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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
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+Title:  Zanoni
+
+Author:  Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+June, 2001 [Etext #2664]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
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+This etext was prepared by Dave Ceponis and Sue Asscher.
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+
+
+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 book-
+shop.  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 Fire-
+tower, 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 ccommon 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 pocket-
+book, 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 Etext of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
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