2 files changed, 4060 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/b036w10.txt b/old/b036w10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c727cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/b036w10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4060 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook Zicci, Complete, by Bulwer-Lytton,
+#36 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: Zicci, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7608]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 21, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZICCI, COMPLETE, BY LYTTON ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
+and David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+                                ZICCI
+
+
+                               A Tale
+
+
+
+
+                               BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+In the gardens at Naples, one summer evening in the last century, some
+four or five gentlemen were seated under a tree drinking their sherbet
+and listening, in the intervals of conversation, to the music which
+enlivened that gay and favorite 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 revery.  One of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom,
+and tapping him on the back, said, "Glyndon, why, what ails you?  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 but 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 gentlemen present then declared that they could comprehend, and
+had felt, what the stranger had described.  "According to one of our
+national superstitions," said Merton, 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 hold
+that at that instant God is deciding the hour either of your death or
+that 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.
+
+"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?" asked the stranger.  "For my part, I
+think--"
+
+"What do you think, sir?" asked Glyndon, curiously.
+
+"I think," continued the stranger, "that it is the repugnance and horror
+of that which is human about us to 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?" asked Merton, with an incredulous
+smile.
+
+"Nay, I said not so.  I can form no notion of a spirit, as the
+metaphysicians do, and certainly have no fear of one; but there may be
+forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae to
+which I have compared them.  The monster that lives and dies in a drop
+of water, carniverous, 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
+malignant and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall
+between them and us, merely by different modifications of matter."
+
+"And could that wall never 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 of nature 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 Merton, at last.
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"I have met him often," said the Neapolitan, who was named Count Cetoxa;
+"it was, if you remember, as my companion that he joined you.  He has
+been some months at Naples; he is very rich,--indeed enormously so.  Our
+acquaintance commenced in a strange way."
+
+"How was it?"
+
+"I had been playing at a public gaming-house, and had lost considerably.
+I rose from the table, resolved no longer to tempt Fortune, when this
+gentleman, who had hitherto been a spectator, laying his hand on my arm,
+said with politeness, 'Sir, I see you enjoy play,--I dislike it; but I
+yet 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 the stranger 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, the
+stranger 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."
+
+"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.'  The
+spectator 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,--blustered more loudly, and at length fairly challenged
+him.  'I never seek a quarrel, and I never shun a danger,' returned my
+partner; and six or seven of us adjourned to the garden behind the
+house.  I was of course my partner's second.  He took me aside.  'This
+man will die,' said he; 'see that he is buried privately in the church
+of St. Januario, by the side of his father.'
+
+"'Did you know his family?' I asked with great surprise.  He made no
+answer, but drew his sword and walked deliberately to the spot we had
+selected.  The Sicilian was a renowned swordsman; nevertheless, in the
+third pass 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?'  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 St. Januario.  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 great 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 gray hairs concealed.  The accomplice
+was executed."
+
+"And this stranger, 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 Salvolio; 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 occured to him to name the place of
+burial, by an instinct he could not account for."
+
+"A very lame story," said Merton.
+
+"Yes, but we Italians are superstitious.  The alleged instinct was
+regarded as the whisper of Providence; 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."
+
+"What is his name?" asked Glyndon.
+
+"Zicci.  Signor Zicci."
+
+"Is it not an Italian name?  He speaks English like a native."
+
+"So he does French and German, as well as Italian, to my knowledge.  But
+he declares himself a Corsican by birth, though I cannot hear of any
+eminent Corsican family of that name.  However, what matters his birth
+or parentage?  He is rich, generous, and the best swordsman I ever saw
+in my life.  Who would affront him?"
+
+"Not I, certainly," said Merton, 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 Zicci is some impostor, some clever
+rogue; and the Neapolitan shares 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
+devilish 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 honor.  Besides, this
+stranger, with his grand features and lofty air,--so calm, so
+unobtrusive,--has nothing in common with the forward garrulity of an
+impostor."
+
+"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
+gets on the love affair?"
+
+"Oh! Isabel could not see me to-night.  The old woman gave me a note of
+excuse."
+
+"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 Zicci."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Clarence Glyndon was a young man of small but independent fortune.  He
+had, early in life, evinced considerable promise in the art of painting,
+and rather from enthusiasm than the want of a profession, he had
+resolved to devote himself to a career which in England has been seldom
+entered upon by persons who can live on their own means.  Without being
+a poet, Glyndon had also manifested a graceful faculty for verse, which
+had contributed to win his entry into society above his birth.  Spoiled
+and flattered from his youth upward, his natural talents were in some
+measure relaxed by indolence and that worldly and selfish habit of
+thought which frivolous companionship often engenders, and which is
+withering alike to stern virtue and high genius.  The luxuriance of his
+fancy was unabated; but the affections, which are the life of fancy, had
+grown languid and inactive.  His youth, his vanity, and a restless
+daring and thirst of adventure had from time to time involved him in
+dangers and dilemmas, out of which, of late, he had always extricated
+himself with the ingenious felicity of a clever head and cool heart.  He
+had left England for Rome with the avowed purpose and sincere resolution
+of studying the divine masterpieces of art; but pleasure had soon
+allured him from ambition, and he quitted the gloomy palaces of Rome for
+the gay shores and animated revelries of Naples.  Here he had fallen in
+love--deeply in love, as he said and thought--with a young person
+celebrated at Naples, Isabel di Pisani.  She was the only daughter of an
+Italian by an English mother.  The father had known better days; in his
+prosperity he had travelled, and won in England the affections of a lady
+of some fortune.  He had been induced to speculate; he lost his all; he
+settled at Naples, and taught languages and music.  His wife died when
+Isabel, christened from her mother, was ten years old.  At sixteen she
+came out on the stage; two years afterwards her father departed this
+life, and Isabel was an orphan.
+
+Glyndon, a man of pleasure and a regular attendant at the theatre, had
+remarked the young actress behind the scenes; he fell in love with her,
+and he told her so.  The girl listened to him, perhaps from vanity,
+perhaps from ambition, perhaps from coquetry; she listened, and allowed
+but few stolen interviews, in which she permitted no favor to the
+Englishman it was one reason why he loved her so much.
+
+The day following that on which our story opens, Glyndon was riding
+alone by the shores of the Neapolitan sea, on the other side of the
+Cavern of Pausilippo.  It was past noon; the sun had lost its early
+fervor, and a cool breeze sprang 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 recognized Zicci.
+
+The Englishman saluted him courteously.  "Have you discovered some
+antique?" said he, with a smile; "they are as common as pebbles on this
+road."
+
+"No," replied Zicci; "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.  But," continued Zicci, looking
+up with a slight and cold smile, "why do you linger on your way to
+converse with me on matters in which you neither have knowledge nor
+desire to obtain it?  I read your heart, young Englishman: your
+curiosity is excited; you wish to know me, and not this humble herb.
+Pass on; your desire never can 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 Zicci.  "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?"
+
+"Some have found me so; 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
+amused me."
+
+"I know it; minds like yours are attracted by mystery."
+
+Glyndon was piqued at those 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."
+
+Zicci 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 Isabel, 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 rapt in delicious revery, a slight touch upon his
+shoulder; he turned, and beheld Zicci.  "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, Zicci disappeared; and when
+the Englishman saw him again, he was in the box of one of the Neapolitan
+ministers, where Glyndon could not follow him.
+
+Isabel now left the stage, and Glyndon accosted her with impassioned
+gallantry.  The actress was surprisingly beautiful; of fair complexion
+and golden hair, her countenance was relieved from the tame and gentle
+loveliness which the Italians suppose to be the characteristics of
+English beauty, by the contrast of dark eyes and lashes, by a forehead
+of great height, to which the dark outline of the eyebrows gave some
+thing of majesty and command.  In spite of the slightness of virgin
+youth, her proportions had the nobleness, blent with the delicacy, that
+belongs to the masterpieces of ancient sculpture; and there was a
+conscious pride in her step, and in the swanlike bend of her stately
+head, as she turned with an evident impatience from the address of her
+lover.  Taking aside an old woman, who was her constant and confidential
+attendant at the theatre, she said, in an earnest whisper,--
+
+"Oh, Gionetta, he is here again!  I have seen him again!  And again, he
+alone of the whole theatre withholds from me his applause.  He scarcely
+seems to notice me; his indifference mortifies me to the soul,--I could
+weep for rage and sorrow."
+
+"Which is he, my darling?" said the old woman, with fondness in her
+voice.  "He must be dull,--not worth thy thoughts."
+
+The actress drew Gionetta nearer to the stage, and pointed out to her a
+man in one of the nearer boxes, conspicuous amongst all else by the
+simplicity of his dress and the extraordinary beauty of his features.
+
+"Not worth a thought, Gionetta," repeated Isabel,--"not worth a thought!
+Saw you ever one so noble, so godlike?"
+
+"By the Holy Mother!" answered Gionetta, "he is a proper man, and has
+the air of a prince."
+
+The prompter summoned the Signora Pisani.  "Find out his name,
+Gionetta," said she, sweeping on 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 Isabel sought only those of one calm
+and unmoved spectator; she exerted herself as if inspired.  The stranger
+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.  Isabel, who was in the character of a jealous
+and abandoned mistress, 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 if this young Englishman should accompany her home?"
+
+"The presuming barbarian!  At all events let him bleed for his folly.  I
+hear that she admits him to secret interviews.  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,--let
+him be watched, and the fitting occasion taken.  I trust him to you,--
+robbers murder him; you understand: the country swarms with them.
+Plunder and strip him.  Take three men; the rest shall be my escort."
+
+Mascari shrugged his shoulders, and bowed submissively.  Meanwhile
+Glyndon besought Isabel, who recovered but slowly, to return home in his
+carriage. (1)  She had done so once or twice before, though she had
+never permitted him to accompany her.  This time she refused, and with
+some petulance.  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 Isabel, the offer was
+accepted; the actress, with a mixture of naivete and coquetry, gave her
+handy to her lover, who kissed it with delight.  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 Zicci then suddenly
+occurred to him; he had forgotten it in the interest of his lover's
+quarrel with Isabel.  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, who hustled and jostled
+and pressed upon him; but he recognized no familiar countenances.  While
+pausing irresolute, he heard Merton's voice calling on him, and to his
+great relief discovered his friend making his way through the throng.
+
+"I have secured you a place in the Count Cetoxa's carriage," said he.
+"Come along, he is waiting for us."
+
+"How kind in you!  How did you find me out?"
+
+"I met Zicci in the passage.  'Your friend is at the door of the
+theatre,' said he; 'do not let him go home alone 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
+asked Cetoxa, who was with me, to accompany you."
+
+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; "ecco Inglese!"  Glyndon imperfectly heard the
+exclamation as the carriage drove on.  He reached home in safety.
+
+"Have you discovered who he is?" asked the actress, as she was now alone
+in the carriage with Gionetta.
+
+"Yes, he is the celebrated Signor Zicci, about whom the court has run
+mad.  They say he is so rich,--oh, so much richer than any of the
+Inglese!  But a bird in the hand, my angel, is better than--"
+
+"Cease," interrupted the young actress.  "Zicci!  Speak of the
+Englishman no more."
+
+The carriage was now entering that more lonely and remote part of the
+city in which Isabel's house was situated, when it suddenly stopped.
+
+Gionetta, in alarm, thrust her head out of 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 arms round the form of the fair actress, and
+endeavored to lift her from the carriage.  But the Signora Pisani was
+not an ordinary person; she had been before exposed to all the dangers
+to which the beauty of the low-born was subjected amongst a lawless and
+profligate nobility.  She thrust back the assailant with a power that
+surprised him, and in the next moment the blade of a dagger gleamed
+before his eyes.  "Touch me," said she, drawing herself to the farther
+end of the carriage, "and I strike!"
+
+The mask drew back.
+
+"By the body of Bacchus, a bold spirit!" said he, half laughing and half
+alarmed.  "Here, Luigi, Giovanni! disarm and seize her.  Harm her not."
+
+The mask retired from the door, and another and yet taller form
+presented itself.  "Be calm, Isabel di 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 Zicci.  "Be calm, be hushed; I can save
+you."  He vanished, leaving Isabel 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 third guarded
+the well-trained steeds of the party; three others, besides Zicci and
+the one who had first accosted Isabel, stood apart by a carriage drawn
+to the side of the road.  To these Zicci 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, shoot him!" said Zicci,
+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 Zicci, as he
+entered the vehicle containing Isabel, and 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 Zicci.  "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, for I
+showed them his signet-ring, and accordingly dispersed; I then joined my
+own band, whom I had left in the rear.  You know all.  We are at your
+door."
+
+(1) At that time in Naples carriages were both cheaper to hire, and more
+necessary for strangers than they are now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Zicci was left alone with the young Italian.  She had thrown aside her
+cloak and head-gear; her hair, somewhat dishevelled, fell down her ivory
+neck, which the dress partially displayed; she seemed, as she sat in
+that low and humble chamber, a very vision of light and glory.
+
+Zicci gazed at her with an admiration mingled with compassion; he
+muttered a few words to himself, and then addressed her aloud:--
+
+"Isabel di Pisani, I have saved you from a great peril,--not from
+dishonor only, but perhaps from death.  The Prince di --, under the weak
+government of a royal child 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 thee, Isabel di Pisani.  Perhaps
+you would ask me wherefore?"  Zicci paused, and smiled mournfully as he
+added: "My life is not that of others, but I am still human,--I know
+pity; and more, Isabel, I can feel gratitude for affection.  You love
+me; it was my fate to fascinate your eye, to arouse your vanity, to
+inflame your imagination.  It was to warn you from this folly that I
+consented for a few minutes to become your guest.  The Englishman,
+Glyndon, loves thee well,--better than I can ever love; 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 to deserve his
+love; and I tell thee that thou wilt be honored and be happy."
+
+Isabel listened with silent wonder and deep blushes to this strange
+address; and when the voice ceased, she covered her face with her hands
+and wept.
+
+Zicci rose.  "I have fulfilled my duty to you, and I depart.  Remember
+that you are still in danger from the prince; be wary, and be cautious.
+Your best precaution is in flight; farewell."
+
+"Oh, do not leave me yet!  You have read a secret of which I myself was
+scarcely conscious: you despise me,--you, my preserver!  Ah! do not
+misjudge me; I am better, higher than I seem.  Since I saw thee I have
+been a new being."  The poor girl clasped her hands passionately as she
+spoke, and her tears streamed down her cheeks.
+
+"What would you that I should answer?" said Zicci, pausing, but with a
+cold severity in his eye.
+
+"Say that you do not despise,--say that you do not think me light and
+shameless."
+
+"Willingly, Isabel.  I know your heart and your history you are capable
+of great virtues; you have the seeds of a rare and powerful genius.  You
+may pass through the brief period of your human life with a proud step
+and a cheerful heart, if you listen to my advice.  You have been
+neglected from your childhood; you have been thrown among nations at
+once frivolous and coarse; your nobler dispositions, your higher
+qualities, are not developed.  You were pleased with the admiration of
+Glyndon; you thought that the passionate stranger might marry you, while
+others had only uttered the vows that dishonor.  Poor child, it was the
+instinctive desire of right within thee that made thee listen to him;
+and if my fatal shadow had not crossed thy path, thou wouldst have loved
+him well enough, at least, for content.  Return to that hope, and nurse
+again that innocent affection: this is my answer to thee.  Art thou
+contented?"
+
+"No! ah, no!  Severe as thou art, I love better to hear thee
+than, than--What am I saying?  And now you have saved me, I shall pray
+for you, bless you, think of you; and am I never to see you more?  Alas!
+the moment you leave me, danger and dread will darken round me.  Let me
+be your servant, your slave; with you I should have no fear."
+
+A dark shade fell over Zicci's brow; he looked from the ground, on which
+his eyes had rested while she spoke, upon the earnest and imploring face
+of the beautiful creature that now knelt before him, with all the
+passions of an ardent and pure, but wholly untutored and half-savage,
+nature speaking from the tearful eyes and trembling lips.  He looked at
+her with an aspect she could not interpret; in his eyes were kindness,
+sorrow, and even something, she thought, of love: yet the brow frowned,
+and the lip was stern.
+
+"It is in vain that we struggle with our doom," said he, calmly; "listen
+to me yet.  I am a man, Isabel, in whom there are some good impulses yet
+left, but whose life is, on the whole, devoted to a systematic and
+selfish desire to enjoy whatever life can afford.  To me it is given to
+warn: the warning neglected, I interfere no more; I leave her victories
+to that Fate that I cannot baffle of her prey.  You do not understand
+me; no matter: what I am now about to say will be more easy to
+comprehend.  I tell thee to tear from thy heart all thought of me: thou
+hast yet the power.  If thou wilt not obey me, thou must reap the seeds
+that thou wilt sow.  Glyndon, if thou acceptest his homage, will love
+thee throughout life; I, too, can love thee."
+
+"You, you--"
+
+"But with a lukewarm and selfish love, and one that cannot last.  Thou
+wilt be a flower in my path; I inhale thy sweetness and pass on, caring
+not what wind shall sup thee, or what step shall tread thee to the dust.
+Which is the love thou wouldst prefer?"
+
+"But do you, can you love me,--you, you, Zicci,--even for an hour?  Say
+it again."
+
+"Yes, Isabel; I am not dead to beauty, and yours is that rarely given to
+the daughters of men.  Yes, Isabel, I could love thee"
+
+Isabel uttered a cry of joy, seized his hand, and kissed it through
+burning and impassioned tears.  Zicci raised her in his arms and
+imprinted one kiss upon her forehead.
+
+"Do not deceive thyself," he said; "consider well.  I tell thee again
+that my love is subjected to the certain curse of change.  For my part,
+I shall seek thee no more.  Thy fate shall be thine own, and not mine.
+For the rest, fear not the Prince di --.  At present, I can save thee
+from every harm."  With these words he withdrew himself from her
+embrace, and had gained the outer door just as Gionetta came from the
+kitchen with her hands full of such cheer as she had managed to collect
+together.  Zicci laid his hand on the old woman's arm.
+
+"Signor Glyndon," said he, "loves Isabel; he may wed her.  You love your
+mistress: plead for him.  Disabuse her, if you can, of any caprice for
+me.  I am a bird ever on the wing."  He dropped a purse, heavy with
+gold, into Gionetta's bosom, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The palace of Zicci was among the noblest in Naples.  It still stands,
+though ruined and dismantled, in one of those antique streets from which
+the old races of the Norman and the Spaniard have long since vanished.
+
+He ascended the vast staircase, and entered the rooms reserved for his
+private hours.  They were no wise remarkable except for their luxury and
+splendor, and the absence of what men so learned as Zicci was reputed,
+generally prize, namely, books.  Zicci seemed to know everything that
+books can teach; yet of books themselves he spoke and thought with the
+most profound contempt.
+
+He threw himself on a sofa, and dismissed his attendants for the night;
+and here it may be observed that Zicci had no one servant who knew
+anything of his origin, birth, or history.  Some of his attendants he
+had brought with him from other cities; the rest he had engaged at
+Naples.  He hired those only whom wealth can make subservient.  His
+expenditure was most lavish, his generosity, regal; but his orders were
+ever given as those of a general to his army.  The least disobedience,
+the least hesitation, and the offender was at once dismissed.  He was a
+man who sought tools, and never made confidants.
+
+Zicci remained for a considerable time motionless and thoughtful.  The
+hand of the clock before him pointed to the first hour of morning.  The
+solemn voice of the timepiece aroused him from his revery.
+
+"One sand more out of the mighty hour-glass," said he, rising; "one hour
+nearer to the last!  I am weary of humanity.  I will enter into one of
+the countless worlds around me."  He lifted the arras that clothed the
+walls, and touching a strong iron door (then made visible) with a minute
+key which he wore in a ring, passed into an inner apartment lighted by a
+single lamp of extraordinary lustre.  The room was small; a few phials
+and some dried herbs were ranged in shelves on the wall, which was hung
+with snow-white cloth of coarse texture.  From the shelves Zicci
+selected one of the phials, and poured the contents into a crystal cup.
+The liquid was colorless, and sparkled rapidly up in bubbles of light;
+it almost seemed to evaporate ere it reached his lips.  But when the
+strange beverage was quaffed, a sudden change was visible in the
+countenance of Zicci: his beauty became yet more dazzling, his eyes
+shone with intense fire, and his form seemed to grow more youthful and
+ethereal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The next day, Glyndon bent his steps towards Zicci'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.
+Zicci's power seemed mysterious and great, his motives kindly and
+benevolent, yet his manners chilling and repellant.  Why at one moment
+reject Glyndon's acquaintance, at another save him from danger?  How had
+Zicci 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 Zicci.
+
+The signor was at home, and Glyndon was admitted into a lofty saloon,
+where in a few moments Zicci 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, Mr. Glyndon," said Zicci, with a smile; "and do you
+know so little of the South as not to be aware that gallants have always
+rivals?"
+
+"Are you serious?" said Glyndon, coloring.
+
+"Most serious.  You love Isabel di 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 Zicci, haughtily;
+"and to me it matters not 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."
+
+"You will not follow my advice."
+
+"You wrong me!  Why?"
+
+"Because you are constitutionally brave; you are fond of excitement and
+mystery; you like to be the hero of a romance.  I should advise you to
+leave Naples, and you will disdain to do so while Naples contains a foe
+to shun or a mistress to pursue."
+
+"You are right," said the young Englishman, with energy; "and you cannot
+reproach me for such a resolution."
+
+"No, there is another course left to you.  Do you love Isabel di Pisani
+truly and fervently?  If so, marry her, and take a bride to your native
+land."
+
+"Nay," answered Glyndon, embarrassed.  "Isabel is not of my rank; her
+character is strange and self-willed; her education neglected.  I am
+enslaved by her beauty, but I cannot wed her."
+
+Zicci frowned.
+
+"Your love, then, is but selfish lust; and by that love you will be
+betrayed.  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
+harmonize with His solemn ends.  You have before you an option.
+Honorable and generous love may even now work out your happiness and
+effect your escape; a frantic and interested 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 Zicci," said Glyndon, with
+a smile, "if report says true you do not yourself reject the allurements
+of unfettered love."
+
+"If it were necessary that practice square with precept," said Zicci,
+with a sneer, "our pulpits would be empty.  Do you think it matters, in
+the great aggregate of human destinies, what one man's conduct may be?
+Nothing,--not a grain of dust; but it matters much what are the
+sentiments he propagates.  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.  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 I was an Italian?"
+
+"Are you not of Corsica?"
+
+"Tush!" said Zicci, impatiently turning away.  Then, after a pause, he
+resumed, in a mild voice: "Glyndon, do you renounce Isabel di Pisani?
+Will you take three days to consider of 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 Zicci, you,--and you dare to tell me so?"
+
+"Dare!  Alas! you know there is nothing on earth left me to fear!"
+
+These 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 sympathies.  You may have power which I cannot
+comprehend or emulate, or you may be but a keen impostor."
+
+"Well, sir, your logical position is not ill-taken; 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 Isabel di Pisani, I am not
+the less determined never tamely to yield her to another."
+
+Zicci looked gravely at the young man, whose sparkling eyes and
+heightened color testified the spirit to support his words, and replied:
+"So bold! well, it becomes you.  You have courage, then; I thought it.
+Perhaps it may be put to a sharper test than you dream of.  But take my
+advice: wait three days, and tell me then if you will marry this young
+person."
+
+"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 or mistress.  Her
+soul, developed by affection, will elevate your own; it will influence
+your fortunes, exalt your destiny; you will become a great and
+prosperous man.  If, on the contrary, she fall to me, I know not what
+may be her lot; but I know that few can pass the ordeal, and hitherto no
+woman has survived the struggle."
+
+As Zicci spoke, his face became livid, and there was something in his
+voice that froze the warm blood of his 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, only a--"
+
+"Hush!" interrupted Zicci, gently, and with a smile of singular but
+melancholy sweetness: "have you earned the right to ask me these
+questions?  The clays 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
+succumb to curiosity."
+
+Glyndon blushed, and rose.  In spite of his love for Isabel, 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.  It was
+like the fascination of the basilisk.  He held out his hand to Zicci,
+saying, "Well, then, if we are to be rivals, our swords must settle our
+rights; till then I would fain be friends."
+
+"Friends!  Pardon me, I like you too well to give you my friendship.
+You know not what you ask."
+
+"Enigmas again!"
+
+"Enigmas!" cried Zicci, passionately, "Nay: can you dare to solve them!
+Would you brave all that human heart can conceive of peril and of
+horror, so that you at last might stand separated from this visible
+universe side by side with me?  When you can dare this, and when you are
+fit to dare it, I may 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.
+
+Zicci observed him in thoughtful silence.
+
+"He may be worthy," he muttered; "he may, yet--"  He broke off abruptly;
+then, speaking aloud, "Go, Glyndon," said he; "in three days we shall
+meet again."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Perhaps where you can least anticipate.  In any case, we shall meet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Glyndon thought seriously and deeply over all that the mysterious Zicci
+had said to him relative to Isabel.  His imagination was inflamed by the
+vague and splendid promises that were connected with his marriage with
+the poor actress.  His fears, too, were naturally aroused by the threat
+that by marriage alone could he save himself from the rivalry of Zicci,
+--Zicci, born to dazzle and command; Zicci, who united to the apparent
+wealth of a monarch the beauty of a god; Zicci, whose eye seemed to
+foresee, whose hand to frustrate, every danger.  What a rival, and what
+a foe!
+
+But Glyndon's pride, as well as jealousy, was aroused.  He was brave
+comme son epee.  Should he shrink from the power or the enmity of a man
+mortal as himself?  And why should Zicci desire him to give his name and
+station to one of a calling so equivocal?  Might there not be motives he
+could not fathom?  Might not the actress and the Corsican be in league
+with each other?  Might not all this jargon of prophecy--and menace be
+but artifices to dupe him,--the tool, perhaps, of a mountebank and his
+mistress!  Mistress,--ah, no!  If ever maidenhood wrote its modest
+characters externally, that pure eye, that noble forehead, that mien and
+manner so ingenuous even in their coquetry, their pride, assured him
+that Isabel was not the base and guilty thing he had dared for a moment
+to suspect her.  Lost in a labyrinth of doubts and surmises, Glyndon
+turned on the practical sense of the sober Merton to assist and
+enlighten him.
+
+As may be well supposed, his friend listened to his account of his
+interview with Zicci with a half-suppressed and ironical smile.
+
+"Excellent, my dear friend!  This Zicci is another Apollonius of Tyana,
+--nothing less will satisfy you.  What! is it possible that you are the
+Clarence Glyndon of whose career such glowing hopes are entertained,--
+you the man whose genius has been extolled by all the graybeards?  Not a
+boy turned out from a village school but would laugh you to scorn.  And
+so because Signor Zicci tells you that you will be a marvellously great
+man if you revolt all your friends and blight all your prospects by
+marrying a Neapolitan actress, you begin already to think of--
+By Jupiter!  I cannot talk patiently on the subject.  Let the girl
+alone,--that would be the proper plan; or else--"
+
+"You talk very sensibly," interrupted Glyndon, "but you distract me.  I
+will go to Isabel's house; I will see her; I will judge for myself."
+
+"That is certainly the best way to forget her," said Merton.  Glyndon
+seized his hat and sword, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+She was seated outside her door, the young actress.  The sea, which in
+that heavenly bay literally seems to sleep in the arms of the shore,
+bounded the view in front; while to the right, not far off, rose the
+dark and tangled crags to which the traveller of to-day is daily brought
+to gaze on the tomb of Virgil, or compare with the Cavern of Pausilippo
+the archway of Highgate Hill.  There were a few fishermen loitering by
+the cliffs, on which their nets were hung up to dry; and, at a distance,
+the sound of some rustic pipe (more common at that day than in 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; and when that luxury has been known,
+when you have breathed the atmosphere of fairy land, then you will no
+longer wonder why the heart ripens with so sudden and wild a power
+beneath the rosy skies and amidst the glorious foliage of the South.
+
+The young actress was seated by the door of her house; overhead a rude
+canvas awning sheltered her from the sun; on her lap lay the manuscript
+of a new part in which she was shortly to appear.  By her side was the
+guitar on which she had been practising the airs that were to ravish the
+ears of the cognoscenti.  But the guitar had been thrown aside in
+despair; her voice this morning did not obey her will.  The manuscript
+lay unheeded, and 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 color seemed
+to deepen the golden hue of the 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 Isabel looked so lovely.
+
+By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold, stood
+Gionetta, with her hands thrust up to the elbow in two huge recesses on
+either side her gown,--pockets, indeed, they might be called by
+courtesy; such pockets as Beelzebub's grandmother might have shaped for
+herself, bottomless pits in miniature.
+
+"But I assure you," said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, earsplitting
+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 the 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, cospetto! that
+they shoe their horses with steak; 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!"
+
+"Gionetta, is he not god-like?"
+
+"Sancta Maria!  he is handsome, bellissimo; and when you are his wife,--
+for they say these English are never satisfied unless they marry--"
+
+"Wife!  English!  Whom are you talking of?"
+
+"Why, the young English signor, to be sure."
+
+"Chut!  I thought you spoke of Zicci."
+
+"Oh!  Signor Zicci is very rich and very generous; but he
+wants to be your cavalier, not your husband.  I see that,--leave me
+alone.  When you are married, then you will see how amiable Signor Zicci
+will be.  Oh, per fede! but he will be as close to your husband as the
+yolk to the white; that he will.
+
+"Silence, Gionetta!  How wretched I am to have no one else to speak to--
+to advise me.  Oh, beautiful sun!" and the girl pressed her hand to her
+heart with wild energy, "why do you light every spot but this?  Dark,
+dark!  And a little while ago I was so calm, so innocent, so gay.  I did
+not hate you then, Gionetta, hateful as your talk was; I hate you now.
+Go in; leave me alone--leave me."
+
+"And indeed it is time I should leave you, for the polenta will be
+spoiled, and you have eaten 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 Isabel of your own to spoil.  I'll go and see to
+the polenta."
+
+"Since I have known this man," said the actress, half aloud, "since his
+dark eyes have fascinated 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.  Is it, indeed, that he is a sorcerer,
+as I have heard?  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.
+
+"Isabella! carissima! Isabella!"
+
+She turned, and saw Glyndon.  The sight of his fair young face calmed
+her at once.  She did not love him, yet his sight gave her pleasure.
+She had for him a kind and grateful feeling.  Ah, if she had never
+beheld Zicci!
+
+"Isabel," said the Englishman, drawing her again to the bench from which
+she had risen, and seating himself beside her, "you know how
+passionately I love thee.  Hitherto thou hast played with my impatience
+and my ardor, thou hast sometimes smiled, sometimes frowned away my
+importunities for a reply to my suit; 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 favored?"
+
+Isabel 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 have told me, Isabel, that you do not love this destiny,
+glittering though it seem,--that your heart is not in the vocation which
+your talents adorn."
+
+"Ah, no!" said the actress, her eyes filling with tears, "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 Isabel di
+Pisani!'  Ah! Isabel, I adore thee: tell me that I do not worship in
+vain."
+
+"Thou art good and fair," said Isabel, gazing on her lover as he pressed
+his cheek nearer to hers, 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 now describest in our tranquil climates is the love of innocence
+and youth."
+
+"And it is the innocence he would destroy," said Isabel, rather to
+herself than to him.
+
+Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
+
+"No, it may not be!" she said, rising, and extricating her hand gently
+from his grasp.  "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 with me day by day.  It is like the shadow
+of twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly round.  My hour approaches; a
+little while, and it will be night!"
+
+As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and perturbation.
+"Isabel!" 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."
+
+Isabel 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 rigor and tension of that wonderful face
+relaxed, the color 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 Zicci.  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 Isabel, 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 Isabel, in a stifled tone; "there must be the
+hand of Fate in this.  I can speak no more to you now; farewell."
+
+She sprang past him into the house and closed the door.  Glyndon did not
+dare to follow her, nor, strange as it may seem, was he so inclined.
+The thought and recollection of that moonlight hour in the gardens, of
+the strange address of Zicci, froze up all human passion; Isabel
+herself, if not forgotten, shrank 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+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.
+Is not Art a wonderful thing?  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, middle-sized, but rather inclined to corpulence, was clothed in a
+loose dressing-robe of rich brocade; on a table before him lay his 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 barricaded window, "well, you
+cannot even guess who this insolent meddler was?  A pretty person you to
+act the part of a Prince's Ruffiano!"
+
+"Am I to be blamed for dulness in not being able to conjecture who had
+the courage to thwart the projects of the Prince di --.  As well blame
+me for not accounting for miracles."
+
+"I will tell thee who it was, most sapient Mascari."
+
+"Who, your Excellency?"
+
+"Zicci."
+
+"Ah! he has the daring of the devil.  But why does your Excellency feel
+so assured,--does he court the actress?"
+
+"I know not; but there is a tone in that foreigner's voice that I never
+can mistake,--so clear, and yet so hollow; when I hear it I almost fancy
+there is such a thing as conscience.  However, we must rid ourselves of
+an impertinent.  Mascari, Signor Zicci hath not yet honored our poor
+house with his presence.  He is a distinguished stranger,--we must give
+a banquet in his honor."
+
+"Ah! and the cypress wine!  The cypress is the proper emblem of the
+grave."
+
+"But this anon.  I am superstitious; there are strange stories of his
+power and foresight,--remember the Sicilian quackery!  But meanwhile the
+Pisani--"
+
+"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 honor is now enlisted in this pursuit: Isabel
+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."
+
+Before Mascari could reply, the gentleman of the chamber announced the
+Signor Zicci.
+
+The Prince involuntarily laid his hand on the sword placed on the table;
+then, with a smile at his own impulse, rose, and met the foreigner at
+the threshold with all the profuse and respectful courtesy of Italian
+simulation.
+
+"This is an honor highly prized," said the Prince; "I have long desired
+the friendship of one so distinguished--"
+
+"And I have come to give you that friendship," replied Zicci, in a sweet
+but chilling voice.  "To no man yet in Naples have I extended this hand:
+permit it, Prince, to grasp your own."
+
+The Neapolitan bowed over the hand he pressed; but as he touched it, a
+shiver came over him, and his heart stood still.
+
+Zicci 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, your
+Excellency, that, unconsciously perhaps, we are rivals.  Can we not
+accommodate our pretensions?  A girl of no moment, an actress, bah! it
+is not worth a quarrel.  Shall we throw for her?  He who casts the
+lowest shall resign his claim?"
+
+Mascari opened his small eyes to their widest extent; the Prince, no
+less surprised, but far too well world-read even to show what he felt,
+laughed aloud.
+
+"And were you, then, the cavalier who spoiled my night's chase and
+robbed me of my white doe?  By Bacchus, it was prettily done."
+
+"You must forgive me, my Prince; I knew not who it was, or my respect
+would have silenced my gallantry."
+
+"All stratagems fair in love, as in war.  Of course you profited by my
+defeat, and did not content yourself with leaving the little actress at
+her threshold?"
+
+"She is Diana for me," answered Zicci, lightly; "whoever wins the wreath
+will not find a flower faded."
+
+"And now you would cast for her,--well; but they tell me you are ever a
+sure player."
+
+"Let Signor Mascari cast for us."
+
+"Be it so.  Mascari, the dice."
+
+Surprised and perplexed, the parasite took up the three dice, deposited
+them gravely in the box, and rattled them noisily, while Zicci threw
+himself back carelessly in his chair and said, "I give the first chance
+to your Excellency."
+
+Mascari interchanged a glance with his patron and threw the numbers were
+sixteen.
+
+"It is a high throw," said Zicci, calmly; "nevertheless, Signor Mascari,
+I do not despond."
+
+Mascari gathered up the dice, shook the box, and rolled the contents
+once more upon 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 shaking his head in puzzled
+wonder.
+
+"I have won, you see," said Zicci: "may we be friends still?"
+
+"Signor," said the Prince, obviously struggling with angel and
+confusion, "the victory is already 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."
+
+"Enough," said the Prince, forcing a smile, "I yield.  Let me prove that
+I do not yield ungraciously: will you honor me with your presence at a
+little feast I propose to give on the royal birthday?"
+
+"It is indeed a happiness to hear one command of yours which I can
+obey."
+
+Zicci then turned the conversation, talked lightly and gayly and soon
+afterwards departed.
+
+"Villain," then exclaimed the Prince, grasping Mascari by the collar,
+"you have 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 hold of his
+parasite, who quietly resettled his cravat.
+
+"My blood is up!  I will win this girl, if I die for it.  Who laughed?
+Mascari, didst thou laugh?"
+
+"I, your Excellency,--I laugh?"
+
+"It sounded behind me," said the Prince, gazing round.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+It was the day on which Zicci had told Glyndon that he should ask for
+his decision in respect to Isabel,--the third day since their last
+meeting.  The Englishman could not come to a resolution.  Ambition,
+hitherto the leading passion of his soul, could not yet be silenced by
+love, and that love, such as it was, unreturned, beset by suspicions and
+doubts which vanished in the presence of Isabel, and returned when her
+bright face shone on his eyes no more, for les absents ont toujours
+tort.  Perhaps had he been quite alone, his feelings of honor, of
+compassion, of virtue, might have triumphed, and he would have resolved
+either to fly from Isabel or to offer the love that has no shame.  But
+Merton, cold, cautious, experienced, wary (such a nature has ever power
+over the imaginative and the impassioned), was at hand to ridicule the
+impression produced by Zicci, and the notion of delicacy and honor
+towards an Italian actress.  It is true that Merton, who was no
+profligate, advised him to quit all pursuit of Isabel; but then the
+advice was precisely of that character which, if it deadens love,
+stimulates passion.  By representing Isabel as one who sought to play a
+part with him, he excused to Glyndon his own selfishness,--he enlisted
+the Englishman's vanity and pride on the side of his pursuit.  Why
+should not he beat an adventuress at her own weapons?
+
+Glyndon not only felt indisposed on that day to meet Zicci, but he felt
+also a strong desire to defeat the mysterious prophecy that the meeting
+should take place.  Into this wish Merton readily entered.  The young
+men agreed to be absent from Naples that day.  Early in the morning they
+mounted their horses and took the road to Baiae.  Glyndon left word at
+his hotel that if Signor Zicci sought him, it was in the neighborhood of
+the once celebrated watering-place of the ancients that he should be
+found.
+
+They passed by Isabel's house; but Glyndon resisted the temptation of
+pausing there, and threading the grotto of Pausilippo, 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 Merton had heard much of the excellence of the macaroni at
+Portici, and Merton was a bon vivant.
+
+They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under an
+awning.  Merton was more than usually gay; he pressed the lacryma upon
+his friend, and conversed gayly.  "Well, my dear friend, we have foiled
+Signor Zicci in one of his predictions at least.  You will have no faith
+in him hereafter."
+
+"The Ides are come, not gone."
+
+"Tush! if he is a soothsayer, you are not 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 suppose Zicci to be a prophet,--a reader of the future; perhaps
+an associate of Genii and Spirits!"
+
+"I know not what to conjecture; but I see no reason why he should seek,
+even if an impostor, to impose on me.  An impostor must have some motive
+for deluding us,--either ambition or avarice.  I am neither rich nor
+powerful; Zicci spends more in a week than I do in a year.  Nay, a
+Neapolitan banker told me that the sums invested by Zicci in his hands,
+were enough to purchase half the lands of the Neapolitan noblesse."
+
+"Grant this to be true: do you suppose the love to dazzle and mystify is
+not as strong with some natures as that of gold and power with others?
+Zicci has a moral ostentation; and the same character that makes him
+rival kings in expenditure makes him not disdain to be wondered at even
+by a humble Englishman."
+
+Here the landlord, a little, fat, oily fellow, came up with a fresh
+bottle of lacryma.  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 Merton.  "What say you, Glyndon?"
+
+"I have not yet seen an eruption; I should like it much."
+
+"But is there no danger?" said the prudent Merton.
+
+"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 won't 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 animated Glyndon, whose unequal spirits were at times high and
+brilliant as those of a school-boy 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, then undiminished by the eruption of 1822,
+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.  Their guide was a
+conversable, garrulous fellow, like most of his country and his calling;
+and Merton, whose chief characteristics were a sociable temper and a
+hardy commonsense, 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 Merton.  "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 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 was so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human creature
+could breathe it and live.  I was so astounded that I stood as still as
+a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes and stood before me
+face to face.  Sancta 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 as near as
+I am to you; but its eyes seemed 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 vapor that well-nigh
+stifled me.  Cospetto!  I have spit blood ever since."
+
+"It must be Zicci," whispered Glyndon.
+
+"I knew you would say so," returned Merton, 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 vapor, 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 helm.  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 Good were brought in one view before
+the gaze of man!  Glyndon--the enthusiast, the poet, the artist, the
+dreamer--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 Englishman and the
+guide, not three feet from the spot where the former stood.  Merton
+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.  Merton, 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 vapor.  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 vapor 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 Merton 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 sound 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
+over-strained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off, to the
+guide, to Merton, 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 felt 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 out 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 vapors 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 X.
+
+
+Merton 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, Merton--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 towards them.
+
+As they came near, Merton recognized 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 Sabbath night.  It is he, but his face is
+human now!"
+
+"Signor Inglese," said the voice of Zicci as Glyndon, pale, wan, and
+silent, returned passively the joyous greeting of Merton,--"  Signor
+Inglese, I told your friend we should meet to-night; you see you have
+not foiled my prediction."
+
+"But how, but where?" stammered Merton, 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 vapor had done its
+work.  Adieu! good night 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?"
+
+Zicci 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 fate.
+Will you marry Isabel di Pisani, or lose her forever?  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: at midnight I will be with you!"
+
+"Incomprehensible being," replied the Englishman, "I would leave the
+life you have preserved in your own hands.  But since I have known you,
+my whole nature has changed.  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.  Instruct me,
+school me, make me thine; and I surrender to thee at once, and without a
+murmur, the woman that, till I saw thee, I would have defied a world to
+obtain."
+
+"I ask not the sacrifice, Glyndon," replied Zicci, coldly, yet mildly,
+"yet--shall I own it to thee?--I am touched by the devotion I have
+inspired.  I sicken for human companionship, sympathy, and friendship;
+yet I dread to share them, for bold must be the man who can partake my
+existence and enjoy my confidence.  Once more I say to thee, in
+compassion and in warning, the choice of life is in thy hands,--to-
+morrow it will be too late.  On the one hand, Isabel, a tranquil home, a
+happy and serene life; on the other hand all is darkness, darkness that
+even this eye cannot penetrate."
+
+"But thou hast told me that if I wed Isabel I must be contented to be
+obscure; and if I refuse, that knowledge and power may be mine."
+
+"Vain man! knowledge and power are not happiness."
+
+"But they are better than happiness.  Say, if I marry Isabel, wilt thou
+be my master, my guide?  Say this, and I am resolved."
+
+"Never!  It is only the lonely at heart, the restless, the desperate,
+that may be my pupils."
+
+"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; at midnight thou shalt give it in one
+word,--ay, or no!  Farewell till then!"
+
+The mystic waved his hand, and descending rapidly, was seen no more.
+
+Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Merton, 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, XI.
+
+
+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 which
+those habitations had been peopled.  The language of words is dead, but
+the language of gestures remains little impaired.  A fisherman,--
+peasant, of Naples will explain to you the motions, the attitudes, the
+gestures of the figures painted on the antique vases better than the
+most learned antiquary of Gottingen or Leipsic.
+
+But now, as the Englishmen rode slowly through the deserted streets,
+lighted but by the lamps of heaven, all the gayety of the 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 happily
+merging this indolent individuality amidst an energetic and active
+population.
+
+The Englishmen rode on in silence, for Glyndon neither appeared to heed
+or hear the questions and comments of Merton, and Merton 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 last hour of night.  Glyndon started
+from his revery, and looked anxiously around.  As the final stroke died,
+the noise of hoofs rang 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 recognized the features and mien of
+Zicci.
+
+"What! do we meet again, signor?" said Merton, in a vexed but drowsy
+tone.
+
+"Your friend and I have business together," replied Zicci, as he wheeled
+his powerful and fiery 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 Zicci, 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 Merton," said Glyndon.  "I will join you before you
+reach the hotel."
+
+Merton nodded, whistled, and pushed his horse into a kind of amble.
+
+"Now your answer,--quick."
+
+"I have decided: the love of Isabel has vanished from my heart.  The
+pursuit is over."
+
+"You have decided?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"Adieu! join your friend."
+
+Zicci 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.
+
+Merton was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute after they
+had parted.
+
+"What business can you have with Zicci?  Will you not confide in me?"
+
+"Merton, 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 Zicci
+himself on a spot in which he could never 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 long been laid, was
+lighted at his heart,--the asbestos fire that, once lit, is never to be
+quenched.  All his early aspiration, his young ambition, his longings
+for the laurel, were mingled in one passionate yearning to overpass 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 beauty ever promised, that mortal hope ever
+whispered, for one hour with Zicci 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 XII.
+
+
+The sleep of Glyndon that night 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 look more ardently for the Penetralia.
+
+He dressed himself, and was relieved to find that Merton 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 Isabel returned
+to his heart.  It was a holy--for it was a human--image; he had resigned
+her, and he repented.  The light of day served, if not to dissipate, at
+least to sober, the turbulence and fervor of the preceding night.  But
+was it indeed too late to retract his resolve?  "Too late!" terrible
+words!  Of what do we not repent, when the Ghost of the Deed returns to
+us to say, "Thou hast no recall?"
+
+He started impatiently from his seat, seized his hat and sword, 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.  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 plays.  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, neatly folded, on the chair
+beside it.  Isabel was not there; and Glyndon, as he gazed around,
+observed that the casement which opened to the ground was wrenched and
+broken, and several fragments of the shattered glass lay below.  The
+light flashed at once upon Glyndon's mind,--the ravisher had borne away
+his prize.  The ominous words of Zicci were fulfilled: it was too late!
+Wretch that he was, perhaps he might have saved her!  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.  He resolved to repair at once
+to the abode of Zicci.  On arriving at the palace of the Corsican, he
+was informed that the signor was gone to the banquet of the Prince di --,
+and would not return until late.  He turned in dismay from the door,
+and perceived the heavy carriage of the Count Cetoxa rolling along the
+narrow street.  Cetoxa recognized him and stopped the carriage.
+
+"Ah my dear Signor Glyndon," said he, leaning out of the window, "and
+how goes your health?  You heard the news?"
+
+"What news?" asked Glyndon, mechanically.
+
+"Why, the beautiful actress,--the wonder of Naples!  I always thought
+she would have good luck."
+
+"Well, well, what of her?"
+
+"The Prince di-- has taken a prodigious fancy to her, and has carried
+her to his own palace.  The Court is a little scandalized."
+
+"The villain! by force?"
+
+"Force!  Ha! ha! my dear signor, what need of force to persuade an
+actress to accept the splendid protection of one of the wealthiest
+noblemen in Italy?  Oh, no! you may be sure she went willingly enough.
+I only just heard the news: the prince himself proclaimed his triumph
+this morning, and the accommodating Mascari has been permitted to
+circulate it.  I hope the connection will not last long, or we shall
+lose our best singer.  Addio!"
+
+Glyndon stood mute and motionless.  He knew not what to think, to
+believe, or how to act.  Even Merton was not at hand to advise him.  His
+conscience smote him bitterly; and half in despair, half in the
+courageous wrath of jealousy, he resolved to repair to the palace of the
+prince himself, and demand his captive in the face of his assembled
+guests.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+We must go back to the preceding night.  The actress and her nurse had
+returned from the theatre; and Isabel, 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; and while 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 tire-room.
+
+The clock sounded the hour of midnight, and still Isabel detained the
+nurse; for a vague and foreboding fear, she could not account for, made
+her seek to protract the time of solitude and rest.
+
+At length Gionetta's voice was swallowed up in successive yawns.  She
+took her lamp and departed to her own room, which was placed in the
+upper story of the house.  Isabel was alone.  The half-hour after
+midnight sounded dull and distant, all was still, and she was about to
+enter 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 went to the door.
+
+"Open, Isabel,--it is Zicci," said the voice again.
+
+And why did the actress feel fear no more, and why did that virgin hand
+unbar the door to admit, without a scruple or, a doubt, at that late
+hour, the visit of the fairest cavalier of Naples?  I know not; but
+Zicci had become her destiny, and she obeyed the voice of her preserver
+as if it were the command of Fate.
+
+Zicci entered with a light and hasty step.  His horseman's
+cloak fitted tightly to his noble form, and the raven plumes of his
+broad hat threw a gloomy shade over his commanding features.
+
+The girl followed him into the room, 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 bare shoulders
+and heaving bust.
+
+"Isabel," said Zicci, 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 Isabel, tenderly.
+
+"Thou knowest the penalty,--name, fame, honor, 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 wouldest not give me to
+another; thou lovest me?"
+
+Zicci was silent; but his breast heaved, his cheeks flushed, his eyes
+darted dark but impassioned fire.
+
+"Speak!" exclaimed Isabel, in jealous suspicion of his silence.  "Speak,
+if thou lovest me."
+
+"I dare not tell thee so; I will not yet say I love thee."
+
+"Then what matter my fate?" said Isabel, turning pale and shrinking from
+his side.  "Leave me; I fear no danger.  My life, and therefore my
+honor, is in mine own hands."
+
+"Be not so mad!" said Zicci.  "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 do you care for me?" said the girl, bitterly.  "Thou hast read my
+heart; thou knowest that I would fly with thee to the end of the world,
+if I were but sure of thy love; that all sacrifice of womanhood's repute
+were sweet to me, if regarded as the proof and seal of affection.  But
+to be bound beneath the weight of a cold obligation; to be the beggar on
+the eyes of Indifference; to throw myself on one who loves me not,--that
+were indeed the vilest sin of my sex.  Ah! Zicci, rather let me die."
+
+She had thrown back her clustering hair from her face as 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 senses and the heart.
+
+"Tempt me not to thine own danger, perhaps destruction," exclaimed
+Zicci, in faltering accents; "thou canst not dream of what thou wouldest
+demand.  Come," and, advancing, he wound his arm round her waist, "come,
+Isabel!  Believe at least in my friendship, my protection--"
+
+"And not thy love," said the Italian, turning on him her hurried and
+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 Zicci,--who seemed to stand aloof from his race.  With a deep
+and burning sigh he murmured, "Isabel, I love thee!"  That beautiful
+face, bathed in blushes, drooped upon his bosom; and.  as he bent down,
+his lips sought the rosy mouth,--a long and burning kiss.  Danger, life,
+the world were forgotten!  Suddenly Zicci tore himself from her.
+
+"Oh! what have I said?  It is gone,--my power to preserve thee, to guard
+thee, to foresee the storm in thy skies, is gone forever.  No matter!
+Haste, haste; and may love supply the loss of prophecy and power!"
+
+Isabel 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 in the inner room.
+
+"Too late!--fool that I was--too late!" cried Zicci, in a sharp tone of
+agony as he hurried to the outer door.  He opened it, only to be borne
+back by the press of armed men.
+
+Behind, before, escape was cut off.  The room literally swarmed with the
+followers of the ravisher, masked, mailed, armed to the teeth.
+
+Isabel was already in the grasp of two of the myrmidons; her shriek
+smote the ear of Zicci.  He sprang forward, and Isabel heard his wild
+cry in a foreign tongue,--the gleam, the clash of swords.  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 XIV.
+
+
+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 characterized
+the palaces of the great seigneurs of Italy.  Her first thought was for
+Zicci,--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.  She placed her hand on the dagger that at all
+hours she wore concealed in her bosom.  Living or dead, she would be
+faithful still to Zicci There was a new motive to the preservation of
+honor.  The door opened, and the Prince entered, in a dress that
+sparkled with jewels.
+
+"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."
+
+"My lord," said Isabel, with a stern gravity which perhaps the Stage had
+conspired with Nature, to bestow upon her, "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 Isabel, 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 a 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 Isabel, 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 color changed.  He mused a moment, and then,
+re-entering the chamber and advancing towards Isabel, 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 becalm, and your dreams propitious to my hopes!"
+
+With these words he retired, and in a few moments Isabel 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
+Zicci, 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 him 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 secrets of our
+hearts.
+
+"What would you with me?" asked the Prince, motioning his visitor to a
+seat.
+
+"Prince di --," 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 the 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 relentless ambition,--I come to gaze upon
+the last star in a darkening firmament.  By this hour to-morrow space
+shall know it not.  Man, thy days are cumbered!"
+
+"What means this jargon?" said the Prince, in visible astonishment and
+secret awe.  "Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldest thou
+warn me of a danger?  Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some
+unguessed of friend?  Speak out, and plainly.  What danger threatens
+me?"
+
+"Zicci!" replied the stranger.
+
+"Ha! ha!" said the Prince, laughing scornfully; "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
+Zicci,--a knowledge shared but by a few, who--But this touches thee not.
+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 this 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 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 allied himself with the royalty
+of Austria, 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 its splendor 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;
+he was worthy to be of us, worthy to be the pupil of Mejnour,--whom you
+now see 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.
+"Impostor!" he cried, "can you dare thus to play with my credulity?
+Sixty years have passed since my grandsire died; and you, a man younger
+apparently than myself, 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 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 the last
+secrets, perished,--the victim of his own frenzy."
+
+"He was poisoned, and Mejnour fled."
+
+"Mejnour fled not," answered the stranger, quickly and 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 draught
+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.
+
+"On the night on which your grandsire breathed his last, I was
+standing alone at moonlight on the ruins of Persepolis,--for my
+wanderings, space hath no obstacle.  But a truce with this: I loved your
+grandsire; I would save the last of his race.  Oppose not thyself to
+Zicci.  Oppose not thyself 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, 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+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 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 Zicci 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 scared myself ere my researches
+had made it mine, thou wouldest have escaped the curse of which thou
+complainest now.  Thou wouldest not have mourned over the brevity of
+human affection as compared to the duration of thine own existence, for
+thou wouldest 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 demons, 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 Zicci, coldly.  "The transport
+and the sorrow, so wildly blended, which diversify 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 have still
+left to me the sublime pleasures of wisdom and of friendship.  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, Zicci (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 thickened the grosser senses, have blunted the imagination.  I
+relinquish him to his doom."
+
+"And still then, Mejnour, you cherish the desire to increase our scanty
+and scattered host 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 among the nearest ministrants and
+agents gathered round the Throne of Thrones?  What matter a thousand
+victims for one convert to our band?  And you, Zicci," 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 Zicci, 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
+color--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 prophesy 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!  Fool, thou hast
+given up thy youth!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+The Prince di -- was not a man whom Naples could suppose to be addicted
+to superstitious fancies, neither was the age one in which the belief of
+sorcery was prevalent.  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 alchemy, 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 Zicci 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.  His night was sleepless, and the
+next morning he came to the resolution of leaving Isabel in peace until
+after the banquet of that day, to which he had invited Zicci.  He felt
+as if the death of the mysterious Corsican 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 Zicci, 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 gloomy 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 fellest tyrants.  Its operation
+was quick, 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 seigneurie,--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 Zicci, 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 Zicci answered by a whisper: "He who
+plays with loaded dice does not always win."
+
+The Prince bit his lip; and Zicci, passing on, seemed deep in
+conversation with the fawning Mascari.
+
+"Who is the Prince's heir?" asked the Corsican.
+
+"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, the
+feast took place at midday.  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 among 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, 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 Zicci afforded a striking contrast.
+The bearing of this singular person was at all times characterized 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 a certain tone of latent mockery that
+characterized his remarks upon the topics on which the conversation
+fell, seemed 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 (who, as the reader will recollect, had resolved, on learning
+from Cetoxa the capture of the actress, to seek the Prince himself)
+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 of 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 remembering that Zicci was among the guests,
+determined to apply himself to the Corsican.  He therefore, slipping a
+few crowns into the porter's hand, said that he was commissioned to seek
+the Signor Zicci 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 Zicci.  The page did the
+errand; and the Corsican, 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."
+
+Zicci bowed.  The page was despatched with all flattering messages to
+Glyndon, a seat next to Zicci 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 Zicci, touching his arm significantly, whispered in English,
+"I know why you have sought me.  Be silent, and witness what ensues."
+
+"You know, then, that Isabel, 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.  Be still, and learn the fate that awaits the foes of
+Zicci."
+
+"My lord," said the Corsican, speaking aloud, "the Signor Glyndon has
+indeed brought me tidings which, though not unexpected, are unwelcome.
+I learn that which will oblige me to leave Naples to-morrow, though I
+trust but for a short time.  I have now a new motive to make the most of
+the present hour."
+
+"And what, if I may venture to ask, may be the cause which brings such
+affliction on the fair dames of Naples?"
+
+"It is the approaching death of one who honored me with most loyal
+friendship," replied Zicci, 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 Zicci, when some beauty on whom we
+have set our heart 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 Zicci.  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 the Corsican bent upon him with an intent and stern
+brightness that the conscience-stricken host cowered and quailed
+beneath.  Not till he had drained the draught and replaced the glass
+upon the board did Zicci 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 favor 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 Zicci.
+"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 Zicci, "let us change both the wine and the theme."  With
+that the Corsican grew 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 Zicci, 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 spell-bound silence as Zicci 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 all things; how deeply steeped in the coldness of the
+derision that makes sport of life itself!
+
+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 Zicci 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 Zicci 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 Zicci, every tongue was now loosened; every man talked, no
+man listened.  In the serene beauty of the night and scene there was
+something wild and fearful in the contrast of the hubbub and Babel of
+these disorderly roysterers.  One of the Frenchmen in especial, the
+young Due 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 Due 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 Due] 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 lambing, 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 most clamorous
+     gayety my eye fell upon the foreign cavalier, Signor Zicci, whose
+     conversation had so enchanted us all, and I felt a certain chill
+     come over me to perceive that he bore the same calm and
+     unsympathizing smile upon his countenance which had characterized
+     it in his singular and curious stories of the court of Louis XV.  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 Zicci they felt their blood rise and their hands wander
+     to their sword-hilts.  There seemed in the 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 Zicci had
+     infected him, and that in imitating the manner of his guest he
+     surpassed the original, he rallied me on some court gossip which
+     had honored 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 Zicci 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 Isabel di Pisani.  She is here, it is true,
+     not by her own choice,--he carried her hither by force; but he will
+     pretend to swear that she adores him.  Let us insist.  on his
+     producing the secret treasure; and when she enters, the Duc de Lt--
+     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 Due de R-- forgets himself
+     sufficiently to administer it to inc."
+
+     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 honored 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 Zicci, gravely;--"the Prince dare 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 Zicci and myself.  Zicci
+     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 drawn.
+     I had left mine in the ante room; Zicci offered me his own,--I
+     seized it eagerly.  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 Zicci bending over him and
+     whispering in his ear.  The 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, and
+     still he struggled to release himself from Zicci's arms, who
+     continued to whisper (I trust divine comfort) in his ear.  I have
+     seen men die, but, never one who wore such horror on his
+     countenance.  At last all was over; Zicci rose from the corpse, and
+     taking, with great composure, his sword from my hand,--"Ye are
+     witnesses, gentlemen," said he, calmly, "that the Prince brought
+     his fate upon himself.  The last of that illustrious house has
+     perished in a brawl."
+
+     I saw no more of Zicci.  I hastened to the French ambassador 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, and the narration of which first induced me to
+collect the materials of this history, which the reader will perceive,
+as it advances, is altogether different in its nature, its agencies, and
+its aims from those tales of external terror, whether derived from
+ingenious imposture or supernatural mystery, that have given life to
+French melodrama or German romance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+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 Zicci.  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 Zicci 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 Zicci.  "But enough of this.  Meet me at midnight by the
+seashore, 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 will be the crisis of your fate; go.  I have
+business here yet,--remember, Isabel is still in the house of the dead
+man."
+
+As Glyndon yet hesitated, strange thoughts, doubts, and fears that
+longed for speech crowding within him, Mascari approached; and Zicci,
+turning to the Italian and waving his hand to Glyndon, drew the former
+aside.  Glyndon slowly departed.
+
+"Mascari," said Zicci, "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 re-act 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 Isabel di 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 Isabel was
+confined.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+It wanted several minutes of midnight, and Glyndon repaired to the
+appointed spot.  The mysterious empire which Zicci 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 would 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 Isabel?  Why not have prevented the crime
+rather than punished the criminal?  And did Zicci really feel love for
+Isabel?  Love, and yet offer to resign her to himself,--to a rival whom
+his arts could not fail to baffle?  He no longer reverted to the belief
+that Zicci or Isabel 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 Isabel himself?  No.  When, that morning, he
+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
+again from his heart, and he felt no jealous pang at the thought that
+she had been saved by Zicci,--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 bow 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 Zicci, 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..  Such fools
+are we when we aspire to be over-wise!  To be enamoured too madly of the
+goddess of goddesses is only to embrace a cloud, and to forfeit alike
+heaven and earth.
+
+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 Zicci.  The
+figure turned, and he saw the face of a stranger,--a face not stamped by
+the glorious beauty of the Corsican, but equally majestic in its aspect,
+and perhaps still more impressive from the mature age and the
+passionless depth of thought that characterized the expanded forehead
+and deep-set but piercing eyes.
+
+"You seek Zicci," 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 realize your dreams."
+
+"Hath the earth then another Zicci?"
+
+"If not," replied the stranger, "why do you cherish the hope and the
+wild faith to be yourself a Zicci?  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 he 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 won to the air in which the
+beings above mankind move and breathe.  Zicci, great though he be,
+stands not alone; he has his predecessors, his contemporary rivals, and
+long lines of successors are yet to come!"
+
+"And will you tell me," said Glyndon, "that in yourself I behold one of
+that mighty few over whom Zicci has no superiority in power and wisdom?"
+
+"In me," answered the stranger, "you see one from whom Zicci himself
+learned many of his loftiest secrets.  Before his birth my wisdom was!
+On these shores, on this spot, have I stood in ages that your chronicles
+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 on 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 be the hewers of wood.  Even the dim
+traditions of the learned that 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, might
+serve you to trace back their primeval settlements 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 men."
+
+"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 Zicci, 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 can be transferred," replied the stranger.  "Yonder
+lies, anchored in the bay, the vessel in which Zicci 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.  Zicci 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 leapt on shore,
+and Glyndon recognized Zicci.
+
+"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
+realization 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,--no matter why; 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, which indeed, as
+the schoolman said, is power, and the loftiest; that knowledge must be
+thine own.  For this, and for this alone, I surrendered the love of
+Isabel; this, and this alone, must be any recompense."
+
+"I cannot gainsay 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 read the past and the
+future, and to insure life against the sword and against disease?"
+
+"All this may be possible," answered Zicci 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 Zicci, 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 the 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 on the pebbles, whose approach he had not beheld in the moonlight,
+was once more by his side.
+
+Glyndon's eyes followed the receding form of the mysterious Corsican.
+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 Zicci gained the
+boat.  Even at this distance he recognized the once-adored form of
+Isabel.  She waved her hand to him, and across the still and shining air
+came her voice, mournfully and sweetly in her native tongue, "Farewell,
+Clarence--farewell, farewell."
+
+He strove to answer, but the voice touched a chord at his heart, and the
+words failed him.  Isabel 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 refreshing 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 bast 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 II.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+It was about a month after the date of Zicci'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 impostor more dangerous--because more in earnest--than
+Zicci.  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 genial 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 dare 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 a
+while to an Italian adventuress, 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."
+
+"Merton," 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
+fascination.  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 Merton, passionately, but with a tear in his
+eye; "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, Merton: 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 the Calabrian 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 Merton's hand as he spoke, darted from his side, and
+disappeared amidst the crowd.
+
+That day Merton 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 that
+lay far distant to his sight.  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 of 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 overall which made the only garment of the men he had
+hitherto seen, the dress of this person was characterized by all the
+trappings of Calabrian 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 lines 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, party-colored sash were placed
+four silver-hilted pistols; and the sheathed knife, usually worn by
+Italians of the lower order, was 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 in the provincial patois, with which he was
+tolerably familiar, 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 accepted
+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, in the hill
+and on 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 honor 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, in good Italian, "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 street; 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 my friend,
+to whose house I am bound, did not disguise from me the character of the
+neighborhood.  And your name, my friend, if I may call you so?"
+
+"Oh, no ceremonies with me, Excellency.  In the village I am generally
+called Maestro Paulo.  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 humor; though, as his tale proceeded,
+the memories it roused seemed to carry him further 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 characterize
+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 was 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
+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 pirate took a
+fancy to me.  'Serve with us,' said he.  'Too happy,' said I.  Behold me
+then a pirate.  Oh jolly life! how I blest the old notary for turning me
+out of doors!  What feasting! what fighting! what wooing! what
+quarreling!  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 and
+through up to the hilt, with the blood spirting 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 up 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 favor.  But luck deserted us on forsaking our own dear
+old ship.  A storm came on; a plank struck; several of us escaped in the
+boats; 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 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 sun light 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 that boarded the "Niobe"!'
+
+"None of your jests,' said I, mildly.  'Ho, ho,' said he.  'I can't be
+mistaken.  Help there,' and he gripped 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 master'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 had 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 soft
+eyes; so, limiting my rogueries to the theft of a beggar's rags, which I
+compensated him by leaving 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.  Do you know how I spent that night?  I will tell you; 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 her 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,
+bear an excellent character, and can eat my macaroni at Naples without
+any danger to life and limbs.  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 your friends?"
+
+Maestro Paulo turned his black eyes 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 Paulo, I want to make your acquaintance; do me the favor to
+come into yonder 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 Paulo,' 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
+neighbor, 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 favor with all his neighbors.  We
+would guard the old 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 poet and 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 well be conjectured by
+the hoarse, low, monotonous sound 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 village of the ancient Possidonia.  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 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
+gray 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 of 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 that 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 gray 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.  II.
+
+
+The attendants which Mejnour had engaged for his strange abode were such
+as might suit a philosopher of few wants.  An old Armenian, whom Glyndon
+recognized as in the mystic's service at Naples; a tall, hard-featured
+woman from the village, recommended by Maestro Paulo; and two long-
+haired, smooth-spoken, but fierce-visaged youths, from the same place,
+and honored by the same sponsorship,--constituted the establishment.
+The rooms used by the sage were commodious and weather-proof, with some
+remains of ancient splendor 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 belvidere 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, which savored a little of jargon, 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 colors 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 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 Zicci 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, "before one property of herbalism was known to
+them, a stranger had visited a wandering tribe,--if he had told the
+savages that the herbs, which every day they trampled underfoot, were
+endowed with the most potent virtues; that one would restore to health a
+brother on the verge of death; that another would paralyze into idiocy
+their wisest sage; that a third would strike lifeless to the dust their
+most stalwart champion; that tears and laughter, vigor 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 was not all a fable."
+
+One evening, Glyndon 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,--rather faintly recognized than all unknown.  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 through the shadowy and star-lit gallery which conducted to
+Mejnour's apartment.
+
+
+THE END. (1)
+
+
+(1)  [So far as Zicci was ever finished.]
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZICCI, COMPLETE, BY LYTTON ***
+
+******* This file should be named b036w10.txt or b036w10.zip ********
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, b036w11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, b036w10a.txt
+
+This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
+and David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
diff --git a/old/b036w10.zip b/old/b036w10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7cfb605
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/b036w10.zip