtues hast thou brought to light!
+Well may they call thee ‘A Holy Mother!’ O gory guillotine!”
+
+He passed on muttering to himself, hailed a gondola, and was soon amidst
+the crowded waters of the Grand Canal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.V.
+
+     Ce que j’ignore
+     Est plus triste peut-etre et plus affreux encore.
+     La Harpe, “Le Comte de Warwick,” Act 5, sc. 1.
+
+     (That which I know not is, perhaps, more sad and fearful still.)
+
+The casement stood open, and Viola was seated by it. Beneath sparkled
+the broad waters in the cold but cloudless sunlight; and to that
+fair form, that half-averted face, turned the eyes of many a gallant
+cavalier, as their gondolas glided by.
+
+But at last, in the centre of the canal, one of these dark vessels
+halted motionless, as a man fixed his gaze from its lattice upon that
+stately palace. He gave the word to the rowers,--the vessel approached
+the marge. The stranger quitted the gondola; he passed up the
+broad stairs; he entered the palace. Weep on, smile no more, young
+mother!--the last page is turned!
+
+An attendant entered the room, and gave to Viola a card, with these
+words in English, “Viola, I must see you! Clarence Glyndon.”
+
+Oh, yes, how gladly Viola would see him; how gladly speak to him of her
+happiness, of Zanoni!--how gladly show to him her child! Poor Clarence!
+she had forgotten him till now, as she had all the fever of her earlier
+life,--its dreams, its vanities, its poor excitement, the lamps of the
+gaudy theatre, the applause of the noisy crowd.
+
+He entered. She started to behold him, so changed were his gloomy brow,
+his resolute, careworn features, from the graceful form and careless
+countenance of the artist-lover. His dress, though not mean, was rude,
+neglected, and disordered. A wild, desperate, half-savage air had
+supplanted that ingenuous mien, diffident in its grace, earnest in its
+diffidence, which had once characterised the young worshipper of Art,
+the dreaming aspirant after some starrier lore.
+
+“Is it you?” she said at last. “Poor Clarence, how changed!”
+
+“Changed!” he said abruptly, as he placed himself by her side. “And whom
+am I to thank, but the fiends--the sorcerers--who have seized upon thy
+existence, as upon mine? Viola, hear me. A few weeks since the news
+reached me that you were in Venice. Under other pretences, and through
+innumerable dangers, I have come hither, risking liberty, perhaps
+life, if my name and career are known in Venice, to warn and save you.
+Changed, you call me!--changed without; but what is that to the ravages
+within? Be warned, be warned in time!”
+
+The voice of Glyndon, sounding hollow and sepulchral, alarmed Viola even
+more than his words. Pale, haggard, emaciated, he seemed almost as one
+risen from the dead, to appall and awe her. “What,” she said, at last,
+in a faltering voice,--“what wild words do you utter! Can you--”
+
+“Listen!” interrupted Glyndon, laying his hand upon her arm, and its
+touch was as cold as death,--“listen! You have heard of the old stories
+of men who have leagued themselves with devils for the attainment of
+preternatural powers. Those stories are not fables. Such men live.
+Their delight is to increase the unhallowed circle of wretches like
+themselves. If their proselytes fail in the ordeal, the demon seizes
+them, even in this life, as it hath seized me!--if they succeed, woe,
+yea, a more lasting woe! There is another life, where no spells can
+charm the evil one, or allay the torture. I have come from a scene where
+blood flows in rivers,--where Death stands by the side of the bravest
+and the highest, and the one monarch is the Guillotine; but all the
+mortal perils with which men can be beset, are nothing to the dreariness
+of the chamber where the Horror that passes death moves and stirs!”
+
+It was then that Glyndon, with a cold and distinct precision, detailed,
+as he had done to Adela, the initiation through which he had gone. He
+described, in words that froze the blood of his listener, the appearance
+of that formless phantom, with the eyes that seared the brain and
+congealed the marrow of those who beheld. Once seen, it never
+was to be exorcised. It came at its own will, prompting black
+thoughts,--whispering strange temptations. Only in scenes of turbulent
+excitement was it absent! Solitude, serenity, the struggling desires
+after peace and virtue,--THESE were the elements it loved to haunt!
+Bewildered, terror-stricken, the wild account confirmed by the dim
+impressions that never, in the depth and confidence of affection, had
+been closely examined, but rather banished as soon as felt,--that
+the life and attributes of Zanoni were not like those of
+mortals,--impressions which her own love had made her hitherto censure
+as suspicions that wronged, and which, thus mitigated, had perhaps only
+served to rivet the fascinated chains in which he bound her heart and
+senses, but which now, as Glyndon’s awful narrative filled her
+with contagious dread, half unbound the very spells they had woven
+before,--Viola started up in fear, not for HERSELF, and clasped her
+child in her arms!
+
+“Unhappiest one!” cried Glyndon, shuddering, “hast thou indeed given
+birth to a victim thou canst not save? Refuse it sustenance,--let it
+look to thee in vain for food! In the grave, at least, there are repose
+and peace!”
+
+Then there came back to Viola’s mind the remembrance of Zanoni’s
+night-long watches by that cradle, and the fear which even then had
+crept over her as she heard his murmured half-chanted words. And as
+the child looked at her with its clear, steadfast eye, in the strange
+intelligence of that look there was something that only confirmed her
+awe. So there both Mother and Forewarner stood in silence,--the sun
+smiling upon them through the casement, and dark by the cradle, though
+they saw it not, sat the motionless, veiled Thing!
+
+But by degrees better and juster and more grateful memories of the past
+returned to the young mother. The features of the infant, as she gazed,
+took the aspect of the absent father. A voice seemed to break from those
+rosy lips, and say, mournfully, “I speak to thee in thy child. In return
+for all my love for thee and thine, dost thou distrust me, at the first
+sentence of a maniac who accuses?”
+
+Her breast heaved, her stature rose, her eyes shone with a serene and
+holy light.
+
+“Go, poor victim of thine own delusions,” she said to Glyndon; “I
+would not believe mine own senses, if they accused ITS father! And
+what knowest thou of Zanoni? What relation have Mejnour and the grisly
+spectres he invoked, with the radiant image with which thou wouldst
+connect them?”
+
+“Thou wilt learn too soon,” replied Glyndon, gloomily. “And the very
+phantom that haunts me, whispers, with its bloodless lips, that its
+horrors await both thine and thee! I take not thy decision yet; before I
+leave Venice we shall meet again.”
+
+He said, and departed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VI.
+
+     Quel est l’egarement ou ton ame se livre?
+     La Harpe, “Le Comte de Warwick,” Act 4, sc. 4.
+
+     (To what delusion does thy soul abandon itself?)
+
+Alas, Zanoni! the aspirer, the dark, bright one!--didst thou think that
+the bond between the survivor of ages and the daughter of a day could
+endure? Didst thou not foresee that, until the ordeal was past, there
+could be no equality between thy wisdom and her love? Art thou absent
+now seeking amidst thy solemn secrets the solemn safeguards for child
+and mother, and forgettest thou that the phantom that served thee hath
+power over its own gifts,--over the lives it taught thee to rescue from
+the grave? Dost thou not know that Fear and Distrust, once sown in the
+heart of Love, spring up from the seed into a forest that excludes the
+stars? Dark, bright one! the hateful eyes glare beside the mother and
+the child!
+
+All that day Viola was distracted by a thousand thoughts and terrors,
+which fled as she examined them to settle back the darklier. She
+remembered that, as she had once said to Glyndon, her very childhood had
+been haunted with strange forebodings, that she was ordained for some
+preternatural doom. She remembered that, as she had told him this,
+sitting by the seas that slumbered in the arms of the Bay of Naples, he,
+too, had acknowledged the same forebodings, and a mysterious sympathy
+had appeared to unite their fates. She remembered, above all, that,
+comparing their entangled thoughts, both had then said, that with the
+first sight of Zanoni the foreboding, the instinct, had spoken to their
+hearts more audibly than before, whispering that “with HIM was connected
+the secret of the unconjectured life.”
+
+And now, when Glyndon and Viola met again, the haunting fears of
+childhood, thus referred to, woke from their enchanted sleep. With
+Glyndon’s terror she felt a sympathy, against which her reason and her
+love struggled in vain. And still, when she turned her looks upon her
+child, it watched her with that steady, earnest eye, and its lips moved
+as if it sought to speak to her,--but no sound came. The infant refused
+to sleep. Whenever she gazed upon its face, still those wakeful,
+watchful eyes!--and in their earnestness, there spoke something of pain,
+of upbraiding, of accusation. They chilled her as she looked. Unable
+to endure, of herself, this sudden and complete revulsion of all the
+feelings which had hitherto made up her life, she formed the resolution
+natural to her land and creed; she sent for the priest who had
+habitually attended her at Venice, and to him she confessed, with
+passionate sobs and intense terror, the doubts that had broken upon her.
+The good father, a worthy and pious man, but with little education and
+less sense, one who held (as many of the lower Italians do to this day)
+even a poet to be a sort of sorcerer, seemed to shut the gates of
+hope upon her heart. His remonstrances were urgent, for his horror was
+unfeigned. He joined with Glyndon in imploring her to fly, if she felt
+the smallest doubt that her husband’s pursuits were of the nature which
+the Roman Church had benevolently burned so many scholars for adopting.
+And even the little that Viola could communicate seemed, to the ignorant
+ascetic, irrefragable proof of sorcery and witchcraft; he had, indeed,
+previously heard some of the strange rumours which followed the path
+of Zanoni, and was therefore prepared to believe the worst; the worthy
+Bartolomeo would have made no bones of sending Watt to the stake, had he
+heard him speak of the steam-engine. But Viola, as untutored as himself,
+was terrified by his rough and vehement eloquence,--terrified, for
+by that penetration which Catholic priests, however dull, generally
+acquire, in their vast experience of the human heart hourly exposed
+to their probe, Bartolomeo spoke less of danger to herself than to her
+child. “Sorcerers,” said he, “have ever sought the most to decoy and
+seduce the souls of the young,--nay, the infant;” and therewith he
+entered into a long catalogue of legendary fables, which he quoted
+as historical facts. All at which an English woman would have smiled,
+appalled the tender but superstitious Neapolitan; and when the priest
+left her, with solemn rebukes and grave accusations of a dereliction of
+her duties to her child, if she hesitated to fly with it from an abode
+polluted by the darker powers and unhallowed arts, Viola, still clinging
+to the image of Zanoni, sank into a passive lethargy which held her very
+reason in suspense.
+
+The hours passed: night came on; the house was hushed; and Viola, slowly
+awakened from the numbness and torpor which had usurped her faculties,
+tossed to and fro on her couch, restless and perturbed. The stillness
+became intolerable; yet more intolerable the sound that alone broke it,
+the voice of the clock, knelling moment after moment to its grave. The
+moments, at last, seemed themselves to find voice,--to gain shape. She
+thought she beheld them springing, wan and fairy-like, from the womb of
+darkness; and ere they fell again, extinguished, into that womb, their
+grave, their low small voices murmured, “Woman, we report to eternity
+all that is done in time! What shall we report of thee, O guardian of a
+new-born soul?” She became sensible that her fancies had brought a sort
+of partial delirium, that she was in a state between sleep and waking,
+when suddenly one thought became more predominant than the rest. The
+chamber which, in that and every house they had inhabited, even that in
+the Greek isles, Zanoni had set apart to a solitude on which none might
+intrude, the threshold of which even Viola’s step was forbid to cross,
+and never, hitherto, in that sweet repose of confidence which belongs to
+contented love, had she even felt the curious desire to disobey,--now,
+that chamber drew her towards it. Perhaps THERE might be found a
+somewhat to solve the riddle, to dispel or confirm the doubt: that
+thought grew and deepened in its intenseness; it fastened on her as with
+a palpable and irresistible grasp; it seemed to raise her limbs without
+her will.
+
+And now, through the chamber, along the galleries thou glidest, O lovely
+shape! sleep-walking, yet awake. The moon shines on thee as thou glidest
+by, casement after casement, white-robed and wandering spirit!--thine
+arms crossed upon thy bosom, thine eyes fixed and open, with a calm
+unfearing awe. Mother, it is thy child that leads thee on! The fairy
+moments go before thee; thou hearest still the clock-knell tolling them
+to their graves behind. On, gliding on, thou hast gained the door; no
+lock bars thee, no magic spell drives thee back. Daughter of the
+dust, thou standest alone with night in the chamber where, pale and
+numberless, the hosts of space have gathered round the seer!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VII.
+
+     Des Erdenlebens
+     Schweres Traumbild sinkt, und sinkt, und sinkt.
+     “Das Ideal und das Lebens.”
+
+     (The Dream Shape of the heavy earthly life sinks, and sinks, and
+     sinks.)
+
+She stood within the chamber, and gazed around her; no signs by which an
+inquisitor of old could have detected the scholar of the Black Art were
+visible. No crucibles and caldrons, no brass-bound volumes and ciphered
+girdles, no skulls and cross-bones. Quietly streamed the broad moonlight
+through the desolate chamber with its bare, white walls. A few bunches
+of withered herbs, a few antique vessels of bronze, placed carelessly on
+a wooden form, were all which that curious gaze could identify with the
+pursuits of the absent owner. The magic, if it existed, dwelt in the
+artificer, and the materials, to other hands, were but herbs and bronze.
+So is it ever with thy works and wonders, O Genius,--Seeker of the
+Stars! Words themselves are the common property of all men; yet, from
+words themselves, Thou Architect of Immortalities, pilest up temples
+that shall outlive the Pyramids, and the very leaf of the Papyrus
+becomes a Shinar, stately with towers, round which the Deluge of Ages,
+shall roar in vain!
+
+But in that solitude has the Presence that there had invoked its wonders
+left no enchantment of its own? It seemed so; for as Viola stood in the
+chamber, she became sensible that some mysterious change was at work
+within herself. Her blood coursed rapidly, and with a sensation of
+delight, through her veins,--she felt as if chains were falling from
+her limbs, as if cloud after cloud was rolling from her gaze. All the
+confused thoughts which had moved through her trance settled and centred
+themselves in one intense desire to see the Absent One,--to be with him.
+The monads that make up space and air seemed charged with a spiritual
+attraction,--to become a medium through which her spirit could pass from
+its clay, and confer with the spirit to which the unutterable desire
+compelled it. A faintness seized her; she tottered to the seat on which
+the vessels and herbs were placed, and, as she bent down, she saw in one
+of the vessels a small vase of crystal. By a mechanical and involuntary
+impulse, her hand seized the vase; she opened it, and the volatile
+essence it contained sparkled up, and spread through the room a powerful
+and delicious fragrance. She inhaled the odour, she laved her temples
+with the liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring up from the
+previous faintness,--to spring, to soar, to float, to dilate upon the
+wings of a bird. The room vanished from her eyes. Away, away, over lands
+and seas and space on the rushing desire flies the disprisoned mind!
+
+Upon a stratum, not of this world, stood the world-born shapes of the
+sons of Science, upon an embryo world, upon a crude, wan, attenuated
+mass of matter, one of the Nebulae, which the suns of the myriad systems
+throw off as they roll round the Creator’s throne*, to become themselves
+new worlds of symmetry and glory,--planets and suns that forever and
+forever shall in their turn multiply their shining race, and be the
+fathers of suns and planets yet to come.
+
+     (* “Astronomy instructs us that, in the original condition of
+     the solar system, the sun was the nucleus of a nebulosity or
+     luminous mass which revolved on its axis, and extended far
+     beyond the orbits of all the planets,--the planets as yet
+     having no existence. Its temperature gradually diminished,
+     and, becoming contracted by cooling, the rotation increased
+     in rapidity, and zones of nebulosity were successively
+     thrown off, in consequence of the centrifugal force
+     overpowering the central attraction. The condensation of
+     these separate masses constituted the planets and
+     satellites. But this view of the conversion of gaseous
+     matter into planetary bodies is not limited to our own
+     system; it extends to the formation of the innumerable suns
+     and worlds which are distributed throughout the universe.
+     The sublime discoveries of modern astronomers have shown
+     that every part of the realms of space abounds in large
+     expansions of attenuated matter termed nebulae, which are
+     irregularly reflective of light, of various figures, and in
+     different states of condensation, from that of a diffused,
+     luminous mass to suns and planets like our own.”--From
+     Mantell’s eloquent and delightful work, entitled “The
+     Wonders of Geology,” volume i. page 22.)
+
+There, in that enormous solitude of an infant world, which thousands and
+thousands of years can alone ripen into form, the spirit of Viola beheld
+the shape of Zanoni, or rather the likeness, the simulacrun, the LEMUR
+of his shape, not its human and corporeal substance,--as if, like hers,
+the Intelligence was parted from the Clay,--and as the sun, while it
+revolves and glows, had cast off into remotest space that nebular image
+of itself, so the thing of earth, in the action of its more luminous and
+enduring being, had thrown its likeness into that new-born stranger of
+the heavens. There stood the phantom,--a phantom Mejnour, by its side.
+In the gigantic chaos around raved and struggled the kindling elements;
+water and fire, darkness and light, at war,--vapour and cloud hardening
+into mountains, and the Breath of Life moving like a steadfast splendour
+over all.
+
+As the dreamer looked, and shivered, she beheld that even there the
+two phantoms of humanity were not alone. Dim monster-forms that that
+disordered chaos alone could engender, the first reptile Colossal race
+that wreathe and crawl through the earliest stratum of a world labouring
+into life, coiled in the oozing matter or hovered through the meteorous
+vapours. But these the two seekers seemed not to heed; their gaze was
+fixed intent upon an object in the farthest space. With the eyes of the
+spirit, Viola followed theirs; with a terror far greater than the chaos
+and its hideous inhabitants produced, she beheld a shadowy likeness
+of the very room in which her form yet dwelt, its white walls, the
+moonshine sleeping on its floor, its open casement, with the quiet roofs
+and domes of Venice looming over the sea that sighed below,--and in that
+room the ghost-like image of herself! This double phantom--here herself
+a phantom, gazing there upon a phantom-self--had in it a horror which no
+words can tell, no length of life forego.
+
+But presently she saw this image of herself rise slowly, leave the room
+with its noiseless feet: it passes the corridor, it kneels by a cradle!
+Heaven of Heaven! She beholds her child!--still with its wondrous,
+child-like beauty and its silent, wakeful eyes. But beside that cradle
+there sits cowering a mantled, shadowy form,--the more fearful and
+ghastly from its indistinct and unsubstantial gloom. The walls of that
+chamber seem to open as the scene of a theatre. A grim dungeon; streets
+through which pour shadowy crowds; wrath and hatred, and the aspect
+of demons in their ghastly visages; a place of death; a murderous
+instrument; a shamble-house of human flesh; herself; her child;--all,
+all, rapid phantasmagoria, chased each other. Suddenly the
+phantom-Zanoni turned, it seemed to perceive herself,--her second self.
+It sprang towards her; her spirit could bear no more. She shrieked,
+she woke. She found that in truth she had left that dismal chamber; the
+cradle was before her, the child! all--all as that trance had seen it;
+and, vanishing into air, even that dark, formless Thing!
+
+“My child! my child! thy mother shall save thee yet!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VIII.
+
+     Qui?  Toi m’abandonner!  Ou vas-tu?  Non! demeure,
+     Demeure!
+     La Harpe, “Le Comte de Warwick,” Act 3, sc. 5.
+
+     (Who?  THOU abandon me!--where goest thou?  No! stay, stay!)
+
+Letter from Viola to Zanoni.
+
+“It has come to this!--I am the first to part! I, the unfaithful one,
+bid thee farewell forever. When thine eyes fall upon this writing thou
+wilt know me as one of the dead. For thou that wert, and still art my
+life,--I am lost to thee! O lover! O husband! O still worshipped and
+adored! if thou hast ever loved me, if thou canst still pity, seek not
+to discover the steps that fly thee. If thy charms can detect and tract
+me, spare me, spare our child! Zanoni, I will rear it to love thee, to
+call thee father! Zanoni, its young lips shall pray for thee! Ah, spare
+thy child, for infants are the saints of earth, and their mediation
+may be heard on high! Shall I tell thee why I part? No; thou, the
+wisely-terrible, canst divine what the hand trembles to record; and
+while I shudder at thy power,--while it is thy power I fly (our child
+upon my bosom),--it comforts me still to think that thy power can read
+the heart! Thou knowest that it is the faithful mother that writes
+to thee, it is not the faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge,
+Zanoni? Sin must have sorrow: and it were sweet--oh, how sweet--to be
+thy comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to mine
+for its shield!--magician, I wrest from thee that soul! Pardon, pardon,
+if my words wrong thee. See, I fall on my knees to write the rest!
+
+“Why did I never recoil before from thy mysterious lore; why did the
+very strangeness of thine unearthly life only fascinate me with a
+delightful fear? Because, if thou wert sorcerer or angel-demon, there
+was no peril to other but myself: and none to me, for my love was my
+heavenliest part; and my ignorance in all things, except the art to love
+thee, repelled every thought that was not bright and glorious as thine
+image to my eyes. But NOW there is another! Look! why does it watch me
+thus,--why that never-sleeping, earnest, rebuking gaze? Have thy spells
+encompassed it already? Hast thou marked it, cruel one, for the terrors
+of thy unutterable art? Do not madden me,--do not madden me!--unbind the
+spell!
+
+“Hark! the oars without! They come,--they come, to bear me from thee! I
+look round, and methinks that I see thee everywhere. Thou speakest to
+me from every shadow, from every star. There, by the casement, thy lips
+last pressed mine; there, there by that threshold didst thou turn again,
+and thy smile seemed so trustingly to confide in me! Zanoni--husband!--I
+will stay! I cannot part from thee! No, no! I will go to the room
+where thy dear voice, with its gentle music, assuaged the pangs
+of travail!--where, heard through the thrilling darkness, it first
+whispered to my ear, ‘Viola, thou art a mother!’ A mother!--yes, I rise
+from my knees,--I AM a mother! They come! I am firm; farewell!”
+
+Yes; thus suddenly, thus cruelly, whether in the delirium of blind and
+unreasoning superstition, or in the resolve of that conviction which
+springs from duty, the being for whom he had resigned so much of empire
+and of glory forsook Zanoni. This desertion, never foreseen, never
+anticipated, was yet but the constant fate that attends those who would
+place Mind BEYOND the earth, and yet treasure the Heart WITHIN it.
+Ignorance everlastingly shall recoil from knowledge. But never yet, from
+nobler and purer motives of self-sacrifice, did human love link itself
+to another, than did the forsaking wife now abandon the absent. For
+rightly had she said that it was not the faithless wife, it WAS the
+faithful mother that fled from all in which her earthly happiness was
+centred.
+
+As long as the passion and fervour that impelled the act animated
+her with false fever, she clasped her infant to her breast, and was
+consoled,--resigned. But what bitter doubt of her own conduct, what icy
+pang of remorse shot through her heart, when, as they rested for a
+few hours on the road to Leghorn, she heard the woman who accompanied
+herself and Glyndon pray for safety to reach her husband’s side,
+and strength to share the perils that would meet her there! Terrible
+contrast to her own desertion! She shrunk into the darkness of her own
+heart,--and then no voice from within consoled her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.IX.
+
+     Zukunft hast du mir gegeben,
+     Doch du nehmst den Augenblick.
+     “Kassandra.”
+
+     (Futurity hast thou given to me,--yet takest from me the Moment.)
+
+“Mejnour, behold thy work! Out, out upon our little vanities of
+wisdom!--out upon our ages of lore and life! To save her from Peril I
+left her presence, and the Peril has seized her in its grasp!”
+
+“Chide not thy wisdom but thy passions! Abandon thine idle hope of the
+love of woman. See, for those who would unite the lofty with the lowly,
+the inevitable curse; thy very nature uncomprehended,--thy sacrifices
+unguessed. The lowly one views but in the lofty a necromancer or a
+fiend. Titan, canst thou weep?”
+
+“I know it now, I see it all! It WAS her spirit that stood beside
+our own, and escaped my airy clasp! O strong desire of motherhood
+and nature! unveiling all our secrets, piercing space and traversing
+worlds!--Mejnour, what awful learning lies hid in the ignorance of the
+heart that loves!”
+
+“The heart,” answered the mystic, coldly; “ay, for five thousand years I
+have ransacked the mysteries of creation, but I have not yet discovered
+all the wonders in the heart of the simplest boor!”
+
+“Yet our solemn rites deceived us not; the prophet-shadows, dark with
+terror and red with blood, still foretold that, even in the dungeon, and
+before the deathsman, I,--I had the power to save them both!”
+
+“But at some unconjectured and most fatal sacrifice to thyself.”
+
+“To myself! Icy sage, there is no self in love! I go. Nay, alone: I
+want thee not. I want now no other guide but the human instincts of
+affection. No cave so dark, no solitude so vast, as to conceal her.
+Though mine art fail me; though the stars heed me not; though space,
+with its shining myriads, is again to me but the azure void,--I return
+but to love and youth and hope! When have they ever failed to triumph
+and to save!”
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VII. -- THE REIGN OF TERROR.
+
+     Orrida maesta nei fero aspetto
+     Terrore accresce, e piu superbo il rende;
+     Rosseggian gli occhi, e di veneno infetto
+     Come infausta cometa, il guardo splende,
+     Gil involve il mento, e sull ‘irsuto petto
+     Ispida efoita la gran barbe scende;
+     E IN GUISA DE VORAGINE PROFONDA
+     SAPRE LA BOCCA A’ATRO SANGUE IMMONDA.
+     (Ger. Lib., Cant. iv. 7.)
+
+
+     A horrible majesty in the fierce aspect increases it terror, and
+     renders it more  superb.  Red glow the eyes, and the aspect
+     infected, like a baleful comet, with  envenomed influences,
+     glares around.  A vast beard covers the chin--and, rough  and
+     thick, descends over the shaggy breast.--And like a profound gulf
+     expand the jaws, foul with black gore.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.I.
+
+     Qui suis-je, moi qu’on accuse?  Un esclave de la Liberte, un
+     martyr vivant de la Republique.
+     --“Discours de Robespierre, 8 Thermidor.”
+
+     (Who am I,--_I_ whom they accuse?  A slave of Liberty,--a living
+     martyr for the Republic.)
+
+It roars,--The River of Hell, whose first outbreak was chanted as the
+gush of a channel to Elysium. How burst into blossoming hopes fair
+hearts that had nourished themselves on the diamond dews of the rosy
+dawn, when Liberty came from the dark ocean, and the arms of decrepit
+Thraldom--Aurora from the bed of Tithon! Hopes! ye have ripened into
+fruit, and the fruit is gore and ashes! Beautiful Roland, eloquent
+Vergniaud, visionary Condorcet, high-hearted Malesherbes!--wits,
+philosophers, statesmen, patriots, dreamers! behold the millennium for
+which ye dared and laboured!
+
+I invoke the ghosts! Saturn hath devoured his children (“La Revolution
+est comme Saturne, elle devorera tous ses enfans.”--Vergniaud.), and
+lives alone,--I his true name of Moloch!
+
+It is the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre the king. The struggles
+between the boa and the lion are past: the boa has consumed the lion,
+and is heavy with the gorge,--Danton has fallen, and Camille Desmoulins.
+Danton had said before his death, “The poltroon Robespierre,--I alone
+could have saved him.” From that hour, indeed, the blood of the dead
+giant clouded the craft of “Maximilien the Incorruptible,” as at last,
+amidst the din of the roused Convention, it choked his voice. (“Le sang
+de Danton t’etouffe!” (the blood of Danton chokes thee!) said Garnier
+de l’Aube, when on the fatal 9th of Thermidor, Robespierre gasped feebly
+forth, “Pour la derniere fois, President des Assassins, je te demande
+la parole.” (For the last time, President of Assassins, I demand to
+speak.)) If, after that last sacrifice, essential, perhaps, to his
+safety, Robespierre had proclaimed the close of the Reign of Terror,
+and acted upon the mercy which Danton had begun to preach, he might have
+lived and died a monarch. But the prisons continued to reek,--the glaive
+to fall; and Robespierre perceived not that his mobs were glutted to
+satiety with death, and the strongest excitement a chief could give
+would be a return from devils into men.
+
+We are transported to a room in the house of Citizen Dupleix, the
+menuisier, in the month of July, 1794; or, in the calendar of the
+Revolutionists, it was the Thermidor of the Second Year of the Republic,
+One and Indivisible! Though the room was small, it was furnished and
+decorated with a minute and careful effort at elegance and refinement.
+It seemed, indeed, the desire of the owner to avoid at once what was
+mean and rude, and what was luxurious and voluptuous. It was a trim,
+orderly, precise grace that shaped the classic chairs, arranged the
+ample draperies, sank the frameless mirrors into the wall, placed bust
+and bronze on their pedestals, and filled up the niches here and there
+with well-bound books, filed regularly in their appointed ranks. An
+observer would have said, “This man wishes to imply to you,--I am
+not rich; I am not ostentatious; I am not luxurious; I am no indolent
+Sybarite, with couches of down, and pictures that provoke the sense;
+I am no haughty noble, with spacious halls, and galleries that awe the
+echo. But so much the greater is my merit if I disdain these excesses
+of the ease or the pride, since I love the elegant, and have a taste!
+Others may be simple and honest, from the very coarseness of their
+habits; if I, with so much refinement and delicacy, am simple and
+honest,--reflect, and admire me!”
+
+On the walls of this chamber hung many portraits, most of them
+represented but one face; on the formal pedestals were grouped many
+busts, most of them sculptured but one head. In that small chamber
+Egotism sat supreme, and made the Arts its looking-glasses. Erect in
+a chair, before a large table spread with letters, sat the original of
+bust and canvas, the owner of the apartment. He was alone, yet he sat
+erect, formal, stiff, precise, as if in his very home he was not at
+ease. His dress was in harmony with his posture and his chamber; it
+affected a neatness of its own,--foreign both to the sumptuous fashions
+of the deposed nobles, and the filthy ruggedness of the sans-culottes.
+Frizzled and coiffe, not a hair was out of order, not a speck lodged
+on the sleek surface of the blue coat, not a wrinkle crumpled the snowy
+vest, with its under-relief of delicate pink. At the first glance, you
+might have seen in that face nothing but the ill-favoured features of a
+sickly countenance; at a second glance, you would have perceived that
+it had a power, a character of its own. The forehead, though low and
+compressed, was not without that appearance of thought and intelligence
+which, it may be observed, that breadth between the eyebrows almost
+invariably gives; the lips were firm and tightly drawn together, yet
+ever and anon they trembled, and writhed restlessly. The eyes, sullen
+and gloomy, were yet piercing, and full of a concentrated vigour that
+did not seem supported by the thin, feeble frame, or the green lividness
+of the hues, which told of anxiety and disease.
+
+Such was Maximilien Robespierre; such the chamber over the menuisier’s
+shop, whence issued the edicts that launched armies on their career of
+glory, and ordained an artificial conduit to carry off the blood that
+deluged the metropolis of the most martial people in the globe! Such was
+the man who had resigned a judicial appointment (the early object of
+his ambition) rather than violate his philanthropical principles by
+subscribing to the death of a single fellow-creature; such was the
+virgin enemy to capital punishments; and such, Butcher-Dictator now, was
+the man whose pure and rigid manners, whose incorruptible honesty, whose
+hatred of the excesses that tempt to love and wine, would, had he died
+five years earlier, have left him the model for prudent fathers and
+careful citizens to place before their sons. Such was the man who seemed
+to have no vice, till circumstance, that hotbed, brought forth the two
+which, in ordinary times, lie ever the deepest and most latent in a
+man’s heart,--Cowardice and Envy. To one of these sources is to be
+traced every murder that master-fiend committed. His cowardice was of
+a peculiar and strange sort; for it was accompanied with the most
+unscrupulous and determined WILL,--a will that Napoleon reverenced;
+a will of iron, and yet nerves of aspen. Mentally, he was a
+hero,--physically, a dastard. When the veriest shadow of danger
+threatened his person, the frame cowered, but the will swept the danger
+to the slaughter-house. So there he sat, bolt upright,--his small, lean
+fingers clenched convulsively; his sullen eyes straining into space,
+their whites yellowed with streaks of corrupt blood; his ears literally
+moving to and fro, like the ignobler animals’, to catch every sound,--a
+Dionysius in his cave; but his posture decorous and collected, and every
+formal hair in its frizzled place.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he said in a muttered tone, “I hear them; my good Jacobins
+are at their post on the stairs. Pity they swear so! I have a law
+against oaths,--the manners of the poor and virtuous people must
+be reformed. When all is safe, an example or two amongst those good
+Jacobins would make effect. Faithful fellows, how they love me!
+Hum!--what an oath was that!--they need not swear so loud,--upon the
+very staircase, too! It detracts from my reputation. Ha! steps!”
+
+The soliloquist glanced at the opposite mirror, and took up a volume;
+he seemed absorbed in its contents, as a tall fellow, a bludgeon in his
+hand, a girdle adorned with pistols round his waist, opened the door,
+and announced two visitors. The one was a young man, said to resemble
+Robespierre in person, but of a far more decided and resolute expression
+of countenance. He entered first, and, looking over the volume in
+Robespierre’s hand, for the latter seemed still intent on his lecture,
+exclaimed,--
+
+“What! Rousseau’s Heloise? A love-tale!”
+
+“Dear Payan, it is not the love,--it is the philosophy that charms me.
+What noble sentiments!--what ardour of virtue! If Jean Jacques had but
+lived to see this day!”
+
+While the Dictator thus commented on his favourite author, whom in his
+orations he laboured hard to imitate, the second visitor was wheeled
+into the room in a chair. This man was also in what, to most, is the
+prime of life,--namely, about thirty-eight; but he was literally dead in
+the lower limbs: crippled, paralytic, distorted, he was yet, as the time
+soon came to tell him,--a Hercules in Crime! But the sweetest of human
+smiles dwelt upon his lips; a beauty almost angelic characterised his
+features (“Figure d’ange,” says one of his contemporaries, in describing
+Couthon. The address, drawn up most probably by Payan (Thermidor 9),
+after the arrest of Robespierre, thus mentions his crippled colleague:
+“Couthon, ce citoyen vertueux, QUI N’A QUE LE COEUR ET LA TETE DE
+VIVANS, mais qui les a brulants de patriotisme” (Couthon, that virtuous
+citizen, who has but the head and the heart of the living, yet possesses
+these all on flame with patriotism.)); an inexpressible aspect of
+kindness, and the resignation of suffering but cheerful benignity, stole
+into the hearts of those who for the first time beheld him. With the
+most caressing, silver, flute-like voice, Citizen Couthon saluted the
+admirer of Jean Jacques.
+
+“Nay,--do not say that it is not the LOVE that attracts thee; it IS the
+love! but not the gross, sensual attachment of man for woman. No! the
+sublime affection for the whole human race, and indeed, for all that
+lives!”
+
+And Citizen Couthon, bending down, fondled the little spaniel that he
+invariably carried in his bosom, even to the Convention, as a vent for
+the exuberant sensibilities which overflowed his affectionate heart.
+(This tenderness for some pet animal was by no means peculiar to
+Couthon; it seems rather a common fashion with the gentle butchers of
+the Revolution. M. George Duval informs us (“Souvenirs de la Terreur,”
+ volume iii page 183) that Chaumette had an aviary, to which he devoted
+his harmless leisure; the murderous Fournier carried on his shoulders a
+pretty little squirrel, attached by a silver chain; Panis bestowed the
+superfluity of his affections upon two gold pheasants; and Marat, who
+would not abate one of the three hundred thousand heads he demanded,
+REARED DOVES! Apropos of the spaniel of Couthon, Duval gives us an
+amusing anecdote of Sergent, not one of the least relentless agents of
+the massacre of September. A lady came to implore his protection for one
+of her relations confined in the Abbaye. He scarcely deigned to speak to
+her. As she retired in despair, she trod by accident on the paw of
+his favourite spaniel. Sergent, turning round, enraged and furious,
+exclaimed, “MADAM, HAVE YOU NO HUMANITY?”)
+
+“Yes, for all that lives,” repeated Robespierre, tenderly.
+“Good Couthon,--poor Couthon! Ah, the malice of men!--how we are
+misrepresented! To be calumniated as the executioners of our colleagues!
+Ah, it is THAT which pierces the heart! To be an object of terror to the
+enemies of our country,--THAT is noble; but to be an object of terror
+to the good, the patriotic, to those one loves and reveres,--THAT is the
+most terrible of human tortures at least, to a susceptible and honest
+heart!” (Not to fatigue the reader with annotations, I may here observe
+that nearly every sentiment ascribed in the text to Robespierre is to be
+found expressed in his various discourses.)
+
+“How I love to hear him!” ejaculated Couthon.
+
+“Hem!” said Payan, with some impatience. “But now to business!”
+
+“Ah, to business!” said Robespierre, with a sinister glance from his
+bloodshot eyes.
+
+“The time has come,” said Payan, “when the safety of the Republic
+demands a complete concentration of its power. These brawlers of the
+Comite du Salut Public can only destroy; they cannot construct. They
+hated you, Maximilien, from the moment you attempted to replace anarcy
+by institutions. How they mock at the festival which proclaimed the
+acknowledgment of a Supreme Being: they would have no ruler, even in
+heaven! Your clear and vigorous intellect saw that, having wrecked
+an old world, it became necessary to shape a new one. The first step
+towards construction must be to destroy the destroyers. While we
+deliberate, your enemies act. Better this very night to attack the
+handful of gensdarmes that guard them, than to confront the battalions
+they may raise to-morrow.”
+
+“No,” said Robespierre, who recoiled before the determined spirit of
+Payan; “I have a better and safer plan. This is the 6th of Thermidor;
+on the 10th--on the 10th, the Convention go in a body to the Fete
+Decadaire. A mob shall form; the canonniers, the troops of Henriot, the
+young pupils de l’Ecole de Mars, shall mix in the crowd. Easy, then, to
+strike the conspirators whom we shall designate to our agents. On the
+same day, too, Fouquier and Dumas shall not rest; and a sufficient
+number of ‘the suspect’ to maintain salutary awe, and keep up the
+revolutionary excitement, shall perish by the glaive of the law. The
+10th shall be the great day of action. Payan, of these last culprits,
+have you prepared a list?”
+
+“It is here,” returned Payan, laconically, presenting a paper.
+
+Robespierre glanced over it rapidly. “Collot d’Herbois!--good!
+Barrere!--ay, it was Barrere who said, ‘Let us strike: the dead alone
+never return.’ [‘Frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient
+pas.’--Barrere.) Vadier, the savage jester!--good--good! Vadier of the
+Mountain. He has called me ‘Mahomet!’ Scelerat! blasphemer!”
+
+“Mahomet is coming to the Mountain,” said Couthon, with his silvery
+accent, as he caressed his spaniel.
+
+“But how is this? I do not see the name of Tallien? Tallien,--I hate
+that man; that is,” said Robespierre, correcting himself with the
+hypocrisy or self-deceit which those who formed the council of this
+phrase-monger exhibited habitually, even among themselves,--“that is,
+Virtue and our Country hate him! There is no man in the whole Convention
+who inspires me with the same horror as Tallien. Couthon, I see a
+thousand Dantons where Tallien sits!”
+
+“Tallien has the only head that belongs to this deformed body,” said
+Payan, whose ferocity and crime, like those of St. Just, were not
+unaccompanied by talents of no common order. “Were it not better to
+draw away the head, to win, to buy him, for the time, and dispose of him
+better when left alone? He may hate YOU, but he loves MONEY!”
+
+“No,” said Robespierre, writing down the name of Jean Lambert Tallien,
+with a slow hand that shaped each letter with stern distinctness; “that
+one head IS MY NECESSITY!”
+
+“I have a SMALL list here,” said Couthon, sweetly,--“a VERY small
+list. You are dealing with the Mountain; it is necessary to make a few
+examples in the Plain. These moderates are as straws which follow the
+wind. They turned against us yesterday in the Convention. A little
+terror will correct the weathercocks. Poor creatures! I owe them no
+ill-will; I could weep for them. But before all, la chere patrie!”
+
+The terrible glance of Robespierre devoured the list which the man of
+sensibility submitted to him. “Ah, these are well chosen; men not of
+mark enough to be regretted, which is the best policy with the relics
+of that party; some foreigners too,--yes, THEY have no parents in
+Paris. These wives and parents are beginning to plead against us. Their
+complaints demoralise the guillotine!”
+
+“Couthon is right,” said Payan; “MY list contains those whom it will be
+safer to despatch en masse in the crowd assembled at the Fete. HIS list
+selects those whom we may prudently consign to the law. Shall it not be
+signed at once?”
+
+“It IS signed,” said Robespierre, formally replacing his pen upon the
+inkstand. “Now to more important matters. These deaths will create no
+excitement; but Collot d’Herbois, Bourdon De l’Oise, Tallien,” the
+last name Robespierre gasped as he pronounced, “THEY are the heads of
+parties. This is life or death to us as well as them.”
+
+“Their heads are the footstools to your curule chair,” said Payan, in
+a half whisper. “There is no danger if we are bold. Judges, juries, all
+have been your selection. You seize with one hand the army, with the
+other, the law. Your voice yet commands the people--”
+
+“The poor and virtuous people,” murmured Robespierre.
+
+“And even,” continued Payan, “if our design at the Fete fail us, we must
+not shrink from the resources still at our command. Reflect! Henriot,
+the general of the Parisian army, furnishes you with troops to arrest;
+the Jacobin Club with a public to approve; inexorable Dumas with judges
+who never acquit. We must be bold!”
+
+“And we ARE bold,” exclaimed Robespierre, with sudden passion, and
+striking his hand on the table as he rose, with his crest erect, as a
+serpent in the act to strike. “In seeing the multitude of vices that
+the revolutionary torrent mingles with civic virtues, I tremble to be
+sullied in the eyes of posterity by the impure neighbourhood of these
+perverse men who thrust themselves among the sincere defenders of
+humanity. What!--they think to divide the country like a booty! I
+thank them for their hatred to all that is virtuous and worthy! These
+men,”--and he grasped the list of Payan in his hand,--“these!--not
+WE--have drawn the line of demarcation between themselves and the lovers
+of France!”
+
+“True, we must reign alone!” muttered Payan; “in other words, the state
+needs unity of will;” working, with his strong practical mind, the
+corollary from the logic of his word-compelling colleague.
+
+“I will go to the Convention,” continued Robespierre. “I have absented
+myself too long,--lest I might seem to overawe the Republic that I have
+created. Away with such scruples! I will prepare the people! I will
+blast the traitors with a look!”
+
+He spoke with the terrible firmness of the orator that had never
+failed,--of the moral will that marched like a warrior on the cannon. At
+that instant he was interrupted; a letter was brought to him: he opened
+it,--his face fell, he shook from limb to limb; it was one of the
+anonymous warnings by which the hate and revenge of those yet left alive
+to threaten tortured the death-giver.
+
+“Thou art smeared,” ran the lines, “with the best blood of France. Read
+thy sentence! I await the hour when the people shall knell thee to the
+doomsman. If my hope deceive me, if deferred too long,--hearken, read!
+This hand, which thine eyes shall search in vain to discover, shall
+pierce thy heart. I see thee every day,--I am with thee every day. At
+each hour my arm rises against thy breast. Wretch! live yet awhile,
+though but for few and miserable days--live to think of me; sleep to
+dream of me! Thy terror and thy thought of me are the heralds of thy
+doom. Adieu! this day itself I go forth to riot on thy fears!” (See
+“Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” etc., volume ii. page 155.
+(No. lx.))
+
+“Your lists are not full enough!” said the tyrant, with a hollow voice,
+as the paper dropped from his trembling hand. “Give them to me!--give
+them to me! Think again, think again! Barrere is right--right!
+‘Frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient pas!’”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.II.
+
+     La haine, dans ces lieux, n’a qu’un glaive assassin.
+     Elle marche dans l’ombre.
+     La Harpe, “Jeanne de Naples,” Act iv. sc. 1.
+
+     (Hate, in these regions, has but the sword of the assassin.  She
+     moves in the shade.)
+
+While such the designs and fears of Maximilien Robespierre, common
+danger, common hatred, whatever was yet left of mercy or of virtue
+in the agents of the Revolution, served to unite strange opposites in
+hostility to the universal death-dealer. There was, indeed, an actual
+conspiracy at work against him among men little less bespattered than
+himself with innocent blood. But that conspiracy would have been idle of
+itself, despite the abilities of Tallien and Barras (the only men whom
+it comprised, worthy, by foresight and energy, the names of “leaders”).
+The sure and destroying elements that gathered round the tyrant were
+Time and Nature; the one, which he no longer suited; the other, which
+he had outraged and stirred up in the human breast. The most atrocious
+party of the Revolution, the followers of Hebert, gone to his last
+account, the butcher-atheists, who, in desecrating heaven and earth,
+still arrogated inviolable sanctity to themselves, were equally enraged
+at the execution of their filthy chief, and the proclamation of a
+Supreme Being. The populace, brutal as it had been, started as from a
+dream of blood, when their huge idol, Danton, no longer filled the
+stage of terror, rendering crime popular by that combination of careless
+frankness and eloquent energy which endears their heroes to the herd.
+The glaive of the guillotine had turned against THEMSELVES. They had
+yelled and shouted, and sung and danced, when the venerable age, or the
+gallant youth, of aristocracy or letters, passed by their streets in
+the dismal tumbrils; but they shut up their shops, and murmured to each
+other, when their own order was invaded, and tailors and cobblers, and
+journeymen and labourers, were huddled off to the embraces of the “Holy
+Mother Guillotine,” with as little ceremony as if they had been the
+Montmorencies or the La Tremouilles, the Malesherbes or the Lavoisiers.
+“At this time,” said Couthon, justly, “Les ombres de Danton, d’Hebert,
+de Chaumette, se promenent parmi nous!” (The shades of Danton, Hebert,
+and Chaumette walk amongst us.)
+
+Among those who had shared the doctrines, and who now dreaded the
+fate of the atheist Hebert, was the painter, Jean Nicot. Mortified and
+enraged to find that, by the death of his patron, his career was closed;
+and that, in the zenith of the Revolution for which he had laboured,
+he was lurking in caves and cellars, more poor, more obscure, more
+despicable than he had been at the commencement,--not daring to exercise
+even his art, and fearful every hour that his name would swell the lists
+of the condemned,--he was naturally one of the bitterest enemies of
+Robespierre and his government. He held secret meetings with Collot
+d’Herbois, who was animated by the same spirit; and with the creeping
+and furtive craft that characterised his abilities, he contrived,
+undetected, to disseminate tracts and invectives against the Dictator,
+and to prepare, amidst “the poor and virtuous people,” the train for
+the grand explosion. But still so firm to the eyes, even of profounder
+politicians than Jean Nicot, appeared the sullen power of the
+incorruptible Maximilien; so timorous was the movement against
+him,--that Nicot, in common with many others, placed his hopes rather in
+the dagger of the assassin than the revolt of the multitude. But Nicot,
+though not actually a coward, shrunk himself from braving the fate of
+the martyr; he had sense enough to see that, though all parties might
+rejoice in the assassination, all parties would probably concur in
+beheading the assassin. He had not the virtue to become a Brutus.
+His object was to inspire a proxy-Brutus; and in the centre of that
+inflammable population this was no improbable hope.
+
+Amongst those loudest and sternest against the reign of blood; amongst
+those most disenchanted of the Revolution; amongst those most appalled
+by its excesses,--was, as might be expected, the Englishman, Clarence
+Glyndon. The wit and accomplishments, the uncertain virtues that
+had lighted with fitful gleams the mind of Camille Desmoulins, had
+fascinated Glyndon more than the qualities of any other agent in the
+Revolution. And when (for Camille Desmoulins had a heart, which seemed
+dead or dormant in most of his contemporaries) that vivid child of
+genius and of error, shocked at the massacre of the Girondins, and
+repentant of his own efforts against them, began to rouse the serpent
+malice of Robespierre by new doctrines of mercy and toleration, Glyndon
+espoused his views with his whole strength and soul. Camille Desmoulins
+perished, and Glyndon, hopeless at once of his own life and the cause
+of humanity, from that time sought only the occasion of flight from the
+devouring Golgotha. He had two lives to heed besides his own; for them
+he trembled, and for them he schemed and plotted the means of escape.
+Though Glyndon hated the principles, the party (None were more opposed
+to the Hebertists than Camille Desmoulins and his friends. It is curious
+and amusing to see these leaders of the mob, calling the mob “the
+people” one day, and the “canaille” the next, according as it suits
+them. “I know,” says Camille, “that they (the Hebertists) have all the
+canaille with them.”--(Ils ont toute la canaille pour eux.)), and the
+vices of Nicot, he yet extended to the painter’s penury the means of
+subsistence; and Jean Nicot, in return, designed to exalt Glyndon
+to that very immortality of a Brutus from which he modestly recoiled
+himself. He founded his designs on the physical courage, on the wild and
+unsettled fancies of the English artist, and on the vehement hate and
+indignant loathing with which he openly regarded the government of
+Maximilien.
+
+At the same hour, on the same day in July, in which Robespierre
+conferred (as we have seen) with his allies, two persons were seated in
+a small room in one of the streets leading out of the Rue St. Honore;
+the one, a man, appeared listening impatiently, and with a sullen
+brow, to his companion, a woman of singular beauty, but with a bold
+and reckless expression, and her face as she spoke was animated by the
+passions of a half-savage and vehement nature.
+
+“Englishman,” said the woman, “beware!--you know that, whether in flight
+or at the place of death, I would brave all to be by your side,--you
+know THAT! Speak!”
+
+“Well, Fillide; did I ever doubt your fidelity?”
+
+“Doubt it you cannot,--betray it you may. You tell me that in flight you
+must have a companion besides myself, and that companion is a female. It
+shall not be!”
+
+“Shall not!”
+
+“It shall not!” repeated Fillide, firmly, and folding her arms across
+her breast. Before Glyndon could reply, a slight knock at the door was
+heard, and Nicot opened the latch and entered.
+
+Fillide sank into her chair, and, leaning her face on her hands,
+appeared unheeding of the intruder and the conversation that ensued.
+
+“I cannot bid thee good-day, Glyndon,” said Nicot, as in his
+sans-culotte fashion he strode towards the artist, his ragged hat on his
+head, his hands in his pockets, and the beard of a week’s growth upon
+his chin,--“I cannot bid thee good-day; for while the tyrant lives, evil
+is every sun that sheds its beams on France.”
+
+“It is true; what then? We have sown the wind, we must reap the
+whirlwind.”
+
+“And yet,” said Nicot, apparently not heeding the reply, and as if
+musingly to himself, “it is strange to think that the butcher is as
+mortal as the butchered; that his life hangs on as slight a thread; that
+between the cuticle and the heart there is as short a passage,--that, in
+short, one blow can free France and redeem mankind!”
+
+Glyndon surveyed the speaker with a careless and haughty scorn, and made
+no answer.
+
+“And,” proceeded Nicot, “I have sometimes looked round for the man born
+for this destiny, and whenever I have done so, my steps have led me
+hither!”
+
+“Should they not rather have led thee to the side of Maximilien
+Robespierre?” said Glyndon, with a sneer.
+
+“No,” returned Nicot, coldly,--“no; for I am a ‘suspect:’ I could not
+mix with his train; I could not approach within a hundred yards of his
+person, but I should be seized; YOU, as yet, are safe. Hear me!”--and
+his voice became earnest and expressive,--“hear me! There seems danger
+in this action; there is none. I have been with Collot d’Herbois and
+Bilaud-Varennes; they will hold him harmless who strikes the blow; the
+populace would run to thy support; the Convention would hail thee as
+their deliverer, the--”
+
+“Hold, man! How darest thou couple my name with the act of an assassin?
+Let the tocsin sound from yonder tower, to a war between Humanity and
+the Tyrant, and I will not be the last in the field; but liberty never
+yet acknowledged a defender in a felon.”
+
+There was something so brave and noble in Glyndon’s voice, mien, and
+manner, as he thus spoke, that Nicot at once was silenced; at once he
+saw that he had misjudged the man.
+
+“No,” said Fillide, lifting her face from her hands,--“no! your friend
+has a wiser scheme in preparation; he would leave you wolves to mangle
+each other. He is right; but--”
+
+“Flight!” exclaimed Nicot; “is it possible? Flight; how?--when?--by what
+means? All France begirt with spies and guards! Flight! would to Heaven
+it were in our power!”
+
+“Dost thou, too, desire to escape the blessed Revolution?”
+
+“Desire! Oh!” cried Nicot, suddenly, and, falling down, he clasped
+Glyndon’s knees,--“oh, save me with thyself! My life is a torture;
+every moment the guillotine frowns before me. I know that my hours are
+numbered; I know that the tyrant waits but his time to write my name
+in his inexorable list; I know that Rene Dumas, the judge who never
+pardons, has, from the first, resolved upon my death. Oh, Glyndon, by
+our old friendship, by our common art, by thy loyal English faith and
+good English heart, let me share thy flight!”
+
+“If thou wilt, so be it.”
+
+“Thanks!--my whole life shall thank thee. But how hast thou prepared the
+means, the passports, the disguise, the--”
+
+“I will tell thee. Thou knowest C--, of the Convention,--he has power,
+and he is covetous. ‘Qu’on me meprise, pourvu que je dine’ (Let them
+despise me, provided that I dine.), said he, when reproached for his
+avarice.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“By the help of this sturdy republican, who has friends enough in the
+Comite, I have obtained the means necessary for flight; I have purchased
+them. For a consideration I can procure thy passport also.”
+
+“Thy riches, then, are not in assignats?”
+
+“No; I have gold enough for us all.”
+
+And here Glyndon, beckoning Nicot into the next room, first briefly
+and rapidly detailed to him the plan proposed, and the disguises to be
+assumed conformably to the passports, and then added, “In return for
+the service I render thee, grant me one favour, which I think is in thy
+power. Thou rememberest Viola Pisani?”
+
+“Ah,--remember, yes!--and the lover with whom she fled.”
+
+“And FROM whom she is a fugitive now.”
+
+“Indeed--what!--I understand. Sacre bleu! but you are a lucky fellow,
+cher confrere.”
+
+“Silence, man! with thy eternal prate of brotherhood and virtue, thou
+seemest never to believe in one kindly action, or one virtuous thought!”
+
+Nicot bit his lip, and replied sullenly, “Experience is a great
+undeceiver. Humph! What service can I do thee with regard to the
+Italian?”
+
+“I have been accessory to her arrival in this city of snares and
+pitfalls. I cannot leave her alone amidst dangers from which neither
+innocence nor obscurity is a safeguard. In your blessed Republic, a good
+and unsuspected citizen, who casts a desire on any woman, maid or wife,
+has but to say, ‘Be mine, or I denounce you!’ In a word, Viola must
+share our flight.”
+
+“What so easy? I see your passports provide for her.”
+
+“What so easy? What so difficult? This Fillide--would that I had never
+seen her!--would that I had never enslaved my soul to my senses! The
+love of an uneducated, violent, unprincipled woman, opens with a heaven,
+to merge in a hell! She is jealous as all the Furies; she will not hear
+of a female companion; and when once she sees the beauty of Viola!--I
+tremble to think of it. She is capable of any excess in the storm of her
+passions.”
+
+“Aha, I know what such women are! My wife, Beatrice Sacchini, whom I
+took from Naples, when I failed with this very Viola, divorced me when
+my money failed, and, as the mistress of a judge, passes me in her
+carriage while I crawl through the streets. Plague on her!--but
+patience, patience! such is the lot of virtue. Would I were Robespierre
+for a day!”
+
+“Cease these tirades!” exclaimed Glyndon, impatiently; “and to the
+point. What would you advise?”
+
+“Leave your Fillide behind.”
+
+“Leave her to her own ignorance; leave her unprotected even by the
+mind; leave her in the Saturnalia of Rape and Murder? No! I have sinned
+against her once. But come what may, I will not so basely desert one
+who, with all her errors, trusted her fate to my love.”
+
+“You deserted her at Marseilles.”
+
+“True; but I left her in safety, and I did not then believe her love to
+be so deep and faithful. I left her gold, and I imagined she would be
+easily consoled; but since THEN WE HAVE KNOWN DANGER TOGETHER! And now
+to leave her alone to that danger which she would never have incurred
+but for devotion to me!--no, that is impossible. A project occurs to
+me. Canst thou not say that thou hast a sister, a relative, or a
+benefactress, whom thou wouldst save? Can we not--till we have left
+France--make Fillide believe that Viola is one in whom THOU only art
+interested; and whom, for thy sake only, I permit to share in our
+escape?”
+
+“Ha, well thought of!--certainly!”
+
+“I will then appear to yield to Fillide’s wishes, and resign the
+project, which she so resents, of saving the innocent object of her
+frantic jealousy. You, meanwhile, shall yourself entreat Fillide to
+intercede with me to extend the means of escape to--”
+
+“To a lady (she knows I have no sister) who has aided me in my distress.
+Yes, I will manage all, never fear. One word more,--what has become of
+that Zanoni?”
+
+“Talk not of him,--I know not.”
+
+“Does he love this girl still?”
+
+“It would seem so. She is his wife, the mother of his infant, who is
+with her.”
+
+“Wife!--mother! He loves her. Aha! And why--”
+
+“No questions now. I will go and prepare Viola for the flight; you,
+meanwhile, return to Fillide.”
+
+“But the address of the Neapolitan? It is necessary I should know, lest
+Fillide inquire.”
+
+“Rue M-- T--, No. 27. Adieu.”
+
+Glyndon seized his hat and hastened from the house.
+
+Nicot, left alone, seemed for a few moments buried in thought. “Oho,” he
+muttered to himself, “can I not turn all this to my account? Can I not
+avenge myself on thee, Zanoni, as I have so often sworn,--through thy
+wife and child? Can I not possess myself of thy gold, thy passports,
+and thy Fillide, hot Englishman, who wouldst humble me with thy loathed
+benefits, and who hast chucked me thine alms as to a beggar? And
+Fillide, I love her: and thy gold, I love THAT more! Puppets, I move
+your strings!”
+
+He passed slowly into the chamber where Fillide yet sat, with gloomy
+thought on her brow and tears standing in her dark eyes. She looked up
+eagerly as the door opened, and turned from the rugged face of Nicot
+with an impatient movement of disappointment.
+
+“Glyndon,” said the painter, drawing a chair to Fillide’s, “has left me
+to enliven your solitude, fair Italian. He is not jealous of the ugly
+Nicot!--ha, ha!--yet Nicot loved thee well once, when his fortunes were
+more fair. But enough of such past follies.”
+
+“Your friend, then, has left the house. Whither? Ah, you look away;
+you falter,--you cannot meet my eyes! Speak! I implore, I command thee,
+speak!”
+
+“Enfant! And what dost thou fear?”
+
+“FEAR!--yes, alas, I fear!” said the Italian; and her whole frame seemed
+to shrink into itself as she fell once more back into her seat.
+
+Then, after a pause, she tossed the long hair from her eyes, and,
+starting up abruptly, paced the room with disordered strides. At length
+she stopped opposite to Nicot, laid her hand on his arm, drew him
+towards an escritoire, which she unlocked, and, opening a well, pointed
+to the gold that lay within, and said, “Thou art poor,--thou lovest
+money; take what thou wilt, but undeceive me. Who is this woman whom thy
+friend visits,--and does he love her?”
+
+Nicot’s eyes sparkled, and his hands opened and clenched, and clenched
+and opened, as he gazed upon the coins. But reluctantly resisting the
+impulse, he said, with an affected bitterness, “Thinkest thou to bribe
+me?--if so, it cannot be with gold. But what if he does love a rival;
+what if he betrays thee; what if, wearied by thy jealousies, he designs
+in his flight to leave thee behind,--would such knowledge make thee
+happier?”
+
+“Yes!” exclaimed the Italian, fiercely; “yes, for it would be happiness
+to hate and to be avenged! Oh, thou knowest not how sweet is hatred to
+those who have really loved!”
+
+“But wilt thou swear, if I reveal to thee the secret, that thou wilt not
+betray me,--that thou wilt not fall, as women do, into weak tears and
+fond reproaches, when thy betrayer returns?”
+
+“Tears, reproaches! Revenge hides itself in smiles!”
+
+“Thou art a brave creature!” said Nicot, almost admiringly. “One
+condition more: thy lover designs to fly with his new love, to leave
+thee to thy fate; if I prove this to thee, and if I give thee revenge
+against thy rival, wilt thou fly with me? I love thee!--I will wed
+thee!”
+
+Fillide’s eyes flashed fire; she looked at him with unutterable disdain,
+and was silent.
+
+Nicot felt he had gone too far; and with that knowledge of the evil part
+of our nature which his own heart and association with crime had taught
+him, he resolved to trust the rest to the passions of the Italian, when
+raised to the height to which he was prepared to lead them.
+
+“Pardon me,” he said; “my love made me too presumptuous; and yet it is
+only that love,--my sympathy for thee, beautiful and betrayed, that can
+induce me to wrong, with my revelations, one whom I have regarded as a
+brother. I can depend upon thine oath to conceal all from Glyndon?”
+
+“On my oath and my wrongs and my mountain blood!”
+
+“Enough! get thy hat and mantle, and follow me.”
+
+As Fillide left the room, Nicot’s eyes again rested on the gold; it was
+much,--much more than he had dared to hope for; and as he peered into
+the well and opened the drawers, he perceived a packet of letters in the
+well-known hand of Camille Desmoulins. He seized--he opened the packet;
+his looks brightened as he glanced over a few sentences. “This would
+give fifty Glyndons to the guillotine!” he muttered, and thrust the
+packet into his bosom.
+
+O artist!--O haunted one!--O erring genius!--behold the two worst
+foes,--the False Ideal that knows no God, and the False Love that burns
+from the corruption of the senses, and takes no lustre from the soul!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.III.
+
+     Liebe sonnt das Reich der Nacht.
+     “Der Triumph der Liebe.”
+
+     (Love illumes the realm of Night.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+Paris.
+
+Dost thou remember in the old time, when the Beautiful yet dwelt in
+Greece, how we two, in the vast Athenian Theatre, witnessed the birth of
+Words as undying as ourselves? Dost thou remember the thrill of terror
+that ran through that mighty audience, when the wild Cassandra burst
+from her awful silence to shriek to her relentless god! How ghastly, at
+the entrance of the House of Atreus, about to become her tomb, rang out
+her exclamations of foreboding woe: “Dwelling abhorred of heaven!--human
+shamble-house and floor blood-bespattered!” (Aesch. “Agam.” 1098.)
+Dost thou remember how, amidst the breathless awe of those assembled
+thousands, I drew close to thee, and whispered, “Verily, no prophet like
+the poet! This scene of fabled horror comes to me as a dream, shadowing
+forth some likeness in my own remoter future!” As I enter this
+slaughter-house that scene returns to me, and I hearken to the voice of
+Cassandra ringing in my ears. A solemn and warning dread gathers round
+me, as if I too were come to find a grave, and “the Net of Hades”
+ had already entangled me in its web! What dark treasure-houses of
+vicissitude and woe are our memories become! What our lives, but the
+chronicles of unrelenting death! It seems to me as yesterday when I
+stood in the streets of this city of the Gaul, as they shone with plumed
+chivalry, and the air rustled with silken braveries. Young Louis, the
+monarch and the lover, was victor of the Tournament at the Carousel; and
+all France felt herself splendid in the splendour of her gorgeous chief!
+Now there is neither throne nor altar; and what is in their stead? I
+see it yonder--the GUILLOTINE! It is dismal to stand amidst the ruins
+of mouldering cities, to startle the serpent and the lizard amidst
+the wrecks of Persepolis and Thebes; but more dismal still to stand as
+I--the stranger from Empires that have ceased to be--stand now amidst
+the yet ghastlier ruins of Law and Order, the shattering of mankind
+themselves! Yet here, even here, Love, the Beautifier, that hath led my
+steps, can walk with unshrinking hope through the wilderness of Death.
+Strange is the passion that makes a world in itself, that individualises
+the One amidst the Multitude; that, through all the changes of my solemn
+life, yet survives, though ambition and hate and anger are dead; the one
+solitary angel, hovering over a universe of tombs on its two tremulous
+and human wings,--Hope and Fear!
+
+How is it, Mejnour, that, as my diviner art abandoned me,--as, in my
+search for Viola, I was aided but by the ordinary instincts of the
+merest mortal,--how is it that I have never desponded, that I have felt
+in every difficulty the prevailing prescience that we should meet at
+last? So cruelly was every vestige of her flight concealed from
+me,--so suddenly, so secretly had she fled, that all the spies, all the
+authorities of Venice, could give me no clew. All Italy I searched in
+vain! Her young home at Naples!--how still, in its humble chambers,
+there seemed to linger the fragrance of her presence! All the sublimest
+secrets of our lore failed me,--failed to bring her soul visible to
+mine; yet morning and night, thou lone and childless one, morning and
+night, detached from myself, I can commune with my child! There in that
+most blessed, typical, and mysterious of all relations, Nature herself
+appears to supply what Science would refuse. Space cannot separate the
+father’s watchful soul from the cradle of his first-born! I know not of
+its resting-place and home,--my visions picture not the land,--only the
+small and tender life to which all space is as yet the heritage! For to
+the infant, before reason dawns,--before man’s bad passions can dim
+the essence that it takes from the element it hath left, there is no
+peculiar country, no native city, and no mortal language. Its soul as
+yet is the denizen of all airs and of every world; and in space its
+soul meets with mine,--the child communes with the father! Cruel and
+forsaking one,--thou for whom I left the wisdom of the spheres;
+thou whose fatal dower has been the weakness and terrors of
+humanity,--couldst thou think that young soul less safe on earth because
+I would lead it ever more up to heaven! Didst thou think that I could
+have wronged mine own? Didst thou not know that in its serenest eyes the
+life that I gave it spoke to warn, to upbraid the mother who would bind
+it to the darkness and pangs of the prison-house of clay? Didst thou
+not feel that it was I who, permitted by the Heavens, shielded it from
+suffering and disease? And in its wondrous beauty, I blessed the holy
+medium through which, at last, my spirit might confer with thine!
+
+And how have I tracked them hither? I learned that thy pupil had been at
+Venice. I could not trace the young and gentle neophyte of Parthenope in
+the description of the haggard and savage visitor who had come to Viola
+before she fled; but when I would have summoned his IDEA before me, it
+refused to obey; and I knew then that his fate had become entwined with
+Viola’s. I have tracked him, then, to this Lazar House. I arrived but
+yesterday; I have not yet discovered him.
+
+....
+
+I have just returned from their courts of justice,--dens where tigers
+arraign their prey. I find not whom I would seek. They are saved as
+yet; but I recognise in the crimes of mortals the dark wisdom of the
+Everlasting. Mejnour, I see here, for the first time, how majestic and
+beauteous a thing is death! Of what sublime virtues we robbed ourselves,
+when, in the thirst for virtue, we attained the art by which we can
+refuse to die! When in some happy clime, where to breathe is to enjoy,
+the charnel-house swallows up the young and fair; when in the noble
+pursuit of knowledge, Death comes to the student, and shuts out the
+enchanted land which was opening to his gaze,--how natural for us to
+desire to live; how natural to make perpetual life the first object of
+research! But here, from my tower of time, looking over the darksome
+past, and into the starry future, I learn how great hearts feel what
+sweetness and glory there is to die for the things they love! I saw
+a father sacrificing himself for his son; he was subjected to charges
+which a word of his could dispel,--he was mistaken for his boy. With
+what joy he seized the error, confessed the noble crimes of valour
+and fidelity which the son had indeed committed, and went to the doom,
+exulting that his death saved the life he had given, not in vain! I saw
+women, young, delicate, in the bloom of their beauty; they had vowed
+themselves to the cloister. Hands smeared with the blood of saints
+opened the gate that had shut them from the world, and bade them go
+forth, forget their vows, forswear the Divine one these demons would
+depose, find lovers and helpmates, and be free. And some of these young
+hearts had loved, and even, though in struggles, loved yet. Did they
+forswear the vow? Did they abandon the faith? Did even love allure them?
+Mejnour, with one voice, they preferred to die. And whence comes this
+courage?--because such HEARTS LIVE IN SOME MORE ABSTRACT AND HOLIER
+LIFE THAN THEIR OWN. BUT TO LIVE FOREVER UPON THIS EARTH IS TO LIVE IN
+NOTHING DIVINER THAN OURSELVES. Yes, even amidst this gory butcherdom,
+God, the Ever-living, vindicates to man the sanctity of His servant,
+Death!
+
+....
+
+Again I have seen thee in spirit; I have seen and blessed thee, my sweet
+child! Dost thou not know me also in thy dreams? Dost thou not feel the
+beating of my heart through the veil of thy rosy slumbers? Dost thou
+not hear the wings of the brighter beings that I yet can conjure around
+thee, to watch, to nourish, and to save? And when the spell fades at thy
+waking, when thine eyes open to the day, will they not look round for
+me, and ask thy mother, with their mute eloquence, “Why she has robbed
+thee of a father?”
+
+Woman, dost thou not repent thee? Flying from imaginary fears, hast
+thou not come to the very lair of terror, where Danger sits visible
+and incarnate? Oh, if we could but meet, wouldst thou not fall upon the
+bosom thou hast so wronged, and feel, poor wanderer amidst the storms,
+as if thou hadst regained the shelter? Mejnour, still my researches
+fail me. I mingle with all men, even their judges and their spies, but
+I cannot yet gain the clew. I know that she is here. I know it by an
+instinct; the breath of my child seems warmer and more familiar.
+
+They peer at me with venomous looks, as I pass through their streets.
+With a glance I disarm their malice, and fascinate the basilisks.
+Everywhere I see the track and scent the presence of the Ghostly One
+that dwells on the Threshold, and whose victims are the souls that would
+ASPIRE, and can only FEAR. I see its dim shapelessness going before the
+men of blood, and marshalling their way. Robespierre passed me with his
+furtive step. Those eyes of horror were gnawing into his heart. I looked
+down upon their senate; the grim Phantom sat cowering on its floor.
+It hath taken up its abode in the city of Dread. And what in truth
+are these would-be builders of a new world? Like the students who have
+vainly struggled after our supreme science, they have attempted what is
+beyond their power; they have passed from this solid earth of usages and
+forms into the land of shadow, and its loathsome keeper has seized them
+as its prey. I looked into the tyrant’s shuddering soul, as it trembled
+past me. There, amidst the ruins of a thousand systems which aimed at
+virtue, sat Crime, and shivered at its desolation. Yet this man is the
+only Thinker, the only Aspirant, amongst them all. He still looks for
+a future of peace and mercy, to begin,--ay! at what date? When he has
+swept away every foe. Fool! new foes spring from every drop of blood.
+Led by the eyes of the Unutterable, he is walking to his doom.
+
+O Viola, thy innocence protects thee! Thou whom the sweet humanities
+of love shut out even from the dreams of aerial and spiritual beauty,
+making thy heart a universe of visions fairer than the wanderer over the
+rosy Hesperus can survey,--shall not the same pure affection encompass
+thee, even here, with a charmed atmosphere, and terror itself fall
+harmless on a life too innocent for wisdom?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.IV.
+
+     Ombra piu che di notte, in cui di luce
+     Raggio misto non e;
+
+     ....
+
+     Ne piu il palagio appar, ne piu le sue
+     Vestigia; ne dir puossi--egli qui fue.
+     --“Ger. Lib.”, canto xvi.-lxix.
+
+     (Darkness greater than of night, in which not a ray of light is
+     mixed;...The palace appears no more:  not even a vestige,--nor
+     can one say that it has been.)
+
+The clubs are noisy with clamorous frenzy; the leaders are grim with
+schemes. Black Henriot flies here and there, muttering to his armed
+troops, “Robespierre, your beloved, is in danger!” Robespierre stalks
+perturbed, his list of victims swelling every hour. Tallien, the Macduff
+to the doomed Macbeth, is whispering courage to his pale conspirators.
+Along the streets heavily roll the tumbrils. The shops are closed,--the
+people are gorged with gore, and will lap no more. And night after
+night, to the eighty theatres flock the children of the Revolution, to
+laugh at the quips of comedy, and weep gentle tears over imaginary woes!
+
+In a small chamber, in the heart of the city, sits the mother, watching
+over her child. It is quiet, happy noon; the sunlight, broken by the
+tall roofs in the narrow street, comes yet through the open casement,
+the impartial playfellow of the air, gleesome alike in temple and
+prison, hall and hovel; as golden and as blithe, whether it laugh over
+the first hour of life, or quiver in its gay delight on the terror
+and agony of the last! The child, where it lay at the feet of Viola,
+stretched out its dimpled hands as if to clasp the dancing motes that
+revelled in the beam. The mother turned her eyes from the glory; it
+saddened her yet more. She turned and sighed.
+
+Is this the same Viola who bloomed fairer than their own Idalia under
+the skies of Greece? How changed! How pale and worn! She sat listlessly,
+her arms dropping on her knee; the smile that was habitual to her lips
+was gone. A heavy, dull despondency, as if the life of life were no
+more, seemed to weigh down her youth, and make it weary of that happy
+sun! In truth, her existence had languished away since it had wandered,
+as some melancholy stream, from the source that fed it. The sudden
+enthusiasm of fear or superstition that had almost, as if still in the
+unconscious movements of a dream, led her to fly from Zanoni, had ceased
+from the day which dawned upon her in a foreign land. Then--there--she
+felt that in the smile she had evermore abandoned lived her life. She
+did not repent,--she would not have recalled the impulse that winged her
+flight. Though the enthusiasm was gone, the superstition yet remained;
+she still believed she had saved her child from that dark and guilty
+sorcery, concerning which the traditions of all lands are prodigal, but
+in none do they find such credulity, or excite such dread, as in
+the South of Italy. This impression was confirmed by the mysterious
+conversations of Glyndon, and by her own perception of the fearful
+change that had passed over one who represented himself as the victim
+of the enchanters. She did not, therefore, repent; but her very volition
+seemed gone.
+
+On their arrival at Paris, Viola saw her companion--the faithful
+wife--no more. Ere three weeks were passed, husband and wife had ceased
+to live.
+
+And now, for the first time, the drudgeries of this hard earth claimed
+the beautiful Neapolitan. In that profession, giving voice and shape to
+poetry and song, in which her first years were passed, there is, while
+it lasts, an excitement in the art that lifts it from the labour of a
+calling. Hovering between two lives, the Real and Ideal, dwells the life
+of music and the stage. But that life was lost evermore to the idol of
+the eyes and ears of Naples. Lifted to the higher realm of passionate
+love, it seemed as if the fictitious genius which represents the
+thoughts of others was merged in the genius that grows all thought
+itself. It had been the worst infidelity to the Lost, to have descended
+again to live on the applause of others. And so--for she would not
+accept alms from Glyndon--so, by the commonest arts, the humblest
+industry which the sex knows, alone and unseen, she who had slept on the
+breast of Zanoni found a shelter for their child. As when, in the
+noble verse prefixed to this chapter, Armida herself has destroyed her
+enchanted palace,--not a vestige of that bower, raised of old by Poetry
+and Love, remained to say, “It had been!”
+
+And the child avenged the father; it bloomed, it thrived,--it waxed
+strong in the light of life. But still it seemed haunted and preserved
+by some other being than her own. In its sleep there was that slumber,
+so deep and rigid, which a thunderbolt could not have disturbed; and
+in such sleep often it moved its arms, as to embrace the air: often its
+lips stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection,--NOT FOR HER;
+and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon
+its lips a smile of such mysterious joy! Then, when it waked, its eyes
+did not turn first to HER,--wistful, earnest, wandering, they roved
+around, to fix on her pale face, at last, in mute sorrow and reproach.
+
+Never had Viola felt before how mighty was her love for Zanoni; how
+thought, feeling, heart, soul, life,--all lay crushed and dormant in
+the icy absence to which she had doomed herself! She heard not the
+roar without, she felt not one amidst those stormy millions,--worlds
+of excitement labouring through every hour. Only when Glyndon, haggard,
+wan, and spectre-like, glided in, day after day, to visit her, did the
+fair daughter of the careless South know how heavy and universal was
+the Death-Air that girt her round. Sublime in her passive
+unconsciousness,--her mechanic life,--she sat, and feared not, in the
+den of the Beasts of Prey.
+
+The door of the room opened abruptly, and Glyndon entered. His manner
+was more agitated than usual.
+
+“Is it you, Clarence?” she said in her soft, languid tones. “You are
+before the hour I expected you.”
+
+“Who can count on his hours at Paris?” returned Glyndon, with a
+frightful smile. “Is it not enough that I am here! Your apathy in the
+midst of these sorrows appalls me. You say calmly, ‘Farewell;’ calmly
+you bid me, ‘Welcome!’--as if in every corner there was not a spy, and
+as if with every day there was not a massacre!”
+
+“Pardon me! But in these walls lies my world. I can hardly credit all
+the tales you tell me. Everything here, save THAT,” and she pointed
+to the infant, “seems already so lifeless, that in the tomb itself one
+could scarcely less heed the crimes that are done without.”
+
+Glyndon paused for a few moments, and gazed with strange and mingled
+feelings upon that face and form, still so young, and yet so invested
+with that saddest of all repose,--when the heart feels old.
+
+“O Viola,” said he, at last, and in a voice of suppressed passion, “was
+it thus I ever thought to see you,--ever thought to feel for you, when
+we two first met in the gay haunts of Naples? Ah, why then did you
+refuse my love; or why was mine not worthy of you? Nay, shrink not!--let
+me touch your hand. No passion so sweet as that youthful love can return
+to me again. I feel for you but as a brother for some younger and lonely
+sister. With you, in your presence, sad though it be, I seem to breathe
+back the purer air of my early life. Here alone, except in scenes of
+turbulence and tempest, the Phantom ceases to pursue me. I forget even
+the Death that stalks behind, and haunts me as my shadow. But better
+days may be in store for us yet. Viola, I at last begin dimly to
+perceive how to baffle and subdue the Phantom that has cursed my
+life,--it is to brave, and defy it. In sin and in riot, as I have told
+thee, it haunts me not. But I comprehend now what Mejnour said in his
+dark apothegms, ‘that I should dread the spectre most WHEN UNSEEN.’ In
+virtuous and calm resolution it appears,--ay, I behold it now; there,
+there, with its livid eyes!”--and the drops fell from his brow. “But
+it shall no longer daunt me from that resolution. I face it, and it
+gradually darkens back into the shade.” He paused, and his eyes dwelt
+with a terrible exultation upon the sunlit space; then, with a heavy and
+deep-drawn breath, he resumed, “Viola, I have found the means of escape.
+We will leave this city. In some other land we will endeavour to comfort
+each other, and forget the past.”
+
+“No,” said Viola, calmly; “I have no further wish to stir, till I am
+born hence to the last resting-place. I dreamed of him last night,
+Clarence!--dreamed of him for the first time since we parted; and,
+do not mock me, methought that he forgave the deserter, and called me
+‘Wife.’ That dream hallows the room. Perhaps it will visit me again
+before I die.”
+
+“Talk not of him,--of the demi-fiend!” cried Glyndon, fiercely, and
+stamping his foot. “Thank the Heavens for any fate that hath rescued
+thee from him!”
+
+“Hush!” said Viola, gravely. And as she was about to proceed, her eye
+fell upon the child. It was standing in the very centre of that slanting
+column of light which the sun poured into the chamber; and the rays
+seemed to surround it as a halo, and settled, crown-like, on the gold
+of its shining hair. In its small shape, so exquisitely modelled, in its
+large, steady, tranquil eyes, there was something that awed, while it
+charmed the mother’s pride. It gazed on Glyndon as he spoke, with a
+look which almost might have seemed disdain, and which Viola, at least,
+interpreted as a defence of the Absent, stronger than her own lips could
+frame.
+
+Glyndon broke the pause.
+
+“Thou wouldst stay, for what? To betray a mother’s duty! If any evil
+happen to thee here, what becomes of thine infant? Shall it be brought
+up an orphan, in a country that has desecrated thy religion, and where
+human charity exists no more? Ah, weep, and clasp it to thy bosom; but
+tears do not protect and save.”
+
+“Thou hast conquered, my friend, I will fly with thee.”
+
+“To-morrow night, then, be prepared. I will bring thee the necessary
+disguises.”
+
+And Glyndon then proceeded to sketch rapidly the outline of the path
+they were to take, and the story they were to tell. Viola listened, but
+scarcely comprehended; he pressed her hand to his heart and departed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.V.
+
+     Van seco pur anco
+     Sdegno ed Amor, quasi due Veltri al fianco.
+     “Ger. Lib.” cant. xx. cxvii.
+
+     (There went with him still Disdain and Love, like two greyhounds
+     side by side.)
+
+Glyndon did not perceive, as he hurried from the house, two forms
+crouching by the angle of the wall. He saw still the spectre gliding by
+his side; but he beheld not the yet more poisonous eyes of human envy
+and woman’s jealousy that glared on his retreating footsteps.
+
+Nicot advanced to the house; Fillide followed him in silence. The
+painter, an old sans-culotte, knew well what language to assume to the
+porter. He beckoned the latter from his lodge, “How is this, citizen?
+Thou harbourest a ‘suspect.’”
+
+“Citizen, you terrify me!--if so, name him.”
+
+“It is not a man; a refugee, an Italian woman, lodges here.”
+
+“Yes, au troisieme,--the door to the left. But what of her?--she cannot
+be dangerous, poor child!”
+
+“Citizen, beware! Dost thou dare to pity her?”
+
+“I? No, no, indeed. But--”
+
+“Speak the truth! Who visits her?”
+
+“No one but an Englishman.”
+
+“That is it,--an Englishman, a spy of Pitt and Coburg.”
+
+“Just Heaven! is it possible?”
+
+“How, citizen! dost thou speak of Heaven? Thou must be an aristocrat!”
+
+“No, indeed; it was but an old bad habit, and escaped me unawares.”
+
+“How often does the Englishman visit her?”
+
+“Daily.”
+
+Fillide uttered an exclamation.
+
+“She never stirs out,” said the porter. “Her sole occupations are in
+work, and care of her infant.”
+
+“Her infant!”
+
+Fillide made a bound forward. Nicot in vain endeavoured to arrest her.
+She sprang up the stairs; she paused not till she was before the door
+indicated by the porter; it stood ajar, she entered, she stood at the
+threshold, and beheld that face, still so lovely! The sight of so much
+beauty left her hopeless. And the child, over whom the mother bent!--she
+who had never been a mother!--she uttered no sound; the furies were at
+work within her breast. Viola turned, and saw her, and, terrified by the
+strange apparition, with features that expressed the deadliest hate and
+scorn and vengeance, uttered a cry, and snatched the child to her bosom.
+The Italian laughed aloud,--turned, descended, and, gaining the spot
+where Nicot still conversed with the frightened porter drew him from the
+house. When they were in the open street, she halted abruptly, and said,
+“Avenge me, and name thy price!”
+
+“My price, sweet one! is but permission to love thee. Thou wilt fly with
+me to-morrow night; thou wilt possess thyself of the passports and the
+plan.”
+
+“And they--”
+
+“Shall, before then, find their asylum in the Conciergerie. The
+guillotine shall requite thy wrongs.”
+
+“Do this, and I am satisfied,” said Fillide, firmly.
+
+And they spoke no more till they regained the house. But when she there,
+looking up to the dull building, saw the windows of the room which the
+belief of Glyndon’s love had once made a paradise, the tiger relented at
+the heart; something of the woman gushed back upon her nature, dark and
+savage as it was. She pressed the arm on which she leaned convulsively,
+and exclaimed, “No, no! not him! denounce her,--let her perish; but I
+have slept on HIS bosom,--not HIM!”
+
+“It shall be as thou wilt,” said Nicot, with a devil’s sneer; “but he
+must be arrested for the moment. No harm shall happen to him, for no
+accuser shall appear. But her,--thou wilt not relent for her?”
+
+Fillide turned upon him her eyes, and their dark glance was sufficient
+answer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VI.
+
+     In poppa quella
+     Che guidar gli dovea, fatal Donsella.
+     “Ger. Lib.” cant. xv. 3.
+
+     (By the prow was the fatal lady ordained to be the guide.)
+
+The Italian did not overrate that craft of simulation proverbial with
+her country and her sex. Not a word, not a look, that day revealed to
+Glyndon the deadly change that had converted devotion into hate. He
+himself, indeed, absorbed in his own schemes, and in reflections on his
+own strange destiny, was no nice observer. But her manner, milder
+and more subdued than usual, produced a softening effect upon his
+meditations towards the evening; and he then began to converse with her
+on the certain hope of escape, and on the future that would await them
+in less unhallowed lands.
+
+“And thy fair friend,” said Fillide, with an averted eye and a false
+smile, “who was to be our companion?--thou hast resigned her, Nicot
+tells me, in favour of one in whom he is interested. Is it so?”
+
+“He told thee this!” returned Glyndon, evasively. “Well! does the change
+content thee?”
+
+“Traitor!” muttered Fillide; and she rose suddenly, approached him,
+parted the long hair from his forehead caressingly, and pressed her lips
+convulsively on his brow.
+
+“This were too fair a head for the doomsman,” said she, with a slight
+laugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in preparations for their
+departure.
+
+The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the Italian; she was
+absent from the house when he left it. It was necessary that he should
+once more visit C-- before his final Departure, not only to arrange for
+Nicot’s participation in the flight, but lest any suspicion should have
+arisen to thwart or endanger the plan he had adopted. C--, though not
+one of the immediate coterie of Robespierre, and indeed secretly hostile
+to him, had possessed the art of keeping well with each faction as
+it rose to power. Sprung from the dregs of the populace, he had,
+nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often found impartially amongst
+every class in France. He had contrived to enrich himself--none knew
+how--in the course of his rapid career. He became, indeed, ultimately
+one of the wealthiest proprietors of Paris, and at that time kept a
+splendid and hospitable mansion. He was one of those whom, from various
+reasons, Robespierre deigned to favour; and he had often saved the
+proscribed and suspected, by procuring them passports under disguised
+names, and advising their method of escape. But C-- was a man who took
+this trouble only for the rich. “The incorruptible Maximilien,” who did
+not want the tyrant’s faculty of penetration, probably saw through all
+his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked beneath his charity.
+But it was noticeable that Robespierre frequently seemed to wink
+at--nay, partially to encourage--such vice in men whom he meant
+hereafter to destroy, as would tend to lower them in the public
+estimation, and to contrast with his own austere and unassailable
+integrity and PURISM. And, doubtless, he often grimly smiled in his
+sleeve at the sumptuous mansion and the griping covetousness of the
+worthy Citizen C--.
+
+To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way. It was true, as
+he had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he had resisted the
+spectre, its terrors had lost their influence. The time had come at
+last, when, seeing crime and vice in all their hideousness, and in so
+vast a theatre, he had found that in vice and crime there are deadlier
+horrors than in the eyes of a phantom-fear. His native nobleness began
+to return to him. As he passed the streets, he revolved in his mind
+projects of future repentance and reformation. He even meditated, as a
+just return for Fillide’s devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasonings
+of his birth and education. He would repair whatever errors he had
+committed against her, by the self-immolation of marriage with one
+little congenial with himself. He who had once revolted from marriage
+with the noble and gentle Viola!--he had learned in that world of wrong
+to know that right is right, and that Heaven did not make the one sex to
+be the victim of the other. The young visions of the Beautiful and the
+Good rose once more before him; and along the dark ocean of his mind lay
+the smile of reawakening virtue, as a path of moonlight. Never, perhaps,
+had the condition of his soul been so elevated and unselfish.
+
+In the meanwhile Jean Nicot, equally absorbed in dreams of the future,
+and already in his own mind laying out to the best advantage the gold of
+the friend he was about to betray, took his way to the house honoured
+by the residence of Robespierre. He had no intention to comply with the
+relenting prayer of Fillide, that the life of Glyndon should be spared.
+He thought with Barrere, “Il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient pas.”
+ In all men who have devoted themselves to any study, or any art, with
+sufficient pains to attain a certain degree of excellence, there must be
+a fund of energy immeasurably above that of the ordinary herd. Usually
+this energy is concentrated on the objects of their professional
+ambition, and leaves them, therefore, apathetic to the other pursuits
+of men. But where those objects are denied, where the stream has not its
+legitimate vent, the energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the whole
+being, and if not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified by
+conscience and principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element in
+the social system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder. Hence,
+in all wise monarchies,--nay, in all well-constituted states,--the
+peculiar care with which channels are opened for every art and every
+science; hence the honour paid to their cultivators by subtle and
+thoughtful statesmen, who, perhaps, for themselves, see nothing in a
+picture but coloured canvas,--nothing in a problem but an ingenious
+puzzle. No state is ever more in danger than when the talent that should
+be consecrated to peace has no occupation but political intrigue or
+personal advancement. Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men. And
+here it is noticeable, that the class of actors having been the most
+degraded by the public opinion of the old regime, their very dust
+deprived of Christian burial, no men (with certain exceptions in the
+company especially favoured by the Court) were more relentless and
+revengeful among the scourges of the Revolution. In the savage Collot
+d’Herbois, mauvais comedien, were embodied the wrongs and the vengeance
+of a class.
+
+Now the energy of Jean Nicot had never been sufficiently directed to
+the art he professed. Even in his earliest youth, the political
+disquisitions of his master, David, had distracted him from the more
+tedious labours of the easel. The defects of his person had embittered
+his mind; the atheism of his benefactor had deadened his conscience.
+For one great excellence of religion--above all, the Religion of the
+Cross--is, that it raises PATIENCE first into a virtue, and next into a
+hope. Take away the doctrine of another life, of requital hereafter, of
+the smile of a Father upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal here,
+and what becomes of patience? But without patience, what is man?--and
+what a people? Without patience, art never can be high; without
+patience, liberty never can be perfected. By wild throes, and impetuous,
+aimless struggles, Intellect seeks to soar from Penury, and a nation
+to struggle into Freedom. And woe, thus unfortified, guideless, and
+unenduring,--woe to both!
+
+Nicot was a villain as a boy. In most criminals, however abandoned,
+there are touches of humanity,--relics of virtue; and the true
+delineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad hearts and dull
+minds, for showing that even the worst alloy has some particles of gold,
+and even the best that come stamped from the mint of Nature have some
+adulteration of the dross. But there are exceptions, though few, to the
+general rule,--exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, and
+when good or bad are things indifferent but as means to some selfish
+end. So was it with the protege of the atheist. Envy and hate filled up
+his whole being, and the consciousness of superior talent only made him
+curse the more all who passed him in the sunlight with a fairer form or
+happier fortunes. But, monster though he was, when his murderous fingers
+griped the throat of his benefactor, Time, and that ferment of all evil
+passions--the Reign of Blood--had made in the deep hell of his heart a
+deeper still. Unable to exercise his calling (for even had he dared to
+make his name prominent, revolutions are no season for painters; and no
+man--no! not the richest and proudest magnate of the land, has so great
+an interest in peace and order, has so high and essential a stake in the
+well being of society, as the poet and the artist), his whole intellect,
+ever restless and unguided, was left to ponder over the images of guilt
+most congenial to it. He had no future but in this life; and how in this
+life had the men of power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion,
+thriven? All that was good, pure, unselfish,--whether among Royalists or
+Republicans,--swept to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone in the
+pomp and purple of their victims! Nobler paupers than Jean Nicot would
+despair; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly multitudes to cut the
+throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, the
+Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side, pointing with solemn finger to
+the life to come! And now, as Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he
+began to meditate a reversal of his plans of the previous day: not
+that he faltered in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would
+necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,--no, THERE
+he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his old but
+never-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni). Viola had scorned him,
+Glyndon had served, and the thought of gratitude was as intolerable
+to him as the memory of insult. But why, now, should he fly from
+France?--he could possess himself of Glyndon’s gold; he doubted not
+that he could so master Fillide by her wrath and jealousy that he
+could command her acquiescence in all he proposed. The papers he had
+purloined--Desmoulins’ correspondence with Glyndon--while it insured the
+fate of the latter, might be eminently serviceable to Robespierre, might
+induce the tyrant to forget his own old liaisons with Hebert, and
+enlist him among the allies and tools of the King of Terror. Hopes
+of advancement, of wealth, of a career, again rose before him. This
+correspondence, dated shortly before Camille Desmoulins’ death, was
+written with that careless and daring imprudence which characterised the
+spoiled child of Danton. It spoke openly of designs against Robespierre;
+it named confederates whom the tyrant desired only a popular pretext
+to crush. It was a new instrument of death in the hands of the
+Death-compeller. What greater gift could he bestow on Maximilien the
+Incorruptible?
+
+Nursing these thoughts, he arrived at last before the door of Citizen
+Dupleix. Around the threshold were grouped, in admired confusion,
+some eight or ten sturdy Jacobins, the voluntary body-guard of
+Robespierre,--tall fellows, well armed, and insolent with the power that
+reflects power, mingled with women, young and fair, and gayly dressed,
+who had come, upon the rumour that Maximilien had had an attack of bile,
+to inquire tenderly of his health; for Robespierre, strange though it
+seem, was the idol of the sex!
+
+Through this cortege stationed without the door, and reaching up the
+stairs to the landing-place,--for Robespierre’s apartments were not
+spacious enough to afford sufficient antechamber for levees so numerous
+and miscellaneous,--Nicot forced his way; and far from friendly or
+flattering were the expressions that regaled his ears.
+
+“Aha, le joli Polichinelle!” said a comely matron, whose robe his
+obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed. “But how could one
+expect gallantry from such a scarecrow!”
+
+“Citizen, I beg to advise thee (The courteous use of the plural was
+proscribed at Paris. The Societies Populaires had decided that whoever
+used it should be prosecuted as suspect et adulateur! At the door of
+the public administrations and popular societies was written up, “Ici on
+s’honore du Citoyen, et on se tutoye”!!! (“Here they respect the title
+of Citizen, and they ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ one another.”) Take away Murder
+from the French Revolution and it becomes the greatest farce ever played
+before the angels!) that thou art treading on my feet. I beg thy pardon,
+but now I look at thine, I see the hall is not wide enough for them.”
+
+“Ho! Citizen Nicot,” cried a Jacobin, shouldering his formidable
+bludgeon, “and what brings thee hither?--thinkest thou that Hebert’s
+crimes are forgotten already? Off, sport of Nature! and thank the Etre
+Supreme that he made thee insignificant enough to be forgiven.”
+
+“A pretty face to look out of the National Window” (The Guillotine.),
+said the woman whose robe the painter had ruffled.
+
+“Citizens,” said Nicot, white with passion, but constraining himself so
+that his words seemed to come from grinded teeth, “I have the honour
+to inform you that I seek the Representant upon business of the
+utmost importance to the public and himself; and,” he added slowly and
+malignantly, glaring round, “I call all good citizens to be my witnesses
+when I shall complain to Robespierre of the reception bestowed on me by
+some amongst you.”
+
+There was in the man’s look and his tone of voice so much of deep
+and concentrated malignity, that the idlers drew back, and as the
+remembrance of the sudden ups and downs of revolutionary life occurred
+to them, several voices were lifted to assure the squalid and ragged
+painter that nothing was farther from their thoughts than to offer
+affront to a citizen whose very appearance proved him to be an exemplary
+sans-culotte. Nicot received these apologies in sullen silence, and,
+folding his arms, leaned against the wall, waiting in grim patience for
+his admission.
+
+The loiterers talked to each other in separate knots of two and three;
+and through the general hum rang the clear, loud, careless whistle of
+the tall Jacobin who stood guard by the stairs. Next to Nicot, an old
+woman and a young virgin were muttering in earnest whispers, and the
+atheist painter chuckled inly to overhear their discourse.
+
+“I assure thee, my dear,” said the crone, with a mysterious shake of
+head, “that the divine Catherine Theot, whom the impious now persecute,
+is really inspired. There can be no doubt that the elect, of whom Dom
+Gerle and the virtuous Robespierre are destined to be the two grand
+prophets, will enjoy eternal life here, and exterminate all their
+enemies. There is no doubt of it,--not the least!”
+
+“How delightful!” said the girl; “ce cher Robespierre!--he does not look
+very long-lived either!”
+
+“The greater the miracle,” said the old woman. “I am just eighty-one,
+and I don’t feel a day older since Catherine Theot promised me I should
+be one of the elect!”
+
+Here the women were jostled aside by some newcomers, who talked loud and
+eagerly.
+
+“Yes,” cried a brawny man, whose garb denoted him to be a butcher,
+with bare arms, and a cap of liberty on his head; “I am come to warn
+Robespierre. They lay a snare for him; they offer him the Palais
+National. ‘On ne peut etre ami du peuple et habiter un palais.’” (“No
+one can be a friend of the people, and dwell in a palace.”--“Papiers
+inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” etc., volume ii. page 132.)
+
+“No, indeed,” answered a cordonnier; “I like him best in his little
+lodging with the menuisier: it looks like one of US.”
+
+Another rush of the crowd, and a new group were thrown forward in the
+vicinity of Nicot. And these men gabbled and chattered faster and louder
+than the rest.
+
+“But my plan is--”
+
+“Au diable with YOUR plan! I tell you MY scheme is--”
+
+“Nonsense!” cried a third. “When Robespierre understands MY new method
+of making gunpowder, the enemies of France shall--”
+
+“Bah! who fears foreign enemies?” interrupted a fourth; “the enemies
+to be feared are at home. MY new guillotine takes off fifty heads at a
+time!”
+
+“But MY new Constitution!” exclaimed a fifth.
+
+“MY new Religion, citizen!” murmured, complacently, a sixth.
+
+“Sacre mille tonnerres, silence!” roared forth one of the Jacobin guard.
+
+And the crowd suddenly parted as a fierce-looking man, buttoned up to
+the chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs clinking at
+his heel, descended the stairs,--his cheeks swollen and purple with
+intemperance, his eyes dead and savage as a vulture’s. There was a still
+pause, as all, with pale cheeks, made way for the relentless Henriot.
+(Or H_a_nriot. It is singular how undetermined are not only the
+characters of the French Revolution, but even the spelling of their
+names. With the historians it is Vergniau_d_,--with the journalists of
+the time it is Vorgniau_x_. With one authority it is Robespierre,--with
+another Robe_r_spierre.) Scarce had this gruff and iron minion of the
+tyrant stalked through the throng, than a new movement of respect and
+agitation and fear swayed the increasing crowd, as there glided in, with
+the noiselessness of a shadow, a smiling, sober citizen, plainly but
+neatly clad, with a downcast humble eye. A milder, meeker face no
+pastoral poet could assign to Corydon or Thyrsis,--why did the crowd
+shrink and hold their breath? As the ferret in a burrow crept that
+slight form amongst the larger and rougher creatures that huddled and
+pressed back on each other as he passed. A wink of his stealthy eye, and
+the huge Jacobins left the passage clear, without sound or question. On
+he went to the apartment of the tyrant, and thither will we follow him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VII.
+
+     Constitutum est, ut quisquis eum HOMINEM dixisset fuisse,
+     capitalem penderet poenam.
+     --St. Augustine, “Of the God Serapis,” l. 18, “de Civ. Dei,” c. 5.
+
+     (It was decreed, that whoso should say that he had been a MAN,
+     should suffer the punishment of a capital offence.)
+
+Robespierre was reclining languidly in his fauteuil, his cadaverous
+countenance more jaded and fatigued than usual. He to whom Catherine
+Theot assured immortal life, looked, indeed, like a man at death’s door.
+On the table before him was a dish heaped with oranges, with the juice
+of which it is said that he could alone assuage the acrid bile that
+overflowed his system; and an old woman, richly dressed (she had been a
+Marquise in the old regime) was employed in peeling the Hesperian fruits
+for the sick Dragon, with delicate fingers covered with jewels. I
+have before said that Robespierre was the idol of the women. Strange
+certainly!--but then they were French women! The old Marquise, who, like
+Catherine Theot, called him “son,” really seemed to love him piously and
+disinterestedly as a mother; and as she peeled the oranges, and heaped
+on him the most caressing and soothing expressions, the livid ghost of a
+smile fluttered about his meagre lips. At a distance, Payan and Couthon,
+seated at another table, were writing rapidly, and occasionally pausing
+from their work to consult with each other in brief whispers.
+
+Suddenly one of the Jacobins opened the door, and, approaching
+Robespierre, whispered to him the name of Guerin. (See for the espionage
+on which Guerin was employed, “Les Papiers inedits,” etc., volume i.
+page 366, No. xxviii.) At that word the sick man started up, as if new
+life were in the sound.
+
+“My kind friend,” he said to the Marquise, “forgive me; I must dispense
+with thy tender cares. France demands me. I am never ill when I can
+serve my country!”
+
+The old Marquise lifted up her eyes to heaven and murmured, “Quel ange!”
+
+Robespierre waved his hand impatiently; and the old woman, with a sigh,
+patted his pale cheek, kissed his forehead, and submissively withdrew.
+The next moment, the smiling, sober man we have before described, stood,
+bending low, before the tyrant. And well might Robespierre welcome one
+of the subtlest agents of his power,--one on whom he relied more than
+the clubs of his Jacobins, the tongues of his orators, the bayonets of
+his armies; Guerin, the most renowned of his ecouteurs,--the searching,
+prying, universal, omnipresent spy, who glided like a sunbeam through
+chink and crevice, and brought to him intelligence not only of the
+deeds, but the hearts of men!
+
+“Well, citizen, well!--and what of Tallien?”
+
+“This morning, early, two minutes after eight, he went out.”
+
+“So early?--hem!”
+
+“He passed Rue des Quatre Fils, Rue de Temple, Rue de la Reunion, au
+Marais, Rue Martin; nothing observable, except that--”
+
+“That what?”
+
+“He amused himself at a stall in bargaining for some books.”
+
+“Bargaining for books! Aha, the charlatan!--he would cloak the
+intriguant under the savant! Well!”
+
+“At last, in the Rue des Fosses Montmartre, an individual in a blue
+surtout (unknown) accosted him. They walked together about the street
+some minutes, and were joined by Legendre.”
+
+“Legendre! approach, Payan! Legendre, thou hearest!”
+
+“I went into a fruit-stall, and hired two little girls to go and play
+at ball within hearing. They heard Legendre say, ‘I believe his power is
+wearing itself out.’ And Tallien answered, ‘And HIMSELF too. I would not
+give three months’ purchase for his life.’ I do not know, citizen, if
+they meant THEE?”
+
+“Nor I, citizen,” answered Robespierre, with a fell smile, succeeded by
+an expression of gloomy thought. “Ha!” he muttered; “I am young yet,--in
+the prime of life. I commit no excess. No; my constitution is sound,
+sound. Anything farther of Tallien?”
+
+“Yes. The woman whom he loves--Teresa de Fontenai--who lies in prison,
+still continues to correspond with him; to urge him to save her by thy
+destruction: this my listeners overheard. His servant is the messenger
+between the prisoner and himself.”
+
+“So! The servant shall be seized in the open streets of Paris. The Reign
+of Terror is not over yet. With the letters found on him, if such their
+context, I will pluck Tallien from his benches in the Convention.”
+
+Robespierre rose, and after walking a few moments to and fro the room
+in thought, opened the door and summoned one of the Jacobins without.
+To him he gave his orders for the watch and arrest of Tallien’s servant,
+and then threw himself again into his chair. As the Jacobin departed,
+Guerin whispered,--
+
+“Is not that the Citizen Aristides?”
+
+“Yes; a faithful fellow, if he would wash himself, and not swear so
+much.”
+
+“Didst thou not guillotine his brother?”
+
+“But Aristides denounced him.”
+
+“Nevertheless, are such men safe about thy person?”
+
+“Humph! that is true.” And Robespierre, drawing out his pocketbook,
+wrote a memorandum in it, replaced it in his vest, and resumed,--
+
+“What else of Tallien?”
+
+“Nothing more. He and Legendre, with the unknown, walked to the Jardin
+Egalite, and there parted. I saw Tallien to his house. But I have
+other news. Thou badest me watch for those who threaten thee in secret
+letters.”
+
+“Guerin! hast thou detected them? Hast thou--hast thou--”
+
+And the tyrant, as he spoke, opened and shut both his hands, as if
+already grasping the lives of the writers, and one of those convulsive
+grimaces that seemed like an epileptic affection, to which he was
+subject, distorted his features.
+
+“Citizen, I think I have found one. Thou must know that amongst those
+most disaffected is the painter Nicot.”
+
+“Stay, stay!” said Robespierre, opening a manuscript book, bound in red
+morocco (for Robespierre was neat and precise, even in his death-lists),
+and turning to an alphabetical index,--“Nicot!--I have him,--atheist,
+sans-culotte (I hate slovens), friend of Hebert! Aha! N.B.--Rene Dumas
+knows of his early career and crimes. Proceed!”
+
+“This Nicot has been suspected of diffusing tracts and pamphlets against
+thyself and the Comite. Yesterday evening, when he was out, his porter
+admitted me into his apartment, Rue Beau Repaire. With my master-key I
+opened his desk and escritoire. I found herein a drawing of thyself at
+the guillotine; and underneath was written, ‘Bourreau de ton pays, lis
+l’arret de ton chatiment!’ (Executioner of thy country, read the decree
+of thy punishment!) I compared the words with the fragments of the
+various letters thou gavest me: the handwriting tallies with one. See, I
+tore off the writing.”
+
+Robespierre looked, smiled, and, as if his vengeance were already
+satisfied, threw himself on his chair. “It is well! I feared it was a
+more powerful enemy. This man must be arrested at once.”
+
+“And he waits below. I brushed by him as I ascended the stairs.”
+
+“Does he so?--admit!--nay,--hold! hold! Guerin, withdraw into the
+inner chamber till I summon thee again. Dear Payan, see that this Nicot
+conceals no weapons.”
+
+Payan, who was as brave as Robespierre was pusillanimous, repressed the
+smile of disdain that quivered on his lips a moment, and left the room.
+
+Meanwhile Robespierre, with his head buried in his bosom, seemed
+plunged in deep thought. “Life is a melancholy thing, Couthon!” said he,
+suddenly.
+
+“Begging your pardon, I think death worse,” answered the philanthropist,
+gently.
+
+Robespierre made no rejoinder, but took from his portefeuille that
+singular letter, which was found afterwards amongst his papers, and
+is marked LXI. in the published collection. (“Papiers inedits,’ etc.,
+volume ii. page 156.)
+
+“Without doubt,” it began, “you are uneasy at not having earlier
+received news from me. Be not alarmed; you know that I ought only to
+reply by our ordinary courier; and as he has been interrupted, dans sa
+derniere course, that is the cause of my delay. When you receive this,
+employ all diligence to fly a theatre where you are about to appear
+and disappear for the last time. It were idle to recall to you all the
+reasons that expose you to peril. The last step that should place you
+sur le sopha de la presidence, but brings you to the scaffold; and the
+mob will spit on your face as it has spat on those whom you have
+judged. Since, then, you have accumulated here a sufficient treasure for
+existence, I await you with great impatience, to laugh with you at the
+part you have played in the troubles of a nation as credulous as it is
+avid of novelties. Take your part according to our arrangements,--all is
+prepared. I conclude,--our courier waits. I expect your reply.”
+
+Musingly and slowly the Dictator devoured the contents of this epistle.
+“No,” he said to himself,--“no; he who has tasted power can no longer
+enjoy repose. Yet, Danton, Danton! thou wert right; better to be a poor
+fisherman than to govern men.” (“Il vaudrait mieux,” said Danton, in his
+dungeon, “etre un pauvre pecheur que de gouverner les hommes.”)
+
+The door opened, and Payan reappeared and whispered Robespierre, “All is
+safe! See the man.”
+
+The Dictator, satisfied, summoned his attendant Jacobin to conduct Nicot
+to his presence. The painter entered with a fearless expression in his
+deformed features, and stood erect before Robespierre, who scanned him
+with a sidelong eye.
+
+It is remarkable that most of the principal actors of the Revolution
+were singularly hideous in appearance,--from the colossal ugliness of
+Mirabeau and Danton, or the villanous ferocity in the countenances
+of David and Simon, to the filthy squalor of Marat, the sinister and
+bilious meanness of the Dictator’s features. But Robespierre, who was
+said to resemble a cat, had also a cat’s cleanness; and his prim and
+dainty dress, his shaven smoothness, the womanly whiteness of his
+lean hands, made yet more remarkable the disorderly ruffianism that
+characterised the attire and mien of the painter-sans-culotte.
+
+“And so, citizen,” said Robespierre, mildly, “thou wouldst speak with
+me? I know thy merits and civism have been overlooked too long. Thou
+wouldst ask some suitable provision in the state? Scruple not--say on!”
+
+“Virtuous Robespierre, toi qui eclaires l’univers (Thou who enlightenest
+the world.), I come not to ask a favour, but to render service to the
+state. I have discovered a correspondence that lays open a conspiracy of
+which many of the actors are yet unsuspected.” And he placed the papers
+on the table. Robespierre seized, and ran his eye over them rapidly and
+eagerly.
+
+“Good!--good!” he muttered to himself: “this is all I wanted. Barrere,
+Legendre! I have them! Camille Desmoulins was but their dupe. I loved
+him once; I never loved them! Citizen Nicot, I thank thee. I observe
+these letters are addressed to an Englishman. What Frenchman but must
+distrust these English wolves in sheep’s clothing! France wants no
+longer citizens of the world; that farce ended with Anarcharsis Clootz.
+I beg pardon, Citizen Nicot; but Clootz and Hebert were THY friends.”
+
+“Nay,” said Nicot, apologetically, “we are all liable to be deceived. I
+ceased to honour them whom thou didst declare against; for I disown my
+own senses rather than thy justice.”
+
+“Yes, I pretend to justice; that IS the virtue I affect,” said
+Robespierre, meekly; and with his feline propensities he enjoyed, even
+in that critical hour of vast schemes, of imminent danger, of meditated
+revenge, the pleasure of playing with a solitary victim. (The most
+detestable anecdote of this peculiar hypocrisy in Robespierre is that
+in which he is recorded to have tenderly pressed the hand of his old
+school-friend, Camille Desmoulins, the day that he signed the warrant
+for his arrest.) “And my justice shall no longer be blind to thy
+services, good Nicot. Thou knowest this Glyndon?”
+
+“Yes, well,--intimately. He WAS my friend, but I would give up my
+brother if he were one of the ‘indulgents.’ I am not ashamed to say that
+I have received favours from this man.”
+
+“Aha!--and thou dost honestly hold the doctrine that where a man
+threatens my life all personal favours are to be forgotten?”
+
+“All!”
+
+“Good citizen!--kind Nicot!--oblige me by writing the address of this
+Glyndon.”
+
+Nicot stooped to the table; and suddenly when the pen was in his hand, a
+thought flashed across him, and he paused, embarrassed and confused.
+
+“Write on, KIND Nicot!”
+
+The painter slowly obeyed.
+
+“Who are the other familiars of Glyndon?”
+
+“It was on that point I was about to speak to thee, Representant,” said
+Nicot. “He visits daily a woman, a foreigner, who knows all his secrets;
+she affects to be poor, and to support her child by industry. But she is
+the wife of an Italian of immense wealth, and there is no doubt that
+she has moneys which are spent in corrupting the citizens. She should be
+seized and arrested.”
+
+“Write down her name also.”
+
+“But no time is to be lost; for I know that both have a design to escape
+from Paris this very night.”
+
+“Our government is prompt, good Nicot,--never fear. Humph!--humph!” and
+Robespierre took the paper on which Nicot had written, and stooping over
+it--for he was near-sighted--added, smilingly, “Dost thou always write
+the same hand, citizen? This seems almost like a disguised character.”
+
+“I should not like them to know who denounced them, Representant.”
+
+“Good! good! Thy virtue shall be rewarded, trust me. Salut et
+fraternite!”
+
+Robespierre half rose as he spoke, and Nicot withdrew.
+
+“Ho, there!--without!” cried the Dictator, ringing his bell; and as the
+ready Jacobin attended the summons, “Follow that man, Jean Nicot. The
+instant he has cleared the house seize him. At once to the Conciergerie
+with him. Stay!--nothing against the law; there is thy warrant. The
+public accuser shall have my instruction. Away!--quick!”
+
+The Jacobin vanished. All trace of illness, of infirmity, had gone from
+the valetudinarian; he stood erect on the floor, his face
+twitching convulsively, and his arms folded. “Ho! Guerin!” the spy
+reappeared--“take these addresses! Within an hour this Englishman and
+his woman must be in prison; their revelations will aid me against
+worthier foes. They shall die: they shall perish with the rest on the
+10th,--the third day from this. There!” and he wrote hastily,--“there,
+also, is thy warrant! Off!
+
+“And now, Couthon, Payan, we will dally no longer with Tallien and his
+crew. I have information that the Convention will NOT attend the Fete on
+the 10th. We must trust only to the sword of the law. I must compose
+my thoughts,--prepare my harangue. To-morrow, I will reappear at the
+Convention; to-morrow, bold St. Just joins us, fresh from our victorious
+armies; to-morrow, from the tribune, I will dart the thunderbolt on the
+masked enemies of France; to-morrow, I will demand, in the face of the
+country, the heads of the conspirators.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VIII.
+
+     Le glaive est contre toi tourne de toutes parties.
+     La Harpe, “Jeanne de Naples,” Act iv. sc. 4.
+
+     (The sword is raised against you on all sides.)
+
+In the mean time Glyndon, after an audience of some length with C--,
+in which the final preparations were arranged, sanguine of safety,
+and foreseeing no obstacle to escape, bent his way back to Fillide.
+Suddenly, in the midst of his cheerful thoughts, he fancied he heard a
+voice too well and too terribly recognised, hissing in his ear, “What!
+thou wouldst defy and escape me! thou wouldst go back to virtue and
+content. It is in vain,--it is too late. No, _I_ will not haunt thee;
+HUMAN footsteps, no less inexorable, dog thee now. Me thou shalt not see
+again till in the dungeon, at midnight, before thy doom! Behold--”
+
+And Glyndon, mechanically turning his head, saw, close behind him, the
+stealthy figure of a man whom he had observed before, but with little
+heed, pass and repass him, as he quitted the house of Citizen C--.
+Instantly and instinctively he knew that he was watched,--that he was
+pursued. The street he was in was obscure and deserted, for the day was
+oppressively sultry, and it was the hour when few were abroad, either
+on business or pleasure. Bold as he was, an icy chill shot through his
+heart, he knew too well the tremendous system that then reigned in Paris
+not to be aware of his danger. As the sight of the first plague-boil to
+the victim of the pestilence, was the first sight of the shadowy spy
+to that of the Revolution: the watch, the arrest, the trial, the
+guillotine,--these made the regular and rapid steps of the monster that
+the anarchists called Law! He breathed hard, he heard distinctly the
+loud beating of his heart. And so he paused, still and motionless,
+gazing upon the shadow that halted also behind him.
+
+Presently, the absence of all allies to the spy, the solitude of the
+streets, reanimated his courage; he made a step towards his pursuer, who
+retreated as he advanced. “Citizen, thou followest me,” he said. “Thy
+business?”
+
+“Surely,” answered the man, with a deprecating smile, “the streets are
+broad enough for both? Thou art not so bad a republican as to arrogate
+all Paris to thyself!”
+
+“Go on first, then. I make way for thee.”
+
+The man bowed, doffed his hat politely, and passed forward. The next
+moment Glyndon plunged into a winding lane, and fled fast through a
+labyrinth of streets, passages, and alleys. By degrees he composed
+himself, and, looking behind, imagined that he had baffled the pursuer;
+he then, by a circuitous route, bent his way once more to his home. As
+he emerged into one of the broader streets, a passenger, wrapped in
+a mantle, brushing so quickly by him that he did not observe his
+countenance, whispered, “Clarence Glyndon, you are dogged,--follow
+me!” and the stranger walked quickly before him. Clarence turned, and
+sickened once more to see at his heels, with the same servile smile
+on his face, the pursuer he fancied he had escaped. He forgot the
+injunction of the stranger to follow him, and perceiving a crowd
+gathered close at hand, round a caricature-shop, dived amidst them, and,
+gaining another street, altered the direction he had before taken, and,
+after a long and breathless course, gained without once more seeing the
+spy, a distant quartier of the city.
+
+Here, indeed, all seemed so serene and fair that his artist eye, even
+in that imminent hour, rested with pleasure on the scene. It was a
+comparatively broad space, formed by one of the noble quays. The Seine
+flowed majestically along, with boats and craft resting on its surface.
+The sun gilt a thousand spires and domes, and gleamed on the white
+palaces of a fallen chivalry. Here fatigued and panting, he paused an
+instant, and a cooler air from the river fanned his brow. “Awhile, at
+least, I am safe here,” he murmured; and as he spoke, some thirty paces
+behind him, he beheld the spy. He stood rooted to the spot; wearied and
+spent as he was, escape seemed no longer possible,--the river on one
+side (no bridge at hand), and the long row of mansions closing up the
+other. As he halted, he heard laughter and obscene songs from a house a
+little in his rear, between himself and the spy. It was a cafe fearfully
+known in that quarter. Hither often resorted the black troop of
+Henriot,--the minions and huissiers of Robespierre. The spy, then,
+had hunted the victim within the jaws of the hounds. The man slowly
+advanced, and, pausing before the open window of the cafe, put his head
+through the aperture, as to address and summon forth its armed inmates.
+
+At that very instant, and while the spy’s head was thus turned from him,
+standing in the half-open gateway of the house immediately before
+him, he perceived the stranger who had warned; the figure, scarcely
+distinguishable through the mantle that wrapped it, motioned to him
+to enter. He sprang noiselessly through the friendly opening: the door
+closed; breathlessly he followed the stranger up a flight of broad
+stairs and through a suite of empty rooms, until, having gained a small
+cabinet, his conductor doffed the large hat and the long mantle that had
+hitherto concealed his shape and features, and Glyndon beheld Zanoni!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.IX.
+
+     Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid
+     Of Stygian angels summoned up from hell;
+     Scorned and accursed be those who have essayed
+     Her gloomy Dives and Afrites to compel.
+     But by perception of the secret powers
+     Of mineral springs in Nature’s inmost cell,
+     Of herbs in curtain of her greenest bowers,
+     And of the moving stars o’er mountain tops and towers.
+     Wiffen’s “Translation of Tasso,” cant. xiv. xliii.
+
+“You are safe here, young Englishman!” said Zanoni, motioning Glyndon to
+a seat. “Fortunate for you that I come on your track at last!”
+
+“Far happier had it been if we had never met! Yet even in these last
+hours of my fate, I rejoice to look once more on the face of that
+ominous and mysterious being to whom I can ascribe all the sufferings
+I have known. Here, then, thou shalt not palter with or elude me. Here,
+before we part, thou shalt unravel to me the dark enigma, if not of thy
+life, of my own!”
+
+“Hast thou suffered? Poor neophyte!” said Zanoni, pityingly. “Yes; I see
+it on thy brow. But wherefore wouldst thou blame me? Did I not warn thee
+against the whispers of thy spirit; did I not warn thee to forbear? Did
+I not tell thee that the ordeal was one of awful hazard and tremendous
+fears,--nay, did I not offer to resign to thee the heart that was mighty
+enough, while mine, Glyndon, to content me? Was it not thine own daring
+and resolute choice to brave the initiation! Of thine own free will
+didst thou make Mejnour thy master, and his lore thy study!”
+
+“But whence came the irresistible desires of that wild and unholy
+knowledge? I knew them not till thine evil eye fell upon me, and I was
+drawn into the magic atmosphere of thy being!”
+
+“Thou errest!--the desires were in thee; and, whether in one direction
+or the other, would have forced their way! Man! thou askest me the
+enigma of thy fate and my own! Look round all being, is there not
+mystery everywhere? Can thine eye trace the ripening of the grain
+beneath the earth? In the moral and the physical world alike, lie dark
+portents, far more wondrous than the powers thou wouldst ascribe to me!”
+
+“Dost thou disown those powers; dost thou confess thyself an
+imposter?--or wilt thou dare to tell me that thou art indeed sold to the
+Evil one,--a magician whose familiar has haunted me night and day?”
+
+“It matters not what I am,” returned Zanoni; “it matters only whether I
+can aid thee to exorcise thy dismal phantom, and return once more to the
+wholesome air of this common life. Something, however, will I tell thee,
+not to vindicate myself, but the Heaven and the Nature that thy doubts
+malign.”
+
+Zanoni paused a moment, and resumed with a slight smile,--
+
+“In thy younger days thou hast doubtless read with delight the great
+Christian poet, whose muse, like the morning it celebrated, came to
+earth, ‘crowned with flowers culled in Paradise.’ [‘L’aurea testa Di
+rose colte in Paradiso infiora.’ Tasso, “Ger. Lib.” iv. l.)
+
+“No spirit was more imbued with the knightly superstitions of the time;
+and surely the Poet of Jerusalem hath sufficiently, to satisfy even the
+Inquisitor he consulted, execrated all the practitioners of the unlawful
+spells invoked,--
+
+‘Per isforzar Cocito o Flegetonte.’ (To constrain Cocytus or
+Phlegethon.)
+
+“But in his sorrows and his wrongs, in the prison of his madhouse,
+know you not that Tasso himself found his solace, his escape, in the
+recognition of a holy and spiritual Theurgia,--of a magic that could
+summon the Angel, or the Good Genius, not the Fiend? And do you not
+remember how he, deeply versed as he was for his age, in the mysteries
+of the nobler Platonism, which hints at the secrets of all the starry
+brotherhoods, from the Chaldean to the later Rosicrucian, discriminates
+in his lovely verse, between the black art of Ismeno and the glorious
+lore of the Enchanter who counsels and guides upon their errand the
+champions of the Holy Land? HIS, not the charms wrought by the aid of
+the Stygian Rebels (See this remarkable passage, which does indeed
+not unfaithfully represent the doctrine of the Pythagorean and the
+Platonist, in Tasso, cant. xiv. stanzas xli. to xlvii. (“Ger. Lib.”)
+They are beautifully translated by Wiffen.), but the perception of the
+secret powers of the fountain and the herb,--the Arcana of the unknown
+nature and the various motions of the stars. His, the holy haunts of
+Lebanon and Carmel,--beneath his feet he saw the clouds, the snows, the
+hues of Iris, the generations of the rains and dews. Did the Christian
+Hermit who converted that Enchanter (no fabulous being, but the type of
+all spirit that would aspire through Nature up to God) command him to
+lay aside these sublime studies, ‘Le solite arte e l’ uso mio’? No! but
+to cherish and direct them to worthy ends. And in this grand conception
+of the poet lies the secret of the true Theurgia, which startles your
+ignorance in a more learned day with puerile apprehensions, and the
+nightmares of a sick man’s dreams.”
+
+Again Zanoni paused, and again resumed:--
+
+“In ages far remote,--of a civilisation far different from that which
+now merges the individual in the state,--there existed men of ardent
+minds, and an intense desire of knowledge. In the mighty and solemn
+kingdoms in which they dwelt, there were no turbulent and earthly
+channels to work off the fever of their minds. Set in the antique mould
+of casts through which no intellect could pierce, no valour could force
+its way, the thirst for wisdom alone reigned in the hearts of those who
+received its study as a heritage from sire to son. Hence, even in your
+imperfect records of the progress of human knowledge, you find that, in
+the earliest ages, Philosophy descended not to the business and homes of
+men. It dwelt amidst the wonders of the loftier creation; it sought to
+analyse the formation of matter,--the essentials of the prevailing soul;
+to read the mysteries of the starry orbs; to dive into those depths
+of Nature in which Zoroaster is said by the schoolmen first to have
+discovered the arts which your ignorance classes under the name of
+magic. In such an age, then, arose some men, who, amidst the vanities
+and delusions of their class, imagined that they detected gleams of a
+brighter and steadier lore. They fancied an affinity existing among all
+the works of Nature, and that in the lowliest lay the secret attraction
+that might conduct them upward to the loftiest. (Agreeably, it would
+seem, to the notion of Iamblichus and Plotinus, that the universe is as
+an animal; so that there is sympathy and communication between one part
+and the other; in the smallest part may be the subtlest nerve. And hence
+the universal magnetism of Nature. But man contemplates the universe as
+an animalcule would an elephant. The animalcule, seeing scarcely the tip
+of the hoof, would be incapable of comprehending that the trunk belonged
+to the same creature,--that the effect produced upon one extremity would
+be felt in an instant by the other.) Centuries passed, and lives were
+wasted in these discoveries; but step after step was chronicled and
+marked, and became the guide to the few who alone had the hereditary
+privilege to track their path.
+
+“At last from this dimness upon some eyes the light broke; but think not,
+young visionary, that to those who nursed unholy thoughts, over whom
+the Origin of Evil held a sway, that dawning was vouchsafed. It could
+be given then, as now, only to the purest ecstasies of imagination and
+intellect, undistracted by the cares of a vulgar life, or the appetites
+of the common clay. Far from descending to the assistance of a fiend,
+theirs was but the august ambition to approach nearer to the Fount
+of Good; the more they emancipated themselves from this limbo of the
+planets, the more they were penetrated by the splendour and beneficence
+of God. And if they sought, and at last discovered, how to the eye of
+the Spirit all the subtler modifications of being and of matter might be
+made apparent; if they discovered how, for the wings of the Spirit, all
+space might be annihilated, and while the body stood heavy and solid
+here, as a deserted tomb, the freed IDEA might wander from star to
+star,--if such discoveries became in truth their own, the sublimest
+luxury of their knowledge was but this, to wonder, to venerate, and
+adore! For, as one not unlearned in these high matters has expressed it,
+‘There is a principle of the soul superior to all external nature,
+and through this principle we are capable of surpassing the order and
+systems of the world, and participating the immortal life and the energy
+of the Sublime Celestials. When the soul is elevated to natures above
+itself, it deserts the order to which it is awhile compelled, and by a
+religious magnetism is attracted to another and a loftier, with which it
+blends and mingles.’ (From Iamblichus, “On the Mysteries,” c. 7, sect.
+7.) Grant, then, that such beings found at last the secret to arrest
+death; to fascinate danger and the foe; to walk the revolutions of the
+earth unharmed,--think you that this life could teach them other desire
+than to yearn the more for the Immortal, and to fit their intellect the
+better for the higher being to which they might, when Time and Death
+exist no longer, be transferred? Away with your gloomy fantasies of
+sorcerer and demon!--the soul can aspire only to the light; and even the
+error of our lofty knowledge was but the forgetfulness of the weakness,
+the passions, and the bonds which the death we so vainly conquered only
+can purge away!”
+
+This address was so different from what Glyndon had anticipated, that he
+remained for some moments speechless, and at length faltered out,--
+
+“But why, then, to me--”
+
+“Why,” added Zanoni,--“why to thee have been only the penance and the
+terror,--the Threshold and the Phantom? Vain man! look to the commonest
+elements of the common learning. Can every tyro at his mere wish and
+will become the master; can the student, when he has bought his Euclid,
+become a Newton; can the youth whom the Muses haunt, say, ‘I will equal
+Homer;’ yea, can yon pale tyrant, with all the parchment laws of a
+hundred system-shapers, and the pikes of his dauntless multitude, carve,
+at his will, a constitution not more vicious than the one which the
+madness of a mob could overthrow? When, in that far time to which I have
+referred, the student aspired to the heights to which thou wouldst have
+sprung at a single bound, he was trained from his very cradle to the
+career he was to run. The internal and the outward nature were made
+clear to his eyes, year after year, as they opened on the day. He was
+not admitted to the practical initiation till not one earthly wish
+chained that sublimest faculty which you call the IMAGINATION, one
+carnal desire clouded the penetrative essence that you call the
+INTELLECT. And even then, and at the best, how few attained to the
+last mystery! Happier inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the holy
+glories for which Death is the heavenliest gate.”
+
+Zanoni paused, and a shade of thought and sorrow darkened his celestial
+beauty.
+
+“And are there, indeed, others, besides thee and Mejnour, who lay claim
+to thine attributes, and have attained to thy secrets?”
+
+“Others there have been before us, but we two now are alone on earth.”
+
+“Imposter, thou betrayest thyself! If they could conquer Death, why
+live they not yet?” (Glyndon appears to forget that Mejnour had before
+answered the very question which his doubts here a second time suggest.)
+
+“Child of a day!” answered Zanoni, mournfully, “have I not told thee the
+error of our knowledge was the forgetfulness of the desires and passions
+which the spirit never can wholly and permanently conquer while this
+matter cloaks it? Canst thou think that it is no sorrow, either to
+reject all human ties, all friendship, and all love, or to see, day
+after day, friendship and love wither from our life, as blossoms from
+the stem? Canst thou wonder how, with the power to live while the world
+shall last, ere even our ordinary date be finished we yet may prefer to
+die? Wonder rather that there are two who have clung so faithfully to
+earth! Me, I confess, that earth can enamour yet. Attaining to the last
+secret while youth was in its bloom, youth still colours all around me
+with its own luxuriant beauty; to me, yet, to breathe is to enjoy. The
+freshness has not faded from the face of Nature, and not an herb in
+which I cannot discover a new charm,--an undetected wonder.
+
+“As with my youth, so with Mejnour’s age: he will tell you that life to
+him is but a power to examine; and not till he has exhausted all
+the marvels which the Creator has sown on earth, would he desire new
+habitations for the renewed Spirit to explore. We are the types of the
+two essences of what is imperishable,--‘ART, that enjoys; and SCIENCE,
+that contemplates!’ And now, that thou mayest be contented that the
+secrets are not vouchsafed to thee, learn that so utterly must the idea
+detach itself from what makes up the occupation and excitement of men;
+so must it be void of whatever would covet, or love, or hate,--that for
+the ambitious man, for the lover, the hater, the power avails not. And
+I, at last, bound and blinded by the most common of household ties; I,
+darkened and helpless, adjure thee, the baffled and discontented,--I
+adjure thee to direct, to guide me; where are they? Oh, tell me,--speak!
+My wife,--my child? Silent!--oh, thou knowest now that I am no sorcerer,
+no enemy. I cannot give thee what thy faculties deny,--I cannot achieve
+what the passionless Mejnour failed to accomplish; but I can give thee
+the next-best boon, perhaps the fairest,--I can reconcile thee to the
+daily world, and place peace between thy conscience and thyself.”
+
+“Wilt thou promise?”
+
+“By their sweet lives, I promise!”
+
+Glyndon looked and believed. He whispered the address to the house
+whither his fatal step already had brought woe and doom.
+
+“Bless thee for this,” exclaimed Zanoni, passionately, “and thou shalt
+be blessed! What! couldst thou not perceive that at the entrance to all
+the grander worlds dwell the race that intimidate and awe? Who in thy
+daily world ever left the old regions of Custom and Prescription,
+and felt not the first seizure of the shapeless and nameless Fear?
+Everywhere around thee where men aspire and labour, though they see it
+not,--in the closet of the sage, in the council of the demagogue, in
+the camp of the warrior,--everywhere cowers and darkens the Unutterable
+Horror. But there, where thou hast ventured, alone is the Phantom
+VISIBLE; and never will it cease to haunt, till thou canst pass to the
+Infinite, as the seraph; or return to the Familiar, as a child! But
+answer me this: when, seeking to adhere to some calm resolve of virtue,
+the Phantom hath stalked suddenly to thy side; when its voice hath
+whispered thee despair; when its ghastly eyes would scare thee back to
+those scenes of earthly craft or riotous excitement from which, as
+it leaves thee to worse foes to the soul, its presence is ever
+absent,--hast thou never bravely resisted the spectre and thine own
+horror; hast thou never said, ‘Come what may, to Virtue I will cling?’”
+
+“Alas!” answered Glyndon, “only of late have I dared to do so.”
+
+“And thou hast felt then that the Phantom grew more dim and its power
+more faint?”
+
+“It is true.”
+
+“Rejoice, then!--thou hast overcome the true terror and mystery of the
+ordeal. Resolve is the first success. Rejoice, for the exorcism is sure!
+Thou art not of those who, denying a life to come, are the victims of
+the Inexorable Horror. Oh, when shall men learn, at last, that if the
+Great Religion inculcates so rigidly the necessity of FAITH, it is not
+alone that FAITH leads to the world to be; but that without faith there
+is no excellence in this,--faith in something wiser, happier, diviner,
+than we see on earth!--the artist calls it the Ideal,--the priest,
+Faith. The Ideal and Faith are one and the same. Return, O wanderer,
+return! Feel what beauty and holiness dwell in the Customary and the
+Old. Back to thy gateway glide, thou Horror! and calm, on the childlike
+heart, smile again, O azure Heaven, with thy night and thy morning star
+but as one, though under its double name of Memory and Hope!”
+
+As he thus spoke, Zanoni laid his hand gently on the burning temples of
+his excited and wondering listener; and presently a sort of trance came
+over him: he imagined that he was returned to the home of his infancy;
+that he was in the small chamber where, over his early slumbers,
+his mother had watched and prayed. There it was,--visible, palpable,
+solitary, unaltered. In the recess, the homely bed; on the walls, the
+shelves filled with holy books; the very easel on which he had first
+sought to call the ideal to the canvas, dust-covered, broken, in the
+corner. Below the window lay the old churchyard: he saw it green in the
+distance, the sun glancing through the yew-trees; he saw the tomb where
+father and mother lay united, and the spire pointing up to heaven, the
+symbol of the hopes of those who consigned the ashes to the dust; in
+his ear rang the bells, pealing, as on a Sabbath day. Far fled all
+the visions of anxiety and awe that had haunted and convulsed; youth,
+boyhood, childhood came back to him with innocent desires and hopes; he
+thought he fell upon his knees to pray. He woke,--he woke in
+delicious tears, he felt that the Phantom was fled forever. He looked
+round,--Zanoni was gone. On the table lay these lines, the ink yet
+wet:--
+
+“I will find ways and means for thy escape. At nightfall, as the clock
+strikes nine, a boat shall wait thee on the river before this house;
+the boatman will guide thee to a retreat where thou mayst rest in safety
+till the Reign of Terror, which nears its close, be past. Think no more
+of the sensual love that lured, and wellnigh lost thee. It betrayed, and
+would have destroyed. Thou wilt regain thy land in safety,--long years
+yet spared to thee to muse over the past, and to redeem it. For thy
+future, be thy dream thy guide, and thy tears thy baptism.”
+
+The Englishman obeyed the injunctions of the letter, and found their
+truth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.X.
+
+     Quid mirare meas tot in uno corpore formas?
+     Propert.
+
+     (Why wonder that I have so many forms in a single body?)
+
+Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+.....
+
+“She is in one of their prisons,--their inexorable prisons. It is
+Robespierre’s order,--I have tracked the cause to Glyndon. This, then,
+made that terrible connection between their fates which I could not
+unravel, but which (till severed as it now is) wrapped Glyndon himself
+in the same cloud that concealed her. In prison,--in prison!--it is the
+gate of the grave! Her trial, and the inevitable execution that follows
+such trial, is the third day from this. The tyrant has fixed all his
+schemes of slaughter for the 10th of Thermidor. While the deaths of the
+unoffending strike awe to the city, his satellites are to massacre his
+foes. There is but one hope left,--that the Power which now dooms the
+doomer, may render me an instrument to expedite his fall. But two
+days left,--two days! In all my wealth of time I see but two days; all
+beyond,--darkness, solitude. I may save her yet. The tyrant shall fall
+the day before that which he has set apart for slaughter! For the first
+time I mix among the broils and stratagems of men, and my mind leaps up
+from my despair, armed and eager for the contest.”
+
+....
+
+A crowd had gathered round the Rue St. Honore; a young man was just
+arrested by the order of Robespierre. He was known to be in the service
+of Tallien, that hostile leader in the Convention, whom the tyrant had
+hitherto trembled to attack. This incident had therefore produced a
+greater excitement than a circumstance so customary as an arrest in the
+Reign of Terror might be supposed to create. Amongst the crowd were many
+friends of Tallien, many foes to the tyrant, many weary of beholding
+the tiger dragging victim after victim to its den. Hoarse, foreboding
+murmurs were heard; fierce eyes glared upon the officers as they seized
+their prisoner; and though they did not yet dare openly to resist, those
+in the rear pressed on those behind, and encumbered the path of the
+captive and his captors. The young man struggled hard for escape, and,
+by a violent effort, at last wrenched himself from the grasp. The
+crowd made way, and closed round to protect him, as he dived and darted
+through their ranks; but suddenly the trampling of horses was heard at
+hand,--the savage Henriot and his troop were bearing down upon the mob.
+The crowd gave way in alarm, and the prisoner was again seized by one
+of the partisans of the Dictator. At that moment a voice whispered the
+prisoner, “Thou hast a letter which, if found on thee, ruins thy last
+hope. Give it to me! I will bear it to Tallien.” The prisoner turned in
+amaze, read something that encouraged him in the eyes of the stranger
+who thus accosted him. The troop were now on the spot; the Jacobin who
+had seized the prisoner released hold of him for a moment to escape
+the hoofs of the horses: in that moment the opportunity was found,--the
+stranger had disappeared.
+
+....
+
+At the house of Tallien the principal foes of the tyrant were assembled.
+Common danger made common fellowship. All factions laid aside their
+feuds for the hour to unite against the formidable man who was marching
+over all factions to his gory throne. There was bold Lecointre, the
+declared enemy; there, creeping Barrere, who would reconcile all
+extremes, the hero of the cowards; Barras, calm and collected; Collet
+d’Herbois, breathing wrath and vengeance, and seeing not that the crimes
+of Robespierre alone sheltered his own.
+
+The council was agitated and irresolute. The awe which the uniform
+success and the prodigious energy of Robespierre excited still held the
+greater part under its control. Tallien, whom the tyrant most feared,
+and who alone could give head and substance and direction to so many
+contradictory passions, was too sullied by the memory of his own
+cruelties not to feel embarrassed by his position as the champion
+of mercy. “It is true,” he said, after an animating harangue from
+Lecointre, “that the Usurper menaces us all. But he is still so beloved
+by his mobs,--still so supported by his Jacobins: better delay open
+hostilities till the hour is more ripe. To attempt and not succeed is
+to give us, bound hand and foot, to the guillotine. Every day his power
+must decline. Procrastination is our best ally--” While yet speaking,
+and while yet producing the effect of water on the fire, it was
+announced that a stranger demanded to see him instantly on business that
+brooked no delay.
+
+“I am not at leisure,” said the orator, impatiently. The servant placed
+a note on the table. Tallien opened it, and found these words in pencil,
+“From the prison of Teresa de Fontenai.” He turned pale, started up,
+and hastened to the anteroom, where he beheld a face entirely strange to
+him.
+
+“Hope of France!” said the visitor to him, and the very sound of his
+voice went straight to the heart,--“your servant is arrested in the
+streets. I have saved your life, and that of your wife who will be. I
+bring to you this letter from Teresa de Fontenai.”
+
+Tallien, with a trembling hand, opened the letter, and read,--
+
+“Am I forever to implore you in vain? Again and again I say, ‘Lose not
+an hour if you value my life and your own.’ My trial and death are fixed
+the third day from this,--the 10th Thermidor. Strike while it is yet
+time,--strike the monster!--you have two days yet. If you fail,--if you
+procrastinate,--see me for the last time as I pass your windows to the
+guillotine!”
+
+“Her trial will give proof against you,” said the stranger. “Her death
+is the herald of your own. Fear not the populace,--the populace would
+have rescued your servant. Fear not Robespierre,--he gives himself to
+your hands. To-morrow he comes to the Convention,--to-morrow you must
+cast the last throw for his head or your own.”
+
+“To-morrow he comes to the Convention! And who are you that know so well
+what is concealed from me?”
+
+“A man like you, who would save the woman he loves.”
+
+Before Tallien could recover his surprise, the visitor was gone.
+
+Back went the Avenger to his conclave an altered man. “I have heard
+tidings,--no matter what,” he cried,--“that have changed my purpose.
+On the 10th we are destined to the guillotine. I revoke my counsel for
+delay. Robespierre comes to the Convention to-morrow; THERE we must
+confront and crush him. From the Mountain shall frown against him
+the grim shade of Danton,--from the Plain shall rise, in their bloody
+cerements, the spectres of Vergniaud and Condorcet. Frappons!”
+
+“Frappons!” cried even Barrere, startled into energy by the new daring
+of his colleague,--“frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne reviennent
+pas.”
+
+It was observable (and the fact may be found in one of the memoirs
+of the time) that, during that day and night (the 7th Thermidor), a
+stranger to all the previous events of that stormy time was seen in
+various parts of the city,--in the cafes, the clubs, the haunts of the
+various factions; that, to the astonishment and dismay of his hearers,
+he talked aloud of the crimes of Robespierre, and predicted his coming
+fall; and, as he spoke, he stirred up the hearts of men, he loosed the
+bonds of their fear,--he inflamed them with unwonted rage and daring.
+But what surprised them most was, that no voice replied, no hand was
+lifted against him, no minion, even of the tyrant, cried, “Arrest the
+traitor.” In that impunity men read, as in a book, that the populace had
+deserted the man of blood.
+
+Once only a fierce, brawny Jacobin sprang up from the table at which he
+sat, drinking deep, and, approaching the stranger, said, “I seize thee,
+in the name of the Republic.”
+
+“Citizen Aristides,” answered the stranger, in a whisper, “go to the
+lodgings of Robespierre,--he is from home; and in the left pocket of the
+vest which he cast off not an hour since thou wilt find a paper; when
+thou hast read that, return. I will await thee; and if thou wouldst then
+seize me, I will go without a struggle. Look round on those lowering
+brows; touch me NOW, and thou wilt be torn to pieces.”
+
+The Jacobin felt as if compelled to obey against his will. He went
+forth muttering; he returned,--the stranger was still there. “Mille
+tonnerres,” he said to him, “I thank thee; the poltroon had my name in
+his list for the guillotine.”
+
+With that the Jacobin Aristides sprang upon the table and shouted,
+“Death to the Tyrant!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XI.
+
+     Le lendemain, 8 Thermidor, Robespierre se decida a prononcer son
+     fameux discours.
+     --Thiers, “Hist. de la Revolution.”
+
+     (The next day, 8th Thermidor, Robespierre resolved to deliver his
+     celebrated discourse.)
+
+The morning rose,--the 8th of Thermidor (July 26). Robespierre has gone
+to the Convention. He has gone with his laboured speech; he has gone
+with his phrases of philanthropy and virtue; he has gone to single out
+his prey. All his agents are prepared for his reception; the fierce St.
+Just has arrived from the armies to second his courage and inflame his
+wrath. His ominous apparition prepares the audience for the crisis.
+“Citizens!” screeched the shrill voice of Robespierre “others have
+placed before you flattering pictures; I come to announce to you useful
+truths.
+
+....
+
+“And they attribute to me,--to me alone!--whatever of harsh or evil
+is committed: it is Robespierre who wishes it; it is Robespierre who
+ordains it. Is there a new tax?--it is Robespierre who ruins you. They
+call me tyrant!--and why? Because I have acquired some influence; but
+how?--in speaking truth; and who pretends that truth is to be without
+force in the mouths of the Representatives of the French people?
+Doubtless, truth has its power, its rage, its despotism, its accents,
+touching, terrible, which resound in the pure heart as in the guilty
+conscience; and which Falsehood can no more imitate than Salmoneus could
+forge the thunderbolts of Heaven. What am I whom they accuse? A slave
+of liberty,--a living martyr of the Republic; the victim as the enemy of
+crime! All ruffianism affronts me, and actions legitimate in others are
+crimes in me. It is enough to know me to be calumniated. It is in my
+very zeal that they discover my guilt. Take from me my conscience, and I
+should be the most miserable of men!”
+
+He paused; and Couthon wiped his eyes, and St. Just murmured applause
+as with stern looks he gazed on the rebellious Mountain; and there was a
+dead, mournful, and chilling silence through the audience. The touching
+sentiment woke no echo.
+
+The orator cast his eyes around. Ho! he will soon arouse that apathy.
+He proceeds, he praises, he pities himself no more. He denounces,--he
+accuses. Overflooded with his venom, he vomits it forth on all. At home,
+abroad, finances, war,--on all! Shriller and sharper rose his voice,--
+
+“A conspiracy exists against the public liberty. It owes its strength
+to a criminal coalition in the very bosom of the Convention; it has
+accomplices in the bosom of the Committee of Public Safety...What is the
+remedy to this evil? To punish the traitors; to purify this committee;
+to crush all factions by the weight of the National Authority; to
+raise upon their ruins the power of Liberty and Justice. Such are the
+principles of that Reform. Must I be ambitious to profess them?--then
+the principles are proscribed, and Tyranny reigns amongst us! For what
+can you object to a man who is in the right, and has at least this
+knowledge,--he knows how to die for his native land! I am made to combat
+crime, and not to govern it. The time, alas! is not yet arrived when men
+of worth can serve with impunity their country. So long as the knaves
+rule, the defenders of liberty will be only the proscribed.”
+
+For two hours, through that cold and gloomy audience, shrilled the
+Death-speech. In silence it began, in silence closed. The enemies of the
+orator were afraid to express resentment; they knew not yet the exact
+balance of power. His partisans were afraid to approve; they knew not
+whom of their own friends and relations the accusations were designed to
+single forth. “Take care!” whispered each to each; “it is thou whom
+he threatens.” But silent though the audience, it was, at the first,
+wellnigh subdued. There was still about this terrible man the spell
+of an overmastering will. Always--though not what is called a great
+orator--resolute, and sovereign in the use of words; words seemed as
+things when uttered by one who with a nod moved the troops of Henriot,
+and influenced the judgment of Rene Dumas, grim President of the
+Tribunal. Lecointre of Versailles rose, and there was an anxious
+movement of attention; for Lecointre was one of the fiercest foes of the
+tyrant. What was the dismay of the Tallien faction; what the complacent
+smile of Couthon,--when Lecointre demanded only that the oration should
+be printed! All seemed paralyzed. At length Bourdon de l’Oise, whose
+name was doubly marked in the black list of the Dictator, stalked to the
+tribune, and moved the bold counter-resolution, that the speech should
+be referred to the two committees whom that very speech accused. Still
+no applause from the conspirators; they sat torpid as frozen men. The
+shrinking Barrere, ever on the prudent side, looked round before he
+rose. He rises, and sides with Lecointre! Then Couthon seized the
+occasion, and from his seat (a privilege permitted only to the paralytic
+philanthropist) (M. Thiers in his History, volume iv. page 79, makes
+a curious blunder: he says, “Couthon s’elance a la tribune.” (Couthon
+darted towards the tribune.) Poor Couthon! whose half body was dead,
+and who was always wheeled in his chair into the Convention, and spoke
+sitting.), and with his melodious voice sought to convert the crisis
+into a triumph.
+
+He demanded, not only that the harangue should be printed, but sent
+to all the communes and all the armies. It was necessary to soothe
+a wronged and ulcerated heart. Deputies, the most faithful, had been
+accused of shedding blood. “Ah! if HE had contributed to the death of
+one innocent man, he should immolate himself with grief.” Beautiful
+tenderness!--and while he spoke, he fondled the spaniel in his bosom.
+Bravo, Couthon! Robespierre triumphs! The reign of Terror shall endure!
+The old submission settles dovelike back in the assembly! They vote
+the printing of the Death-speech, and its transmission to all the
+municipalities. From the benches of the Mountain, Tallien, alarmed,
+dismayed, impatient, and indignant, cast his gaze where sat the
+strangers admitted to hear the debates; and suddenly he met the eyes of
+the Unknown who had brought to him the letter from Teresa de Fontenai
+the preceding day. The eyes fascinated him as he gazed. In aftertimes he
+often said that their regard, fixed, earnest, half-reproachful, and
+yet cheering and triumphant, filled him with new life and courage. They
+spoke to his heart as the trumpet speaks to the war-horse. He moved from
+his seat; he whispered with his allies: the spirit he had drawn in was
+contagious; the men whom Robespierre especially had denounced, and who
+saw the sword over their heads, woke from their torpid trance. Vadier,
+Cambon, Billaud-Varennes, Panis, Amar, rose at once,--all at once
+demanded speech. Vadier is first heard, the rest succeed. It burst
+forth, the Mountain, with its fires and consuming lava; flood upon flood
+they rush, a legion of Ciceros upon the startled Catiline! Robespierre
+falters, hesitates,--would qualify, retract. They gather new courage
+from his new fears; they interrupt him; they drown his voice; they
+demand the reversal of the motion. Amar moves again that the speech
+be referred to the Committees, to the Committees,--to his enemies!
+Confusion and noise and clamour! Robespierre wraps himself in silent
+and superb disdain. Pale, defeated, but not yet destroyed, he
+stands,--a storm in the midst of storm!
+
+The motion is carried. All men foresee in that defeat the Dictator’s
+downfall. A solitary cry rose from the galleries; it was caught up;
+it circled through the hall, the audience: “A bas le tyrant! Vive la
+republique!” (Down with the tyrant! Hurrah for the republic!)
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XII.
+
+     Aupres d’un corps aussi avili que la Convention, il restait des
+     chances pour que Robespierre sortit vainqueur de cette lutte.
+     Lacretelle, volume xii.
+
+     (Amongst a body so debased as the Convention, there still
+     remained some chances that Robespierre would come off victor in
+     the struggle.)
+
+As Robespierre left the hall, there was a dead and ominous silence in
+the crowd without. The herd, in every country, side with success;
+and the rats run from the falling tower. But Robespierre, who wanted
+courage, never wanted pride, and the last often supplied the place
+of the first; thoughtfully, and with an impenetrable brow, he passed
+through the throng, leaning on St. Just, Payan and his brother following
+him.
+
+As they got into the open space, Robespierre abruptly broke the silence.
+
+“How many heads were to fall upon the tenth?”
+
+“Eighty,” replied Payan.
+
+“Ah, we must not tarry so long; a day may lose an empire: terrorism must
+serve us yet!”
+
+He was silent a few moments, and his eyes roved suspiciously through the
+street.
+
+“St. Just,” he said abruptly, “they have not found this Englishman
+whose revelations, or whose trial, would have crushed the Amars and the
+Talliens. No, no! my Jacobins themselves are growing dull and blind. But
+they have seized a woman,--only a woman!”
+
+“A woman’s hand stabbed Marat,” said St. Just. Robespierre stopped
+short, and breathed hard.
+
+“St. Just,” said he, “when this peril is past, we will found the Reign
+of Peace. There shall be homes and gardens set apart for the old. David
+is already designing the porticos. Virtuous men shall be appointed to
+instruct the young. All vice and disorder shall be NOT exterminated--no,
+no! only banished! We must not die yet. Posterity cannot judge us till
+our work is done. We have recalled L’Etre Supreme; we must now remodel
+this corrupted world. All shall be love and brotherhood; and--ho! Simon!
+Simon!--hold! Your pencil, St. Just!” And Robespierre wrote hastily.
+“This to Citizen President Dumas. Go with it quick, Simon. These eighty
+heads must fall TO-MORROW,--TO-MORROW, Simon. Dumas will advance their
+trial a day. I will write to Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser.
+We meet at the Jacobins to-night, Simon; there we will denounce the
+Convention itself; there we will rally round us the last friends of
+liberty and France.”
+
+A shout was heard in the distance behind, “Vive la republique!”
+
+The tyrant’s eye shot a vindictive gleam. “The republic!--faugh! We did
+not destroy the throne of a thousand years for that canaille!”
+
+THE TRIAL, THE EXECUTION, OF THE VICTIMS IS ADVANCED A DAY! By the
+aid of the mysterious intelligence that had guided and animated him
+hitherto, Zanoni learned that his arts had been in vain. He knew that
+Viola was safe, if she could but survive an hour the life of the
+tyrant. He knew that Robespierre’s hours were numbered; that the 10th of
+Thermidor, on which he had originally designed the execution of his
+last victims, would see himself at the scaffold. Zanoni had toiled, had
+schemed for the fall of the Butcher and his reign. To what end? A single
+word from the tyrant had baffled the result of all. The execution
+of Viola is advanced a day. Vain seer, who wouldst make thyself the
+instrument of the Eternal, the very dangers that now beset the tyrant
+but expedite the doom of his victims! To-morrow, eighty heads, and
+hers whose pillow has been thy heart! To-morrow! and Maximilien is safe
+to-night!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XIII.
+
+     Erde mag zuruck in Erde stauben;
+     Fliegt der Geist doch aus dem morschen Haus.
+     Seine Asche mag der Sturmwind treiben,
+     Sein Leben dauert ewig aus!
+     Elegie.
+
+     (Earth may crumble back into earth; the Spirit will still escape
+     from its frail tenement.  The wind of the storm may scatter his
+     ashes; his being endures forever.)
+
+To-morrow!--and it is already twilight. One after one, the gentle stars
+come smiling through the heaven. The Seine, in its slow waters, yet
+trembles with the last kiss of the rosy day; and still in the blue sky
+gleams the spire of Notre Dame; and still in the blue sky looms the
+guillotine by the Barriere du Trone. Turn to that time-worn building,
+once the church and the convent of the Freres-Precheurs, known by the
+then holy name of Jacobins; there the new Jacobins hold their club.
+There, in that oblong hall, once the library of the peaceful monks,
+assemble the idolaters of St. Robespierre. Two immense tribunes,
+raised at either end, contain the lees and dregs of the atrocious
+populace,--the majority of that audience consisting of the furies of
+the guillotine (furies de guillotine). In the midst of the hall are
+the bureau and chair of the president,--the chair long preserved by the
+piety of the monks as the relic of St. Thomas Aquinas! Above this seat
+scowls the harsh bust of Brutus. An iron lamp and two branches scatter
+over the vast room a murky, fuliginous ray, beneath the light of which
+the fierce faces of that Pandemonium seem more grim and haggard. There,
+from the orator’s tribune, shrieks the shrill wrath of Robespierre!
+
+Meanwhile all is chaos, disorder, half daring and half cowardice, in the
+Committee of his foes. Rumours fly from street to street, from haunt to
+haunt, from house to house. The swallows flit low, and the cattle group
+together before the storm. And above this roar of the lives and things
+of the little hour, alone in his chamber stood he on whose starry
+youth--symbol of the imperishable bloom of the calm Ideal amidst the
+mouldering Actual--the clouds of ages had rolled in vain.
+
+All those exertions which ordinary wit and courage could suggest had
+been tried in vain. All such exertions WERE in vain, where, in that
+Saturnalia of death, a life was the object. Nothing but the fall of
+Robespierre could have saved his victims; now, too late, that fall would
+only serve to avenge.
+
+Once more, in that last agony of excitement and despair, the seer had
+plunged into solitude, to invoke again the aid or counsel of those
+mysterious intermediates between earth and heaven who had renounced the
+intercourse of the spirit when subjected to the common bondage of the
+mortal. In the intense desire and anguish of his heart, perhaps, lay a
+power not yet called forth; for who has not felt that the sharpness
+of extreme grief cuts and grinds away many of those strongest bonds
+of infirmity and doubt which bind down the souls of men to the cabined
+darkness of the hour; and that from the cloud and thunderstorm often
+swoops the Olympian eagle that can ravish us aloft!
+
+And the invocation was heard,--the bondage of sense was rent away from
+the visual mind. He looked, and saw,--no, not the being he had called,
+with its limbs of light and unutterably tranquil smile--not his
+familiar, Adon-Ai, the Son of Glory and the Star, but the Evil Omen, the
+dark Chimera, the implacable Foe, with exultation and malice burning in
+its hell-lit eyes. The Spectre, no longer cowering and retreating into
+shadow, rose before him, gigantic and erect; the face, whose veil no
+mortal hand had ever raised, was still concealed, but the form was more
+distinct, corporeal, and cast from it, as an atmosphere, horror and rage
+and awe. As an iceberg, the breath of that presence froze the air; as a
+cloud, it filled the chamber and blackened the stars from heaven.
+
+“Lo!” said its voice, “I am here once more. Thou hast robbed me of a
+meaner prey. Now exorcise THYSELF from my power! Thy life has left thee,
+to live in the heart of a daughter of the charnel and the worm. In that
+life I come to thee with my inexorable tread. Thou art returned to the
+Threshold,--thou, whose steps have trodden the verges of the Infinite!
+And as the goblin of its fantasy seizes on a child in the dark,--mighty
+one, who wouldst conquer Death,--I seize on thee!”
+
+“Back to thy thraldom, slave! If thou art come to the voice that called
+thee not, it is again not to command, but to obey! Thou, from whose
+whisper I gained the boons of the lives lovelier and dearer than my own;
+thou--I command thee, not by spell and charm, but by the force of a soul
+mightier than the malice of thy being,--thou serve me yet, and speak
+again the secret that can rescue the lives thou hast, by permission of
+the Universal Master, permitted me to retain awhile in the temple of the
+clay!”
+
+Brighter and more devouringly burned the glare from those lurid eyes;
+more visible and colossal yet rose the dilating shape; a yet fiercer and
+more disdainful hate spoke in the voice that answered, “Didst thou think
+that my boon would be other than thy curse? Happy for thee hadst thou
+mourned over the deaths which come by the gentle hand of Nature,--hadst
+thou never known how the name of mother consecrates the face of Beauty,
+and never, bending over thy first-born, felt the imperishable sweetness
+of a father’s love! They are saved, for what?--the mother, for the death
+of violence and shame and blood, for the doomsman’s hand to put aside
+that shining hair which has entangled thy bridegroom kisses; the child,
+first and last of thine offspring, in whom thou didst hope to found a
+race that should hear with thee the music of celestial harps, and
+float, by the side of thy familiar, Adon-Ai, through the azure rivers of
+joy,--the child, to live on a few days as a fungus in a burial-vault, a
+thing of the loathsome dungeon, dying of cruelty and neglect and famine.
+Ha! ha! thou who wouldst baffle Death, learn how the deathless die if
+they dare to love the mortal. Now, Chaldean, behold my boons! Now I
+seize and wrap thee with the pestilence of my presence; now, evermore,
+till thy long race is run, mine eyes shall glow into thy brain, and mine
+arms shall clasp thee, when thou wouldst take the wings of the Morning
+and flee from the embrace of Night!”
+
+“I tell thee, no! And again I compel thee, speak and answer to the lord
+who can command his slave. I know, though my lore fails me, and the
+reeds on which I leaned pierce my side,--I know yet that it is written
+that the life of which I question can be saved from the headsman. Thou
+wrappest her future in the darkness of thy shadow, but thou canst not
+shape it. Thou mayest foreshow the antidote; thou canst not effect the
+bane. From thee I wring the secret, though it torture thee to name it.
+I approach thee,--I look dauntless into thine eyes. The soul that loves
+can dare all things. Shadow, I defy thee, and compel!”
+
+The spectre waned and recoiled. Like a vapour that lessens as the sun
+pierces and pervades it, the form shrank cowering and dwarfed in the
+dimmer distance, and through the casement again rushed the stars.
+
+“Yes,” said the Voice, with a faint and hollow accent, “thou CANST save
+her from the headsman; for it is written, that sacrifice can save. Ha!
+ha!” And the shape again suddenly dilated into the gloom of its giant
+stature, and its ghastly laugh exulted, as if the Foe, a moment baffled,
+had regained its might. “Ha! ha!--thou canst save her life, if thou wilt
+sacrifice thine own! Is it for this thou hast lived on through crumbling
+empires and countless generations of thy race? At last shall Death
+reclaim thee? Wouldst thou save her?--DIE FOR HER! Fall, O stately
+column, over which stars yet unformed may gleam,--fall, that the herb at
+thy base may drink a few hours longer the sunlight and the dews! Silent!
+Art thou ready for the sacrifice? See, the moon moves up through
+heaven. Beautiful and wise one, wilt thou bid her smile to-morrow on thy
+headless clay?”
+
+“Back! for my soul, in answering thee from depths where thou canst not
+hear it, has regained its glory; and I hear the wings of Adon-Ai gliding
+musical through the air.”
+
+He spoke; and, with a low shriek of baffled rage and hate, the Thing was
+gone, and through the room rushed, luminous and sudden, the Presence of
+silvery light.
+
+As the heavenly visitor stood in the atmosphere of his own lustre,
+and looked upon the face of the Theurgist with an aspect of ineffable
+tenderness and love, all space seemed lighted from his smile. Along the
+blue air without, from that chamber in which his wings had halted, to
+the farthest star in the azure distance, it seemed as if the track of
+his flight were visible, by a lengthened splendour in the air, like the
+column of moonlight on the sea. Like the flower that diffuses perfume as
+the very breath of its life, so the emanation of that presence was joy.
+Over the world, as a million times swifter than light, than electricity,
+the Son of Glory had sped his way to the side of love, his wings had
+scattered delight as the morning scatters dew. For that brief moment,
+Poverty had ceased to mourn, Disease fled from its prey, and Hope
+breathed a dream of Heaven into the darkness of Despair.
+
+“Thou art right,” said the melodious Voice. “Thy courage has restored
+thy power. Once more, in the haunts of earth, thy soul charms me to thy
+side. Wiser now, in the moment when thou comprehendest Death, than when
+thy unfettered spirit learned the solemn mystery of Life; the human
+affections that thralled and humbled thee awhile bring to thee, in these
+last hours of thy mortality, the sublimest heritage of thy race,--the
+eternity that commences from the grave.”
+
+“O Adon-Ai,” said the Chaldean, as, circumfused in the splendour of the
+visitant, a glory more radiant than human beauty settled round his form,
+and seemed already to belong to the eternity of which the Bright One
+spoke, “as men, before they die, see and comprehend the enigmas hidden
+from them before (The greatest poet, and one of the noblest thinkers, of
+the last age, said, on his deathbed, “Many things obscure to me before,
+now clear up, and become visible.”--See the ‘Life of Schiller.’), “so in
+this hour, when the sacrifice of self to another brings the course of
+ages to its goal, I see the littleness of Life, compared to the majesty
+of Death; but oh, Divine Consoler, even here, even in thy presence,
+the affections that inspire me, sadden. To leave behind me in this
+bad world, unaided, unprotected, those for whom I die! the wife! the
+child!--oh, speak comfort to me in this!”
+
+“And what,” said the visitor, with a slight accent of reproof in the
+tone of celestial pity,--“what, with all thy wisdom and thy starry
+secrets, with all thy empire of the past, and thy visions of the future;
+what art thou to the All-Directing and Omniscient? Canst thou yet
+imagine that thy presence on earth can give to the hearts thou lovest
+the shelter which the humblest take from the wings of the Presence that
+lives in heaven? Fear not thou for their future. Whether thou live or
+die, their future is the care of the Most High! In the dungeon and on
+the scaffold looks everlasting the Eye of HIM, tenderer than thou to
+love, wiser than thou to guide, mightier than thou to save!”
+
+Zanoni bowed his head; and when he looked up again, the last shadow had
+left his brow. The visitor was gone; but still the glory of his presence
+seemed to shine upon the spot, still the solitary air seemed to murmur
+with tremulous delight. And thus ever shall it be with those who have
+once, detaching themselves utterly from life, received the visit of the
+Angel FAITH. Solitude and space retain the splendour, and it settles
+like a halo round their graves.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XIV.
+
+     Dann zur Blumenflor der Sterne
+     Aufgeschauet liebewarm,
+     Fass’ ihn freundlich Arm in Arm
+     Trag’ ihn in die blaue Ferne.
+     --Uhland, “An den Tod.”
+
+     Then towards the Garden of the Star
+     Lift up thine aspect warm with love,
+     And, friendlike link’d through space afar,
+     Mount with him, arm in arm, above.
+     --Uhland, “Poem to Death.”
+
+He stood upon the lofty balcony that overlooked the quiet city. Though
+afar, the fiercest passions of men were at work on the web of strife and
+doom, all that gave itself to his view was calm and still in the rays
+of the summer moon, for his soul was wrapped from man and man’s narrow
+sphere, and only the serener glories of creation were present to the
+vision of the seer. There he stood, alone and thoughtful, to take the
+last farewell of the wondrous life that he had known.
+
+Coursing through the fields of space, he beheld the gossamer shapes,
+whose choral joys his spirit had so often shared. There, group upon
+group, they circled in the starry silence multiform in the unimaginable
+beauty of a being fed by ambrosial dews and serenest light. In his
+trance, all the universe stretched visible beyond; in the green valleys
+afar, he saw the dances of the fairies; in the bowels of the mountains,
+he beheld the race that breathe the lurid air of the volcanoes, and hide
+from the light of heaven; on every leaf in the numberless forests, in
+every drop of the unmeasured seas, he surveyed its separate and swarming
+world; far up, in the farthest blue, he saw orb upon orb ripening into
+shape, and planets starting from the central fire, to run their day
+of ten thousand years. For everywhere in creation is the breath of the
+Creator, and in every spot where the breath breathes is life! And alone,
+in the distance, the lonely man beheld his Magian brother. There,
+at work with his numbers and his Cabala, amidst the wrecks of Rome,
+passionless and calm, sat in his cell the mystic Mejnour,--living on,
+living ever while the world lasts, indifferent whether his knowledge
+produces weal or woe; a mechanical agent of a more tender and a wiser
+will, that guides every spring to its inscrutable designs. Living
+on,--living ever,--as science that cares alone for knowledge, and halts
+not to consider how knowledge advances happiness; how Human Improvement,
+rushing through civilisation, crushes in its march all who cannot
+grapple to its wheels (“You colonise the lands of the savage with the
+Anglo-Saxon,--you civilise that portion of THE EARTH; but is the SAVAGE
+civilised? He is exterminated! You accumulate machinery,--you increase
+the total of wealth; but what becomes of the labour you displace? One
+generation is sacrificed to the next. You diffuse knowledge,--and
+the world seems to grow brighter; but Discontent at Poverty replaces
+Ignorance, happy with its crust. Every improvement, every advancement in
+civilisation, injures some, to benefit others, and either cherishes
+the want of to-day, or prepares the revolution of to-morrow.”--Stephen
+Montague.); ever, with its Cabala and its number, lives on to change, in
+its bloodless movements, the face of the habitable world!
+
+And, “Oh, farewell to life!” murmured the glorious dreamer. “Sweet, O
+life! hast thou been to me. How fathomless thy joys,--how rapturously
+has my soul bounded forth upon the upward paths! To him who forever
+renews his youth in the clear fount of Nature, how exquisite is the mere
+happiness TO BE! Farewell, ye lamps of heaven, and ye million tribes,
+the Populace of Air. Not a mote in the beam, not an herb on the
+mountain, not a pebble on the shore, not a seed far-blown into the
+wilderness, but contributed to the lore that sought in all the true
+principle of life, the Beautiful, the Joyous, the Immortal. To others,
+a land, a city, a hearth, has been a home; MY home has been wherever the
+intellect could pierce, or the spirit could breathe the air.”
+
+He paused, and through the immeasurable space his eyes and his
+heart, penetrating the dismal dungeon, rested on his child. He saw it
+slumbering in the arms of the pale mother, and HIS soul spoke to the
+sleeping soul. “Forgive me, if my desire was sin; I dreamed to have
+reared and nurtured thee to the divinest destinies my visions could
+foresee. Betimes, as the mortal part was strengthened against disease,
+to have purified the spiritual from every sin; to have led thee, heaven
+upon heaven, through the holy ecstasies which make up the existence
+of the orders that dwell on high; to have formed, from thy sublime
+affections, the pure and ever-living communication between thy mother
+and myself. The dream was but a dream--it is no more! In sight myself of
+the grave, I feel, at last, that through the portals of the grave lies
+the true initiation into the holy and the wise. Beyond those portals I
+await ye both, beloved pilgrims!”
+
+From his numbers and his Cabala, in his cell, amidst the wrecks of Rome,
+Mejnour, startled, looked up, and through the spirit, felt that the
+spirit of his distant friend addressed him.
+
+“Fare thee well forever upon this earth! Thy last companion forsakes thy
+side. Thine age survives the youth of all; and the Final Day shall find
+thee still the contemplator of our tombs. I go with my free will into
+the land of darkness; but new suns and systems blaze around us from the
+grave. I go where the souls of those for whom I resign the clay shall be
+my co-mates through eternal youth. At last I recognise the true ordeal
+and the real victory. Mejnour, cast down thy elixir; lay by thy load
+of years! Wherever the soul can wander, the Eternal Soul of all things
+protects it still!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XV.
+
+     Il ne veulent plus perdre un moment d’une nuit si precieuse.
+     Lacretelle, tom. xii.
+
+     (They would not lose another moment of so precious a night.)
+
+It was late that night, and Rene-Francois Dumas, President of the
+Revolutionary Tribunal, had re-entered his cabinet, on his return from
+the Jacobin Club. With him were two men who might be said to represent,
+the one the moral, the other the physical force of the Reign of Terror:
+Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Accuser, and Francois Henriot, the
+General of the Parisian National Guard. This formidable triumvirate were
+assembled to debate on the proceedings of the next day; and the three
+sister-witches over their hellish caldron were scarcely animated by a
+more fiend-like spirit, or engaged in more execrable designs, than these
+three heroes of the Revolution in their premeditated massacre of the
+morrow.
+
+Dumas was but little altered in appearance since, in the earlier part of
+this narrative, he was presented to the reader, except that his manner
+was somewhat more short and severe, and his eye yet more restless. But
+he seemed almost a superior being by the side of his associates. Rene
+Dumas, born of respectable parents, and well educated, despite his
+ferocity, was not without a certain refinement, which perhaps rendered
+him the more acceptable to the precise and formal Robespierre. (Dumas
+was a beau in his way. His gala-dress was a BLOOD-RED COAT, with the
+finest ruffles.) But Henriot had been a lackey, a thief, a spy of the
+police; he had drunk the blood of Madame de Lamballe, and had risen
+to his present rank for no quality but his ruffianism; and
+Fouquier-Tinville, the son of a provincial agriculturist, and afterwards
+a clerk at the Bureau of the Police, was little less base in his
+manners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome buffoonery, revolting
+in his speech,--bull-headed, with black, sleek hair, with a narrow and
+livid forehead, with small eyes, that twinkled with a sinister malice;
+strongly and coarsely built, he looked what he was, the audacious bully
+of a lawless and relentless Bar.
+
+Dumas trimmed the candles, and bent over the list of the victims for the
+morrow.
+
+“It is a long catalogue,” said the president; “eighty trials for
+one day! And Robespierre’s orders to despatch the whole fournee are
+unequivocal.”
+
+“Pooh!” said Fouquier, with a coarse, loud laugh; “we must try them en
+masse. I know how to deal with our jury. ‘Je pense, citoyens, que vous
+etes convaincus du crime des accuses?’ (I think, citizens, that you are
+convinced of the crime of the accused.) Ha! ha!--the longer the list,
+the shorter the work.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” growled out Henriot, with an oath,--as usual, half-drunk,
+and lolling on his chair, with his spurred heels on the table,--“little
+Tinville is the man for despatch.”
+
+“Citizen Henriot,” said Dumas, gravely, “permit me to request thee
+to select another footstool; and for the rest, let me warn thee that
+to-morrow is a critical and important day; one that will decide the fate
+of France.”
+
+“A fig for little France! Vive le Vertueux Robespierre, la Colonne de
+la Republique! (Long life to the virtuous Robespierre, the pillar of the
+Republic!) Plague on this talking; it is dry work. Hast thou no eau de
+vie in that little cupboard?”
+
+Dumas and Fouquier exchanged looks of disgust. Dumas shrugged his
+shoulders, and replied,--
+
+“It is to guard thee against eau de vie, Citizen General Henriot, that I
+have requested thee to meet me here. Listen if thou canst!”
+
+“Oh, talk away! thy metier is to talk, mine to fight and to drink.”
+
+“To-morrow, I tell thee then, the populace will be abroad; all factions
+will be astir. It is probable enough that they will even seek to arrest
+our tumbrils on their way to the guillotine. Have thy men armed and
+ready; keep the streets clear; cut down without mercy whomsoever may
+obstruct the ways.”
+
+“I understand,” said Henriot, striking his sword so loudly that Dumas
+half-started at the clank,--“Black Henriot is no ‘Indulgent.’”
+
+“Look to it, then, citizen,--look to it! And hark thee,” he added, with
+a grave and sombre brow, “if thou wouldst keep thine own head on thy
+shoulders, beware of the eau de vie.”
+
+“My own head!--sacre mille tonnerres! Dost thou threaten the general of
+the Parisian army?”
+
+Dumas, like Robespierre, a precise atrabilious, and arrogant man, was
+about to retort, when the craftier Tinville laid his hand on his arm,
+and, turning to the general, said, “My dear Henriot, thy dauntless
+republicanism, which is too ready to give offence, must learn to take
+a reprimand from the representative of Republican Law. Seriously, mon
+cher, thou must be sober for the next three or four days; after the
+crisis is over, thou and I will drink a bottle together. Come, Dumas
+relax thine austerity, and shake hands with our friend. No quarrels
+amongst ourselves!”
+
+Dumas hesitated, and extended his hand, which the ruffian clasped; and,
+maudlin tears succeeding his ferocity, he half-sobbed, half-hiccoughed
+forth his protestations of civism and his promises of sobriety.
+
+“Well, we depend on thee, mon general,” said Dumas; “and now, since we
+shall all have need of vigour for to-morrow, go home and sleep soundly.”
+
+“Yes, I forgive thee, Dumas,--I forgive thee. I am not vindictive,--I!
+but still, if a man threatens me; if a man insults me--” and, with the
+quick changes of intoxication, again his eyes gleamed fire through their
+foul tears. With some difficulty Fouquier succeeded at last in soothing
+the brute, and leading him from the chamber. But still, as some wild
+beast disappointed of a prey, he growled and snarled as his heavy tread
+descended the stairs. A tall trooper, mounted, was leading Henriot’s
+horse to and fro the streets; and as the general waited at the porch
+till his attendant turned, a stranger stationed by the wall accosted
+him:
+
+“General Henriot, I have desired to speak with thee. Next to
+Robespierre, thou art, or shouldst be, the most powerful man in France.”
+
+“Hem!--yes, I ought to be. What then?--every man has not his deserts!”
+
+“Hist!” said the stranger; “thy pay is scarcely suitable to thy rank and
+thy wants.”
+
+“That is true.”
+
+“Even in a revolution, a man takes care of his fortunes!”
+
+“Diable! speak out, citizen.”
+
+“I have a thousand pieces of gold with me,--they are thine, if thou wilt
+grant me one small favour.”
+
+“Citizen, I grant it!” said Henriot, waving his hand majestically. “Is
+it to denounce some rascal who has offended thee?”
+
+“No; it is simply this: write these words to President Dumas, ‘Admit
+the bearer to thy presence; and, if thou canst, grant him the request
+he will make to thee, it will be an inestimable obligation to Francois
+Henriot.’” The stranger, as he spoke, placed pencil and tablets in the
+shaking hands of the soldier.
+
+“And where is the gold?”
+
+“Here.”
+
+With some difficulty, Henriot scrawled the words dictated to him,
+clutched the gold, mounted his horse, and was gone.
+
+Meanwhile Fouquier, when he had closed the door upon Henriot, said
+sharply, “How canst thou be so mad as to incense that brigand? Knowest
+thou not that our laws are nothing without the physical force of the
+National Guard, and that he is their leader?”
+
+“I know this, that Robespierre must have been mad to place that drunkard
+at their head; and mark my words, Fouquier, if the struggle come, it
+is that man’s incapacity and cowardice that will destroy us. Yes, thou
+mayst live thyself to accuse thy beloved Robespierre, and to perish in
+his fall.”
+
+“For all that, we must keep well with Henriot till we can find the
+occasion to seize and behead him. To be safe, we must fawn on those who
+are still in power; and fawn the more, the more we would depose them.
+Do not think this Henriot, when he wakes to-morrow, will forget thy
+threats. He is the most revengeful of human beings. Thou must send and
+soothe him in the morning!”
+
+“Right,” said Dumas, convinced. “I was too hasty; and now I think we
+have nothing further to do, since we have arranged to make short work
+with our fournee of to-morrow. I see in the list a knave I have long
+marked out, though his crime once procured me a legacy,--Nicot, the
+Hebertist.”
+
+“And young Andre Chenier, the poet? Ah, I forgot; we be headed HIM
+to-day! Revolutionary virtue is at its acme. His own brother abandoned
+him.” (His brother is said, indeed, to have contributed to the
+condemnation of this virtuous and illustrious person. He was heard to
+cry aloud, “Si mon frere est coupable, qu’il perisse” (If my brother be
+culpable, let him die). This brother, Marie-Joseph, also a poet, and
+the author of “Charles IX.,” so celebrated in the earlier days of the
+Revolution, enjoyed, of course, according to the wonted justice of the
+world, a triumphant career, and was proclaimed in the Champ de Mars “le
+premier de poetes Francais,” a title due to his murdered brother.)
+
+“There is a foreigner,--an Italian woman in the list; but I can find no
+charge made out against her.”
+
+“All the same we must execute her for the sake of the round number;
+eighty sounds better than seventy-nine!”
+
+Here a huissier brought a paper on which was written the request of
+Henriot.
+
+“Ah! this is fortunate,” said Tinville, to whom Dumas chucked the
+scroll,--“grant the prayer by all means; so at least that it does not
+lessen our bead-roll. But I will do Henriot the justice to say that
+he never asks to let off, but to put on. Good-night! I am worn out--my
+escort waits below. Only on such an occasion would I venture forth in
+the streets at night.” (During the latter part of the Reign of Terror,
+Fouquier rarely stirred out at night, and never without an escort. In
+the Reign of Terror those most terrified were its kings.) And Fouquier,
+with a long yawn, quitted the room.
+
+“Admit the bearer!” said Dumas, who, withered and dried, as lawyers
+in practice mostly are, seemed to require as little sleep as his
+parchments.
+
+The stranger entered.
+
+“Rene-Francois Dumas,” said he, seating himself opposite to the
+president, and markedly adopting the plural, as if in contempt of the
+revolutionary jargon, “amidst the excitement and occupations of your
+later life, I know not if you can remember that we have met before?”
+
+The judge scanned the features of his visitor, and a pale blush settled
+on his sallow cheeks, “Yes, citizen, I remember!”
+
+“And you recall the words I then uttered! You spoke tenderly and
+philanthropically of your horror of capital executions; you exulted
+in the approaching Revolution as the termination of all sanguinary
+punishments; you quoted reverently the saying of Maximilien Robespierre,
+the rising statesman, ‘The executioner is the invention of the tyrant:’
+and I replied, that while you spoke, a foreboding seized me that
+we should meet again when your ideas of death and the philosophy of
+revolutions might be changed! Was I right, Citizen Rene-Francois Dumas,
+President of the Revolutionary Tribunal?”
+
+“Pooh!” said Dumas, with some confusion on his brazen brow, “I spoke
+then as men speak who have not acted. Revolutions are not made with
+rose-water! But truce to the gossip of the long-ago. I remember, also,
+that thou didst then save the life of my relation, and it will please
+thee to learn that his intended murderer will be guillotined to-morrow.”
+
+“That concerns yourself,--your justice or your revenge. Permit me the
+egotism to remind you that you then promised that if ever a day should
+come when you could serve me, your life--yes, the phrase was, ‘your
+heart’s blood’--was at my bidding. Think not, austere judge, that I
+come to ask a boon that can affect yourself,--I come but to ask a day’s
+respite for another!”
+
+“Citizen, it is impossible! I have the order of Robespierre that not one
+less than the total on my list must undergo their trial for to-morrow.
+As for the verdict, that rests with the jury!”
+
+“I do not ask you to diminish the catalogue. Listen still! In your
+death-roll there is the name of an Italian woman whose youth, whose
+beauty, and whose freedom not only from every crime, but every tangible
+charge, will excite only compassion, and not terror. Even YOU would
+tremble to pronounce her sentence. It will be dangerous on a day when
+the populace will be excited, when your tumbrils may be arrested, to
+expose youth and innocence and beauty to the pity and courage of a
+revolted crowd.”
+
+Dumas looked up and shrunk from the eye of the stranger.
+
+“I do not deny, citizen, that there is reason in what thou urgest. But
+my orders are positive.”
+
+“Positive only as to the number of the victims. I offer you a substitute
+for this one. I offer you the head of a man who knows all of the very
+conspiracy which now threatens Robespierre and yourself, and compared
+with one clew to which, you would think even eighty ordinary lives a
+cheap purchase.”
+
+“That alters the case,” said Dumas, eagerly; “if thou canst do this, on
+my own responsibility I will postpone the trial of the Italian. Now name
+the proxy!”
+
+“You behold him!”
+
+“Thou!” exclaimed Dumas, while a fear he could not conceal betrayed
+itself through his surprise. “Thou!--and thou comest to me alone at
+night, to offer thyself to justice. Ha!--this is a snare. Tremble,
+fool!--thou art in my power, and I can have BOTH!”
+
+“You can,” said the stranger, with a calm smile of disdain; “but my life
+is valueless without my revelations. Sit still, I command you,--hear
+me!” and the light in those dauntless eyes spell-bound and awed the
+judge. “You will remove me to the Conciergerie,--you will fix my trial,
+under the name of Zanoni, amidst your fournee of to-morrow. If I do
+not satisfy you by my speech, you hold the woman I die to save as your
+hostage. It is but the reprieve for her of a single day that I demand.
+The day following the morrow I shall be dust, and you may wreak your
+vengeance on the life that remains. Tush! judge and condemner of
+thousands, do you hesitate,--do you imagine that the man who voluntarily
+offers himself to death will be daunted into uttering one syllable at
+your Bar against his will? Have you not had experience enough of the
+inflexibility of pride and courage? President, I place before you the
+ink and implements! Write to the jailer a reprieve of one day for the
+woman whose life can avail you nothing, and I will bear the order to my
+own prison: I, who can now tell this much as an earnest of what I can
+communicate,--while I speak, your own name, judge, is in a list of
+death. I can tell you by whose hand it is written down; I can tell you
+in what quarter to look for danger; I can tell you from what cloud, in
+this lurid atmosphere, hangs the storm that shall burst on Robespierre
+and his reign!”
+
+Dumas grew pale; and his eyes vainly sought to escape the magnetic gaze
+that overpowered and mastered him. Mechanically, and as if under an
+agency not his own, he wrote while the stranger dictated.
+
+“Well,” he said then, forcing a smile to his lips, “I promised I would
+serve you; see, I am faithful to my word. I suppose that you are one of
+those fools of feeling,--those professors of anti-revolutionary virtue,
+of whom I have seen not a few before my Bar. Faugh! it sickens me to see
+those who make a merit of incivism, and perish to save some bad patriot,
+because it is a son, or a father, or a wife, or a daughter, who is
+saved.”
+
+“I AM one of those fools of feeling,” said the stranger, rising. “You
+have divined aright.”
+
+“And wilt thou not, in return for my mercy, utter to-night the
+revelations thou wouldst proclaim to-morrow? Come; and perhaps thou
+too--nay, the woman also--may receive, not reprieve, but pardon.”
+
+“Before your tribunal, and there alone! Nor will I deceive you,
+president. My information may avail you not; and even while I show the
+cloud, the bolt may fall.”
+
+“Tush! prophet, look to thyself! Go, madman, go. I know too well the
+contumacious obstinacy of the class to which I suspect thou belongest,
+to waste further words. Diable! but ye grow so accustomed to look on
+death, that ye forget the respect ye owe to it. Since thou offerest
+me thy head, I accept it. To-morrow thou mayst repent; it will be too
+late.”
+
+“Ay, too late, president!” echoed the calm visitor.
+
+“But, remember, it is not pardon, it is but a day’s reprieve, I have
+promised to this woman. According as thou dost satisfy me to-morrow,
+she lives or dies. I am frank, citizen; thy ghost shall not haunt me for
+want of faith.”
+
+“It is but a day that I have asked; the rest I leave to justice and to
+Heaven. Your huissiers wait below.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XVI.
+
+     Und den Mordstahl seh’ ich blinken;
+     Und das Morderauge gluhn!
+     “Kassandra.”
+
+     (And I see the steel of Murder glitter,
+     And the eye of Murder glow.)
+
+Viola was in the prison that opened not but for those already condemned
+before adjudged. Since her exile from Zanoni, her very intellect had
+seemed paralysed. All that beautiful exuberance of fancy which, if not
+the fruit of genius, seemed its blossoms; all that gush of exquisite
+thought which Zanoni had justly told her flowed with mysteries and
+subtleties ever new to him, the wise one,--all were gone, annihilated;
+the blossom withered, the fount dried up. From something almost above
+womanhood, she seemed listlessly to sink into something below childhood.
+With the inspirer the inspirations had ceased; and, in deserting love,
+genius also was left behind.
+
+She scarcely comprehended why she had been thus torn from her home and
+the mechanism of her dull tasks. She scarcely knew what meant those
+kindly groups, that, struck with her exceeding loveliness, had gathered
+round her in the prison, with mournful looks, but with words of comfort.
+She, who had hitherto been taught to abhor those whom Law condemns for
+crime, was amazed to hear that beings thus compassionate and tender,
+with cloudless and lofty brows, with gallant and gentle mien, were
+criminals for whom Law had no punishment short of death. But they, the
+savages, gaunt and menacing, who had dragged her from her home, who
+had attempted to snatch from her the infant while she clasped it in her
+arms, and laughed fierce scorn at her mute, quivering lips,--THEY were
+the chosen citizens, the men of virtue, the favourites of Power, the
+ministers of Law! Such thy black caprices, O thou, the ever-shifting and
+calumnious,--Human Judgment!
+
+A squalid, and yet a gay world, did the prison-houses of that day
+present. There, as in the sepulchre to which they led, all ranks were
+cast with an even-handed scorn. And yet there, the reverence that comes
+from great emotions restored Nature’s first and imperishable, and most
+lovely, and most noble Law,--THE INEQUALITY BETWEEN MAN AND MAN! There,
+place was given by the prisoners, whether royalists or sans-culottes,
+to Age, to Learning, to Renown, to Beauty; and Strength, with its own
+inborn chivalry, raised into rank the helpless and the weak. The iron
+sinews and the Herculean shoulders made way for the woman and the child;
+and the graces of Humanity, lost elsewhere, sought their refuge in the
+abode of Terror.
+
+“And wherefore, my child, do they bring thee hither?” asked an old,
+grey-haired priest.
+
+“I cannot guess.”
+
+“Ah, if you know not your offence, fear the worst!”
+
+“And my child?”--for the infant was still suffered to rest upon her
+bosom.
+
+“Alas, young mother, they will suffer thy child to live.’
+
+“And for this,--an orphan in the dungeon!” murmured the accusing heart
+of Viola,--“have I reserved his offspring! Zanoni, even in thought, ask
+not--ask not what I have done with the child I bore thee!”
+
+Night came; the crowd rushed to the grate to hear the muster-roll.
+(Called, in the mocking jargon of the day, “The Evening Gazette.”) Her
+name was with the doomed. And the old priest, better prepared to die,
+but reserved from the death-list, laid his hands on her head, and
+blessed her while he wept. She heard, and wondered; but she did not
+weep. With downcast eyes, with arms folded on her bosom, she bent
+submissively to the call. But now another name was uttered; and a man,
+who had pushed rudely past her to gaze or to listen, shrieked out a
+howl of despair and rage. She turned, and their eyes met. Through
+the distance of time she recognised that hideous aspect. Nicot’s face
+settled back into its devilish sneer. “At least, gentle Neapolitan, the
+guillotine will unite us. Oh, we shall sleep well our wedding-night!”
+ And, with a laugh, he strode away through the crowd, and vanished into
+his lair.
+
+....
+
+She was placed in her gloomy cell, to await the morrow. But the child
+was still spared her; and she thought it seemed as if conscious of the
+awful present. In their way to the prison it had not moaned or wept. It
+had looked with its clear eyes, unshrinking, on the gleaming pikes and
+savage brows of the huissiers. And now, alone in the dungeon, it put its
+arms round her neck, and murmured its indistinct sounds, low and sweet
+as some unknown language of consolation and of heaven. And of heaven it
+was!--for, at the murmur, the terror melted from her soul; upward, from
+the dungeon and the death,--upward, where the happy cherubim chant the
+mercy of the All-loving, whispered that cherub’s voice. She fell upon
+her knees and prayed. The despoilers of all that beautifies and hallows
+life had desecrated the altar, and denied the God!--they had removed
+from the last hour of their victims the Priest, the Scripture, and the
+Cross! But Faith builds in the dungeon and the lazar-house its sublimest
+shrines; and up, through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of
+Heaven, ascends the ladder where the angels glide to and fro,--PRAYER.
+
+And there, in the very cell beside her own, the atheist Nicot sits
+stolid amidst the darkness, and hugs the thought of Danton, that death
+is nothingness. (“Ma demeure sera bientot LE NEANT” (My abode will soon
+be nothingness), said Danton before his judges.)) His, no spectacle
+of an appalled and perturbed conscience! Remorse is the echo of a lost
+virtue, and virtue he never knew. Had he to live again, he would live
+the same. But more terrible than the death-bed of a believing and
+despairing sinner that blank gloom of apathy,--that contemplation of
+the worm and the rat of the charnel-house; that grim and loathsome
+NOTHINGNESS which, for his eye, falls like a pall over the universe of
+life. Still, staring into space, gnawing his livid lip, he looks upon
+the darkness, convinced that darkness is forever and forever!
+
+....
+
+Place, there! place! Room yet in your crowded cells. Another has come to
+the slaughter-house.
+
+As the jailer, lamp in hand, ushered in the stranger, the latter touched
+him and whispered. The stranger drew a jewel from his finger. Diantre,
+how the diamond flashed in the ray of the lamp! Value each head of your
+eighty at a thousand francs, and the jewel is more worth than all!
+The jailer paused, and the diamond laughed in his dazzled eyes. O thou
+Cerberus, thou hast mastered all else that seems human in that fell
+employ! Thou hast no pity, no love, and no remorse. But Avarice survives
+the rest, and the foul heart’s master-serpent swallows up the tribe.
+Ha! ha! crafty stranger, thou hast conquered! They tread the gloomy
+corridor; they arrive at the door where the jailer has placed the fatal
+mark, now to be erased, for the prisoner within is to be reprieved a
+day. The key grates in the lock; the door yawns,--the stranger takes the
+lamp and enters.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XVII. The Seventeenth and Last.
+
+     Cosi vince Goffredo!
+     “Ger. Lib.” cant. xx.-xliv.
+
+     (Thus conquered Godfrey.)
+
+And Viola was in prayer. She heard not the opening of the door; she saw
+not the dark shadow that fell along the floor. HIS power, HIS arts were
+gone; but the mystery and the spell known to HER simple heart did not
+desert her in the hours of trial and despair. When Science falls as a
+firework from the sky it would invade; when Genius withers as a flower
+in the breath of the icy charnel,--the hope of a child-like soul wraps
+the air in light, and the innocence of unquestioning Belief covers the
+grave with blossoms.
+
+In the farthest corner of the cell she knelt; and the infant, as if to
+imitate what it could not comprehend, bent its little limbs, and bowed
+its smiling face, and knelt with her also, by her side.
+
+He stood and gazed upon them as the light of the lamp fell calmly on
+their forms. It fell over those clouds of golden hair, dishevelled,
+parted, thrown back from the rapt, candid brow; the dark eyes raised
+on high, where, through the human tears, a light as from above was
+mirrored; the hands clasped, the lips apart, the form all animate and
+holy with the sad serenity of innocence and the touching humility of
+woman. And he heard her voice, though it scarcely left her lips: the low
+voice that the heart speaks,--loud enough for God to hear!
+
+“And if never more to see him, O Father! Canst Thou not make the love
+that will not die, minister, even beyond the grave, to his earthly fate?
+Canst Thou not yet permit it, as a living spirit, to hover over him,--a
+spirit fairer than all his science can conjure? Oh, whatever lot be
+ordained to either, grant--even though a thousand ages may roll between
+us--grant, when at last purified and regenerate, and fitted for the
+transport of such reunion--grant that we may meet once more! And for his
+child,--it kneels to Thee from the dungeon floor! To-morrow, and whose
+breast shall cradle it; whose hand shall feed; whose lips shall pray for
+its weal below and its soul hereafter!” She paused,--her voice choked
+with sobs.
+
+“Thou Viola!--thou, thyself. He whom thou hast deserted is here to
+preserve the mother to the child!”
+
+She started!--those accents, tremulous as her own! She started to
+her feet!--he was there,--in all the pride of his unwaning youth and
+superhuman beauty; there, in the house of dread, and in the hour of
+travail; there, image and personation of the love that can pierce the
+Valley of the Shadow, and can glide, the unscathed wanderer from the
+heaven, through the roaring abyss of hell!
+
+With a cry never, perhaps, heard before in that gloomy vault,--a cry of
+delight and rapture, she sprang forward, and fell at his feet.
+
+He bent down to raise her; but she slid from his arms. He called her by
+the familiar epithets of the old endearment, and she only answered him
+by sobs. Wildly, passionately, she kissed his hands, the hem of his
+garment, but voice was gone.
+
+“Look up, look up!--I am here,--I am here to save thee! Wilt thou deny
+to me thy sweet face? Truant, wouldst thou fly me still?”
+
+“Fly thee!” she said, at last, and in a broken voice; “oh, if
+my thoughts wronged thee,--oh, if my dream, that awful dream,
+deceived,--kneel down with me, and pray for our child!” Then springing
+to her feet with a sudden impulse, she caught up the infant, and,
+placing it in his arms, sobbed forth, with deprecating and humble tones,
+“Not for my sake,--not for mine, did I abandon thee, but--”
+
+“Hush!” said Zanoni; “I know all the thoughts that thy confused and
+struggling senses can scarcely analyse themselves. And see how, with a
+look, thy child answers them!”
+
+And in truth the face of that strange infant seemed radiant with its
+silent and unfathomable joy. It seemed as if it recognised the father;
+it clung--it forced itself to his breast, and there, nestling, turned
+its bright, clear eyes upon Viola, and smiled.
+
+“Pray for my child!” said Zanoni, mournfully. “The thoughts of souls
+that would aspire as mine are All PRAYER!” And, seating himself by her
+side, he began to reveal to her some of the holier secrets of his lofty
+being. He spoke of the sublime and intense faith from which alone the
+diviner knowledge can arise,--the faith which, seeing the immortal
+everywhere, purifies and exalts the mortal that beholds, the glorious
+ambition that dwells not in the cabals and crimes of earth, but amidst
+those solemn wonders that speak not of men, but of God; of that power to
+abstract the soul from the clay which gives to the eye of the soul its
+subtle vision, and to the soul’s wing the unlimited realm; of that
+pure, severe, and daring initiation from which the mind emerges, as from
+death, into clear perceptions of its kindred with the Father-Principles
+of life and light, so that in its own sense of the Beautiful it finds
+its joy; in the serenity of its will, its power; in its sympathy with
+the youthfulness of the Infinite Creation, of which itself is an essence
+and a part, the secrets that embalm the very clay which they consecrate,
+and renew the strength of life with the ambrosia of mysterious and
+celestial sleep. And while he spoke, Viola listened, breathless. If she
+could not comprehend, she no longer dared to distrust. She felt that in
+that enthusiasm, self-deceiving or not, no fiend could lurk; and by an
+intuition, rather than an effort of the reason, she saw before her, like
+a starry ocean, the depth and mysterious beauty of the soul which
+her fears had wronged. Yet, when he said (concluding his strange
+confessions) that to this life WITHIN life and ABOVE life he had dreamed
+to raise her own, the fear of humanity crept over her, and he read in
+her silence how vain, with all his science, would the dream have been.
+
+But now, as he closed, and, leaning on his breast, she felt the clasp of
+his protecting arms,--when, in one holy kiss, the past was forgiven and
+the present lost,--then there returned to her the sweet and warm hopes
+of the natural life, of the loving woman. He was come to save her! She
+asked not how,--she believed it without a question. They should be at
+last again united. They would fly far from those scenes of violence and
+blood. Their happy Ionian isle, their fearless solitudes, would once
+more receive them. She laughed, with a child’s joy, as this picture rose
+up amidst the gloom of the dungeon. Her mind, faithful to its sweet,
+simple instincts, refused to receive the lofty images that flitted
+confusedly by it, and settled back to its human visions, yet more
+baseless, of the earthly happiness and the tranquil home.
+
+“Talk not now to me, beloved,--talk not more now to me of the past! Thou
+art here,--thou wilt save me; we shall live yet the common happy life,
+that life with thee is happiness and glory enough to me. Traverse, if
+thou wilt, in thy pride of soul, the universe; thy heart again is the
+universe to mine. I thought but now that I was prepared to die; I see
+thee, touch thee, and again I know how beautiful a thing is life! See
+through the grate the stars are fading from the sky; the morrow will
+soon be here,--The MORROW which will open the prison doors! Thou sayest
+thou canst save me,--I will not doubt it now. Oh, let us dwell no more
+in cities! I never doubted thee in our lovely isle; no dreams haunted
+me there, except dreams of joy and beauty; and thine eyes made yet more
+beautiful and joyous the world in waking. To-morrow!--why do you not
+smile? To-morrow, love! is not TO-MORROW a blessed word! Cruel! you
+would punish me still, that you will not share my joy. Aha! see our
+little one, how it laughs to my eyes! I will talk to THAT. Child, thy
+father is come back!”
+
+And taking the infant in her arms, and seating herself at a little
+distance, she rocked it to and fro on her bosom, and prattled to it, and
+kissed it between every word, and laughed and wept by fits, as ever and
+anon she cast over her shoulder her playful, mirthful glance upon the
+father to whom those fading stars smiled sadly their last farewell. How
+beautiful she seemed as she thus sat, unconscious of the future! Still
+half a child herself, her child laughing to her laughter,--two soft
+triflers on the brink of the grave! Over her throat, as she bent, fell,
+like a golden cloud, her redundant hair; it covered her treasure like
+a veil of light, and the child’s little hands put it aside from time to
+time, to smile through the parted tresses, and then to cover its face
+and peep and smile again. It were cruel to damp that joy, more cruel
+still to share it.
+
+“Viola,” said Zanoni, at last, “dost thou remember that, seated by the
+cave on the moonlit beach, in our bridal isle, thou once didst ask me
+for this amulet?--the charm of a superstition long vanished from the
+world, with the creed to which it belonged. It is the last relic of my
+native land, and my mother, on her deathbed, placed it round my neck.
+I told thee then I would give it thee on that day WHEN THE LAWS OF OUR
+BEING SHOULD BECOME THE SAME.”
+
+“I remember it well.”
+
+“To-morrow it shall be thine!”
+
+“Ah, that dear to-morrow!” And, gently laying down her child,--for it
+slept now,--she threw herself on his breast, and pointed to the dawn
+that began greyly to creep along the skies.
+
+There, in those horror-breathing walls, the day-star looked through the
+dismal bars upon those three beings, in whom were concentrated whatever
+is most tender in human ties; whatever is most mysterious in the
+combinations of the human mind; the sleeping Innocence; the trustful
+Affection, that, contented with a touch, a breath, can foresee no
+sorrow; the weary Science that, traversing all the secrets of creation,
+comes at last to Death for their solution, and still clings, as it
+nears the threshold, to the breast of Love. Thus, within, THE WITHIN,--a
+dungeon; without, the WITHOUT,--stately with marts and halls, with
+palaces and temples; Revenge and Terror, at their dark schemes and
+counter-schemes; to and fro, upon the tide of the shifting passions,
+reeled the destinies of men and nations; and hard at hand that day-star,
+waning into space, looked with impartial eye on the church tower and
+the guillotine. Up springs the blithesome morn. In yon gardens the
+birds renew their familiar song. The fishes are sporting through the
+freshening waters of the Seine. The gladness of divine nature, the
+roar and dissonance of mortal life, awake again: the trader unbars his
+windows; the flower-girls troop gayly to their haunts; busy feet are
+tramping to the daily drudgeries that revolutions which strike down
+kings and kaisars, leave the same Cain’s heritage to the boor; the
+wagons groan and reel to the mart; Tyranny, up betimes, holds its pallid
+levee; Conspiracy, that hath not slept, hears the clock, and whispers to
+its own heart, “The hour draws near.” A group gather, eager-eyed, round
+the purlieus of the Convention Hall; to-day decides the sovereignty of
+France,--about the courts of the Tribunal their customary hum and stir.
+No matter what the hazard of the die, or who the ruler, this day eighty
+heads shall fall!
+
+....
+
+And she slept so sweetly. Wearied out with joy, secure in the presence
+of the eyes regained, she had laughed and wept herself to sleep; and
+still in that slumber there seemed a happy consciousness that the loved
+was by,--the lost was found. For she smiled and murmured to herself, and
+breathed his name often, and stretched out her arms, and sighed if
+they touched him not. He gazed upon her as he stood apart,--with what
+emotions it were vain to say. She would wake no more to him; she could
+not know how dearly the safety of that sleep was purchased. That morrow
+she had so yearned for,--it had come at last. HOW WOULD SHE GREET
+THE EVE? Amidst all the exquisite hopes with which love and youth
+contemplate the future, her eyes had closed. Those hopes still lent
+their iris-colours to her dreams. She would wake to live! To-morrow, and
+the Reign of Terror was no more; the prison gates would be opened,--she
+would go forth, with their child, into that summer-world of light. And
+HE?--he turned, and his eye fell upon the child; it was broad awake, and
+that clear, serious, thoughtful look which it mostly wore, watched him
+with a solemn steadiness. He bent over and kissed its lips.
+
+“Never more,” he murmured, “O heritor of love and grief,--never more
+wilt thou see me in thy visions; never more will the light of those
+eyes be fed by celestial commune; never more can my soul guard from
+thy pillow the trouble and the disease. Not such as I would have vainly
+shaped it, must be thy lot. In common with thy race, it must be thine
+to suffer, to struggle, and to err. But mild be thy human trials, and
+strong be thy spirit to love and to believe! And thus, as I gaze upon
+thee,--thus may my nature breathe into thine its last and most intense
+desire; may my love for thy mother pass to thee, and in thy looks may
+she hear my spirit comfort and console her. Hark! they come! Yes! I
+await ye both beyond the grave!”
+
+The door slowly opened; the jailer appeared, and through the aperture
+rushed, at the same instant, a ray of sunlight: it streamed over the
+fair, hushed face of the happy sleeper,--it played like a smile upon
+the lips of the child that, still, mute, and steadfast, watched the
+movements of its father. At that moment Viola muttered in her sleep,
+“The day is come,--the gates are open! Give me thy hand; we will go
+forth! To sea, to sea! How the sunshine plays upon the waters!--to home,
+beloved one, to home again!”
+
+“Citizen, thine hour is come!”
+
+“Hist! she sleeps! A moment! There, it is done! thank Heaven!--and STILL
+she sleeps!” He would not kiss, lest he should awaken her, but gently
+placed round her neck the amulet that would speak to her, hereafter,
+the farewell,--and promise, in that farewell, reunion! He is at the
+threshold,--he turns again, and again. The door closes! He is gone
+forever!
+
+She woke at last,--she gazed round. “Zanoni, it is day!” No answer but
+the low wail of her child. Merciful Heaven! was it then all a dream?
+She tossed back the long tresses that must veil her sight; she felt
+the amulet on her bosom,--it was NO dream! “O God! and he is gone!” She
+sprang to the door,--she shrieked aloud. The jailer comes. “My husband,
+my child’s father?”
+
+“He is gone before thee, woman!”
+
+“Whither? Speak--speak!”
+
+“To the guillotine!”--and the black door closed again.
+
+It closed upon the senseless! As a lightning-flash, Zanoni’s words, his
+sadness, the true meaning of his mystic gift, the very sacrifice he
+made for her, all became distinct for a moment to her mind,--and then
+darkness swept on it like a storm, yet darkness which had its light. And
+while she sat there, mute, rigid, voiceless, as congealed to stone, A
+VISION, like a wind, glided over the deeps within,--the grim court, the
+judge, the jury, the accuser; and amidst the victims the one dauntless
+and radiant form.
+
+“Thou knowest the danger to the State,--confess!”
+
+“I know; and I keep my promise. Judge, I reveal thy doom! I know that
+the Anarchy thou callest a State expires with the setting of this sun.
+Hark, to the tramp without; hark to the roar of voices! Room there, ye
+dead!--room in hell for Robespierre and his crew!”
+
+They hurry into the court,--the hasty and pale messengers; there is
+confusion and fear and dismay! “Off with the conspirator, and to-morrow
+the woman thou wouldst have saved shall die!”
+
+“To-morrow, president, the steel falls on THEE!”
+
+On, through the crowded and roaring streets, on moves the Procession of
+Death. Ha, brave people! thou art aroused at last. They shall not die!
+Death is dethroned!--Robespierre has fallen!--they rush to the rescue!
+Hideous in the tumbril, by the side of Zanoni, raved and gesticulated
+that form which, in his prophetic dreams, he had seen his companion at
+the place of death. “Save us!--save us!” howled the atheist Nicot. “On,
+brave populace! we SHALL be saved!” And through the crowd, her dark
+hair streaming wild, her eyes flashing fire, pressed a female form, “My
+Clarence!” she shrieked, in the soft Southern language native to the
+ears of Viola; “butcher! what hast thou done with Clarence?” Her eyes
+roved over the eager faces of the prisoners; she saw not the one she
+sought. “Thank Heaven!--thank Heaven! I am not thy murderess!”
+
+Nearer and nearer press the populace,--another moment, and the deathsman
+is defrauded. O Zanoni! why still upon THY brow the resignation that
+speaks no hope? Tramp! tramp! through the streets dash the armed troop;
+faithful to his orders, Black Henriot leads them on. Tramp! tramp!
+over the craven and scattered crowd! Here, flying in disorder,--there,
+trampled in the mire, the shrieking rescuers! And amidst them, stricken
+by the sabres of the guard, her long hair blood-bedabbled, lies the
+Italian woman; and still upon her writhing lips sits joy, as they
+murmur, “Clarence! I have not destroyed thee!”
+
+On to the Barriere du Trone. It frowns dark in the air,--the giant
+instrument of murder! One after one to the glaive,--another and another
+and another! Mercy! O mercy! Is the bridge between the sun and the
+shades so brief,--brief as a sigh? There, there,--HIS turn has come.
+“Die not yet; leave me not behind; hear me--hear me!” shrieked the
+inspired sleeper. “What! and thou smilest still!” They smiled,--those
+pale lips,--and WITH the smile, the place of doom, the headsman, the
+horror vanished. With that smile, all space seemed suffused in eternal
+sunshine. Up from the earth he rose; he hovered over her,--a thing not
+of matter, an IDEA of joy and light! Behind, Heaven opened, deep after
+deep; and the Hosts of Beauty were seen, rank upon rank, afar; and
+“Welcome!” in a myriad melodies, broke from your choral multitude, ye
+People of the Skies,--“welcome! O purified by sacrifice, and immortal
+only through the grave,--this it is to die.” And radiant amidst the
+radiant, the IMAGE stretched forth its arms, and murmured to the
+sleeper: “Companion of Eternity!--THIS it is to die!”
+
+....
+
+“Ho! wherefore do they make us signs from the house-tops? Wherefore
+gather the crowds through the street? Why sounds the bell? Why shrieks
+the tocsin? Hark to the guns!--the armed clash! Fellow-captives, is
+there hope for us at last?”
+
+So gasp out the prisoners, each to each. Day wanes--evening closes;
+still they press their white faces to the bars, and still from window
+and from house-top they see the smiles of friends,--the waving signals!
+“Hurrah!” at last,--“Hurrah! Robespierre is fallen! The Reign of Terror
+is no more! God hath permitted us to live!”
+
+Yes; cast thine eyes into the hall where the tyrant and his conclave
+hearkened to the roar without! Fulfilling the prophecy of Dumas,
+Henriot, drunk with blood and alcohol, reels within, and chucks his gory
+sabre on the floor. “All is lost!”
+
+“Wretch! thy cowardice hath destroyed us!” yelled the fierce Coffinhal,
+as he hurled the coward from the window.
+
+Calm as despair stands the stern St. Just; the palsied Couthon crawls,
+grovelling, beneath table; a shot,--an explosion! Robespierre would
+destroy himself! The trembling hand has mangled, and failed to kill! The
+clock of the Hotel de Ville strikes the third hour. Through the battered
+door, along the gloomy passages, into the Death-hall, burst the crowd.
+Mangled, livid, blood-stained, speechless but not unconscious, sits
+haughty yet, in his seat erect, the Master-Murderer! Around him they
+throng; they hoot,--they execrate, their faces gleaming in the tossing
+torches! HE, and not the starry Magian, the REAL Sorcerer! And round HIS
+last hours gather the Fiends he raised!
+
+They drag him forth! Open thy gates, inexorable prison! The Conciergerie
+receives its prey! Never a word again on earth spoke Maximilien
+Robespierre! Pour forth thy thousands, and tens of thousands,
+emancipated Paris! To the Place de la Revolution rolls the tumbril of
+the King of Terror,--St. Just, Dumas, Couthon, his companions to the
+grave! A woman--a childless woman, with hoary hair--springs to his
+side, “Thy death makes me drunk with joy!” He opened his bloodshot
+eyes,--“Descend to hell with the curses of wives and mothers!”
+
+The headsmen wrench the rag from the shattered jaw; a shriek, and the
+crowd laugh, and the axe descends amidst the shout of the countless
+thousands, and blackness rushes on thy soul, Maximilien Robespierre! So
+ended the Reign of Terror.
+
+....
+
+Daylight in the prison. From cell to cell they hurry with the
+news,--crowd upon crowd; the joyous captives mingled with the very
+jailers, who, for fear, would fain seem joyous too; they stream through
+the dens and alleys of the grim house they will shortly leave. They
+burst into a cell, forgotten since the previous morning. They found
+there a young female, sitting upon her wretched bed; her arms crossed
+upon her bosom, her face raised upward; the eyes unclosed, and a smile
+of more than serenity--of bliss--upon her lips. Even in the riot of
+their joy, they drew back in astonishment and awe. Never had they seen
+life so beautiful; and as they crept nearer, and with noiseless feet,
+they saw that the lips breathed not, that the repose was of marble,
+that the beauty and the ecstasy were of death. They gathered round in
+silence; and lo! at her feet there was a young infant, who, wakened
+by their tread, looked at them steadfastly, and with its rosy fingers
+played with its dead mother’s robe. An orphan there in a dungeon vault!
+
+“Poor one!” said a female (herself a parent), “and they say the father
+fell yesterday; and now the mother! Alone in the world, what can be its
+fate?”
+
+The infant smiled fearlessly on the crowd, as the woman spoke thus. And
+the old priest, who stood amongst them, said gently, “Woman, see! the
+orphan smiles! THE FATHERLESS ARE THE CARE OF GOD!”
+
+
+*****
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+The curiosity which Zanoni has excited among those who think it worth
+while to dive into the subtler meanings they believe it intended to
+convey, may excuse me in adding a few words, not in explanation of its
+mysteries, but upon the principles which permit them. Zanoni is not, as
+some have supposed, an allegory; but beneath the narrative it relates,
+TYPICAL meanings are concealed. It is to be regarded in two characters,
+distinct yet harmonious,--1st, that of the simple and objective fiction,
+in which (once granting the license of the author to select a subject
+which is, or appears to be, preternatural) the reader judges the writer
+by the usual canons,--namely, by the consistency of his characters
+under such admitted circumstances, the interest of his story, and the
+coherence of his plot; of the work regarded in this view, it is not my
+intention to say anything, whether in exposition of the design, or in
+defence of the execution. No typical meanings (which, in plain terms are
+but moral suggestions, more or less numerous, more or less subtle) can
+afford just excuse to a writer of fiction, for the errors he should
+avoid in the most ordinary novel. We have no right to expect the most
+ingenious reader to search for the inner meaning, if the obvious course
+of the narrative be tedious and displeasing. It is, on the contrary,
+in proportion as we are satisfied with the objective sense of a work of
+imagination, that we are inclined to search into its depths for the more
+secret intentions of the author. Were we not so divinely charmed with
+“Faust,” and “Hamlet,” and “Prometheus,” so ardently carried on by
+the interest of the story told to the common understanding, we should
+trouble ourselves little with the types in each which all of us can
+detect,--none of us can elucidate; none elucidate, for the essence of
+type is mystery. We behold the figure, we cannot lift the veil. The
+author himself is not called upon to explain what he designed. An
+allegory is a personation of distinct and definite things,--virtues or
+qualities,--and the key can be given easily; but a writer who conveys
+typical meanings, may express them in myriads. He cannot disentangle all
+the hues which commingle into the light he seeks to cast upon truth;
+and therefore the great masters of this enchanted soil,--Fairyland of
+Fairyland, Poetry imbedded beneath Poetry,--wisely leave to each mind to
+guess at such truths as best please or instruct it. To have asked Goethe
+to explain the “Faust” would have entailed as complex and puzzling an
+answer as to have asked Mephistopheles to explain what is beneath the
+earth we tread on. The stores beneath may differ for every passenger;
+each step may require a new description; and what is treasure to the
+geologist may be rubbish to the miner. Six worlds may lie under a sod,
+but to the common eye they are but six layers of stone.
+
+Art in itself, if not necessarily typical, is essentially a suggester of
+something subtler than that which it embodies to the sense. What Pliny
+tells us of a great painter of old, is true of most great painters;
+“their works express something beyond the works,”--“more felt than
+understood.” This belongs to the concentration of intellect which high
+art demands, and which, of all the arts, sculpture best illustrates.
+Take Thorwaldsen’s Statue of Mercury,--it is but a single figure, yet
+it tells to those conversant with mythology a whole legend. The god has
+removed the pipe from his lips, because he has already lulled to sleep
+the Argus, whom you do not see. He is pressing his heel against his
+sword, because the moment is come when he may slay his victim. Apply the
+principle of this noble concentration of art to the moral writer: he,
+too, gives to your eye but a single figure; yet each attitude, each
+expression, may refer to events and truths you must have the learning to
+remember, the acuteness to penetrate, or the imagination to conjecture.
+But to a classical judge of sculpture, would not the exquisite pleasure
+of discovering the all not told in Thorwaldsen’s masterpiece be
+destroyed if the artist had engraved in detail his meaning at the base
+of the statue? Is it not the same with the typical sense which the
+artist in words conveys? The pleasure of divining art in each is the
+noble exercise of all by whom art is worthily regarded.
+
+We of the humbler race not unreasonably shelter ourselves under the
+authority of the masters, on whom the world’s judgment is pronounced;
+and great names are cited, not with the arrogance of equals, but with
+the humility of inferiors.
+
+The author of Zanoni gives, then, no key to mysteries, be they trivial
+or important, which may be found in the secret chambers by those who
+lift the tapestry from the wall; but out of the many solutions of the
+main enigma--if enigma, indeed, there be--which have been sent to him,
+he ventures to select the one which he subjoins, from the ingenuity and
+thought which it displays, and from respect for the distinguished writer
+(one of the most eminent our time has produced) who deemed him worthy
+of an honour he is proud to display. He leaves it to the reader to agree
+with, or dissent from the explanation. “A hundred men,” says the old
+Platonist, “may read the book by the help of the same lamp, yet all may
+differ on the text, for the lamp only lights the characters,--the mind
+must divine the meaning.” The object of a parable is not that of a
+problem; it does not seek to convince, but to suggest. It takes
+the thought below the surface of the understanding to the deeper
+intelligence which the world rarely tasks. It is not sunlight on the
+water; it is a hymn chanted to the nymph who hearkens and awakes below.
+
+....
+
+
+
+
+“ZANONI EXPLAINED.
+
+BY--.”
+
+MEJNOUR:--Contemplation of the Actual,--SCIENCE. Always old, and must
+last as long as the Actual. Less fallible than Idealism, but less
+practically potent, from its ignorance of the human heart.
+
+ZANONI:--Contemplation of the Ideal,--IDEALISM. Always necessarily
+sympathetic: lives by enjoyment; and is therefore typified by eternal
+youth. (“I do not understand the making Idealism less undying (on this
+scene of existence) than Science.”--Commentator. Because, granting
+the above premises, Idealism is more subjected than Science to the
+Affections, or to Instinct, because the Affections, sooner or later,
+force Idealism into the Actual, and in the Actual its immortality
+departs. The only absolutely Actual portion of the work is found in the
+concluding scenes that depict the Reign of Terror. The introduction of
+this part was objected to by some as out of keeping with the fanciful
+portions that preceded it. But if the writer of the solution has rightly
+shown or suggested the intention of the author, the most strongly
+and rudely actual scene of the age in which the story is cast was the
+necessary and harmonious completion of the whole. The excesses and
+crimes of Humanity are the grave of the Ideal.--Author.) Idealism is the
+potent Interpreter and Prophet of the Real; but its powers are impaired
+in proportion to their exposure to human passion.
+
+VIOLA:--Human INSTINCT. (Hardly worthy to be called LOVE, as Love would
+not forsake its object at the bidding of Superstition.) Resorts, first
+in its aspiration after the Ideal, to tinsel shows; then relinquishes
+these for a higher love; but is still, from the conditions of its
+nature, inadequate to this, and liable to suspicion and mistrust. Its
+greatest force (Maternal Instinct) has power to penetrate some secrets,
+to trace some movements of the Ideal, but, too feeble to command them,
+yields to Superstition, sees sin where there is none, while committing
+sin, under a false guidance; weakly seeking refuge amidst the very
+tumults of the warring passions of the Actual, while deserting the
+serene Ideal,--pining, nevertheless, in the absence of the Ideal, and
+expiring (not perishing, but becoming transmuted) in the aspiration
+after having the laws of the two natures reconciled.
+
+(It might best suit popular apprehension to call these three the
+Understanding, the Imagination, and the Heart.)
+
+CHILD:--NEW-BORN INSTINCT, while trained and informed by Idealism,
+promises a preter-human result by its early, incommunicable vigilance
+and intelligence, but is compelled, by inevitable orphanhood, and
+the one-half of the laws of its existence, to lapse into ordinary
+conditions.
+
+AIDON-AI:--FAITH, which manifests its splendour, and delivers its
+oracles, and imparts its marvels, only to the higher moods of the soul,
+and whose directed antagonism is with Fear; so that those who employ
+the resources of Fear must dispense with those of Faith. Yet aspiration
+holds open a way of restoration, and may summon Faith, even when the cry
+issues from beneath the yoke of fear.
+
+DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD:--FEAR (or HORROR), from whose ghastliness men
+are protected by the opacity of the region of Prescription and Custom.
+The moment this protection is relinquished, and the human spirit pierces
+the cloud, and enters alone on the unexplored regions of Nature, this
+Natural Horror haunts it, and is to be successfully encountered only
+by defiance,--by aspiration towards, and reliance on, the Former and
+Director of Nature, whose Messenger and Instrument of reassurance is
+Faith.
+
+MERVALE:--CONVENTIONALISM.
+
+NICOT:--Base, grovelling, malignant PASSION.
+
+GLYNDON:--UNSUSTAINED ASPIRATION: Would follow Instinct, but is
+deterred by Conventionalism, is overawed by Idealism, yet attracted,
+and transiently inspired, but has not steadiness for the initiatory
+contemplation of the Actual. He conjoins its snatched privileges with a
+besetting sensualism, and suffers at once from the horror of the one and
+the disgust of the other, involving the innocent in the fatal conflict
+of his spirit. When on the point of perishing, he is rescued by
+Idealism, and, unable to rise to that species of existence, is grateful
+to be replunged into the region of the Familiar, and takes up his rest
+henceforth in Custom. (Mirror of Young Manhood.)
+
+....
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Human Existence subject to, and exempt from, ordinary conditions
+(Sickness, Poverty, Ignorance, Death).
+
+SCIENCE is ever striving to carry the most gifted beyond ordinary
+conditions,--the result being as many victims as efforts, and the
+striver being finally left a solitary,--for his object is unsuitable to
+the natures he has to deal with.
+
+The pursuit of the Ideal involves so much emotion as to render the
+Idealist vulnerable by human passion, however long and well guarded,
+still vulnerable,--liable, at last, to a union with Instinct. Passion
+obscures both Insight and Forecast. All effort to elevate Instinct to
+Idealism is abortive, the laws of their being not coinciding (in the
+early stage of the existence of the one). Instinct is either alarmed,
+and takes refuge in Superstition or Custom, or is left helpless to human
+charity, or given over to providential care.
+
+Idealism, stripped of in sight and forecast, loses its serenity, becomes
+subject once more to the horror from which it had escaped, and by
+accepting its aids, forfeits the higher help of Faith; aspiration,
+however, remaining still possible, and, thereby, slow restoration; and
+also, SOMETHING BETTER.
+
+Summoned by aspiration, Faith extorts from Fear itself the saving truth
+to which Science continues blind, and which Idealism itself hails as its
+crowning acquisition,--the inestimable PROOF wrought out by all labours
+and all conflicts.
+
+Pending the elaboration of this proof,
+
+CONVENTIONALISM plods on, safe and complacent;
+
+SELFISH PASSION perishes, grovelling and hopeless;
+
+INSTINCT sleeps, in order to a loftier waking; and
+
+IDEALISM learns, as its ultimate lesson, that self-sacrifice is true
+redemption; that the region beyond the grave is the fitting one for
+exemption from mortal conditions; and that Death is the everlasting
+portal, indicated by the finger of God,--the broad avenue through
+which man does not issue solitary and stealthy into the region of Free
+Existence, but enters triumphant, hailed by a hierarchy of immortal
+natures.
+
+The result is (in other words), THAT THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN LOT IS, AFTER
+ALL, THAT OF THE HIGHEST PRIVILEGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
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